Dave Holland - A Mystical Undercurrent

Dave Holland is a deceptively unassuming man. His deliberate manner of speaking belies a passion laced with a mystical undercurrent that may in fact explain the unusual combination of talent that has him compared to great bassists in jazz like Scott LaFaro as well as the genre's outstanding composers like Duke Ellington.
 
The British-born Holland, now a resident of upstate New York, mentions Ellington during this conversation with Doug Collette as they talk about the conception of his new album pathways and his music in general. But this reference, like a well-rendered bass line in a live performance of one of his compositions, is but a means to an end, that of revealing a deep humility that ultimately drives him to make every project he engages in, by his own admission, "as good as it possibly can be."
 
Given the diversity of his projects over the years---as a band leader he's fronted a quintet, sextet, octet and big band beside participating in the Monterey Quartet--it's all the more remarkable Dave Holland reaches the level of excellence he does. It's as if he approaches each project as if it were the only thing he does and in doing so elicits the same level of engagement from everyone involved: the musicians, the recoding and mixing engineers and the business people.
 
Holland, then, is all the more rare an individual who executes on as high a plane as he conceptualizes. His artistry is reflected in everything he does whether it's playing bass for Miles Davis on the epochal Bitches Brew-- music founded on continuity not to mention rhythm--or helping conceive a website that is informative as it is fun. While this man radiates a quiet reserve, there is also a palpable, albeit understated sense of gusto he radiates that derives from what he's doing at any given moment, including a conversation like the following.

I have to tell you I was absolutely knocked out by the new album (Pathways) the first time I heard it and I had some really high expectations because, as I looked at it and noticed who was playing on it, it looked like a combination of the first two groups I ever saw you play with: your quintet and the big band.

They're very important musicians to me, these people who play on this record have been on this journey for some time and it was a good combination.

As I looked through your website prepping for our conversation, I found it one of the easiest to navigate and informative sites I've encountered in a long time...

I'm so glad to hear that: we just launched it on Monday and we're just starting to get feedback about it. We certainly intended it to be user friendly and not too complicated

That's the great thing about it. If we can digress for a moment, it's really colorful and easy to find out where you want to go, it's quick to get there and it's as computer and Internet-savvy as a website could be with its links to Facebook, downloads, music samples, etc. You should give great kudos to the people who designed and administer it.

Some really bright people have been involved: our designer, Gregg Ipp, a Canadian gentleman, and the mastermind who's been guiding the project is Garrett Shelton, who's in charge of marketing for my record company.

I'm glad you mentioned Dare2. It must be a great success for you having released five albums now--can you tell me what prompted you to put your own label together?

It was an idea that had been a long time in my thoughts but hadn't become a reality until 2004. The idea behind doing it was to have more decisive control over the recordings that I've done and how the record company is run and secondly to have owner ship of the work and the masters: conventional relationship is the artist usually records music but after that it's owned by the record company. You're paid royalties on the sales of the music, but you have no ownership of your work. This is something I've felt strongly about it for some time and made some attempts to get it started --we never actually started a record company but we looked into it the possibilities of it on several occasions--then finally, in 2004, everything was in place for it to happen.

What you're saying echoes what I've heard said by other musicians who have long had the idea but take some time to pull it together. Now that you've done it for five or six years, has it been more or less work for you to actually operate your own label?

In the case of the first three releases, they were being released under a licensing arrangement with Universal Records; in that respect we were the record company, but we didn't really deal with all the manufacturing and distribution realities a record company deals with. We had Universal's framework to pug into and they did a very good job on the first three records.

We wanted to move away from that arrangement with this next release and to really become a fully functional record and that's what we're doing with the last releases. Of course the archives records are only available on-line while the Pathways release is available on-line and as a hard copy through conventional channels

One of the first things that caught my eye on the website was the archives series. You don't seem to be missing one trick: you're covering your past current and future all seemingly in one fell swoop. How long have you been recording your shows?

