Nels Cline/Gerald Cleaver/Larry Ochs Trio at The Bakery, Atlanta

Two shows in two nights (thankfully, it was on a weekend!).  This evening, it wasn't the ever-reliable Earl but a show at the Atlanta alternative, D.I.Y. venue, The Bakery (where we saw Lonnie Holley and Mary Lattimore last year).

The show opened with an Atlanta outfit called Outside Voices, a clever name as they played "outsider" free jazz and also because they played loud, using their "outside voices."  Normally a trio, the band expanded for this performance with an upright bassist, who added a lot to the set.

Theirs was an improv jam session with each musician playing their own thing, but unlike, say, the Aurora Nealand-Tim Berne-David Torn-Bill Frisell band Absînt, the sounds blended well together into one coherent whole, rather than just sounding like four people noodling along at the same time. There was dynamism to the set, louder at times, loud, but not quite as loud, at others.  It was a fun set and a good way to start the show, and I'm glad that Atlanta has resident bands like this playing this kind of music.

Nels Cline is an incredible guitarist.  In thinking about what makes a guitarist "incredible," we came up with another one of our crackpot theories (no, we're not going to bore you with veridical vs. sequential again, other than to say that this entire show was 100% sequential).  Guitarists, we propose, can distinguish themselves in one of two ways.  Some distinguish themselves by their lyricism, their ability to carry and create melody, and especially in jazz, to improvise and compose on the fly, basically creating a pleasing song as they go along.  Think Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Jerry Garcia, even Frank Zappa.  Other guitarists are more into the sound than the melody, and distinguish themselves by their inventiveness, playing the guitar in new and different ways, coaxing new sounds out of their equipment with novel or unusual methods.  Think Arto Lindsey and Pete Cosey (Miles Davis' electric band), and Robert Fripp and Johnny Greenwood.  The reason that Jimi Hendrix is so universally respected, even all these decades later, is that he was both lyrical (his guitar sang) and inventive (it sang in voices never heard before).

Nels Cline falls into the inventive category, and can arguably be called the most inventive guitarist playing today.  The man truly belongs in the guitar god pantheon.  His playing last night incorporated about every device imaginable - slides, pedals, repeaters, feedback, fretboard play, etc. He constantly was doing something new and something interesting, and it always sounded good and spot on for that moment. It was a Masters' dissertation on guitar inventiveness and on the ways his instrument can adapt to a free jazz format.

Saxophonist Larry Ochs brought the lyricism, and his playing was every bit as good in its way as Cline's was in its.  Ochs is best knows as a member of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, and while he might look like Larry David if David dropped a lot of acid, he channeled Albert Ayler, Sonny Shepp, and even John Coltrane himself in his playing.  Unfortunately, the nature of their compositions usually had Ochs' solos fading off into a Nels Cline passage, and Ochs didn't get nearly as much applause for his playing than did Cline, but Ochs more than held his own.  It takes a certain selfless humility to end your solo by yielding to the other rather than grandstanding for effect, and it seems that what Ochs did much of the evening.

But this was a trio, and member Gerald Cleaver was no slouch on drums.  There was no bass and most of the set was basically just an electric guitar over drums or a saxophone over drums with occasional full ensemble play, and Cleaver ably kept the beat going and provided percussive comments on both player's music.  The cool thing was he made it look easy, even when both soloists ganged up on him with aggressive free playing at the same time.  Cleaver just sat there, not missing a beat and effortlessly tied it all together with his drumming.  On some of the quieter passages, he didn't "drum" so much as coax odd sounds out of his kit with rim shots, cymbal effects, and brush work.  Cleaver may have taken a back seat, both literally and figuratively, to his bandmates, but he was every bit their equal musically.  Listen to how he adapts his drumming to match the changes in Och's solo, giving Ochs some room to breathe as he tapped the keys on his sax:

So,  yes, as you can tell, we enjoyed the show.  It was a wonderful way to end the weekend, and we were even able to get home in time to catch the encore presentation of the season opener of Game of Thrones.