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Elegant Mayhem—Bill Carrothers Keeps His “Funny Side” Up

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"Music is like a wheel, When you drive a car down a street, you might go down the same street, but you'll run over something today that wasn't there yesterday, so that puts a new look on that tire, and that's the way music is. When it goes over, it picks up something that wasn't there before." - Jimmy McGriff

Friday, 09 January 2009

Elegant Mayhem—Bill Carrothers Keeps His “Funny Side” Up

Written by Andrea Canter, Contributing Editor

Friday, 13 April 2007

Keep Your Sunnyside Up

If there is one thing predictable about internationally acclaimed pianist Bill Carrothers, it’s his unpredictability. His recorded output (now totaling sixteen releases as leader) reflects respect for classic repertoire and uncompromising experimentation in a range of configurations with diverse casts of collaborators. A recent fascination with military history led to several projects inspired by the Civil War (The Blues and the Greys) and World War I (Armistice 1918); in 2005 he turned his attention to swing-era standards (I Love Paris), albeit delivered in unconventional terms, while only a few months later, he released a trio recording of spontaneous improvisations (Shine Ball). Now Carrothers takes another swing at convention with Keep Your Sunnyside Up (Pirouet), a trio set that—predictably--brings his unique deconstructions and odd-ball humor to familiar and less familiar mainstream targets.

Bill Carrothers © Andrea Canter

A protégé of the late Bobby Peterson, Edina, MN native Bill Carrothers has a wealth of technical and artistic devices which seem to fuse Debussy and Jarrett with sprinklings of Bill Evans and plenty of humor. He will caress the keys one moment and then stuff his shoe into the innards to dampen the hammers. He can explode with two-handed runs, fleet sequences of chords, sudden changes in dynamics and rhythm, and well-placed pizzicato twangs on the strings. And unlike some of his highly creative contemporaries, Carrothers achieves his sonic dramas with only acoustic manipulations. Noted John Kelman (All About Jazz) regarding I Love Paris, “Carrothers is a harmony-rich player with an uncanny ability to see the greater potential of both hands in concert. While some pianists are fairly linear with their right hand and eke out accompaniment with their left..he has a vivid sense of larger voicings, like British pianist John Taylor, sometimes creating eight- and nine-part harmonies that move smoothly, and in ways that makes every subsequent note feel perfectly logical, yet somehow unpredictable.”

On Keep Your Sunnyside Up, Carrothers keeps both hands busy as if a one-man band, yet provides plenty of play space for his same-minded cohorts, bassist Ben Street and drummer Ari Hoenig. Ben Street’s affinity for diversity and experimentation grew out of his early studies with Weather Report bassist, Miroslav Vitous, and subsequent collaborations with Sam Rivers, Ben Monder and Kurt Rosenwinkel. Described by Jazz Times as “one of the most maniacally obsessive, spasmodic and musical drummers in jazz,” Ari Hoenig is the perfect foil for Bill Carrothers. A long-standing member of the Kenny Werner and Jean-Michel Pilc Trios, his wide-ranging collaborations have included Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, Chris Potter and Mike Stern.

On Keep Your Sunnyside Up, the Bill Carrothers Trio mixes work and play, mayhem and elegance, and makes it all seem both spontaneous and logical. Carrothers’ introduction to his minimalist, abstract liner notes sets the stage:

Keep your sunny side up, up!
Hide the side that gets blue.
If you have nine sons in a row,
Baseball teams make money, you know!
Keep your funny side up, up!
Let your laughter come through, do!
Stand upon your legs, be like two fried eggs,
Keep your sunny side up!

Ben Street

Only two tracks feature original compositions (Bill’s “Church of the Open Air” and his joint effort with Hoenig, “Salty Peanuts”), while the rest runs the gamut from the gay title track, Joni Mitchell’s “Roses Blue” and Matt Dennis’ “The Night We Called It a Day,” to the Monk classic, “Evidence,” with the familiar “You and the Night and the Music” and a less familiar Irving Berlin “Say It Isn’t So” along the way. It makes little difference, however, if a tune is familiar or not, as Carrothers and company deconstruct whatever lies in their path, often within the first bar. And with seemingly long pauses between tracks, the listener, like the musicians, can easily switch gears to greet the flow of new ideas.

The title track starts and ends the recording. For the opening, a romping bass and drum precede Carrothers’ entrance with widely spaced chords, leading to a sparsely phrased melody with dissonant extensions. The decomposition is furthered by Carrothers’ playful scales running up and down the keyboard, alternating single-note lines with clanging chords while Hoenig punctuates throughout with thumps and bangs. Carrothers brings a characteristic thick texture to his role, playing what seem to be many parts yet always integrated with the bass and drum. As the final track reprise, the tune is give a more balladic, somber treatment, as if poking fun at the whole concept—the sunny side versus dark side, one becoming the other, yin and yang. On the finale, Street is key to holding it together while Hoenig adds some faint scratches to close the set with a hint of chaos.

