Brad Shepik, Ron Samworth, Michael Sarin

This interview with Ron Samworth, Brad Shepik and Michael Sarin was conducted by email during December 2015 and January 2016.

Tony Reif: I’d like to put this release into the context of the time it was recorded so that listeners can gain some idea about what was going on in jazz and in your ideas about music that led to it being the way it is. First, could you broadly summarize where you were at in 1991 and what you’d done up to that time? What inspired you to play guitar in the first place, musicians and music you listened to inside and outside of jazz, your studies, etc?

Brad Shepik: Hard to remember but I was certainly listening to Frisell, Scofield, Abercrombie and Metheny, Jim Hall.  Rambler (Frisell), Electric Outlet (Scofield), Bass Desires (Marc Johnson, featuring Frisell and Scofield), Night (Abercrombie) and Song X (Metheny/Coleman) were records that I listened a lot in the late 80s/early 90’s. I remember from 3 or 4 years old seeing my Dad play and sing, I liked that feeling. I started on guitar about 10 and alto sax at about 11 with Mr. Thurttle. In junior high we had a garage band that played ZZ Top and Cream tunes but also “Mack the Knife” and Crusaders, and a really great band teacher, Mr. Billy Mitchell. I studied jazz guitar with Al Galante in high school thanks to Bruce Gutgesell who was my high school band teacher. Proud to say I was a band geek! We had a blues band called Otis Elevator and the Shaft. I plowed my paper route money into records – Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Jim Hall, Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Monk, Herbie Hancock, Albert King, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and on.

Ron Samworth: There was always music around the house – my Mom loved jazz and musicals and soul and some pop music. I loved rock from a young age – Beatles, Monkees, Stones et al. My aunt Brenda left a big pile of LPs at our house in the early 70s which was a Pandora’s box for me – the Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Hendrix (just like the scene in Almost Famous where Cameron Crowe’s older sister bequeaths her record collection to him). I also remember Chicago and Stevie Wonder as some of my favorite music.

I studied privately when I first picked up the guitar at 12. My first really important teacher was a guy named Bob Smart who taught me rock (Jeff Beck, Yes, Zeppelin) but also music theory and classical guitar. When I was in high school I played in jazz band, jazz choir and a small pop/jazz ensemble, Zeke Bean and the Weenies, as well as a garage rock band called Dynasty (which included Ken Lister on bass). In addition to top 40 and classic rock covers we played Zeppelin, Rush, Yes, Genesis and even Mahavishnu tunes (that was my first two guitar band with a talented guy named Lincoln Nordstrand.)

I went to VCC (Vancouver Community College) from 1981-83, studying with guitarist Bruce Clausen and learning about jazz and classical music and the way it was constructed (harmony, form, counterpoint), and I was introduced to 20th century music (Stravinsky, Bartok, Cage) by composer David Duke.

TR: According to an old bio I found from those days, from 1985 on you were part of various ensembles, including Lunar Adventures (which you co-led with Coat Cooke), Vancouver Ensemble of Jazz Improvisation (V.E.J.I.), the N.O.W. Big Band, Creatures of Habit and Turnaround. NOW and Lunar Adventures had CDs out on Nine Winds, and Justin Time put out a CD of Creatures of Habit in ’91. Plus you led an Ornette cover band, Fort Worth Travelogue, which you formed in 1990.

RS: Yes, from the mid-80s onward I played lots of freelance jazz gigs, R&B/soul gigs, and improvised music with the guys from NOW (Gregg Simpson, Clyde Reed, Paul Plimley, Coat) as well as improvising with poets, visual artists and dancers. There were a lot of influences to sort out – all of the jazz guitar guys Brad cited for sure, Miles, Coltrane and especially the AACM, Ornette and the Downtown New York scene.

Michael Sarin: I always was into music from an early age: my maternal grandfather played tenor sax and would play with family friends at parties; pop radio; older sister’s record collection; mother’s small (maybe ten LPs) but good jazz record collection. Actually, these records – Ray Charles, Teddy Wilson, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley – are what really sent me down the jazz rabbit hole. Sometime in 8th grade I began private lessons with a great drummer/teacher in Seattle named Dave Coleman, Sr. Studied with him throughout high school while playing in the school jazz band and other bands – not rock, but jazz/r&b/pop influenced.

