JAZZ ON SUNDAY: JEFF PARKER - KNOXVILLE 2022
May 22, 2022 – 6:42 am
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JEFF PARKER AND THE NEW BREED
Knoxville 2022 [no label, 1CD]
Big Ears Festival. Live at The Standard, Knoxville, TN; March 25, 2022. Very good audience recording.
Thanks to recorder TBG; Joe Noel (mastering); and photoleon for sharing the show at Dime.
In 2016, Jeff Parker released The New Breed. He revisits some of the tracks in this show.
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intlanthem.bandcamp.com, 2016:
Best known as a multi-instrumental member of Tortoise and a pillar of the Chicago jazz and experimental music scene, Jeff Parker has been incomparably prolific over the last 20+ years while merely producing five albums as a “lead artist” (just two since 2005, including 2016’s duo recording with Rob Mazurek on Rogue Art). “Lead artist” is in quotes here, because though his name is seldom seen in marquees, his distinctive guitar sound has been essential to every project he’s been part of. It was in that sense that we at International Anthem came to work with Parker during the production of Makaya McCraven’s In The Moment, an album which ultimately showcased said essentialness (of Parker’s “side man” sound) on 9 of its 19 tracks.
Over the course of the In The Moment sessions in 2013 and 2014, Parker was slowly transitioning his personal belongings from Chicago to a new home in Los Angeles. It was when finally settled that he found opportunity to re-open some home recordings and beat projects that had been dormant on his hard drive for years (early versions of some could have been heard in the late ‘00s on his Myspace page). Parker had long been in silent study of vinyl sampling and beat conduction, but perhaps it’s no coincidence that new residence in a city aflame with experimental R&B, jazz and electronic fusers (that is, LA, for example, Brainfeeder, Leaving Records, Low End Theory) spurred him to dig back in to the practice and produce with more purpose.
By early 2015 Parker had refined several compositional ideas around his samples, and enlisted local friend Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann, Meshell Ndegeocello) to engineer and play bass guitar in sessions with Chicago ex-pat saxophonist, Thelonious Monk Institute protégé Josh Johnson (Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Esperanza Spaulding) and drummer Jamire Williams (Robert Glasper, Carlos Niño). The recordings were conducted to capture composed passages as well as free playing that used Parker’s beats and sample suites as improvisational criterion. After completing 7 songs with the band, the last of which with vocals from his daughter Ruby Parker recorded in Chicago by John McEntire, Parker named the project The New Breed (after a clothing store his late father Ernie owned and operated in the ‘70s)and finished the album by stitching the band tracks together with intermittent pieces of beat memories from his archive.
The final presentation is a retrospective tapestry that explores Parker’s past both musically - as a potent compositional tribute to his influences (J Dilla, Thelonious Monk, Charles Stepney) held together by literal fragments of his life’s work - and patrilineally - as a collaboration with his kin held together by clippings from the family photo album. The New Breed is Jeff Parker’s most vibrant and comprehensively personal work yet, appropriately the first in 11 years with only his name in the “lead artist” column.
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Lineage:
(FOB) Schoeps MK4 cardioids (first row, left of center) > N Box Platinum > Tascam Dr-2d (WAV16/48)
Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (320 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.
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Track 01. Intros 0:57
Track 02. Executive Life 7:27
Track 03. Para Ha Tay 1:56
Track 04. Here Comes Ezra 8:16
Track 05. Visions (Bobby Hutcherson) 6:36
Track 06. Black Narcissus (Joe Henderson) 9:39
Track 07. Go Away 5:23
Track 08. How Fun It Is To Year Whip 14:11
55 mins
Lineup:
Jeff Parker - electric guitar, keyboards
Josh Johnson - alto saxophone
Paul Bryan - electric bass guitar
Makaya McCraven - drums
Click here to order Jeff Parker releases.
14 Responses to “JAZZ ON SUNDAY: JEFF PARKER - KNOXVILLE 2022”
Rumor has it Jeff gots a Big Un
By U L E on May 22, 2022
Of course
By U L E on May 22, 2022
Who starts these rumors?
By Jocko P on May 22, 2022
Does that mean he has big penis?
By Pablo on May 22, 2022
Black men have big penises.
By Pablo on May 22, 2022
Naw it means he has a big guitar. Stupid spick . It means he has a big Dic k . What else would it mean ?
By T J on May 22, 2022
This darkie has a big ole triple size hoagie in his britches I hear , super big
By ELU on May 22, 2022
My butt is so wet right now
By U L E on May 22, 2022
We seem to be living with covid these days but there is a new virus starting up called Monkeypox. I’m not joking either. Is this going to be covid part2???
By HHH on May 22, 2022
Maybe shitting my pants will help fight Monkeypox. It helped me not get Covid because no one came near me.
By HHH on May 22, 2022
could be my father Derriere. my mother spread for many coons looking like him
By Derrick on May 22, 2022
Im a gook
k and I have a big dic k
By Won Hung Low on May 22, 2022
I’ll never be at the Big Uns Festival *sob*
By U L E on May 23, 2022
Last two twernt me more fakes
By U L E on May 23, 2022