Time Machine

A Matt Wilson throwback, sprung from the vault

Matt Wilson with the tools of his trade. (John Abbott)

Summertime, and the living is… well, it depends in part on how much attention you’ve been paying to your news feed, doesn’t it? I’ve been half-in, half-out on recent events, attempting to maintain some responsible level of civic engagement even as I give myself permission to unplug and uncoil. This is neither a precise science nor much of an art. What I can tell you is that I’m doing my best to keep it together, focusing on things that are nominally in my control.

Because I’m coming off some much-needed downtime and also preparing for a real vacation, things have been a little quiet here at The Gig. But I have a few things in the works, which I’m excited to share (soon). Meanwhile, we all deserve some better vibes. Which brings me to my subject today, Matt Wilson.

As you may know, Wilson is an incorrigibly upbeat drummer who has also racked up plenty of wins as a bandleader. He has a new album on Palmetto titled Good Trouble — an earnest nod to the late congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis, and a reminder of the light we’re entrusted to carry in darker times.

Good Trouble is also the name of Wilson’s rangy new quintet, which has Tia Fuller on alto saxophone, Jeff Lederer on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Dawn Clement on piano and vocals, and Ben Allison on bass. They’re out on tour at the moment: go seek them out at the Iowa City Jazz Festival this Saturday; at the Tilles Jazz Fest in Brookville, NY on July 20; and at the Stowe Jazz Festival in Vermont on Aug. 4. If your plans extend past Labor Day, there’s a New York gig on Sept. 13 and 14, at Dizzy’s Club.

Wilson turns 60 later on in September (the 27th), so it might seem odd that “boyish” still crops up in the word cloud whenever his name gets mentioned. Then again, listen to his shuffle beat on that title track; clock his spang-a-lang, and it’ll all make sense. Some musicians just don’t ever leave their youthful bounce behind.

I’ve covered Wilson for about as long as I’ve been writing about music. Once, I referred to him in passing as “a jazz drummer constitutionally averse to pretension,” which still feels true. That line came from this 2010 review (gift link) of a gig at the Iridium, which had his working combo joined by a string quartet; one of the violinists was his wife, Felicia, whom I’d met the previous year at their home.

That’s because I wrote a profile of Wilson for the November 2009 issue of JazzTimes, which ran it as a cover story. Until I started writing this post, I’d forgotten that this was the first issue published after the magazine’s takeover by Madavor Media.

Howard Mandel

noted at the time that it was a sign of JazzTimes’ Robust Recovery.

We’re post-recovery now — since the mag, its reputation, and its archives all got trashed by a vengeful bluster baron. (Icymi, here’s my take from last year.) Perhaps it was the recent obliteration of MTV’s website that got me thinking about preservation. In any case, I’ve decided to go back and grab that cover story from 15 years ago (edited by my dude Evan Haga), and share it with you here. In many ways, it’s a time capsule — a report enlivened by the presence of those who’ve since left us, including Paul Motian (2011), Charlie Haden (2014), Lee Konitz (2020) and Frank Kimbrough (2020). Most poignantly, Felicia Wilson died almost exactly a decade ago, on June 15, 2014.

I’d like to dedicate this post to Felicia’s memory, while celebrating the vital optimism that Matt has managed to carry forward. One more thing: for a sidebar, I subjected him to a lightning-round A/B quiz — Qs like “Billy Higgins or Ed Blackwell?” and “Tony Williams or Jack DeJohnette?” Matt’s answers were both thoughtful and fun. So I’m including that quiz at the end of this post, as a bonus for paid subscribers.

---

Living History

How drummer & funnyman Matt Wilson blended various eras of jazz drumming into a style worth its own historical weight.

By Nate Chinen | Photos by Jimmy Katz

If you’ve ever seen Matt Wilson in action, then you’ve probably seen him smile. It happens often in the course of his playing, and it has a way of spreading: across the bandstand, throughout a club, along the expanse of a festival hall. His posture and bearing at the drums communicates an upright whimsy, perhaps especially when he’s wearing a coat and tie — which, combined with his dark-frame glasses and gray-streaked hair, can call to mind a younger version of Minnesota senator Al Franken. And yes, it’s true: He’s good enough, and smart enough, to make you like him. In fact, he’s probably the most blithely sociable jazz drummer since the late Billy Higgins, who earned the fond sobriquet Smiling Billy, and who also happens to be Wilson’s clearest musical precursor.

“Matt exudes joy and a sense of well-being on the bandstand,” says pianist-composer Myra Melford, who works alongside Wilson in the avant-garde collective Trio M, and occasionally in her ensemble Be Bread. “I’m constantly smiling when I’m playing with him, and I know this is transmitted to the audience as well as the ensemble members.” 