TR: Brad, you studied at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and graduated in 1988. According to the info I have your composition teachers there included Ralph Towner, Julian Priester and Jim Knapp. Knapp became a member of Brad Schoeppach and Borders, a quartet that began in 1987 and that also included Michael and Phil Sparks, and you recorded a cassette of the band featuring Priester in 1989. You also had a grant to compose two suites for Borders plus Priester, Jay Clayton and Denny Goodhew, which was performed in an Earshot Jazz concert in March ’89. Jerry Granelli had been another teacher of yours at Cornish and you had played with him as a sideman.

BS: In addition to those you mentioned, I was really fortunate to study with Dave Peck, Jay Clayton, Chuck Deardorf and Dave Petersen too. All my teachers were really generous – I try to remember them when I’m with my students.

TR: Mike, you studied at the University of Washington for two years, but I know you consider Jerry as your mentor of the time – did you take private lessons with him? (Incidentally, Phil studied at the University of Colorado in Boulder in the 70s and had played in Jerry Granelli’s Visions while in Colorado.)

MS: I attended UW for a couple of years, ’84-’86, studying percussion with Tom Collier as part of a percussion performance degree program – didn’t quite make it! I was playing in the UW jazz big band (Roy Cummings, dir.) and jazz combo plus all the other non-jazz ensembles at school; I learned a helluva lot musically. But the lure of Cornish – which represented for me, and had since the first time I attended a concert there in ’78 or ’79, the creativity and artistic freedom/expression of JAZZ – was strong enough to pull me away from UW. Did I then attend Cornish as a student? No. Why didn’t I enroll at Cornish out of high school? Both very good questions that, in order to get a satisfactory answer, would probably require the asker to have much more training in a different discipline than the performing arts! But I digress…

At Cornish, I did end up getting paid to play for classes; kept my drums there and had a key to come practice when I wanted; took lessons, although quite informally, with Jerry Granelli; played with all of the students who were attending at the time, and it was a group of GOOD ones – Brad, John Silverman, John Schott, Briggan Krauss, Mizue Murakami, and later J. Granelli and Arnold Hammerschlag.

TR: Brad and Mike, how did the two of you hook up – had you known each other before playing together in a Jim Knapp group?

BS: I think Mike and I met through John Silverman a year or so before we started playing with Jim Knapp, who I studied with in theory, repertoire and combo.

MS: Yes, we met through John, whom I had met at UW. John was transferring to Cornish, and Brad was transferring from Central Washington to Cornish. I believe we met during the summer before they both started at Cornish; I don’t recall our first time playing together – probably at a session that summer or the ensuing fall at Cornish.

TR: Ron and Brad, you met at the Banff workshop in ’87. Did you do any playing together there? John Abercrombie was teaching that year I believe.

BS: Banff was a great experience, both from a faculty standpoint and the students attending. I got to hear and play with a lot of great players. I’m sure Ron and I played together in a combo there but I don’t have a clear memory of it.

RS: I think we played some jam sessions together and I believe we did one gig with Benoît Delbecq and Andy Laster and a couple of other guys that was an improvised Ornettish/Electric Miles kind of thing.

TR: Ron, what other Seattle connections did you have? You told me that you already knew Mike, who had performed with you and Kate Hammett-Vaughan in some theatrical project here. Also in Vancouver you workshopped and performed with Wayne Horvitz (who had moved to Seattle in ’88),– your tune “Way In” is a reference to Wayne, and of course the record covers a composition by his wife Robin Holcomb.

RS: I met Mike through John Silverman, I believe, but I can’t for the life of me remember the sequence of things. We did one or two gigs with Kate who was my wife at the time. I also knew Jay Clayton through Kate as well as Aaron Alexander. There was some exchange then as there is now but it was hampered a lot by the border thing – were it not so tricky to play over the border I think we might have perhaps done more stuff together. I also met Jim Knapp, Julian Priester, Jerry Granelli, and Gary Peacock at the time. I played with Wayne Horvitz, Butch Morris and Bobby Previte in 1988 at the Western Front when Wayne did a residency there organized by Alex Varty.

