The Jazz Mandolin Project Does The Jungle Tango

"That was the craziest song we've ever done" announced an exasperated Jamie Masefield from the stage. After bringing the song to a territory where most live improvised music intends to reach, but seldom attains, the result was simply stunning. Masefield tells the crowd, "that was only the third time we've played that song, and we don't really have a name for it yet." Scratching his head he ads, "by the way, if anybody has an idea for a name and felt something while listening to it, write it on a piece of paper and give it to the guy at the table in the back," while pointing to the merchandise booth. Once again, another full circle example of the spontaneous energy The Jazz Mandolin Project propels.

This particular evening is the CD release party for The Jazz Mandolin Project's newest recording, rightfully titled Jungle Tango, that was released nationally on March 25th. An exciting karma fills the air as the band and audience find themselves equally excited to reopen another chapter in The Jazz Mandolin Project. This edition features along with Masefield on mandolin -Danton Boller on bass and Danny Shapiro Weiss on drums - a monster on the skins that has added a fresh carnal force of energy to the trio. Trumpeter Matt Shulman joins the band for the first time live and invigorates the overall sound to incorporate psychedelic vibrations of feedback and echoes by supplementing his vocal chords towards flourishing the overall sound to a sum, clearly larger than its parts.

In between songs, Masefield greets the fans and reminds them that, "you'll only be able to find Jungle Tango at the cool record stores, the un-cool stores won't have it." Jungle Tango spawns from the same exact recording sessions of the band's prior release After Dinner Jams, released in 2001. The sound incorporates themes of trance, bass, drums, fusion and jazz, built around the mandolin that confidently allows you to say - "this is nothing like I've ever heard before." Masefield, even goes on further to proclaim, "this is the most significant thing I've done."

Engineered by John Siket (Phish, Dave Matthews Band), the accomplished recording fits snug within a 46-minute package . Rather than confronting us with the power trio - of records and tours past, Jungle Tango is a five-man effort with resourceful contributions from Gil Goldstein (Pat Metheny) on the piano and accordion, and percussionist Chris Lovejoy (Charlie Hunter Band). The recording is beyond jazz. It's beyond anything you might have heard with a mandolin based sound. It grooves funks, fuses, swings, dances, bounces, jams, laughs, and bangs while maintaining a sense of cohesiveness and adventure within an improvisational spirit.

Masefield explains the process behind the evolution of Jungle Tango. "We talked about...what we wanted to try and accomplish with this CD, and we talked about how there is so much music that sounds very much the same on the scene right now, and what we would sometimes consider uncreative music. I mean that on the jamband scene as well. That there is a typical sound that's developed and you just hear it all the time. We just wanted to distance ourselves from that, and focus on...what we've played all these hundreds of gigs and how we've tried to develop our own way of improvising. That's what we wanted to try and get on tape - this unique way we see the music and show the uniqueness of this. And not unique just because it is led by a mandolin player, not for that at all. More for the way we communicate, and the way we move through music and create a different sonic. It's not too much like you've ever heard, and it could be too out there for a lot of people."

It's a Wednesday night, and rock icon Lou Reed is playing at the north wing of the University of Vermont campus along with ex-Ratdog bassist Rob Wasserman, who joined The Jazz Mandolin Project for a run of nine shows in September of 2000. Masefield chooses to do his own thing this particular evening rather than attend Reed's first performance in Vermont, with a guest pass and all the experiences that come with that territory. Instead, Masefield bestows a detailed presentation to a crowd of young college students. He speaks amongst various topics, including his role as a musician and many of his extraneous experiences that have allowed him to play the music he loves for a living. He chooses to do this, down to earth, patient and sincere - Masefield tells his story to those students in attendance.

Masefield grew up in a musical household and was exposed to New Orleans jazz through Dixieland jam sessions at family functions. While in college at the University of Vermont he decided to pursue another inquisitive instrument - the mandolin - as he was tired of playing the banjo in a jazz setting, and it came easily to him because it was tuned the same as a banjo. Shortly after college, his connection with the mandolin became closer than ever imagined while he lived on a tree farm in Vermont for nine years. This enabled him to live simply and hone his expertise of the instrument, looking for ways to innovate the mandolin from its traditional sense.

It was during this period of time that Masefield began to launch a one gig a month performance at the Last Elm Café in Burlington, Vermont's old north end. When his combination would play, this shoddy part of town would become a creative melting pot, as these impromptu sessions would involve any musicians he could possibly obtain and the audience would dig it. As Masefield suggests, "the hope was to get the interest we had in music to be conveyed to the audience at will."