Terell Stafford, the trumpeter in Wilson’s band Arts & Crafts, uses similar terms to describe his first time ever playing with the drummer: “I would turn around and we were smiling at each other the whole performance.” That was at a conference of the International Association of Jazz Education, about a decade ago—not long after Wilson released an album called Smile, its cover emblazoned with a photo of his grinning mug. 

Of course you don’t get to be one of the steadiest-working drummers in jazz on the merits of goofy charm alone. Consult Wilson’s discography of the last year or two, which includes sterling albums by pianist Denny Zeitlin (In Concert, on Sunnyside); bassist Mario Pavone with pianist Paul Bley (Trio Arc, Playscape); soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom (Mental Weather, Outline); and multireedist Ted Nash (The Mancini Project, Palmetto). On each of those titles — as on That’s Gonna Leave a Mark (Palmetto), the excellent new release by the Matt Wilson Quartet — you’ll hear the mix of perceptive flow and responsive flexibility that has long been his unassuming trademark. There are a few more emphatically dazzling drummers working today, but almost nobody in Wilson’s peer group with a broader grasp of jazz history, or a more natural sense of time, or a stronger signature as a bandleader, or more goodwill among his fellow players.

“In addition to being a great drummer, Matt is a bandleader and composer,” says bassist Ben Allison. “So he’s always thinking about the tune we’re playing—about making clear statements that, although often surprising, never feel out of place. He’s in the moment when he plays and has a keen sense of group interplay. In a way, he’s always playing ‘free.’”

Alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, one of a handful of certifiable jazz legends to have employed Wilson, is no less enthusiastic: “I don’t think I’ve never ever heard him play an unmusical hit on the drums and cymbals. That to me is very admirable. And of course he’s got a great sense of humor, and he has no compunction to release it at any point.” He adds: “When we’re playing together, it’s fun. Every time I look at him, I smile.”

****

So here’s Matt Wilson, amiably swashbuckling his left-side cymbal in a low-ceilinged Greenwich Village club. It’s a late-summer weeknight at the Cornelia Street Café, and the gig is relaxed, though that’s no indication of its merits. Nir Felder, a guitarist of recent Berklee College of Music pedigree, is the bandleader, and he has brought along one of his mentors, alto saxophonist Greg Osby. The set opens with a Charlie Parker tune, a blues called “Big Foot,” and from Beat One there’s the pull of forward-tilt swing. 

Wilson, locking in with bassist Doug Weiss, initially keeps his ride pattern loose but driving; his snare-drum annotations, played with the left hand, are effectively sparse. Throughout the duration of Osby’s solo, a smart and angular thing, he never once uses his hi-hat, or breaks the pattern of his ride. But at the solo handoff to Felder, he switches to his right-side cymbal, for a brighter tonality, and strikes up a chattering conversation between his hi-hat and snare. It’s a change both pervasive and subtle, like flicking on a new light in the room. And it’s a decision motivated purely by intuition, though Wilson has no problem explaining it later. “Behind Greg it was more of a horizontal time feel,” he says. “When I got to Nir’s solo, I thought I could divide the bar up a bit more.” 

The second tune in the set is a rhythmically complex invention of Felder’s called “Memorial,” and somehow Wilson, sight-reading on the bandstand, makes it open up and breathe. After heeding a halting pulse during the song’s opening stretch, he delves into tumbling abstraction, inviting Osby along with him. Together they bob and weave, pulling further and further away from tempo, but with a toehold in tonality. Osby, at 49, and Wilson, at 45, are a full generation removed from Felder, and their treatment of his music suggests casual mastery crossed with a flicker of surprise. “Sometimes it’s more exciting not to know too much, and really react more,” Wilson says after the set. “I love that first time, when you’re trying stuff out. I always tell people that you only play a piece of music for the first time once. And if you approach every gig that way, it’s cool.”

It’s just one of the lessons Wilson attributes to his apprenticeship with the late tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman — or to put it another way, one drop in the ocean of insight that the jazz life has afforded him. “Just to have had that experience of being with Dewey for that long, or being around Charlie,” he muses, referring to bassist Charlie Haden, in whose Liberation Music Orchestra he has memorably played. “There’s no substitute for the hang. I was never one of these people who play the gig and then go to bed. When you get in company with these people — Buster Williams is another one, for me — you just learn so much. No university will give you that. Not that any one of these guys have ever said that much to me about how to play, but one little thing here or there will do it. I played with Dewey for 12 years and I think he told me like five things.” 

