Why A Band?

Some thoughts as I head to the West Coast with Ember..

Why be in a band?

What’s the motivation for professional musicians to start a collective music-making commercial enterprise?

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Ember, my co-op band with Caleb Wheeler Curtis on straight alto and trumpet, Noah Garabedian on bass, and myself on drums, is making our first trip to the West Coast on Wednesday, March 1st. 

We have concerts in Seattle, Eugene, Portland, and Berkeley, CA, and are giving workshops in Portland and Berkeley too. Of course, we’re pretty excited about the trip, looking forward to seeing our old friends, making some new ones, and playing every night, being in the music, making it happen.

It’s a busy season for us. When we get back, we make a direct-to-vinyl mini-album for Leest Avall records; these are one-of-a-kind albums, not to be re-printed, and you can pre-order yours here.

We have a gig at Bar Bayeux in Brooklyn, NY on Saturday April 1st with special guest Leo Genovese, and are then focussed on the release of our third album this August, tentatively titled August In March.

Regarding Ember, sometimes colleagues or acquaintances will say to me “I can’t believe you guys are making a cooperative band function!”, or “How do you guys divide the work to set up a tour?”, or even “How do you make any money?” 

I certainly get it. Most bands that attempt to be cooperative usually just become one person’s band, or, more likely still, just fizzle out and break up. Here’s my best attempt at an explanation about why I’m in bands generally, and Ember specifically, with a sort of implication about “how we make it work”:

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When I was just starting out, right after college, I specifically did not want to be part of a collective band, or a be a bandleader, or anything like that. I had a dream of being a highly-sought after sideperson, the kind of player you needed in your band to take the music to the next level. 

Pretty much right away, I saw that this would not work. Biggest reason being, I simply wasn’t good enough to be in the bands I wanted to join.

But I knew lots and lots of great players around my age who weren’t doing much in terms of shows or gigs. If we had gigs at all, they were just little here-and-there things. None of us seemed to be really going anywhere, physically or career-wise.

So there was time to get together and play sessions. If the session was going well, and it was familiar faces, inevitably, I or someone else would propose a gig, and, hay presto, I was in a band. 

My first band in NYC played scattered gigs at off-the-map venues in town and booked “tours” of the few jazz clubs in driving distance that would have us. Of course, we made no money, or almost no money, and weren’t reaching any audiences, or really doing anything— we just wanted the experience, wanted to feel what being in a band was all about, which, in retrospect, was smart and brave of us. We desperately needed the experience, and we sort of got it.

But the band wasn’t a collective— I was a ‘co-leader’, and it just wasn’t much fun— driving to random clubs in big cities, playing original jazz for audiences that didn’t know us, didn’t care to know us, or simply weren’t there. No Kerouac adventures for us, the whole thing was deeply un-romantic, and felt more like a crappy job instead of a mission, a joy, or a career. 

So, because the band was neither pragmatic (we weren’t popular, we weren’t supplying a demand for our music) nor romantic, after a handful of in-town gigs and a few trips, the group was done.

And that’s the point: the collective band, is, at its core, romantic and idealistic. It’s a utopian dream community established to make and deliver music to you.

Pearl Jam, the Roots, Arcade Fire, The Rolling Stones, the E Street Band, etc. Part of what makes us want to see their shows, to look at them on stage, is that we’re really witnessing a long-term relationship; and no matter the ups-and-downs of the band’s fortunes, if the show is good, or even pretty good, we’re seeing a still-functioning musical/personal community. We’re the audience for an idea, the dream of a communal, mutually-enhancing, interlocking life, expressed in music.

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So when I’m asked about Ember, “why a collective?” “how does it work”, etc, I sometimes dissemble and say something like “Well, it just works this way, musically— we work great as a collective, but I wouldn’t be the best player for the Caleb Curtis Trio or Noah Garabedian Group”, but that’s only half-true, or maybe even downright false. The truth is that I joined, or really formed Ember, and my other co-op bands (The Choir Invisible, with Chris Tordini and Charlotte Greve; Landline, with Jacob Sacks, Chet Doxas, and Zack Lober; maybe a few others that haven’t played in a while), for a reason much simpler, or much more complex than I usually give:

I’m in bands because, deep down, I’m a utopian romantic idealist, that’s why. 

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In fact, I’m a musician because I love music— that’s my entry point. I love listening to music, round the clock, live or recorded, “as long as there’s music”... And though I love it all, I notice in my listening that I gravitate to music played by bands— working bands, bands that were traveling, recording, playing all the time.

Jazz is all about bands….Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie Parker Quintet, Miles Davis Quintet (pick your favorite), John Coltrane Quartet, Thelonious Monk Quartet, Keith Jarrett Quartets, Herbie Hancock Sextet, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ornette bands, Air, Modern Jazz Quartet, Oscar Peterson Trio, Wynton Quintet, Branford Trio, Motian Trio, Scofield Quartet, Frisell Band, Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet, Mehldau Trio, Bad Plus, Brian Blade Fellowship, AlasNoAxis/Human Feel/Yeah No, Jason Moran Bandwagon….

It goes on and on… I’m sure I’ve left out your favorite bands and a few of mine…

So as a musician who’s in music because I love music, and the music I love the most is made by bands, I join and commit to bands, because I believe that the ideal embodied in a cooperative band is an ideal worth living for, and I think the music has more potential to grow and change in a band.

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I haven’t mentioned the fun of being in a group— the humor, the play, the adventure, the camaraderie, meeting new people, the awareness that we have no idea what’s going to happen until it happens. Confounding and stressful at times, but rewarding and a pleasure if looked at from a certain perspective.

I really love playing and working with Caleb and Noah. Here’s just a the tip of the iceberg about them:

Caleb Wheeler Curtis is such a charismatic player. Every time he plays, the bar is set very high, and he goes all in, all the time; he is fully present in the music.

So is Noah Garabedian; in fact Noah will not play a note he doesn’t believe in. Everything must have meaning and direction— this is a very bass-player philosophy. Noah is the center of our sound.

As a group, we want the music to have excitement and dynamism, a sense of adventure. To that end, we often don’t make set lists, and we *almost never* use sheet music on the bandstand, making an effort to memorize each tune.

Ember is all about adventure and experiment— our new in-band joke for this is “sink and swim”.

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I don’t know a single musician who is not, somewhere in there, as romantic as me. There’s simply no reason to put a life to music unless you kind of have no choice. The collective represents an expression of idealism, a way of sharing risk and reward, and, most importantly, a chance to do more than you could do yourself.

One for all, all for one, e pluribus unum. That’s what I believe in. 

So, as Ember sets out for the West Coast, I know why we do this, all the stress and risk of travel and being a band:

For the music, for the people, for ourselves, because it matters.