[Dixielandjazz] Interesting "New Traditional" music from local modern jazz musician

[david richoux]

Hi all,

Just read this article in the San Francisco Weekly (a free alternative
press newspaper) - thought some of you might be interested. I have
heard Mark play in several different groups and as a solo act - he is
really very good! I did miss the shows this article was promoting...

Dave Richoux

Mark Growden’s New Traditionalism
A sometime jazzman tackles American folk, and leaves his own imprint.
By Mark Keresman
published: February 16, 2011


Putting down the sax, picking up the banjo.


Mark Keresman on Mark Growden There are many ways to interpret and
preserve the traditions of musical Americana. One is treat it like a
museum piece, with pious reverence — thereby sucking the fun clean out
of it. Another is to revamp it, keep its mannerisms but supercharge
it, mucking it up with irony and audacity until it's hard to tell
where love for the music leaves off and contempt takes over. Local lad
Mark Growden has found his own path — he approaches American music in
untraditional ways, keeping the framework and verities, but, in his
words, "turning them on their head, [interpreting them] the way a jazz
musician would. It's not jazz, but it's taking old songs and finding
their emotion, remaking them anew." Growden embraces American music as
a whole, finding Bruce Springsteen and Aretha Franklin part of the
same continuum as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly.
Growden has taken a circuitous path to get to where he is now. His
background is in jazz and classical music; his main ax, the saxophone.
Growden had established himself in the Bay Area's cutting-edge jazz
scene, exploring the areas where composition and improvisation blur,
with Bay Area ensembles the Splatter Trio and the Club Foot Orchestra.
"I had been composing and performing music for local dance companies,
and one night, all my instruments were stolen [from one of the
performance spaces]. I had to start from scratch. Someone lent me a
banjo, and that completed a connection for me. I always liked and
studied folk music, listened to the Alan Lomax field recordings of
Appalachian music. The banjo was an auxiliary [way] to get to playing
again, but it tapped into my love for that."

Lose Me in the Sand was made live in the studio, recorded in two days
in Tucson, Ariz. "Everything [about the album] is a snapshot," Growden
says. The desiccated desert ambiance of that state and region is part
of the album. He recorded with his "Tucson band," whose regional
sensibilities infuse the proceedings. Growden's voice has an almost
eerie echo throughout, sounding as if it were coming from an abandoned
home. "That's probably because my voice is coming through everyone's
microphones," he says. "I did the vocals live along with the band."

The album often has a ghostlike cast, but do not call it "lo-fi."
"When [performers] try too hard to sound lo-fi and 'primitive,' that's
just as bad as Nashville high-gloss studio stuff," says Growden,
referring to how mainstream rock and country discs' studio productions
have taken heart and spontaneity out of music, and how indie
recordings confuse rawness with authenticity. Growden celebrates
American sounds, but he's no snob about it, seeking to unearth and
embrace the obscure or archaic. Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" is recast
as apocalyptic mountain ballad, its declaration of devotion sounding
harrowing rather than happy. Growden's own ominous "Takin' My Time"
evokes the work songs of field laborers and prison chain gangs,
conjuring the driven grunts, chants, boot-stomps, and hammers of
endlessly, thanklessly toiling men, with a serrated harmonica wail
that cuts through flesh and bone into the soul. While some use
sampling to juxtapose elements in a postmodern hoo-hah, Growden
employs what he terms "acoustic mash-up" — the album's final track is
an exhilarating collision of tunes unique to the U.S. of A. The words
to the Janis Joplin hit "Mercedes Benz" — "Oh, Lord, won't you buy me
... a night on the ... a color TV" — are sung, ingeniously, to the
tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Of this, Growden states, "It's a
protest of materialism in our culture." As an elegant, hopeful
epilogue, there is a courtly version of "Molly Rose Waltz."

Growden has three bands of and for different cities and distinct
musical ambitions. His Oakland/San Francisco combo features protean
guitarist Myles Boisen ("I've been playing with him off and on since
1995"), trumpeter Chris Grady, percussionist Jenya Chernoff, cellist
Alex Kelly, and himself on an assortment of noisemakers ("accordion,
bicycle handlebars, shruti box"). The band concentrates on "art songs,
not the usual verse/chorus/verse framework." His next disc will
feature his New Orleans group. "This band is amazing — [it includes]
Wendell Brunious, a trumpeter for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and
saxophonist Loren Pickford, who used to play for Jackie Wilson and Van
Morrison. [The next album] will be songs, but done in the hard bop,
soul-jazz style of Cannonball Adderley and Horace Silver," Growden
says. "Those guys reached back into the roots of jazz, into gospel,
blues, field hollers." That's somewhat similar to the way, on Lose Me,
Growden delves into the history of American song, going full circle,
connecting the events and emotions of what was to what is and likely
will be.

http://tinyurl.com/4v8w8xh