The Jazz Mandolin Project has always been about connecting to the audience, just as Masefield is reaching out to the students attending the casual lecture. He explains how the most important time to make it a big gig is when you are playing the less important gig. The opportunity to turn people onto his music, unfamiliar with the band, is what he truly loves... as is to have his audience intently listen. "There used to be so much separation between band and audience - like the people on stage were from Mars," explains Masefield to the young crowd about a particular brand of rock acts relevant during his post-college years. "We don't wear costumes, we go out dressed the way we are that day. We want to reach out and communicate."

Masefield explains the significance of being a live musician, and is quick to compare it to today's sense of community spawned around the jazz scene of the 1930's and 1940's. Just like the golden era of jazz, he thrives on feeding the audience music that intrigues, excites and keeps them asking for more. "All we are trying to do is get our inspiration together, put it in a package, make it creative, throw it out to the audience and make sure the audience has value in it." Although The Jazz Mandolin Project has witnessed many incarnations, Masefield is a firm believer in the healthy phase of change. After traveling around the entire country and playing random gigs in empty bars in Peoria, Illinois on a Tuesday Night to a packed sold out show at the Wetlands in New York City, he puts it all into perspective from a creative stand point. "As time goes by we live in a world of increasing saneness all around. Things look all the same on highways in California or North Carolina. I'm concerned saneness can stunt our creativity. Things that are unique will have more value as time goes by. As artists and creative people we do things that are really unique."

Unique in his innovation of the mandolin, Masefield has a very limited bluegrass background. He bypasses this obvious genre most closely associated with the instrument, preferring instead to take his eight-string toward a more radical interpretation. The band is called The Jazz Mandolin Project for an apparent reason, despite the obvious pairing of mandolin to bluegrass, which he finds rather stereotypical in a musical sense.

A student asks Masefield about his performance with Bernie Williams of the New York Yankees at the Jammy Awards a couple years back. Masefield was eager to reflect on their initial meeting and reiterate how gracious and friendly the ball player was, despite the egocentric personalities attached with many of today's professional athletes. After jamming on a jazz standard called "Ramblin," Masefield asked Bernie what it felt like and he responded, "that felt like I just hit a home run." Masefield answers a few more questions from the students before playing a new song, which has never been played live before. Clearly, another treat for those in attendance.

A few days later I had the opportunity to sit down with Masefield and inquire more about his continually evolving band, the new album Jungle Tango, the mandolin and anything else worth engaging.

You take the mandolin and make it a more cutting edge instrument, bringing it to new levels of imagination and originality - Do you see yourself as a pioneer of sorts?

I would hope that in the end I would be considered that, but I wouldn't make a statement that I would consider myself a pioneer. Although I do feel that a lot of my areas of interest with the mandolin are areas that are fairly un-chartered, in that it's difficult in some ways and a bit of a benefit in other ways, but if I could hope for anything out of my efforts it would be to make a contribution to how people seek their options with the mandolin.

Do you ever hear yourself sounding like anybody else? I hear more Pat Metheny than say, David Grisman

Yeah, I hear more of that as well. I went through a pretty long period where I didn't want to listen to any mandolin players, because I just didn't want to sound like them. I don't do that anymore, I listen to everybody. I think I had to go through a period, when I was getting going, of blocking out the obvious options in front of me, saying - "no, no, I don't want to go down those paths that other people have gone down already. I want to try and do something different." So I was influenced by jazz guitarists like Pat Metheny, Scofield Bill Frisell and Mike Stern. There is a whole school of modern jazz guitar players, and I really dug into them.

Are there any limitations regarding tone and range with your instrument by moving into such an improvised jazz setting?

Yeah, there are a lot of limitations to the mandolin that I'm trying to deal with. One is that it's a very high pitched instrument, and I'm always trying to be aware that it's a lot of mandolin music for a crowd to listen to for the duration of a show. So I try and think of ways to change it up, do different things in the way I arrange songs, and what happens through the course of a song. Another limitation is it has no sustain. The notes, they come and they go. It's very nice to have sustain. There are some things I try to benefit from with that situation, like I've always been trying to develop a kind of percussive way of strumming the mandolin, that sounds more like, you know, that might be trying to imitate a drum kit, something really rhythmic. A lot of mandolin players have done that as well, but I think that's an attribute of the mandolin that can really be exploited and really be used effectively.

Your records with The Jazz Mandolin Project have gone from the more mellow jazz side, to the in your face intensity of Xenoblast. Your new record, Jungle Tango - is it what the name implies? Sounds a bit trance based.

