Bill Frisell Live CD

/Kermit Driscoll/Joey Baron.
Personnel: Bill Frisell (guitar); Kermit Driscoll (bass); Joey Baron (drums).
Recorded live at Teatro Lope de Vega, Sevilla, Spain on October 27, 1991.
Personnel: Bill Frisell (guitar); Kermit Driscoll (electric bass); Joey Baron (drums).
A Bill Frisell solo can invoke amber waves of grain, the south side of Chicago, and various places in New England, all in the space of three bars. His tonal palette is hugely varied, yet his sound is completely personal -- only Richard Thompson can boast a guitar style so individual and fully realized. Think of the music of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Charles Mingus; jazz has always lived at the murky nexus between African music and European art music, and what makes Frisell unique is his ability to take those same two basic ingredients and come up with something that sounds brand new. That he's liable to quote Chuck Berry at the same time says something about his sweetness of spirit. This album finds Frisell onstage with bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Joey Baron, running through a few faves ("Throughout," "Strange Meeting," "When We Go"), as well as some more obscure and surprising material. Driscoll is a sharply intuitive bassist with a reggae player's feel for silence; Baron punctuates more than he undergirds. As a result, this is largely music without groove. Instead, it hovers and floats overhead like a benevolent thunderstorm, sometimes letting loose rumbling, atonal chaos like "Crumb" and sometimes emitting bolts of pure electric light such as the utterly charming "Rag" and the yearning sweetness of "Throughout." "Pip, Squeak/Goodbye" steps briefly into tango territory, and Frisell takes the Sonny Rollins composition "No Moe" all the way back to the Delta with a bent blues solo. The John Hiatt cover, by the way, is the emotional centerpiece of the album: a deeply felt rendition of "Have a Little Faith in Me." This is a very special disc. ~ Rick Anderson
For guitarist/composer Bill Frisell, the acclaim has come pouring from all sides. Not only do esteemed jazzmen such as Julius Hemphill, John Zorn, Paul Motian, Ginger Baker and David Sanborn look up to him as a valued collaborator, but lately renegade producers and rock icons such as Hal Wilner, Marianne Faithful and Elvis Costello have come to depend on his imaginative touch to enliven their own experimental projects.
Why? Because Frisell is a musician's musician, deeply rooted in the jazz tradition ("No Moe"), but with an uncanny ear for texture and a rhythmic drive which is equal parts blues, rock and psychedelia (the Chuck Berry-like trashorama on "Crumb"), with an overlay of southwestern Americana and country ("Have A Little Faith In Me"). LIVE documents the work of the Bill Frisell Trio at the peak of their expressive powers, recorded in concert before an ecstatic audience in Sevilla, Spain...where they know from guitarists.
From the opening strains of "Throughout," Frisell's method is clear: over the waltzing, minimalistic backbeat of Driscoll and Baron, the guitarist unwinds spare sheets of reverberant chords and tape loops. His calliope-like melody goes through multiple transformations, from countryish slurs to screaming blues asides worthy of Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana. On "Rag," he illustrates his gift for evocative chordal voicings, as Driscoll's woody bass punctuations and Baron's spasmodic percussive asides turn this waltz into a humorous circus of sounds.
A rollicking theme like "Pip, Squeak" is equal parts western swing and free jazz, and the trio's ability to juggle multiple moods and tempos transforms "Hello Nellie" from a moody ballad, to syncopated free-for-all, to barnyard boogie. Such fanciful leaps of imagination mark each improvisation, from odd rhythmic cycles of "Hangdog" to the climactic Hendrixian calypso-cum-Stones rave-up of "When We Go." LIVE is an evocative, original, joyous recital.Entertainment Weekly (10/27/95, p.95) - "...showcases the looseness of his playing--as well as that of bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Joey Baron, the critical two thirds of this quirkily artful band." - Rating: B+
Down Beat (2/96, p.46) - 4 Stars - Very Good - "...turns the trio loose for a winning, wide-ranging set covering the extremes of Frisell's music, from ethereal tone poems to buzzing grung/surf hybrids....LIVE is both a good introduction and an opportunity to hear the trio's interaction without the prism of the recording studio..."
JazzTimes (3/96, p.102) - "...more than the range of Frisell's writing and playing, LIVE documents the tightly meshed interplay of Frisell, Driscoll and Baron, which alternates between dry understatement and colorful gesture..."
Option (1-2/96, p.92) - "...this album sings with etude-like abstractions, stop-and-go thrashed melodies, and blustery electricity..."