See Bill Evans’ mesmerizing Soulgrass group enough and you start to wonder just how it works – how it can work, what with so much that could make it feel overcrowded or unfocused or too much “too much.”
There’s the intensity of the jamming, sure, and that’s more than enough to warrant repeat visits. But the bluegrass-meets-jazz-meets-all-kinds-of-other-stuff concept is heady enough, and with this assemblage of players — sax, drums/vocals, bass, electric guitar, banjo, and, for this run of shows, anyway, keyboards — the potential is always for these performances to become mere hodgepodge. “You solo there, then I solo, and in doing so we’ve said something profound about how woodwinds and strings can find common ground somewhere between jazz, bluegrass, country, rock, funk and R&B.”
Bill Evans’ Soulgrass residency at the Blue Note in NYC continued last night, where the band’s guests for both sets were Umphrey’s McGee guitarist Jake Cinninger and MMW keyboardist John Medeski.
Just as they did on Thursday night, the ensemble tackled UM’s Glory during the late show. The version they laid down last night was completely different from Thursday’s version, not only because Popper wasn’t on hand but also due to the speed and approach, so we wanted to share MKDevo’s exceptional video of Glory from Friday’s late set. Take a peek…
Earlier today we posted a video of Bill Evans’ Soulgrass, Jake Cinninger, John Popper and John Medeski performing Glory by Umphrey’s McGee as shot by our pal LazyLightning55. Well LL has just posted another clip from the concert. Watch as the ensemble tackles Blues Traveler’s Runaround…
Bill Evans’ Soulgrass’s guest-filled residency at the Blue Note in NYC continued last night, where the band was joined by Blues Traveler front man John Popper, keyboardist John Medeski and Umphrey’s McGee guitarist Jake Cinninger for an early and late set.
During the late set the ensemble offered a gorgeous take on UM staple Glory that featured Cinninger, Popper, Evans and Medeski each taking solos. Our pal LazyLightning55 caught the magical performance on video for our viewing pleasure. Take a look…
Saxophonist Bill Evans and his Soulgrass outfit started a residency at New York City’s famed Blue Note jazz club last night that will run until Sunday. For their first show, Evans and Soulgrass were joined by keyboardist John Medeski and guitarist Eric Krasno. Blues Traveler harmonica wiz John Popper was set to appear, but missed the early and late shows due to a medical issue.
Bill Evans’ Soul Grass will play an early and late show each night until Sunday for a total of 12 performances over six nights. John Medeski is expected to sit in at each show with Jake Cinninger among the other guests set to play with Soulgrass.
Check out more of Dino Perrucci’s exceptional photos from the first night of the residency…
Saxophonist Bill Evans came up in the jazz world, but he’s a jazz musician like his friend Bela Fleck is a jazz musician: deeply virtuosic, but hardly tethered to doctrine or idiom or genre, and definitely willing to push the envelope on music that’s endlessly variable and warrants well-thought-out, but not overly cerebral, exploration.
Soulgrass, Evans’ seven-year-old bluegrass-jazz summit, is the ideal forum for something like this. The jazz-meets-bluegrass-with-plenty-of-stopovers concept isn’t new — the Flecktones are its best-known modern purveyor — but Evans’ effusiveness and his skill in picking co-conspirators make his version sound particularly adventurous. And yet, it also goes down pretty smooth without being neat and tidy; Evans himself is so exciting a player that even his freest stuff feels accessible.
The sardine-tight Blue Note, where Evans set up a week’s worth of Soulgrass gigs in mid-April, became a staging for material for his superb new album, Dragonfly. Joining him was an all-star cast: the great, understated Mitch Stein on guitar, a how-is-he-still-unknown banjoist, Ryan Cavanaugh, Josh Dion, a protean drummer but also a sublime singer — his pipes falling somewhere between Southern rock, gospel and buttery R&B — and Etienne Mbappe, a Cameroon-bred bass player and a wicked stylist on the low end, with an all-pro approach, but also a mischievous streak not unlike, say, Oteil Bubridge’s. (Evans, who’s sat in with the Allman Brothers on several occasions over the last two years, must dig that mischief.)
