The Invitational 12/15/05

David Gans & Friends
Thursday, December 15, 2005
The Invitational at the Hotel Utah, San Francisco
Personnel: DG & Chris Rowan, guitar and vocals; Josh Zucker, bass and vocals; Josh Kaye, keyboards; Adam Perry, drums.

Surprise guests: Tony Perez, sax (all of main set); James Nash (the Waybacks), mandolin (Yellow Submarine to end of main set)

P&L Jam (without Chris)
I Should Have Known Better
I’ll Be Back->
Things We Said Today
She Loves You
Here, There, and Everywhere
No Reply
In My Life
Yellow Submarine
A Hard Day’s Night
Travelin’ Man
Jackaroe
Mr Tambourine Man
Far Away
Shove in the Right Direction
~
Psycho Killer->
Jam (DG, Josh, Josh, and Adam)
Chris Rowan and I have bonded over Beatle songs, and that repertoire was the centerpiece of this show. But this band that fell together almost by accident turned out to be a formidable improvisational ensemble.
I’ve been working with bassist Josh Zucker for several months, after I heard him backing the Rowan Brothers at Sweetwater earlier this year. Adam was the drummer on the Guilty Pleasures tour last May. I’ve known him online for a few years but had never heard him play; he delivered the goods handsomely with G.P., and he demonstrated his big ears and sensitive touch last night. Josh Z. brought Josh K. to the September 29 Invitational (also with Chris Rowan), and he fit right in with no rehearsal at all. And this time, Josh Z. invited his friend Tony Perez to play sax with us. I thought we’d have him in for some of the rockin’ stuff and a jam, but it felt so good with him on the opening jam that I asked him to stay for the rest of the set.
This was a good night for me as a guitarist. I’ve been growing steadily more competent and confident over the last few years, but this year I’ve taken it to the next leval as solo player and as an ensemble player.
The loop is hard to use in ensemble situtations, because music played by multiple humans is elastic in both micro and macro ways. (At the last Invitational, I did a couple of loop jams with Kurt Ribak on bass; we had a little trouble locking in because the sound on stage wasn’t very well-adjusted, but once we got that figured out we did pretty well playing with the machine.)
The opening jam began with me alone, using a theme I have developed coming out of “Pancho and Lefty” over the last couple of years (hence the title “P&L Jam”). The other players drifted onstage and joined the party one by one, each locking in w/ the loop. Once we had it going on, I turned the loop off and we continued playing live.
I used the loop in a whole new way in the post-Psycho Killer jam last night: I got a fat overdrive sound and used the volume pedal to create extended, swelling tones, and looped a more or less random period of that work; then with the loop playing back, I overdubbed more upswelling notes, some overlapping and some more or less in sync, some in harmony and some in close dissonance. All the while the live musicians were jamming along in the groove we had made together. After a while I bent over and faded the loop out while the band continued, and I rejoined them on live guitar for the rest of the jam.
Adam posted a comment in the WELL this morning: “Josh Zucker had never even heard ‘Psycho Killer” before, so the actual song was pretty much a delightful mess, but the jam (probably 20 minutes of weirdness) was something I seriously need to hear again. Truly spacey but only boring for maybe two minutes of the twenty.” It was a joy to play with Adam again. I want to get that quartet together again ASAP – Josh, Josh, Adam, and me – and get James Nash in, too, if he’s available.
A friend of Bob Cogswell (Todd – I don’t know his last name) came with a PZM and made a recording from the balcony. The sound system at the Utah isn’t so great, but the recording will give us the gist of it. I’ll get it mastered after my busy weekend of gigs.