 For anyone attending the 2005 Minnesota Sur Seine Festival, it was hard
to miss hearing the drummer, JT Bates who participated in a dozen
performances over the nine days. The festival brought a host of
pioneering musicians together for their second annual festival of
cross-cultural collaboration featuring eleven days of concerts with
French, English and Minnesotan musicians in varied configurations. The
Festival ran from October 14th through the 23rd.
I was hooked right away with the opening performance of jazz and
contemporary pianist and composer, Benoît Delbecq who modified
the grand piano with sticks and other wooden devices to create a
wonderfully warm pallet of sound for his inventive and percussive
compositions. Another French pianist, free-jazz pioneer François
Tusques, dazzled the sold-out crowd in solo performance at Studio-Z.
A mid-week peak performance featured the Denis Colin Trio (featuring
cello, bass clarinet and zarb) with vocalist Gwen Mathews at the
Dakota. I was surprised at how well the gospel influenced vocal styling
blended so well with the unconventional instrumentation and Avant-garde
style of the trio. I think that their soulful and stirring rendition of
Nina Simone's Four Women will haunt me for years. Another noteworthy
combination of musicians was Tony Hymas playing for the first time with
the uncompromising George Cartwright accompanied by Adam Linz and JT
Bates at the Artists' Quarter. The Acadia Cafe hosted the dueling
basses of Chris Bates and Helène Labarrière
with the tenor of Chris Thomson and JT Bates on Drums. The climax of
the festival on the final night was a concert pairing Minnesota trio
Fat Kid Wednesdays (Mike Lewis, Adam Linz and JT Bates) with free jazz
pioneer, Evan Parker. Later they were joined by Pianist Tony Hymas and
bassist Anthony Cox for a truly grand finale.
 JT Bates, photo by Andrea Canter JT Bates collaborated with many different musicians in his dozen
performances over the nine days. Inspired and encouraged he stretched
out musically, at times pushing a hard swinging groove - at other times
polyrhythmic and cerebral. At his most experimental JT was banging on
the sides and bottoms of his drums, tossing things at them, piling
things on the skins like sacrificial offerings to add rattle and hiss.
John Thomas Bates is the son of trumpeter and band leader Don Bates.
At about thirty years of age, JT has distinguished himself as a
versatile musician
and leader. For nearly eight years he hosted the Clown Lounge Jazz
Series that proved to be an incubator for experimental music
that gave birth to, among other things, Fat Kid Wednesdays.
This weekly session in the basement of the Turf Club was also a
showcase for music that was not played in the mainstream clubs and
help build an audience for 'edgy' music in the Twin Cities.
Before the festival I had the opportunity to speak with JT Bates
(Interview follows).
- Jazz Police: You come from a musical family. How do
you think that an early exposure to music influenced you, and was it
significant in your decision to become a musician?
- JT Bates: I am very grateful for my family and the
exposure to music that came along with it. It just made music seem
tangible and natural, which made it SEEM easy to do. I say that because
it was still a lot of hard work, but all the while it never seemed far
away. My father listens to a lot of different kinds of music as well,
so we were hearing Aaron Copland and Count Basie and Willie Nelson, and
it all sounded good to us as kids. Our parents never forced us into
playing, so I think we all made the decision to make it a career on our
own (of course with a musician father there is no one telling you not
to).
 Helene Labarrie, Photo by Bev Berryman
- Jazz Police: I think I first heard you play about 10
years ago with the Motion Poets, you were pretty young at the time. Was
that your first professional jazz ensemble?
- JT Bates: I was 19 when I joined the Motion Poets which
was the first jazz group I toured with, but my first professional gigs
were with my dad and brothers in my dad's big band. My oldest brother,
Dave, played saxophone and Chris was on bass. I was 15 years old. I was
very frightened.
- Jazz Police: You play in both traditional jazz venues
and trendy/edgy/younger ones too, how does the experience compare?
- JT Bates: Ah, the grass is always greener. . . . we
started playing non jazz venues mainly because at that time, unlike
now, you didn't find many young people in the crowds at the traditional
jazz venues. That of course has changed now, with both the Artists
Quarter and Dakota being really great about letting younger kids in. I
like both types of venues, and there are pros and cons to both, younger
crowds at non traditional jazz clubs sometimes talk a little louder,
and older crowds at jazz clubs, for a group like Fat Kid Wednesdays,
can sometimes be a little quiet. We like it when people respond audibly
to our music, good or bad, because its proof that its getting through
somehow. It's also a good thing to bring jazz into new venues.
 JT Bates, photo by Andrea Canter
- Jazz Police: You hosted a regular jazz night at the
Clown Lounge for a long time. Can you describe this experience?
- JT Bates: That was an amazing experience. There had never
been any jazz at The Turf regularly and although it took a couple years
to catch on, it became quite the scene. It was a very underground
approach, just a listing as the Clown Lounge Jazz Series, so most of
the time the audience had no idea what band they would hear before they
got to the club. It was a venue where we could literally play whatever
we wanted. We could play super loud or really "out" all night and had
no one to answer to. We liked that a lot. It became a sort of home for
Fat Kid Wednesdays and we really developed our sound there. It also
became a great musician hang, usually making up to close to half of the
audience. And not just jazz musicians, The Turf Club has been a huge
rock musician hang for years and a lot of those people would check out
a lot of Monday nights too. Now a lot of them are working on projects
together. That was great part of it. We ended up playing there on
Mondays for close to 8 years. Now that it has been done for a while I
realize that the one of the best things about it was that the younger
jazz players were able to have a place to call their own and it never
detracted from any of the other jazz clubs or scenes in town.
 Didier Petit playing the peg, photo by Bev Berryman
- Jazz Police: How did you and Fat Kid Wednesdays get
involved with a French production company?
- JT Bates: I met Jean Rouchard at a Happy Apple gig. Jean
had been coming and staying in Minneapolis because he met Sara Remke,
(the producer/promoters of the Minnesota Sur Seine) and being a
producer, he was going out to hear a lot of music. He heard Happy Apple
and began working with them. Mike Lewis had told Jean about the Fat
Kids and the Clown Lounge and he came and checked it out. A few weeks
later he contacted me and asked if we would be interested in doing a
recording. We were very lucky to have made European contacts because
Fat Kids had never traveled outside of Minneapolis. Jean then decided
he would like us to record a Don Cherry tribute because he had heard us
play some Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman and liked how we played
together on the more open music. Since then we have done two small
tours in France and made the recording called "The Art of Cherry"
- Jazz Police: Is there a 'French' approach to jazz, and
has working with French musicians affected the way you play?
- JT Bates: I don't really think it's that different. There
are some different aesthetics, but we are really all drawing on the
same pool of influences, musically.
 Adam Linz, photo by Don Berryman You can hear more of JT Bates with Fat Kid Wednesdays and Slow Skate on
December 15th at the Artists' Quarter in Saint Paul, and for a late show on December 16th at the Dakota in Minneapolis.
"The obvious motto of Fat Kid Wednesdays: liberty, equality,
brotherhood." - FFrançois Tusques - Jazz Magazine
 Chris and, Helene and JT - Photo by Don Berryman |
Wednesday, 07 January 2009
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