Category Archives: Durkin mumbles

Mumblings and musings from The Industrial Jazz Group’s fearless composer, director and do-it-aller, Andrew Durkin.

Durkin mumbles, mp3s

A tune I miss

Count_Basie_Swings_--_Joe_Williams_Sings

And believe me, I don’t usually say that about things I have retired from the Industrial Jazz songbook. Once they’ve had a good run, I like to set ’em out to pasture, and move on to something else. But coming across this one in my files brought a tear to my eye, perhaps because it was one of the first “big band” charts I wrote:

Every Day I Have the Blues, Too

That’s right, it’s sort of an extended fantasia on a few thematic slivers from a tune you may be surprised to learn I love: Joe Williams & Count Basie doing Memphis Slim’s “Every Day I Have the Blues.”

This is a studio recording, unmixed and unedited. I may officially release it someday, who knows.

Saxes: Damon Zick (soprano, bari), Ben Wendel (soprano), Dan Boissy (alto), Brian Walsh (tenor), Cory Wright (tenor).

Trumpets: Dan Rosenboom, Kris Tiner, Phil Rodriguez

Bone: Mike Richardson

Drums: Dan Schnelle

Bass: Oliver Newell

Durkin mumbles, mp3s, Uncategorized

Another side of the Industrial Jazz Group

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DSC02609

Cleaning up some computer files yesterday, I came across a recording of an Industrial Jazz Group show from a few years back. I believe it was at Cafe Metropol, in LA, sometime in 2006. I honestly don’t remember who recorded it — it was some internet radio thing, and though I got a nice mixed (and processed) copy of the show many months later, I don’t know if any of it ever actually made it onto the web.

Until now! Here’s a thing of mine called “Rover,” which I believe was the opener.

Personnel: Cory Wright (alto sax), Damon Zick (soprano sax), Mike Richardson (trombone), Oliver Newell (bass), Dan Schnelle (drums).

Those of you who have come to the group recently may not realize that we began life as a much smaller ensemble — a quintet, to be exact. Our first album, Hardcore (only available digitally now), is a quintet album. This Metropol show also featured a quintet — not exactly the same configuration as the Hardcore band, as I had removed piano from the equation altogether by this point. Still, it’s a pretty good (live) souvenir of how we once sounded. Note that during the period when this was recorded, I was basically trying to keep the quintet and the big band working simultaneously.

I had almost forgotten that I used to write music that actually sounds like jazz! Anyway, enjoy if you can. I’ll probably be posting the rest of this concert soon.

Durkin mumbles, videos

I’m pretty sure you need to hear this

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PDX’s own Quadraphonnes, featuring Mary-Sue Tobin (soprano sax), Mieke Bruggeman (bari sax), and Ward Griffiths (drums) — all of whom have shared (and, if I have anything to say about it, will continue to share) their brilliance with the Industrial Jazz Group. The group also features Chelsea Luker and Michelle Medler (alto and tenor sax, respectively) and Leah Hinchcliff (bass). Each player in herself is all kinds of awesome — put them together and you get some sort of supernova.

Yet another reason to spend the rest of my life in Portland.

Durkin mumbles

More on astonishment

A brief addendum to this. Jazz critic James Hale, commenting on his list of “albums I distinctly remembered hearing for the first time, and knowing I was hearing something special”:

All of which leads me to conclude that these types of indelible experiences may be limited to your first quarter-century, since I haven’t had a single memorable moment like this since — not for lack of listening to new music. Maybe having children (and pets, and debts, etc.) in your life has something to do with it, too.

I definitely still have those “indelible experiences,” but as I said, it feels like they are harder to come by now that I am older and more musically experienced. The thought that they could ever go away drives me to despair. (For the record, I don’t believe they ever will — but who knows? There are plenty of things I don’t believe for a while and then later they turn out to be true.)