What’s the difference between involvement and commitment? Ask a chicken and a pig; the chicken is involved with breakfast, the pig is committed to breakfast. That is essentially the difference between most artists and Mike Stern’s passion for playing with fellow musicians. In this day of ipods and computers, it’s easy to “mail in” your music for a recording. Stern will have none of that, as his latest collection of releases exemplify.
Last year, he recorded and toured with the venerable Yellowjackets, which was a stimulating experience for Stern. After one of the sets at Catalina’s, Stern, perspiring and grinning, pointed to the band, and yelled to the audience, “These guys are kicking my butt!” Reminded of that evening, Stern laughs, “They’re great. On that tour, we do a lot of their music, and some of my own music too, which I really am grateful for. They include some of my stuff. Some of their music is very adventurous in ways that I don’t write. I don’t write music in 11/4 for instance! Some of their stuff is like that. Also, they’re just a fantastic band. They’re really exceptionally creative, and have been together for a long time, so they have a strong core, and can go in a whole bunch of different directions.”
“Bob Mintzer’s an incredible musician, Russ Ferrante’s an incredible musician, Jimmy Haslip is an incredible musician, and I love Marcus Baylor, who’s an incredible drummer. Put them all together, and it’s a real strong musical combination, so it really inspires me to play with people like that. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to play with a lot of amazing musicians, in my own band as well with my own music. So, I’m getting constantly inspired and my butt kicked, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!”
Besides his venture with the Yellowjackets, this past year he’s put out a pair of dvds that capture him with two different bands in concert. Stern revels in these live settings, stating, “both I did one with Francis and Richard and Bob Franchescini, and there’s a new one with Weckl and Bob Franceschini and Tom Kennedy. It’s really cool to do both of them. The one with Weckl and Kennedy is really fresh because that’s an amazing rhythm section because both of them have played together for a long time. Tom Kennedy is an amazing bass player; he played with Steps Ahead. He took Eddie Gomez’s place, so they’ve played together forever. So, it’s a special combination. They both grew up in St. Louis.”
Playing in person with all of these Midwesterners opened Stern up to a whole new group of musicians that he couldn’t have met via the internet. He laughs, pointing out, “there’s something about St. Louis, man. Something in the water-I’ve got to move there for a couple of years and see if it rubs off on me. Because Kim Thompson who’s played with me a lot (she’s with Beyonce now)-she’s an amazing drummer. Tom Kennedy, Bob Weckl…Marcus Baylor is from St. Louis. There’s a lot of great trumpet players coming out of St. Louis. Plus, I played with this trumpet player years ago. I forget his name, Miles something or other! There’s a lot of real cool stuff from there.”
Stern’s latest cd, Big Neighborhood (Heads Up), while a studio recording, captures his love of playing in person, as it features the leader not only with his regular working band, but with seemingly disparate guests as guitarists Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, bass/vocal sensation Esperanza Spalding, and the jam band Medeski, Martin and Wood. Meeting in person with all of these various artists helps Stern grown as an artist and composer, as he writes for each different situation. He explains, “I really like playing with different guys. It’s come to the point where I’ve made enough cds with a certain kind of thing where it’s more or less the same band. I like to change it up a little bit on just about every cd, maybe have two or more different drummers. But, on this cd, this is the most adventurous, because there’s a whole bunch of different people on it, and they’re all smokin’! A lot of them I’ve worked with before, like (drummer) Terri Lyne Carrington, and she’s toured with me before. Dave Weckl of course. He’s done a bunch of touring with me. Bob Franceschini and Bob Malach are playing sax on it. And Richard Bona, too, so there’s some familiarity.”
“But then there’s some new people that are out of my regular orbit. Esperanza (Spalding) is kind of new on the scene, but I knew about her. She’s from around the East Coast, from Jersey, so that was something we could do in New York. Medeski, Martin and Wood-same thing; we could record in New York with them. I’ve never played with those guys before, or with Esperanza, so it was really a treat.”
“I called them, and said, “Hey, are you into doing this with me?” It was kind of an impulsive thing, which is what I did on the last record. I’d think, “Boy, I’d like to have Roy Hargrove and MeShell NdegeOcello on a disc. It would be really cool to hook both of those guys up.” I’ve dug their music for a long time, so I just kind of thought that since it’s my tunes, and I’m writing them, that and the fact that I’m playing on everything, that will kind of glue it all together. For better or worse, that will be the continuity, and I can just go for it on the different tunes, and I can hear the sequence more or less in my head. I’m also writing to accommodate whoever the new person is that is playing on the song, which kind of pushes me to write in a certain way. Or, I have a tune that I’ve already written, but haven’t recorded yet, and think that it might be perfect for Medeski, Martin and Wood, for instance. Or for Esperanza.”