For the musicians who routinely work with him, younger and older, all that perspective is a goldmine. “He's a universalist, totally versed in the history of the music, but [he] never sounds studied, so ‘in,’ ‘out,’ genre, etc., mean nothing,” says pianist Frank Kimbrough, who has enlisted Wilson both in his trio and in larger groups like the Herbie Nichols Project. “All those dichotomies are removed, so that whether we’re playing my originals, standards, or a free piece, he’s just there to make music.”

And working with the likes of Haden and Konitz has helped make time feel, the currency of any jazz drummer, one of Wilson’s foremost strengths. “From the first time I played with him, it was just an unbelievably comfortable experience,” reflects Jeff Lederer, the tenor saxophonist in the Matt Wilson Quartet since 2001. “A lot of cats say that: that his beat is comfortable to work with, very embracing.”

Kimbrough expands on the thought: “Wherever he puts [the beat], it’s going to feel good. If the music needs momentum, it’s there. If it needs to open up, it’s there. He always has a loose, organic feel that can move to fit everyone else’s playing. That comes from his many varied experiences, but it’s also a gift. If we’re playing and I feel a little shift in the beat, no matter where it’s coming from, I know that if I look at him, there’s going to be a smile, and perhaps a funny face, and it’s all going to come out alright because he’s really listening. He has no interest in dictating where the beat is — that’s decided democratically, and usually unconsciously, by the interpersonal dynamics of the group.”

A week after seeing Wilson at Cornelia Street Café, I happen to run into him at the Village Vanguard, sharing a table with multireedist Marty Ehrlich, with whom he has just played some dates in Europe. Onstage is the landmark trio led by drummer Paul Motian, with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell. Their set is a marvel of shadowy intuition, and I can’t help but elicit Wilson’s impressions after the fact. 

“Just stellar,” he says, beaming. “As much as I’ve played with those guys, Joe and Bill, when I hear them in that band, it always seems to be their place to be. There’s just some sort of way that Paul allows them to go somewhere.”

He draws a parallel to his own bandleading, influenced in no small part by Motian’s example. “I don’t even know if it’s about what piece of music you put in front of people,” he says. “It comes down to: how you can allow them to go someplace?”

****

The Wilson family resides in a handsome if inevitably cluttered two-story home on a tree-lined street in Baldwin, one of Long Island’s larger suburban hamlets. On a sunny Labor Day afternoon, Matt settles down for a conversation in his backyard, while Felicia, his wife of more than 20 years, takes their children — Audrey, 11, and the triplets Henry, Max and Ethan, now 8 — out for some errands. At ease in a baseball cap, shorts and a polo shirt, Wilson sips a carbonated fruit drink and laughs readily, always in earnest.

Born and raised in Knoxville, Ill., Wilson grew up in a household that was not exactly musical but extremely hospitable to music. After he took a serious interest in the drums, sparked by seeing Buddy Rich on television in third grade, his parents began driving him to clinics and workshops in nearby (or not-so-nearby) towns. “My parents had these march records, for some reason, and I played along with those a lot,” he recalls. “And then my friend growing up, he had this record Rich versus Roach, Max Roach versus Buddy Rich. I’ll never forget the day we were sitting in his room, and I heard Max. It really spoke to me. I think it was tangible to me, like something I could maybe get to. 

“And then my middle brother plays saxophone, so on Saturday nights we would play duets. We’d go get sheet music at the music store on the weekends, like Byerly Music in Galesburg, and play little 4H or PTA meetings. We had a shtick; we’d do humor and tell jokes in between.” He chuckles. “Nothing really changes. But later in high school, we didn’t have a jazz band at that point because of the budget cuts of the ‘70s. So I just started playing locally with people. From eighth grade on, I was playing probably every weekend somewhere: supper club things or weddings or gigs.”

Wilson, who firmly believes in the existence of a Midwest Beat — a bit more open in the ride cymbal pattern than your typically aggressive East Coast swing — pursued an omnivore’s path all along, playing country and rock along with jazz. His tastes within jazz were just as broad. “My brother got me this record called The Drums, with stuff from all the Impulse! vaults,” he says, “and it was the first time I heard Albert Ayler or Archie Shepp. I had never heard music like this, ever.  Here I am with my little turntable in a farmhouse in Illinois. And I felt a connection to it like I felt a connection to Philly Joe Jones. I didn’t know any better. I thought, ‘Well, this is what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be playing all this kind of stuff.’” 

Wilson attended Wichita State University, chiefly for the purpose of studying with the percussion guru J.C. Combs, to whom he ascribes not only his grounding in technique but also a deep and canny curiosity. It was in college, too, that Matt met Felicia, a violin major whom he eventually followed to Boston, when she entered a masters program at the New England Conservatory. While stationed in Boston, Wilson fell in with the Either/Orchestra, a dynamic little big band, and with people like keyboardist John Medeski, vocalist Dominique Eade and, perhaps most fortuitously, multireedist Andrew D’Angelo, who would be a pillar of his quartet once he moved to New York.  