The two original tracks share some bluesy elements. On “Salty Peanuts,” Hoenig sets out alone, Carrothers joining with a single-note line running across left and right hands. With remote references to Parker’s “Salt Peanuts,” the dissonant lower register suggests the blues as they roll to the finish. In contrast, Carrothers’ “Church of the Open Air” is a majestic hymn, largely a piano/drum duet raised by elegantly chaotic percussion and very subtle bass accompaniment.

Thelonious Monk seems to be lurking around every note throughout much of the recording, and overtly on “Evidence.” Fast grooves are established immediately by Street and Hoenig, Street maintaining a steady pulse while Hoenig constantly interrupts. Carrothers gathers his most Monkish resources while Hoenig turns up the heat, as conversation erupts among the threesome.

Working mostly in the piano’s lower register, Carrothers gives this track a dark tone with increasing intensity, all over the keyboard. Hoenig contributes sinister percussive combinations, while Street is ever-present with a furious pulse that takes command in the final chorus.

The remainder of the set is pure Carrothers—a crazy quilt of ideas that take logical shape in conversational fragments. “I Can’t Begin to Tell You” (J. Monaco) has a gentle and lyrical opening verse with just enough swing, thanks to Hoenig’s brushes and Street’s laid-back basslines. Carrothers takes the second verse on a spinning climb around the melodic core, slipping and sliding with scampering embellishments, extracting from each chord a new mini-melody. Street’s solo follows suit in exploring the possibilities of each phrase, while Hoenig controls the conversation with brief outbursts. Carrothers’ return to the melody provides an elegant finish.

A keyboard ostinato introduces Joni Mitchell’s “Roses Blue,” Carrothers providing an exquisite take on the melody with a Romantic, classical sheen, like casting a Chopin prelude for 21^st century listening. Street keeps the pendulum swinging gently in the background, while Hoenig’s cymbals create a light, airy veil even as Carrothers begins his lush improvisation. Street takes a mournful solo; Hoenig’s brushes never recede while Carrothers drops short, dark phrases in-between the bass tones. Sounding like an amalgam of Bill Evans and Fred Hersch, here Carrothers seems free of his trademark quirks, overflowing with a caressing touch, conjuring a choir of small bells. In a similar lacey vein, Carrothers gives “London by Night (C. Coates) a slow swing, particularly anchored by Street, as if taking a page from the Great American Songbook and writing a silent lyric. Here the trio interplay is reminiscent of the great piano trios (Evans, Hersch, Werner).

V. Mizzy’s “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time” follows the above quieter tracks with a bluesy interlude that strongly hints of stride and even rag, a polyrhythmic tour of jazz history as each musician goes in a slightly different direction, giving the track more drive and lots of sonic interest. Like kids turned loose at recess, Carrothers uncorks a Fats Wallerish piano while Street and Hoenig also have some fun, and there are faint background vocalizations that suggest cats at play.

“The Night We Called It a Day” (Matt Dennis) starts with a series of short somber phrases from Carrothers, his abstract solo piano supported by the subtle, spare accompaniment of drum and bass. Street provides an equally abstract solo with less subtle punctuations. Over the final minute or two, the complexity of the group’s interations increases, the lyricism more elaborated, only to recede into a more introspective conclusion. Irving Berlin’s “Say It Isn’t So” has a quirky beginning with a stuttering series of chords and quick jerky phrases from Carrothers, who starts and stops in unison with Street. Buried beneath is a swinging melodic element but Carrothers isn’t about to let a normal pulse take over, instead creating what sounds like manually induced zings directly applied to the piano strings while Hoenig creates his own wild palette of sound with the drumkit. There’s a fragment of the melody here and there, but by and large this one is turned inside out into a totally new shape. On Arthur Schwartz’ classic, “You and the Night and the Music,” Carrothers repeats the opening phrase a few times before hinting at the next experiment. Street and Hoening add their own mayhem, the original line all but obliterated, sliced into fragments with jagged edges. Hoenig falls into a militaristic pulse that sharply counters Carrothers’ on and off meter.

Once again, Bill Carrothers, here in the perfect company of sympathetic explorers, Ben Street and Ari Hoenig, has taken mostly familiar stories and rewritten plots, created new characters, and scrambled time and space, sometimes with a grin, sometimes with grace, always with incredible facility and artistry. There are few minds in music that can translate such divergent ideas into coherent reality, few who can create such unpredictable logic. And make it all fun.

Keep Your Sunnyside Up was released April 12^th. Find out more about Bill Carrothers and order his recordings at www.bridgeboymusic.com

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