Playing with artists from different musical genres stimulates Mike, which is why he revels in these summit meetings. Regarding this latest recording, he recalls, “In this case, I really went out of my “neighborhood.” It is extended in a way; Steve Vai and Eric Johnson are not known as “jazz” players, but they are amazing musicians and amazing guitar players. I’ve always dug them. The guitar, for instance, kind of blurs the musical boundaries just by being the guitar. If I were asked what my first musical priority was, what I listen to mostly, it’s not guitarists, though; it’s jazz players. Saxophonists and trumpet players and pianists. I love McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane, Miles, Sonny Rollins…that’s what I check out the most.”
“But, I grew up as a guitarist listening to Jimi Hendrix. When I was 12, that’s what I heard. And BB King, and a lot of blues players, with tons of Motown on the radio. And even some country stuff you can relate to with the guitar, even if it’s not your favorite kind of stuff. A lot of that stuff is on the radio, and you can relate to it, because the guitar is present in so much kind of music. Classical, rock, jazz, funk. The guitar pulls you in a way that’s kind of eclectic anyway, even if your priority is in “jazz.” I’ve always dug things by Steve Vai. He’s a wonderful musician, and he gets an amazing sound out of the instrument. He’s got a bunch of stuff together. I talked to the great drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, who recorded with everybody-Beck, Sting, Corea, etc. He’s said that when they played together with Frank Zappa that Vai was incredible. I’d already heard him live and on tapes, and thought a lot of it was really cool. Really different from my normal thing is, so I wanted to record with him. So I called him, and he was down to do it. I was surprised, because he doesn’t do a lot of stuff like that. He said that when he was at Berklee years ago, and I was playing there. He said he used to check out my gigs.”
Again, it’s the personal connections through concert performances that created the environment for this latest disc. Stern recalls just by chance, “I mentioned to Steve when that there was this guy that was the type of vibe that I wanted on a record. Leni, my wife, brings home a lot of exotic music, and one of the guys she was into was Pakastani vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who died in 97.So, when I mentioned the vibe of this guy that I wanted to record to Steve, I asked him if he’d ever heard of him. He said that he almost played with him, so he clicked into it. He has this Fender sitar-guitar thing. I’d never even heard of it, and he played a bit of it on that track “Moroccan Roll.”
Because of situations like these Stern will go cross country to record in person with someone else. He points out, “I went out to Austin to play and record with Eric Johnson. Eric and I have been talking the past 5-6 years to do something. He’s really blues based, and I thought it would be cool.So, he was down to do it to. We went down to Austin with a drummer that I play with a lot; Lionel Cordew, along with bassist Lincoln Goines and Jim Beard on organ. I wanted to bring my own band out there, because he couldn’t come out to New York. Then, we flew to LA to do the stuff with Vai. Steve learned everything, and Eric did his homework as well. We sent him his tunes; so it was two tunes apiece. It was cool, and it went down really fast. We did it in a day apiece with each guitar player. I did it this way, because I have to play “live.” Otherwise, you can’t get the trading between musicians; you can’t get that vibe of the live-ness. The way of just sending your files doesn’t work for me. The same thing with New York with Randy and Esperanza. Only the vocals were done later. Basically everything is “live” in the studio. We’re all there in the same time. There’s no way you can match that.”
Of course, the post important group interaction that stimulates Mike, as he willingly admits, is his wife of 30+ years, Leni. Like a true woman who is “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” she has stimulated Mike into various types of music that he normally wouldn’t have been exposed to. He beams over his wife, stating, “She’s doing amazing stuff with her music, and she inspires me. She goes everywhere, riding on camels and elephants. She’s doing this thing with Salef Keta in Mali, and Baba Mal in Senegal, so she brings home music that really piques my interest. She’s doing some great stuff on her cds with African music, she’s learning these weird instruments that I can’t even pronounce, let alone play! And it’s beautiful, incredible stuff, a whole different perspective.”
So, as in all big neighborhoods, there’s stimulus and growth in your own home, long time next door neighbors, and newcomers on the block. Stern’s coming to town twice to LA, once with the Yellowjackets, and then in December with his own band. Catch him both times and watch the beams glow from the keeper of the neighborhood.