Well I’ve been a bit absent from the internet of late, partially due to nice weather and partially due to various trips and a typically nutso schedule in general.  However, I’m back and ready to type, as it were, armed with some great upcoming shows for the rest of the summer and into the fall, as well as some more Post-Colonial African Grooves of the Week (starting up again on Friday), the reprise of some more thoughts on Morton and other jazz pioneers, and more.

Speaking of Morton, my first big show this summer (yes, here in Portland the sun has only recently come out for good!) is a double-bill I’ve been looking forward to for some time, featuring my old-timey band the Bridgetown Sextet and the Midnight Serenaders,  one of my favorite bands of any genre in Portland, at Jimmy Mak’s, Portland’s classiest jazz club, this Saturday night!

I don’t always mention Bridgetown stuff on this blog, but it has really turned from sort of a fun side-hobby band into one of my favorite projects of late.  My good friend of many many years Scott Kennedy and I started the group a couple of years ago after a long history with the style.  We met in 5th grade, at which point I was a nerdy classical pianist and he knew nothing about music.  Several years later, we both began to develop an interest in ragtime and early jazz, and around that time I decided to teach myself trumpet and we both picked up some drumming from my high school band teacher after school.  Meanwhile, I began moving from classical to jazz piano and Scott decided to teach himself piano from scratch, starting out rather amazingly with the Maple Leaf Rag, hardly the world’s easiest piece of music.

After many years of blundering through attempts to play as a duo and occasionally add other musicians, Scott and I found ourselves back in Portland after college, and decided to put this group together.  We figured that we would just call the best musicians in the style who we could find in town and see if they would do it, and miraculously they all said yes!  We’ve made a very strong effort to play the music in a fresh and energetic style reminiscent of the original vibe of the music, rather than in any sort of “preservationist” manner, and I feel that we’ve developed a uniquely exciting way of approaching the repertoire, a sentiment which, fortunately for us, has been echoed by Portland’s vibrant swing dance community!

So, all in all, we’re excited to bring the old-time stomp down to Jimmy Mak’s on Saturday and of course to share the bill with the Serenaders, who have really been instrumental in bringing attention to old-time jazz and swing in Portland over the past 5 years.  We were recently in the studio recording the first half of a new album, so here are some excerpts from those tracks to whet your appetite for the show (click to listen):

King Porter Stomp

Who’s Sorry Now

Buddy Bolden’s Blues

I’m Gonna Stomp Mr. Henry Lee

Our first album, “Authentic Old-Time Jazz and Swing” is available over at Bandcamp, you can check it out below and click on the album art to get there!

And I would be amiss not to finish by listing the personnel who make this whole thing happen.

Bridgetown Sextet:
Scott Kennedy – piano, drums
Andrew Oliver – cornet, drums, piano
Doug Sammons – guitar, vocals
David Evans – clarinet, tenor sax
John Moak – trombone (on recordings linked above)
Dave Bryan – trombone (currently in the band)
Eric Gruber, bass

We’re just about to head into Two Sticks studio in Seattle to record our second album (our first, Just 4 U, came out in April of 09) with Don Gunn, our favorite engineer.  This one will be out in September on Origin Records, continuing my excellent relationship with them!

So, come out to Jimmy’s tomorrow night for this show if you’re in Portland, it’ll be a great one!  Reservations at 503-295-6542.

Despite our great fatigue from late night driving, Dan and I employed the good old jet lag tactic of staying up all day and being outside as much as possible.  It was great to hang out with my old friend Colin Williams (whose class we had taught earlier in the day) and relax before our evening gig:

Our last gig of the tour was certainly the best.  We played at a very hip, tiny room in the Mission called BlueSix, along with Darren Johnston’s Nice Guy Trio, a fantastic trumpet-accordion-bass trio from SF.  Their music was really fun and jaunty, and a great pleasure to hear.  Our set went really well too, many of Dan and Kevin’s families and all of our Bay Area friends showed up, and with the addition of the Nice Guy Trio’s fans, we packed the place!  The audience was extremely attentive and appreciative, always a pleasure (and unfortunately rare), so thanks to everyone who came out down in SF. I only have one bad picture from the show, but you get the idea:

San Francisco is always one of my favorite cities to visit, and it seems that I always schedule it so I have almost no free time there.  This held true again on this trip, as Kevin and I had to blast out of town the next morning since we were both subbing with Portland’s most rockin’ Afrobeat band, Jujuba, in Mt. Shasta City the next day.  That was lots of fun too, though the scheduling was a bit rough.

