music
Incarnations of Jazz
It is easy for quality artists with incredible imagination and immense improvisational skills to get
overlooked by those who seek more traditional, popular fare. Pop is short for “popular” for a reason, though
the jazz genre and its many talented musicians deserve more recognition than they often receive these days.
When promising Northwest artists appear, it’s important to make sure you hear about them. The Joe Freuen
Sextet is one such collection of noteworthy musicians.
Freuen is a rising talent who has shared the stage with the likes of Dave Liebman, backed up the Cherry
Poppin’ Daddies and performed at legendary clubs like New York City’s The Blue Note. His sextet plays a
spirited sort of orchestral jazz that will have you dancing to the beats, or at least bopping in your seats.
Tracks like the 10-minute “Barber Moresi” begin and end with the sort of characteristic bombastic fl air
some traditional orchestra numbers are known for, though in-between these moments the song reveals some
jazzy undercurrents. Ditto the groovy “25-24,” which features slippery saxophone solos that fl y up and down
the scales while frenetic drumming keeps things moving right along. “Siamese” is more raucous, with its
sections of sustained heavy drumming and dizzying piano, and a trumpet solo halfway through slows things
down for a spell before the song’s swelling conclusion.
The Joe Freuen Sextet alternates between languid and lively with ease, changing time and mood in a
way that feels natural. Its tracks are cohesive and yet imaginative enough to stand on their own, and their
complexity is never overwhelming. You will be hard-pressed not to enjoy this incarnation.
The Joe Freuen Sextet plays at 7:30 pm Thursday, April 21, at the Granary; n/c. — Brian Palmer
Orchestral Chamber Pop
Nona Marie Invie’s voice has a chilling coo that sits between dark and bright. Regardless, it’s beautiful. Her
hesitance in speech and unwillingness to disclose the concrete meaning of her lyrics makes her music more
poetry than anything else. The Minneapolis quintet, with Invie at its lead, weaves together soft textures of
melancholy and longing that often refl ect the Dark Dark Dark of their name, but that also veers away from
gray by opening into a wide spectrum of different colors.
Invie’s background in music is similar to that of many young pianists. Learning as a child at her mother’s
behest and then classically trained, she was left as an adult wanting more than the clinical routine of recitals.
Invie quit and picked up the guitar, then relearned the instrument of her youth that now — in combination
with cello, banjo, accordion and clarinet — has established the quintet’s distinct version of orchestral chamber
pop. As brazen as one would assume this band would be, given its combined talent, the lyrics are shrouded
in metaphor. Unsure if this veiling is a guard against intrusion or just an artist conscious of partial revelation,
Invie’s audience is left to decipher her lyrical oddities. “Oh, the unspeakable things,” she laments over and
over at the end of “Daydreaming.” However indistinct they appear, her words blend into heart-wrenching
ballads that need no explanation.
Dark Dark Dark plays at 9:30 pm Saturday, April 23, at Sam Bond’s Garage; $8. — Andrew Hitz
The Devil You Know
Since The Devil Makes Three released its debut record
in 2002, the band has sprouted a following among hipsters,
punk rockers and fans of bluegrass old-timey jug bands.
That goes to show the cross-genre appeal of this group,
deeply rooted in country but not denying its punk rock
infl uences either.
Santa Cruz’s The Devil Makes Three is an oddball in the
world of folk — a drummerless acoustic trio consisting of two
guitarists and a string bass — yet even without a drummer
the group manages to add a punk edge with a concrete
sense of rhythm. Standup bassist Lucia Turino has said
that the band does for American music what the Pogues
did for Irish music. If that sounds like a horrible way to ruin
bluegrass, think again.
The band has a cohesiveness that comes from years of
playing together — guitarist Pete Bernhard and guitarist
Cooper McBean fi rst met and began playing punk songs in
Vermont in eighth grade. But they’re not just cranking out
acoustic versions of the three-chord, two-minute blasts that
originally defi ned punk. On the contrary, they’re much more
in line with the fi nger-picking style of Mississippi John Hurt,
and their twangy, three-part harmonizing recalls the Monroe
Brothers more than the Ramones. It’s loose and rough
around the edges, like back-porch bluegrass should be. Their
lyrics give booze and blues and hard luck a bit of grace, and
while some of their songs are fairly autobiographical (like
“Old Number Seven,” an homage to Jack Daniels whiskey,
or “Beneath the Piano,” about a New Year’s party where
people, including Bernhard, passed out under a piano) many
of them are captivating stories — campfi re yarns — sung in a
minor chord.
With every song, Bernhard’s gritty voice conjures visions
of barroom brawlers and whiskey-fueled rebellion of days
past. They don’t look like hillbillies, though, and they don’t
play bluegrass like Bill Monroe would have played it, but
they certainly inspire as much enthusiastic bass-slappin’ and
boot-scootin’ mayhem as any old-timey band could. Though
it took them four years to come up with their latest CD, Do
Wrong Right, the only thing you could do wrong would be to
not go check them out.
The Devil Makes Three plays with Brown Bird 9 pm
Saturday, April 23, at the WOW Hall; $18 adv., $20 door.
— Vanessa Salvia
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APRIL 21, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
Garage A Trois
Sexy Punkalectic Jazz Skronk
When a band is called Garage A Trois, the sex metaphors kind of write themselves. And with a sound
like theirs, those metaphors are almost irresistible. These guys produce jazz, funk and psychedelic rock in an
intoxicated orgy, and in this three-way nobody ends up feeling awkward or left out.
Garage A Trois is a super group of contemporary jazz-funksters. Skonkin’ on the saxophone is Skerik,
known for his work in Critters Buggin’ and with Les Claypool (Frog Brigade, Les Claypool’s Fancy Band). On
drums is Stanton Moore of Galactic. On keyboards is Marco Benevento of the Benevento Russo Duo. On
vibraphone is Mike Dillon (Critters Buggin, Les Claypool’s Fancy Band), who is known for his work with Ani
Difranco and Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe.
Garage A Trois is coming through Eugene in support of their 2011 release, Always Be Happy, But Stay Evil,
out on Potato Family Records. They sometimes get lumped in with the jam band scene, though they transcend
that genre in many ways. Live, the band attacks with the intensity of a Bebop musician on junk — updating jazz
into a funky amalgam of angular, glitchy and twitchy techno beats with melodies that build upon themselves,
exploding at times into the spiritual exultation of Coltrane or an experimental jazz-rock ruckus.
Garage-a-trois plays at 9 pm Thursday, April 21, at Sam Bond’s Garage; $12. — William Kennedy
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