We don't record everything--there are some tours we don't bother taking equipment with us--but we've got quite a lot of material and quite a lot of different projects we've recorded over time. And one of the reasons for the archives series is that I feel the live performances offer something special you don't quite get in the studio: a certain flow and a freedom in the live performance. And, of course, the energy of the audience affects it too. So I've been wanting to document and eventually release some of the live performances that we do. So now we've set up the website that will allow us to distribute, from time to time, our archive recordings. We will continue to add to these too.

That's a great arrangement...and a nice segue into some things I wanted to discuss about Pathways: I didn't find any information that you had ever recorded this octet in the studio, is that right?  

This was recorded at Birdland (famed New York jazz club)..

Right, but you've never taken this group into the studio to record...?

No, this band's never been in the studio. We considered it for this recording. Originally I considered of going into Birdland and doing a week there and then going into the studio (which is what we did with the Sextet album Pass It On). But this time I felt like I really wanted to get that live feeling on this record, so we cancelled the recording dates and decided to do it in the club.

That's fascinating especially insofar as you first played with the octet in 2001. When you came to work with them again and decided to forego the studio for live, what concept were you aiming for? Was there specific material, were you recoding whole nights and picking the best or were you aiming for one night, after a few nights, and 'that's going to be it.'

We had a fair amount of material we had recorded during the week, so here's quite a bit more that wasn't chosen for the album, some other compositions, but there was always, in the back of my mind, the thought that these compositions that are on the album would always end up being part of the album. There was an idea to feature particular songs and to feature particular people as well.

You did a great job in making sure that everyone in the group got their chance to shine. But it never came down to giving someone a chance to solo just to solo: it always seemed to add to the ambiance of what was going on around them and what came before and after them.

That's part of the way I like to put the music together. That's why I'm a great admirer of Ellington and how he used to program his music. I always felt the solos were always very closely integrated into the whole thing, that the settings are very much created for particular people and the songs were in fact written for particular people. That's not the case on all the songs on the Octet CD, but certainly those elements are considerations that come into play when I'd deciding what songs we're going to play in a set and so on. I'm looking to really create a continuity between the written work and the improvised work.

It occurred to me as I listened to the album to what extent you wrote tunes for people or whether in general, when deciding to work with the octet, you decided to write some material for this group? Can you tell me who it was who actually ended up picking the tracks that ended up on the CD?

Well it was me of course (laughs). I would certainly listen to opinions from other people but the final decision was mine.

How did you go about making those selections? Did you look for particular songs?...

I wanted everybody to be featured equally on the album; I didn't want to have ten bass solos, and then everybody else have one each for the rest of the album. I'm thinking about giving each person a spot which gives them a chance to really show their approach to playing in that context.

Did you listen to absolutely all the recordings you did at Birdland to be able to pick the tunes and how long did that take you?

Quite awhile, there were four nights and two sets a night, so there's ten hours of music probably.

In listening to those recordings, did anything surprise you positively or negatively about how the group sounded or how the material worked out?

This sounds rather glib but I was just astounded at how great everybody played. Every night. It was a hard choice as to what to put on and leave off. Often in a project, once we've done it, I sit back and reflect on all the creative energy and care and attention and discussion, all the decision making that's gone along, through all the rehearsal, putting the music together and all the explaining of whatever needed to be explained. At the end of it, you end up with something like an hour and fifteen minutes of music--I'm struck by that: I always like to feel the presence of all that preparation and care and attention that goes into the final result and these gentlemen that were on the record are first class and really gave it more than a hundred percent.

You must love working with these guys because they seem, at every turn, whether they're part of an ensemble section or doing a solo, totally engaged in what's going on, as if their stake in the project is as great as yours.  It's as if it was their project in and of itself.

That's a good observation and I would say it does sound that way. I would say that all the musicians really care and want to make it as good as it possibly can be. That's a lot of commitment and unselfish energy being put into it.