Yeah, that's very true, Jungle Tango is an extension of what we were starting to develop in Xenoblast. We were just starting to crack open a nut, that in my opinion has really helped us to fulfill Jungle Tango. If you took the song Xenoblast, and listened to that, and then listened to the first track off Jungle Tango (the song "Jungle Tango"), you can hear a difference of hundreds of gigs developing a way of - mandolin, upright bass and drums. Figuring out how to improvise through that genre of music, and it's come a long way. So, yes it is an extension.

Well in your live shows, you've been mixing it up with techno and funk lately, which obviously doesn't satisfy jazz purists.

I think it probably disgusts them (laughs). That's something that I think about, ‘cause the name of the band is The Jazz Mandolin Project, so I feel like I'm being kind of a traitor, like they thought they'd hear more jazz, and now they are hearing something that they are disgusted with. The other inspiration that we are following is - we are trying to do something that inspires us, and we are trying to be here now, rather than be there then. So, if they want to hear string tunes played on a mandolin, they could listen to David Grisman. I want to do what we hear in our place, what inspires us, what's our fantasy sound...we want to retort that. You have to lean toward what your intuition is telling you, and this next CD is a really good example of what our intuition is telling us is a hip thing in our minds.

How would you prefer to describe your music? You've obviously been thrown into the jamband label, but than again, you were on Blue Note Records.

That's ok. That's the way it's always been, and that's a side effect of the music itself. I try not to get too absorbed in the labels. I try not to get too bogged down on what a jazz critic is going to think, and what is a hippie going to think. We're just going to play our music and hopefully people hear it.

There are so many different incarnations of The Jazz Mandolin Project. Do you feel you are always having to start over with different players?

No, I always say the opportunity to play this music with different players, in some ways it's a drawback, but I think in many more ways it's a benefit to me, and the music, because every player I work with I learn a lot from, and they all contribute to how these songs are played. There might be one drummer who doesn't make a song - say "The Gourd", like a tune on my first CD, maybe the drummer I'm working with just doesn't make that happen in my ear...and then I'll move to play with a new drummer and they'll do some stuff differently that they just feel like, ‘this is the way the tune goes,' and then I'll hear it and I'll be like - ‘that's right.' They can add a whole new way of playing the song, and if I ever use a different drummer, I'll say ‘check this out, this is what I'm going for.' And the tunes are improving all the time, so I feel like I'm building, because I've had these different people come in and give me their two cents on how it all goes, it helps me to see, ‘that's how it all goes.'

So, I think that ties into - saneness stunting creativity?

Yeah, a lot of the fans of this scene are perplexed by the notion of personnel changing; they have this image that we are all these rock bands, who like the Rolling Stones or Lynyrd Skynyrd, where if one person dies or leaves the band, you have to end the band, but in the tradition of jazz it's been going on for decades, where bands are changing all the time. Just think about Miles Davis. He started out in Charlie Parker's band, and then he started his own band. Every album has different guys on it, every album, and it's not just Miles, it's all the cats of jazz. It's a different type of aesthetic where hopefully if you know your instrument well enough, and everybody you are working with knows their instrument well enough, you can have conversations. Everybody up here is a great jazz musician.

When you came up with the name Jazz Mandolin Project, did you have that in mind? It's not like "The Cars", it kind of signifies the band is an ongoing project?

Exactly, it all fits together, and it's probably one of the best moves I've ever made to call it that. Although some people have taken me to task with, it's the wrong name, because they didn't hear what they thought to be jazz. It works perfectly because the name suggests it's an ongoing jazz experiment, involving jazz on the mandolin. It's a project, which makes people think, as a project, it's kind of an experiment. So, that's exactly what's going on.

I've heard your fans talk about you adding vocals, or expanding beyond a three piece?

Well, we're going to have a trumpet player (Matt Shulman) who plays trumpet like nobody else...who plays effects through it. He also has this multi-tonal way that he plays it, where he can get two notes at the same time, you'll have to hear it, it's quite interesting.

Yeah, I can't wait

I've been considering adding another member for a long time, and just haven't seen what it is yet, and now I'm going to try the trumpet and see what happens.

How do you approach songwriting? Your compositions don't appear to revolve around sitting down and writing, there appears to be more going on?