MS: I think I met Ron and Kate through a pianist/composer named Linda Dowdell. And I was at Banff in ’86, the year before Brad and Ron, and Kate was there with me (I think, memories are beginning to get a bit hazy in my advancing years.) I remember going up to Vancouver with John Silverman to do some gigs with Kate, Ron and Roy Styffe at The Classical Joint. Later I came up to play other gigs with Ron, Mizue, Clyde Reed (a memorable New Year’s Japanese feast prepared by Clyde’s wife), Coat Cooke, and Kate.

TR: Ok, now let’s talk about New York. Mike, you moved there in ’89, and Brad in ’90. Other young Seattle hotshots had already made the move East – Jim Black, Chris Speed and Andrew D’Angelo (first to Boston actually, then in ’91 to NYC). What was the downtown scene like in those days for you, and how did living and gigging in New York (for example playing together in the Dean Street Collective with Dave Douglas as well as in the Dave Douglas Trio) affect your musical outlook and practice?

MS: Yes, I moved to NYC in May of ’89 and had a thrilling but rough first year. Upon moving, I only knew one musician there, Andy Laster, whom I had met at Banff in ’86. He was living with Ben Monder in Queens, and soon after a session at their place, my first gig in NY was with Ben and Stomu Takeishi – pretty good company when I look back on it.

When Brad moved out the following year – having my friend and musical compadre nearby and in NYC! – things started to brighten considerably. And within a few months of his moving, we both moved into a house that we shared with Dave Douglas and his then-wife Nabila and another musician named Kenny Pearson. That’s when our music scene REALLY started to take off. We had a basement space where we practiced and played. The Tiny Bell Trio, Dave Douglas String Group, New and Used, various Andy Laster groups, and probably others that I’ve overlooked, they all were nurtured at that house. Also, much of Brad’s and my early experience (Brad can correct me if I’m wrong) with Balkan music came from Dave and his wife (who played accordion and sang), their exploration of Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, Turkish, etc. music. Matt Darriau played a big part in this as well – it was kind of the world music zeitgeist of the time among many jazz musicians.

BS: We did a lot of sessions and rehearsing each other’s music with Mike and Dave and Andy Laster and many others, though there weren’t many gigs. Eventually we started to get to play at the Knitting Factory, which was open to all kinds of groups. I remember playing there with Paul Motian a few times as well. It was a lean but fun time.

TR: Ron, Lunar Adventures played the Knitting Factory in October ’90, and you’d been following the downtown scene yourself for years, as I guess had other creative jazz musicians in Vancouver – what effect did that music have on your playing, and which musicians in particular had a big influence on you? You made an interesting comment recently, you said that Horvitz, Zorn, Frisell and the whole downtown scene “threw down the gauntlet”, and that realizing that you could your bring your love of rock into jazz was liberating.

RS: The Zorn, Frisell, Tom Cora, Tim Berne, Knitting Factory scene was what I was checking out as well as Paul Bley, Ornette, Henry Threadgill and Paul Motian. Here in Vancouver my big influences were Al Neil, Claude Ranger, the New Orchestra Workshop, and contact improv dancer/choreographer Peter Bingham. I was one of the first players on the Vancouver scene to assert the New York Downtown concepts as I was younger than many of the other guys, who were more rooted in free jazz, modal music or the Fluxus movement. The rest of the Vancouver jazz scene at the time was a little more mainstream.

