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June 22nd was the third day of the 2014 Ottawa jazz festival and it was a long one.
I began the evening in the afternoon with a set that was in the right room at the wrong time. A singer and guitarist named Dida – who sounded every bit like she stepped straight out of the classic ’60’s-era smoky jazz nightclub scene – was leading her quartet through one brand-new throwback after another in the National Arts Centre’s rather jazzy nightclub-ish 4th Stage. Nevermind that they started at the very un-jazzy hour of 5pm, it was still a great set. Dida sang like a sultry jazz temptress and backed herself up with guitar playing that harkened to the sounds of legendary sidemen like Herb Ellis or Joe Pass*. It was a nice start to a fine day of music.
Next up was a show I had (sort of) missed two years before, one I had seen just a year earlier, and one I was excitedly anticipating: Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers featuring Edie Brickell. Whew…just typing that made me breathless!
I had somehow, some way convinced myself to skip seeing Steve Martin playing the banjo with his Steep Canyon cohorts on the same jazzfest main stage back in 2012, a mis-step I spent almost a full year kicking myself over until a monumental road trip offered me the opportunity to see him and them (with Edie too) in Minneapolis. My goodness it was such a great concert…I can’t even…
Now, I have been calling Steve Martin my favourite comedian ever since I first saw The Jerk when I was about thirteen years old. As an extension of this fandom I had long been an admirer of his banjo playing as well, and I eventually (and quite separately) developed a fair appreciation for the whole bluegrass thing. And then to heap on my long-time smitteness for everything Edie Brickell and, well, how could I have been more excited for a mainstage set of music?
And I was not disappointed. The concert was every bit as good as the theatre show I had seen in Minnesota. The bulk of the show featured Edie and Steve performing material from their Broadway collaboration Bright Star, much of it peppered throughout with slick banjo picking and hilarious one-liners. It was all very homey, it was breathlessly beautiful, and it was stacked to the sky with monstrously diverse talents. We heard some of the best bluegrass playing around, some of the funniest jokes a guy could make, some of the prettiest singing a jaded heart could imagine, and some of the most pleasant, thoughtful, and earthy songwriting one could hope for. So yeah, it was basically the same as the last time I saw them and you’d better believe I’d go again in a double-heartbeat.
With my soul all a-flutter in the void of their absence I meandered slowly towards the aftershow with my wistful eyes turned skyward to gaze at the impossibly infinite twinkling starscape hovering overhead. Once I reached the after-hours tent I was hit with my first Snarky Puppy concert, which smacked my cozy reverie firmly upside the head. Though I don’t recall any specifics of this performance at all I can report with confidence that the aggressive American octet attacked my reverie like a bucket of ice water and triggered my sonic soul of consciousness to forever repel them. In the intervening years I have consistently conflated Snarky Puppy with The Bad Plus – whom I had seen for the second time just the night before – and that conflation began as I stood there in the OLG late-nite tent semi-watching the band.
So I can only conclude that my Edie-softened musical skandhas had their shields up when I entered the tent. And while I enjoy Snarky Puppy and the sonic mania that they stand for (not to mention The Bad Plus) nearly as much as the next guy all I can say is: good move, skandhas.
*Did I really just describe Joe Pass as a “sideman”?!? He’s surely one of the greatest solo jazz guitarists hands-down but he’s also the quiet chordal brilliance behind much of Ella’s best work, and I was thinking of those recordings when I typed that sentence. And yes, Herb Ellis was a brilliant guitarist too, however I only think of him as Oscar Peterson’s sideman.
Todd Man Out 