My process has changed quite a bit since my first CD. I've started studying with Ernie Stires, and he convinced me if I was really interested in composing that I had to learn how to play the piano, and I didn't know how to play the piano. Ernie said not for performance purposes, just for writing songs, it opens up your options so much. If you play any string instrument, the choices that you make tend to go with the patterns you learned and where the accessibility of the notes are. So, you may pick a note that's right close to where your other one is. So, there's this bias to certain notes and certain patterns, and he would want me to get away from that, so the whole thing with the piano, is the piano is the ultimate composing tool, nobody will ever disagree too much. So, say I think of something on the mandolin, and I'll like that, and then I'll think, ‘ok, how am I going to expand that, that's just a phrase, I need a whole song.' Then I'll go the piano and I'll just experiment with extending it and I'll find notes on the piano, and develop something that I would never have developed that way on the mandolin. I'll try different notes and be like - ‘oh that's good' and then I'll add to that, and then I'll make up this idea, and I'll have to go back to the mandolin and play it.

Having Jon Fishman in your band - do you find that to be a sort of hindrance, with people just coming for the novelty of seeing him play in small venues?

I feel you got to take the good with the bad, I mean, I know what I'm getting into. There are many people who will come just because they want to see Jon, but I think that's helped [introduce] a lot of people to JMP. It is distracting in some ways when we walk on stage and they are all screaming Jon's name, or while we have been playing a quiet ballad and there is some drunk guy just screaming Jon's name, that sucks. But at the same time...and this can be a statement some people could disagree with or whatever, but the reason I have Jon in JMP is because Jon is a great musician, who makes great contributions musically, and I have learned a ton from playing with that guy. People on the outside of it all see it as a marketing opportunity for me.

I think most people familiar with you and your music know that you two go back sometime.

How many influences do I have to pick from in the Burlington scene to ask to come along, it's not a very large pool. We've kind of gone through the years together, it's not an illogical thing to ask him to do it. It's a musical interest to me. I know JMP has benefited just from Jon's name, but that's a side effect to the fact. I've learned so much and he plays so great...and now that we are on that subject, I really feel like he's an undervalued drummer. I feel a lot of people don't see all these other things in what he's doing. That they dwell more on the antics of wearing a dress and being a strong personality, but I mean, just listening to him, he just sounds so great.

Like the jazz scene of the early days, you seem to really enjoy sitting in with other bands, especially during summer festivals. You've played with moe. a few times.

Yeah, they'll do anything. I sat in with Umphrey's McGee the other night. I love sitting in with other bands. I'm not that fond of when you have these all-star jams at the end of the night, where there are members of four different bands, and there are like six guitar players on stage. It's great to go into a group where they all know how to play together really well, they've developed their thing, so you know they communicate very well and to try and fit in a contribution to their thing - that's a great challenge.

You played in Alaska last summer, how was that, and have you ever been thee before?

I have been to Alaska before. I worked there when I was a lot younger, for the summer, but I hadn't played there with JMP. It was funny, because we did Alaska and they we did Japan in one tour, and they were both so great and totally different from each other because in Alaska, in the summer time, there is just all this sunshine and they deal with all this day time and they don't get too much music up there either. So we played two crazy outdoor festivals. We ended at 11 at night and it was like [daylight] outside, and we didn't want to stop cause it felt like five in the afternoon, so we were like ‘let's keep playing.' You know, and the promoter was like ‘it's 11:00, you got to stop.' But yeah, it's high energy up there in the summer...they were screaming and wailing and stomping their feet and getting into it. So we were floored, we were so pleased. And then we went to Japan which was equally incredible, but kind of like on a total opposite direction, because it is a very disciplined culture. They listen very closely and they clap at the appropriate places and then they stop clapping all at once. So, we're still tuning, and getting things ready for the next tune, and when it first happened I felt really awkward, ‘cause it was like (claps) and then the whole club was just silent. We all felt like, ‘ooook, let's start playing' (in spooked out voice).

Is that one of the times you most clearly felt the power of your music? That's a good example of how it can transcend a language barrier.

I love that part that there is no language barrier. The first set that we played in Japan, Fishman, who was with us, told me this would happen. So I got off the stage after the first set and I thought ‘oh man, I don't know how well this is going. I don't know if they like this music.' And [Jon] goes, ‘no, no this is what I told you. They're very disciplined, and they react differently,' where we just had screaming and yelling in Alaska. So after some gigs of playing I just really started to hook in with them, because it was flattering that they were listening so carefully. and you can tell they were listening carefully, because they have a longer listening span too, they just have more patience, it wasn't as hyper as an environment...so we started elongating the songs and feeling confident about developing things slowly, and it was really great. They can feel the energy of it. This sounds kind of weird, but the whole Zen thing about how you relax and open your mind and focus and meditate and all these things, I swear I can feel it in their culture...and they were really, they just kind of listened and focused and when things were really cooking for us musically, you can tell that they were like - ‘yup, this is happening' and it inspired me. It made me want to please them. So like those two shows in Japan and Alaska, were like, ‘wow.'

