By Taylor Jones

“So that was during the time I spent in Tennessee when I used to hitchhike across the country,” explains the elderly man next to me sporting a circular, brown-rimmed hat along with what appears to be a green, pinstriped shirt. Yes, it is definitely green. Tonight at the Alternative Café in Seaside, California, the “jazz & beyond” music of the Something Cool Trio evidently attracts an audience with a wealth of life experience, and suitably, since pianist/vocalist Bill Minor has traveled the world and will sing songs in English, Greek, Italian, and Russian. Along with Minor this evening are his band mates Jenn Schaaf on drums and Heath Proskin on upright bass.

Captivated by the current exhibit “Guardians,” featuring work by artists Cory Benhatzel and Matthew Linares, I admire the vivid textures Linares uses in order take the observer to another dimension. I’m looking through a portal into an almost video-game kind of world where objects are floating around with a sense of unsettling ambiguity, yet setting a serene mood through the smooth, shaded color scheme.

After pushing aside the black curtain from backstage, the trio picks up their instruments and starts off their set with a Thelonious Monk standard called “Ask Me Now.” This song demonstrates how the Alternative Café’s acoustics are perfect for a jazz combo, in that you can hear Schaaf playing brushes without needing to mic her snare. Being a drummer, I know one of the hardest parts of jazz drumming is brush technique, and Schaaf gracefully shows the audience just how it’s done by never letting a moment go untouched by the gentle glide of her fluid hands.

An interesting aspect of the Something Cool Trio is Minor’s experiments in combining his original poetry with backing music, which acts as a soundtrack to the story. As he begins to recite his poem “My Father’s Things,” the music appropriately follows. Minor shares a deep emotion from his personal life with the audience as he conveys a story of how his father lost his memory with age, and how he could no longer recognize his own son. Minor moves on with the story, elaborating on how his father never used to sing, but one day when his mother was playing piano, his father miraculously burst into song. Minor knew that his father’s true love for his mother had persisted despite his loss of memory.

While living in communist Russia, illegally listening to black-market jazz records, Minor became fluent in the native language, and brought it back to the Alternative Café for us tonight. Schaaf turns off her snare and hits the drums with mallets as the band kicks off a Russian waltz. This tune shows how Proskin on bass is the glue between the drums and piano. By locking in rhythmically with Schaaf and working out melodic progressions with Minor, Proskin proves that a tight jazz combo operates through individual feats of musicianship as well as a keen sense of communication.

Minor hypes up the next song as “the most beautiful love song ever written,” which is apparently “Creep” by Radiohead, a favorite cover I’ve heard artists such as Yann Brown and Angels In the Alps perform in their own interpretations. Something Cool Trio also took the song and made it their own, keeping the original melancholy energy of the verses, but changing up the chorus drastically. Rather than a rude, distorted guitar bleeding into a belting chorus like Radiohead, a piano pickup leads to an upbeat, swing chorus, in which Minor’s vocals resemble a mixture of Willie Nelson and Randy Newman. Thus, I think we can agree that they made it their own.

After taking the audience on an adventure around the world, reciting a poem in Greek and singing a love song in Italian, Minor takes us south to Brazil by performing the Stan Getz & João Gilberto classic “The Girl From Ipanema.” Schaaf tightens her brushes and once again demonstrates her precise control, turning off the snare to enhance the relaxed, Latin feel of the song. As Proskin drops out on the bass, Minor picks up a small conga drum and begins a percussion feature with Schaaf, coordinating dynamics together to give the duet movement in not only volume, but also intensity. When the torrent of percussive juices is finished and the audience reality checks back in to Seaside, California, the performance is met with a magnanimous applause.

So what is “cool” to you? Does being cool mean being the most popular kid at school? Does being cool mean doing what everybody else is doing? To me, being cool is doing what you want to do and expressing yourself the way you naturally feel. Tonight, the Something Cool Trio was just that, cool. Not only did they express themselves, they expressed themselves in four different languages, in song and poetry, and through an assortment of musical genres that will surely please your ears.

Links:

http://trudeaupublishing.blogspot.com

(All photos by Taylor Jones)