Bobby Previte

[baltostar]

When the audience crowds into the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma on Friday night (May 19) or The Independent in San Francisco on Saturday night (May 20) to hear The Coalition of the Willing, chances are that many will be unfamiliar with the all-star band's leader, virtuoso drummer and composer Bobby Previte. He may be something of a household name to cutting-edge jazz fans whose record collections contain works by John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Marty Ehrlich, Wayne Horvitz and the New York Composers Orchestra. But while Previte's name appears above the title on the new Coalition of the Willing CD, it's the drawing power of guitarist Charlie Hunter, saxophonist Skerik and organist Marco Benevento that guarantees him a hearing outside of regulation jazz venues.

"I'm skirting another scene where people don't know anything about me," Previte granted in a recent phone call from New York City. "That's one of the exciting things about it."

The scene that Previte is breaking into appreciates jazz -- when it provides the improvisational freedom for musicians to exercise chops steeped in rock, R&B, funk and bluegrass. When, that is, it's part of a genre-busting jam-band aesthetic.

Bay Area-raised Hunter, Seattle-based Skerik and New Jersey-bred Benevento are stars of various statures on the jam-band circuit, though each transcends even that loosey-goosey category. Hunter, known for his seven- and eight-string jazz-guitar prowess, boasts a long, big-league resume that includes Garage a Trois with Skerik and drummer Stanton Moore (of the popular New Orleans funk-jam band Galactic). Skerik's credits include Critters Buggin, the avant-fusion band Ponga and his new five-horn Syncopated Taint Septet. Benevento is best known for his improvising rock-fusion duo with drummer Joe Russo.

For the 48-year-old Previte, what's most important about these guys is that, musically, they cook. "I wanted to put together a working band that rocks," he declared in a conversation that took place after he cleaned up a coffee disaster in his kitchen and while he prepared himself a fresh cup.

The Coalition of the Willing rocks with a vengeance. On the CD, fresh out on the Ropeadope label, Previte, Hunter and Skerik are joined by organist-bassist Jamie Saft, trumpeter Steven Bernstein and guitarist-harmonica player Stew Cutler. The keyboards are as weighty as anything this side of The Band or Deep Purple, and Hunter, playing a six-string electric guitar (rather than his usual jazz ax), ranges into raunchy rock-blues sounds few have ever heard from him, while Previte channels heavy-metal thunder into his Max Roach-like precision.

"More and more, I've been going back to my roots," Previte explained. "And that's really my roots -- the first music I played was soul and rock."

When told that the opening moments of "The Ministry of Truth," the first track on The Coalition of the Willing, was reminiscent of The Band's "Chest Fever," Previte broke into an expletive-laced rant of praise: "Oh, man, the f--ing Band, man, you just said the magic F-word, dude. The f--ing Band! You can just forget about everybody else. I won't even try to put myself in even the same sentence as the Band. I remember very well hearing 'Chest Fever' on the radio the first time. What?! It just crashed the car radio speaker! It was just amazing!"

But Previte's musical studies took him in a different direction than his awestruck reaction to Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson and company might have suggested. At the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where he majored in percussion under Jan Williams, the music department faculty also included Morton Feldman and John Cage. Then, as he puts it in his online biography, he "ran head on into Miles Davis, Edgard Varèse, Charles Mingus, Terry Reilly, Abstract Expressionism, Igor Stravinsky, Frank Lloyd Wright, George Balanchine and William Faulkner. That was that."

In 1979, Previte moved to New York City, where he fell in with the "downtown" scene, recorded with John Zorn, Tom Waits, Marty Ehrlich and others, and began recording his own bands -- Bump; Empty Suits; Weather Clear, Track Fast; Latin for Travelers. As composer, Previte has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and Meet the Composer, and he has made his groups vehicles for his original music.

"I started composing because I had a band and we needed music," he said. "One advantage was that I could write music and have it played immediately, and I could hear it. Unfortunately, it wasn't a symphony, or I would be a very skilled symphonic composer now. That's really the deal: You write music and you hear it back -- bang! Then you know, this works and this doesn't work. This instrument does this pretty well, but it really doesn't do this very well. Or this instrument sounds like this in this octave, or these instruments together sound like this- -- but what if I flipped them and put this one under that one? You can't learn all that out of the book. You learn just by doing.

"No one ever told me how to write music or critiqued it, except for the band," Previte continued. "I was just writing music and getting it played, and, little by little, I came upon whatever I'm doing now. It's a little like I grew up in a cave and was unsullied by everything else. I think that has helped me define my own vision clearly. I'm kind of in my own space."

Currently, Previte's is growing -- with a new DVD of solo electronics, Dialed In, made with video artist Benton-C Bainbridge, and an ambitious new collaborative project called "The Separation" (as in "of church and state"), with writer Andrea Kleine, filmmaker Anna Kiraly and an adaptation of Guillaume Dufay's 15th century Missa Sancti Jacobi, "rearranged as Coalition music, which is probably going to take a little bit more of a metal direction."