Overall a fun trip with a bit too much driving, and a good kickoff for the new CD, “82% Chance of Rain.”

Lots more touring coming up in the near future:  The Tunnel Six cross-Canada tour kicks off in just about a month in Toronto, and the Kora Band will be on tour up and down the West Coast in September, among other things!  What a busy year.  I feel very lucky to be able to do all of these things, it’s a great pleasure and privilege.

I’m going to re-focus some energy on this blog in the near future too, I’m considering reprising some “serieses” that I had started (Jazz Pioneers and the Post-Colonial African Groove of the Week), as well as maybe interspersing one on jazz in Portland.  Stay tuned!

This morning, we had a great time working with my good friend Colin Williams’ students at the Bay School of San Francisco.  They played great and we also spent quite a bit of time talking about some of my and Dan’s tunes, including “Inattentive Attendant,” which they had listened to in preparation for our arrival:

And we had a good time jamming with them too. Colin’s done a great job with a wide variety of students, getting them all up to speed nicely.

It was a nice morning and now we’re enjoying the beautiful SF weather and chilling out before our gig tonight at BlueSix with Darren Johnston’s Nice Guy Trio, who I’m really excited to check out too!  Double-billing on tour is always lots of fun, as its great to check out the local bands as well, especially in cities where I don’t get to spend as much time as I’d like, such as San Fran.  Hope the weather is this nice wherever you are!

We started the day by admiring Mary Sue’s father’s amazing 6,000+ LP collection:

Then enjoyed the FANTASTIC weather on the way down and some nice hangs in Lithia Park and by the river:

Then, a great gig at the Avalon!

A few photos from yesterday: rearranging the cars in a Wilsonville parking lot, Eric Gruber proves his claim that the Gruber gene includes being able to fit many items into small spaces:

Gruber prepares us some fine sausage at MST’s parents house:

Sam Bonds Garage and the Doug Detrick Quintet:

Now we’re heading down to Talent for a gig at the Avalon Bar and Grill, a cool-looking little place run by a childhood friend of a friend of mine in Portland.  Should be fun, and we’ll keep you posted.  Cheers!

(Farka and Khaira – Side A Track 2)

Tonight we’re playing in Eugene (home of Mary-Sue Tobin, our alto/soprano saxophonist) with the Douglas Detrick Quintet.  Douglas is a great trumpeter and fantastic composer who I recently met thanks to the glories of the internet.  I got to see his jazz/classical chamber ensemble, the “AnyWhen Ensemble,” last Saturday at the Community Music Center here in Portland, they were on a short tour after a gig 2 weeks ago at John Zorn’s club The Stone in NYC!  It was a fantastic concert, Doug’s compositions are really interesting and pleasantly epic and free-flowing, and the musicians were all excellent.  I’m excited to hear his quintet tonight!

We’re playing at Sam Bonds Garage, a great multi-genre venue in Eugene, at 9 PM, followed by the Detrick Quintet.  Have a listen to Doug’s stuff over at his site and we’ll see you down the road. Full details:

Wednesday, April 17, 2010, 9:00PM
Douglas Detrick Quintet
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Sam Bonds Garage
407 Blair
Eugene, OR
$1-$5 cover

(AO Sextet as 1947 family portrait.  Photo by Maureen Oliver)

It’s always interesting how tunes develop over time, and we’ve been playing many of the tunes in our book for over a year, some for even longer.  When we pulled out our old classic “Szesc” yesterday night, I realized just how much faster we play it now than when I wrote it 5 years ago.  Certainly this is not a surprising trend, but in this specific instance it was nice to actually be able to pull it off at that tempo after so many train wrecks back there in the past!

The newer tunes have come together really well too.  I feel like we may be on the verge of getting tired of playing them, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet so they’re really tight and still full of energy.  I do forsee some significant new repertoire for this band in the coming year, however.