As you prepared to do the run at Birdland to record, how much literal rehearsal time did you and the band put in to get ready for this?

The band done some previous performances prior to the Birdland gig. The idea for the group and the group itself was established and we did our first gig in 2001. In the interim, nothing much happened for quite a long time as i was focusing on the big band and the quintet. And then probably about two or three years ago, we had a chance to do a double bill somewhere--I think it was Ann Arbor Michigan-and I wrote tome new music and we took some of the songs we'd done before. It was a double bill with the big band and I thought it'd be fun to do the octet as the second group and it was so nice...someone in the audience yelled out "When are you going to record it?" (laughs) and that was sort of my cue: I hadn't thought about recording it, but then I thought about doing it for awhile and then the chance finally came around: this year I thought might be a good year to do it and so now we've recorded it.

You certainly seem to have caught the band at a point where everything has jelled together and when you talk about the prep work and detail involved in such a project, one thing that struck me about this (recording) was how absolutely impeccable the sound qualify is. Kudos to the engineer who does your sound and makes sure these recordings come out with all the warmth and clarity you'd get being in the room.

Well thank you, it's very nice of you to mention: it's often overlooked the contribution a good sound engineer can give. Paul Bagin was the engineer for the recording - he's also our sound engineer and has been travelling with us for several years now, at least nine or ten years I think--Paul helped me put the whole recording equipment plan together, what we needed and so on. He's been using this equipment since we had it and so Paul did the initial recording and then we had our engineer I've been working with for many years on the studio recordings, James Farber, and with the mixing engineer, we took the tapes that Paul had recorded to the Avatar Studios-- which is where I've recorded for a lot of my studio recordings-- and we used their great equipment (outboard and mixing board facilities) to give it that extra special setting. The raw material was there from what Paul had recoded and we just brought it to light: it was like shining a light on it and polishing it.

Paul must take as much pride in his role in the project as you and the musicians do. Being well-versed in technique is one thing, being able to execute with the equipment is a whole other thing.

Exactly, he's done a fantastic job. There'll be some more results of our working together coming out over the next few years.

That must spur your excitement about your archive series when something comes out as well as this did.

It's made me feel confident that we can produce very high quality recordings from the approach we're using. And it's only going to get better as we invest in new equipment and technology, maybe better microphones, it'll just get better. This is a great start for our archives series and we feel very good about it.

The consistency you can rely on for the production and the recordings is what will entice people to come back over and over because they'll be able to rely on how good it will sound.

I had a very good relationship with ECM (the groundbreaking European-based jazz/classical label), so in a lot of ways their standards are very high for the quality of sound and I wanted to continue that on with our own label and make sure the sound is representing the music in the best way possible and is on the same level as what we hope the music will be.

I wanted to ask you one more thing about Pathways: when it came time to mix and master the CD, did you work with Farber as he mixed and readied it for release?

Yes, for the mixing session I was there, Paul was there, and James, and we had an assistant engineer as well and we all worked together: James obviously is steering the ship and then I'm listening, Paul's listening--we're all pooling our resources to come up with the best ideas we can to lend to the music.

I'm sure it was a great collaboration. Were there any points where there were disagreements about how something should sound? Or whether you should go in one direction or another?

I think we're usually in agreement in a general way--sometimes (we might differ on) small details about the relative balance of something perhaps, but we generally have a very good working relationship; you know, how much room sound should we have from the room mikes in the sound of the recording, decisions like that. We knew we were in the same ballpark: it's like with the music: you find people that you can work with and you enhance each other's opinions. Sometimes James would have an idea that I perhaps wouldn't have thought of and I'd go "That's great" and at the same time it goes around. We have a good enough relationship where everybody feels confident enough to say what they think "Let's try it this way" and we do it. It's not a competitive situation--we're just trying to get the best results.

That sounds like a pretty good description of how a great band works on stage.

It's the very same thing. it works for all groups and all collaborative efforts. That's why I think that music is a great model of human interaction.