"Coalition of the Willing is a band that I want to keep going for as long as I possibly can," Previte noted. "This is my new loudspeaker to shout out from. I love doing all these projects, but the Coalition is going to be my working band, my get-in-the-trenches band. It just rocks so hard and it's got my stuff, too."

The Coalition emerged from the network of relationships Previte cultivated over the past 20 years. He met Skerik through keyboardist Wayne Horvitz (and the three played together as Ponga). Skerik, among others, hipped him to Charlie Hunter. "I just called him up and said, 'Let's play.' I had just been getting into electronic drums at the time, and when Charlie and I played together, it was enlightening. It's a duo, but it's really a quartet -- in Charlie we've got the bass player and the guitar player; with me we've got the drummer and the electronics guy."

As Groundtruther, Previte and Hunter have invited a variety of third players to join in. "We have the basics so down," Previte said, "that no matter who we got, they could fly on top of us or inside us, or anything they wanted to do." Once they added Skerik and Jamie Saft (on the record) or Benevento (for the tour), The Coalition of the Willing was born. "I wanted to put together a band that had all my things in it," Previte explained, "whatever my things are -- composition and tunes and a tough edge."

Composition is rarely a strong suit in jam-band circles. But for Previte it's critical. In 2002, John Zorn's Tzadik label released Previte's The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró, 23 musical "miniatures" based on Miró's "Constellation" paintings and scored for harp, two trumpets, soprano sax, bass clarinet, flute, percussion, piano/celesta, organ/electronics and accordion.

For all its "chamber" qualities, Previte sees Constellations as a companion piece to The Coalition of the Willing. "In my mind, these two records are very close, simply because they are more consistent than anything else I've ever done," he said. "Stylistically, even though they are 'wildly different,' I feel they're linked."

And in his current band, Previte makes sure another link -- between composition and improvisation -- is reinforced. "I have learned the lesson of how to play music live, which is very different than making a record," he explained.

"I'm too much of a control freak, but now I understand perfectly well that the function is to subvert -- subvert, subvert, subvert. And you must subvert your own music, too. That's the only way to play music live. When I'm working with younger musicians, I tell them, you must be the composer -- you must listen to everything that goes down as a composer, as an orchestrator, as if you're sitting with your pencil, at your desk, looking out the window and you're writing a symphony, and then you think, 'OK, now, this section, what do I want to hear there?' Let's say you're the guitarist and you think, 'This section would be great but I don't want to hear the guitar,' then you don't play the guitar. You stop, which you can only do if you're out of yourself and into the music."

As a drummer-bandleader, like such jazz icons as Art Blakey and Max Roach, Previte exerts a commanding influence on the musicians who share the stage with him. "You have to be present," he explained. "I will not allow people not to be present. I like to give everybody that feeling of absolute abandon, but it's not about 'Here's my solo and now I'm going to sit back and listen to Charlie rip.' That's not it. You have to truly listen to the music you're playing -- you're involved every second, and you can make decisions every second. You can subvert the chart, you can come in blasting and you can bury everybody -- if it's strong enough and it's cool and you do it with conviction. That's the kind of thing that should happen live, and it does in my band because I make sure that it happens."

[Aggie87]

Out of curiousity, is there a reason you didn't post this in the other Previte thread you created in the past 24 hours?

[kh1958]

Bobby Previte is at the 55 Bar on Friday, June 2, with a different band. Since I'm expecting to be in New York that night, I'm hoping to attend.

Bobby Previte's "Strike"

Bobby Previte - Drums, Briggan Krauss - Alto Sax, David Binney - Alto Saxophone, Marco Benevento - Hammond Organ

"Previte is a serious composer with the heart of a roadhouse rocker" -the Village Voice

The drummer debuts a new Electric quartet modeled after his acoustic Bump band, with Sex Mob master Bernstein, sax great Binney, and rising star Benevento ripping up the organ.

[baltostar]

the NYC scene must be so different than out here on the West Coast. i get the feeling that there's so many incredible musicians that everything is constantly morphing and changing. one player or one group of players has reason to mix with another and in turn that catalyzes all sorts of combinations. some quickly grow tired of one band and move to another or they rotate around almost like it's "who's available for this date? there are so many good choices".

what amazed me about seeing Previte in person was that having not paid much attention to Zorn , Downtown, et al , back in the 80s, and only discovering his music last year and having never seen him in person, i figured him well under 40. on stage, he looked as lithe and muscular as any endurance athlete in their 20s, not an ounce of fat ... he played the kit like an athlete, dexterity with the sticks seemed as natural to him as breathing. turn off the sound and i'd still figure him as having amazing technique on the skins. the next day i looked him up and although his web page isn't saying, various sources have him at between 47 and 51 huh?! he's like one of these people who theoretically can't exist.

[kh1958]

For the most part, I don't care for Zorn, one exception being (with Bobby Previte on drums) the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet, Voodoo (on Black Saint).

Bobby Previte is another another story. He has a large body of fascinating work. These are recommended:

Claude's Late Morning, Empty Suits, Music of the Moscow Circus, Counterclockwise, The 23 Constellations of Joan Miro, Too Close to the Pole, Just Add Water, Hue and Cry, Slay the Suitors, and Dangerous RIP.