I’m really happy to have the opportunity to take this sextet on the road after almost 5 years of playing together, and we’ll keep you posted on happenings as we make our way southward.  The Medford Mail-Tribune has a nice preview of our show on Thursday in Talent (a small town between Ashland and Medford), here.  We’re teaming up with some great bands in Eugene (Douglas Detrick Quintet) and San Francisco (the Nice Guy Trio), and we may even see some sun for a change as we head southward (though admittedly there is sun outside my window right now in Portland, though one never knows how long that will last…)

Anyway, for a refresher, here’s the tour schedule.  Tell your friends!  Happy weekend everyone…

Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 9:00PM
Douglas Detrick Quintet
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Sam Bonds Garage
407 Blair
Eugene, OR
$1-$5 cover

Thursday, April 15 2010, 8:00-10:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Avalon Bar and Grill
105 W. Valley Rd.
Talent, OR
$10

Friday, April 16, 2010, 9:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Darren Johnston’s Nice Guy Trio
BlueSix Acoustic Room
3043 24th St. (at Treat St.)
San Francisco, CA

Brett Campbell wrote a really nice review of the new album over at Willamette Week:

[ELECTRIC JAZZ] With his Kora Band and Portland Jazz Composers [Ensemble], hard-working young keyboardist Andrew Oliver has become a mainstay of this city’s jazz scene. His high-energy second sextet release gets the precipitation percentage wrong, but just about everything else right.

82% Chance of Rain is an eclectic collection, but a year of honing these 10 tracks has allowed them to benefit from the variety of the composers’ well-integrated yet distinctive styles, rather than sounding like several different bands. Oliver’s own memorably melodic compositions (“Inattentive Attendant,” “800 Turtles,” “Biannual/Biennial”) tend to be fairly straight ahead, even playful (“Very Small Island”); throughout, he makes smart use of retro tech like the Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric piano without sounding merely throwback.

Guitarist Dan Duval’s pieces (“Public and Republic,” “Only a Quality Lime for Eric Gruber #1”) unleash some crunchy electric-guitar excitement, while drummer Kevin Van Geem’s contributions (like “Bolivar” and the title cut) add an indie-rock vibe. And saxman Willie Matheis scores with a warm ballad, “I Am Yours.” Matheis (tenor and soprano sax) and Mary-Sue Tobin (alto and soprano saxes and clarinet) contribute soaring lines that herald the ascension of a generous, diverse band that can appeal to fans of new jazz as well as older genres like fusion and post-bop. BRETT CAMPBELL.

And, of course, you can check out the album over on the right side of this page, and CD’s are available at the OA2 site.

Thursday, April 8, 7:30 PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet CD Release!
TaborSpace (http://www.taborspace.org)
5441 SE Belmont (corner of SE 55th and Belmont)
Portland, OR 97215
$7-15 sliding scale
All Ages!

Thanks everyone!

The album is up for streaming and download at Bandcamp, you can use the player below (or to the right, for that matter) to check it out, and I hope you’ll consider supporting our endeavors by purchasing a download.  Physical copies are also available, you can order them at the OA2 page.

Meanwhile, we’ll be playing a CD Release gig in Portland at the unique TaborSpace on April 8 and hitting the road the following week for gigs in Eugene, Talent (near Ashland), and San Francisco.  We’ll be sharing bills with some great local groups down there and we’re really looking forward to our first tour together!  Here are the complete details, send a note to your friends down south and help us make it a success!

You can find us over at Facebook as well, right here.

Thursday, April 8, 7:30 PM
CD Release Show!
Andrew Oliver Sextet
TaborSpace
5441 SE Belmont (corner of SE 55th and Belmont)
Portland, OR 97215
$7-15 sliding scale
All Ages!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 9:00PM
Douglas Detrick Quintet
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Sam Bonds Garage
407 Blair
Eugene, OR
$1-$5 cover

Thursday, April 15 2010, 8:00-10:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Avalon Bar and Grill
105 W. Valley Rd.
Talent, OR
$10

Friday, April 16, 2010, 9:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Darren Johnston’s Nice Guy Trio
BlueSix Acoustic Room
3043 24th St. (at Treat St.)
San Francisco, CA