TR: Let’s move on to the music on Quartet 1991. Brad and Ron, you played a gig at Vancouver’s Glass Slipper in (I think) April ’90, and I was there. (Brad, I met you at Seattle’s Bumbershoot festival in summer 1989, when you were performing with Jim Knapp’s group.) And it was based on that gig that I decided to produce a quartet with you guys. The idea of a two-guitar quartet in contemporary/avant jazz wasn’t anything new, it goes back at least to 1970 with the two cuts on Larry Coryell’s Spaces that feature John McLaughlin, and then the latter’s collaboration with Carlos Santana in ’72, Love Devotion Surrender. But I know you’d both listened a lot to Bass Desires, Marc Johnson’s ’85-’87 quartet featuring Frisell and Scofield, who were clearly influences on both your playing styles. And there were other bands featuring two guitars, such as Ornette’s Of Human Feelings group and Prime Time, and Ronald Shannon Jackson & the Decoding Society’s Red Warriors record (it actually has 3 guitars), plus there were duo collaborations between Vernon Reid and Bill Frisell (Smash and Scatteration, 1985) and Sonny Sharrock and multi-stringed instrumentalist Nicky Skopelitis (Faith Moves, 1991). But do you think any of these pairings had much of an influence on how you went about choosing pieces of your own to record, the way you arranged them, and the approach to duo improvisation that you were working up during the recording? Were you combining jazz and rock with freeish improvisation in other music you were making around that time? And do you remember any compositional influences (Brad, in an interview I taped with you and Mike the day after the sessions you said you’d been listening to a lot of Bartok and Chopin.)

BS: I was probably reaching for/borrowing things I liked a lot. Conceptually I hear Ornette Coleman, Jerry Granelli, Jay Clayton, Julian Priester, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz. Guitar-wise Frisell, Scofield, Metheny, Abercrombie, Jim Hall, Jimi Hendrix.

RS: There were a lot of influences to sort out – all of the jazz guitar guys Brad just cited for sure, Miles, Coltrane and especially the AACM, Ornette and the Downtown New York scene. The NY scene was great because it was not just rock-influenced jazz but full on genre-busting. Skronk, Hendrix, tango, minimalism, bebop, complexity, classical, folk music – whatever you brought to the table could co-exist, and that, to me was liberating.

TR: It turned out that the biggest problem with the recording – something that no one had really anticipated, given the success of the Vancouver gig and the fact that you’d exchanged lead sheets of the new pieces to be recorded well ahead of time, was a lack of preparation. There was only one rehearsal, the day before the first recording day (and my notes of the time say that we lost 6 hours of that rehearsal due to some malfunction in your equipment, Ron), and there were no gigs to get the music really fluent and the interplay worked out – I think you were probably both depending on your chops and the energy and spontaneity of the moment to make it all happen. A lot of this music though is a bit complicated, and playing it really well together demanded a degree of virtuosity and polish that wasn’t always achieved in the time we had. And of course that’s why you both felt strongly that it shouldn’t be released, and why I sent it round as a demo to try and interest a big label in taking on the project – without success. I was pretty naïve! On the other hand I stand by the capsule description of the music I came up with to present it cold to those label execs: “Its style ranges across the jazz spectrum from fusion to freedom by way of funk, post-post bop, cool, skronk, the Spanish tinge, and free time sonic exploration (among others) – influences which are pulled together in an approach that combines introspection with edge.” (I don’t know if the term “soundscape” had been applied to an ambient sort of improvised jazz yet; if so I hadn’t heard it.)

My question: how you feel about finally releasing it now? We’ve cleaned up written sections by editing around any playing problems, but otherwise there are just two pieces that have been shortened (“Ramblin’” and “Way In”), the rest is as performed. Do you think that on balance, as a document of the time but also as music to be listened to today, the record’s merits (in terms of your otherwise unrecorded compositions as well as the playing) outweigh any shortcomings?

BS: I had completely forgotten about this session. Surprised to hear it again in the sense that much has changed yet remains the same. Not a huge struggle to recognize myself – I guess I have to own it. Is it compelling music? for anyone else? I can’t be a fair judge. Music is music and music is better than a lot of other things.

RS: The session was very uncomfortable for me – my sound was messed up and I was really off. Though I had practiced the music, it only really makes sense when it’s up on its feet with a full band. Music to me has always been about creating a feeling between people, so playing together as a band is far more important than woodshedding cool stuff to play over the tunes. I was very naive at the time and in hindsight it would have been great to have done a couple of live gigs with that material and then hit the studio – it could have been a nice little project. I had so much regard for Brad and Mike and Phil and regretted not being on my game those few days…However, it taught me some important stuff. As far as it being a document of the time – let’s leave that to the historians and jazz pundits.