In its first incarnation — with D’Angelo, tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm and bassist Yosuke Inoue — the Matt Wilson Quartet grabbed a lot of attention, through musical and extra-musical means. A gig was likely to feature stage props, calisthenics and a kind of absurdist frenzy: D’Angelo taking mock stage-dives, or running wind sprints across the length of a stage. (For just a taste of the madness, look up the band’s version of “School Boy Thug” on YouTube, from a Lichtfield Jazz Festival performance. Wilson sports a black hair-metal wig and parodies an arena-rock drum solo, sticks a-twirl.) 

But there was always a serious musical intent behind the band: Smile, its second release, features workhorses by John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk right along with originals like “Go Team Go!” (Wilson) and “Big Butt” (D’Angelo). The new album, That’s Gonna Leave a Mark, spotlights a tight version of the group that has worked on and off in recent years, with Lederer in place of Frahm and Chris Lightcap in place of Inoue. It begins with a shot across the bow by D’Angelo; includes a romp through “Two Bass Hit,” a bebop charger; and ends with the War song “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” featuring vocals by the whole Wilson brood. “This band has an identity from its influences and, by now, its own pedigree,” wrote Ben Ratliff in his New York Times review, “but this record sounds porous and unassuming; it's not painting itself into any corners.”

****

Bandleading is inherently a generous endeavor for Wilson, and yet he’s as shrewd as anyone when it comes to presenting his ideas. That was one reason for Arts & Crafts, which features Stafford in a gallant lead role alongside a pianist-organist (initially Larry Goldings, and now Gary Versace). The group has released three albums, each of them worthwhile, and it has been a bridge between Wilson’s mainstream side and his more outer-reaching side, largely because he shaped it that way. 

“When I joined the group,” Stafford says, “I came from a straight-ahead background, and he was good about saying, ‘Let’s just play this tune and see what happens.’ At first that was really uncomfortable for me, because I was used to playing over changes, with a set structure. I started to open up to it; Matt pushed me in a direction I had never gone in.”

Despite the difference in instrumentation and style between Wilson’s two bands, there’s a steadfast aesthetic — far easier to recognize than describe — that stretches across his eight albums. Lederer calls it “some ineffable quality that transcends the particular identities in the group.” Melford, an astute observer of Wilson’s efforts, credits the writing. “Matt has a very unique way of composing and arranging music for his own ensembles, and he brings this to Trio M as well,” she says. “He is able to organize his materials so that they are very open-ended, and this leaves a lot of room for the individual players to bring their own sensibilities to his music, which he then is able to shape through his playing.”

Wilson, whose compositional mind has also produced a words-and-music project inspired by poet Carl Sandburg, is the first to acknowledge that his worlds have been converging. “When I first started Arts & Crafts it was like, OK, this allows me to play more ‘jazz,’” he says. “But now that group has become, concert-wise, more like the quartet. And then not having done the quartet for a while, they shift. I don’t ever really want to put any of these things into a box. Everything can kind of be everything, just with different instrumentation and different people on it.” (On That’s Gonna Leave a Mark, the quartet plays the title track from Arts & Crafts’ 2001 debut.)

The stirrings of an interchangeable band policy, after so much constancy, feel more than a little strategic. D’Angelo, who survived a harrowing bout with brain cancer last year, will soon be taking a leave from the quartet, to focus on his own music and on the continuing process of healing. (He wasn’t the only person in Wilson’s immediate circle with such serious health problems: Dennis Irwin, the original bassist in Arts & Crafts, was diagnosed with a spinal tumor around the same time. He died last March.) 

D’Angelo’s substitute won’t be another alto saxophonist, but rather the sharp young trumpeter Kirk Knuffke. When I reach Lederer by phone, he mentions that Knuffke has just left his house; they’ve been reading down charts from the band’s book. 

“We have to go out there live and play,” Wilson says, describing a philosophy that has led him, in the past, to perform in nursing homes and youth centers as well as jazz clubs. “If there are gigs that allow us to go play Zorba’s Greek Restaurant in Champaign, Illinois on a Thursday night, them I’m going to do it. People deserve to hear the music.” 

And as for the balancing act behind his dual career as a bandleader and sideman, Wilson can only exhale. “To play with all these people, from my peers and younger players to the older musicians that I’ve apprenticed with,” he says, leaving the thought unfinished for a second. Then comes that toothy grin again. “Somehow it all works out.”