That's great to hear that your music moved the Japanese fans

The whole thing is the Japanese are really catching on to this whole movement of our bands.

Yeah, I know, they appear to be loving the adventure aspect in the music.

I think it's because we're on the same...like what the bands like us are trying to do is a very communal jam. It's long and not a rushed thing and they feel the effort to connect with each other on stage and make sure I'm in tight with the drummer and they see the process of the cycle, and it's very much like some elements of Eastern religion, I think.

So can you clear up one thing? How did Bat Hat come about, your collaboration with Trey Anastasio?

I had started JMP, and at that point I was basically using any musicians I could get, and that's why it was called Jazz Mandolin Project. It was just my project that I would try and make happen every month. I already had the first incarnation with Gabe (Jarrett) and Stacey (Starkweather), but Gabe couldn't play a gig for some reason...he had to be somewhere else, and so I asked Jon if he would come substitute for Gabe, and he said yes...and then I bumped into Trey later that week, and Trey knew that Jon was going to come and play, and we talked about it, and I said, ‘hey, if you want to come down and play it will be really fun.' He said, ‘yeah, that sounds great.' So, it was Stacey Starkweather and Trey and Jon. It all started as finding a drum substitute for JMP, and, although many people think JMP came out of Bad Hat, that's not the case. So, I needed a substitute drummer for Gabe and I got Jon, and then Trey and I talked about it, how Jon was going to play a gig with me and through our conversation, Trey decided to come too and that's what ended up being Bad Hat. Me, Stacey, Trey and Jon...and those gigs were really fun.

Any plans of releasing those shows?

Some of it's kind of sloppy. We were just having a good time, and we did a lot of silly antics where things would just happen, and we'd stop playing and maybe when we were playing, one of us would stamp his foot, and then the other guy would be like ‘that guy is really stamping his foot,' and so he'd stop and just stamp his foot...so we'd all be like ‘ok, let's all stamp our feet for a little while.' So when you are listening to a tape of it, it doesn't translate.

I hear you, you had to be there for it. So you played mainly coffee houses and real small places?

Yeah, we played a bunch of times at the Last Elm Café, and then we played a couple of times over in Plattsburgh at a club, and then we went to Portland, Maine a couple times and Northampton, Mass at the Iron Horse...and we played a Middlebury College gig. There were probably roughly twelve gigs total.

You've recruited some of your fellow band mates from New York - how do you find such talented musicians to join your project, and interest them in joining a band they might not have previously been familiar with?

I grew up an hour and a half outside of New York City, and was playing some gigs down there as just a regular jazz trio. I was playing with a real great bass player, an upright bass player. And when I decided to end the band as Gabe, Stacey and myself, that bass player had a jam session at his house and a lot of New York City musicians came, and we had all played together, and I had met Chris Dahlgren, who was the next bass player who I had used, and I had met him at that party...but by then, Gabe, Stacey and I had already built up a national reputation. We had played in New York and sold out the Knitting Factory, so once I started using some musicians from New York, it just spread out from there. More and more musicians know about JMP, and they are looking for opportunities to be in a national touring band, so fortunately the reputation had already gotten going so they knew it could possibly be a good opportunity for them. So I've just gotten to know more and more musicians down there and it's a great place to find in the jazz world if you really want to make it as a young musician...most guys end up moving to New York City. That's a generalization, but a lot of guys, even if you come from other parts of the world, you come to New York because that is the center, and there are a lot of guys eager for work that are really talent so it's worked out well to go down there and find cats to play with.

What does Danton (Boller) bring to your band that's different from Chris (Dahlgren)?

They are really different players. Chris is a very melodic soloist who plays beautiful melodic things and is an excellent bower. He has a wonderful sense of composition. Danton is just a rhythmic monster, with tons of chops and tons of modern ideas about how to play the bass. He's a real rhythmic force, he just nails everything, right on the note. Very unique, they've both been wonderful to play with.

On a closing note, are there any types of sports or activities that you involve yourself in to keep your life balanced and creativity running high?

The thing that I've really gotten into a lot in the last four or five years is rollerblading. I love to get some good music, get my walkman, and rollerblade on the bike path.

For tour dates and additional information please visit www.jazzmandolinproject.com