TR: I’ve listened to this music quite a lot in the process of mixing and mastering, and (hopefully without getting too pretentious about this), I think there’s a very expressive Romantic sensibility at play in a number of these pieces and the way you guys treated them. The music’s often expansive but sometimes rises to a fever pitch. It frequently demands a no-holds barred/no holding back approach to the playing, especially soloing. And some of your compositions, Brad, I now think of as tending towards grandeur and melodrama. By melodrama I’m not just referencing a heightened or sensationalized emotional quality (which sometimes seems like a dialogue that can seesaw between joy/exaltation and “negative” emotions such as anger, extreme tension, and melancholy) but, by analogy, the historical meaning of the word – theatre interspersed with songs and orchestral music. In other words, music with a situational or story element suggesting characters and feelings, a compositional approach I think you developed further in BABKAS, for example the “Cautionary Tale” suite on Ants to the Moon. At the same time I like that the compositions are thought through and melodically memorable, that both the compositions and improvisations aim for clear structure and cohesion, and that the playing avoids fusiony cliches and empty showboating – there’s a more “classical” side to this music as well. Does my characterization capture something about the ambitions of the music in a way that you recognize? Or would you describe it in different terms?

BS: Anything I could say would only be conjecture and limiting; probably better off just listening.

TR: Mike, is your playing on this session typical of your style of the time? I like your drumming here a lot and think it was essential for the music to gel as well as it does. In that interview I did with you and Brad you refer to Ed Blackwell and Roy Haynes as among the drummers you particularly admire, along with Granelli, DeJohnette, Baron and Motian. So where does the slashing, rockish side of it come from? I have a feeling that you also had a quite a lot to do with how the music was worked out, as Brad comments in the interview that “we all had our say in the session.”

MS: Unfortunately, I really have very little recollection of the recording session. Naturally, my playing was a compendium of various styles and influences I was processing at time: Paul Motian, Shannon Jackson (in the Power Tools Trio with Frisell – that probably accounts for any “rock” element, since I was never much influenced by classic rock drummers), Joey Baron, Billy Hart, Al Foster, and the others you mentioned.

TR: Brad and Ron, you’ve both performed in several bands with two guitars since then. And if you could return to 1991 with that experience, are there any words of advice you’d offer your younger selves about trying to extend what you can say in a guitar trio by adding another guitar?

BS: I’ve been fortunate to play with several guitar players (David Tronzo, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Bill Bickford, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Ben Monder, Steve Cardenas) in the two-guitar bands of Paul Motian and Joey Baron and I’m still involved in multiple guitar projects. One of them is my own band with Ben Monder. Another is the Arthur Kell Quartet with Nate Radley on the other guitar, and I’ve also played a few times with Mike Baggetta. I always enjoy playing with other guitar players, the more the merrier. I recently recorded a tune with Peter Bernstein, Adam Rogers and John Scofield, which was an honor and a lot of fun. The advice I’d give to my younger self is pretty much what I suggest to my students, which is to keep listening/practicing/transcribing and have fun.

RS: I’ve worked with Tony Wilson in his band Bugs Inside, The Peggy Lee Band and the alt rock band DarkBlueWorld with vocalist Elizabeth Fischer, with Bernard Falaise in The Unexpected (with Dylan van der Schyff and Pierre Tanguay on drums), with René Lussier and the NOW Orchestra (Tour du Bloc). On the international front I worked with Fred Frith at the Vancouver New Music festival, and Marc Ribot and René Lussier (Cobra with John Zorn in Victo). I also did a show with Terry Ex (guitar), Michael Vatcher and Tony Buck that was really fun.

I think we were on the right track in 1991 – it’s an honest representation of the state of music and ourselves at the time. There are many sonic possibilities with two guitars but ultimately it matters more who is behind the instruments and how they make music together. The guys on the session were/are good people and good artists and that’s what I value.