On Wednesday, June 10, Ken Vandermark spoke by phone from the Empty Bottle in Chicago to Lazaro Vega of Blue Lake Public Radio. Portions of the interview are republished here with Lazaro Vega's permission.
Lazaro Vega: The Vandermark 5 has been together a little more than two years now.
Ken Vandermark: It's kind of weird, we've been doing the weekly gig for so long it feels like I can't remember not doing it, because we've had so many performances. But, yeah, it's only been a couple of years.
The biggest change in that time is that Dave Rempis is playing alto now with us because Mars Williams became too busy with the Liquid Soul, it became absolutely impossible to rehearse or do any kind of gigs other than Tuesday night. It became too frustrating to deal with that, so, it's kind of like, you know, there's no hard feelings or anything like that, it's just kind of like the decision came where he wasn't able to commit to the band the way the band needed him to be committed, and we understand his situation with having a really popular group. We were lucky enough to find someone who's a really strong player to replace him.
It's been working out really well, we've been working on some new material, and we've been able to get back to a regular rehearsal schedule, which has been really nice. I can bring new music in and get moving on it, which is great.
One of the things about putting the band together that I was looking for was though there's only five people, it's kind of going after the more orchestrated type of sound, like a larger, more complex type sound that relates superficially, anyway, to what some writers were doing on the West Coast with their octets trying to make it sound like a big band. Or Miles Davis "The Birth of the Cool" band with Gil Evans helping out with the arrangements making a ten piece group sound like a big band.
Because the economics of having a large group makes it impossible to afford, especially if you're trying to do any regular work, the idea was to have a five piece group where there would be a lot of interaction, a lot of writing going on but still a lot of improvisation happening. So it'd be utilizing people to do backdrops behind a soloist as opposed to you play a head and then everybody is open to play in open solos. This way there's a lot more interactive playing going on, and people have different roles. In some pieces that don't necessarily have a solo but they're contributing by executing parts that are important to getting across the tune.
The whole idea behind the band was to utilize players who would fit into that kind of situation, and try to experiment with pushing my (laughs in self deprecation), whatever, limited writing skills. But, push my writing as hard as I could and to try to be as creative with the writing as I could and have an outlet for that.
With a lot of other groups I'm in, a number of people will write music for the group, but this is a project where I wanted to have an outlet to do all the different kinds of writing I wanted to try with the group. It could maybe tackle a wide variety of influences whether it'd be a funk thing, or a free jazz thing, or more a swinging jazz thing, or even more experimental notated late 20th century classical music, I wanted to get into some of those spaces.
It's kind of like an all over, multi-dimensional group. Even though it's the same five people, the multi-instrumentation of Jeb Bishop and myself gives us a lot of range in terms of different kinds of sound. The abilities of the musicians to move really quickly at this point, after a lot of work, we can now play a piece and switch to a number with a completely different feel and actually nail that. Or have multiple feels within the same tune and have that stuff really breath and feel natural, as opposed to a cut and paste job.
I think the new record, "Target of Flag," really shows that kind of development in the band. It's a hard thing to articulate verbally, but I think you can hear that the band's breathing in the music a lot better to bring the music to life, and not have it sound like a bunch of complex writing, which really isn't the point at all.
LV: Titles and dedications, "Super Opaque," for Cecil Taylor is good visual image as that's what the notes would look like on the page. Why "New Luggage" for Shelly Manne?
Ken: A lot of times when I come up with titles for the pieces, sometimes there's a subconscious connection. I think "Super Opaque" actually makes sense in relationship to the piece itself and to Cecil Taylor's music in terms of the layers and density of things that happen.
But a lot of times the titles are just words that I like the way they sound next to each other. Just the way the words sound in and of themselves, not so much the meaning behind them. So in the case of a piece like "New Luggage," I don't know. I evoked something, I have no idea what it is, though. It just seems to somehow fit with the sound of the tune. A lot of times the titles come to me that way, where the way the tune sounds results into a title that somehow sounds, by the sound of the words, connected to the music. It isn't always about an imagery kind of thing.
But then subconsciously there is connections with imagery and things of that nature, and the meanings of the words, too, which I'm not really aware of sometimes when I first put the title to the piece.
LV: Like "The Mark Inside" for Johnny Hodges?
Ken: The title of that came from a William Burroughs comment that, "The one mark you can't fool is the mark inside." Like the "mark" being someone you're trying to rip-off. I like that idea that the person you can't cheat out is yourself, you can't fool that person. I thought that idea was really great, typical Burroughs, and it kind of fit with the melancholy of the tune, and also Johnny Hodges just amazing ballad playing which he's really known for. All of those things came together really quickly in my mind.
LV: Dedications: "Sucker Punch" for Phelps "Catfish" Collins.
Ken: That's Bootsie Collins brother, who was an amazing guitarist who was in the band with James Brown in 1971. He was really an incredible player. Some of the rhythm feel of that piece actually comes out of what he did.
LV: "Fever Dream," for Dan Grzeca, who's he?
Ken: Dan is a painter who's a really good friend of mine who's done a lot of art work for me, he did the cover to the "Standards" record. He's done a lot of posters for the jazz series that we have on Wednesday nights at the Empty Bottle. He's a really good friend and we have a lot in common in terms of our viewpoints on art and things of that nature. So that piece was for him.
LV: "New Luggage" and "The Start of Something" are the cuts I've been playing most on the radio. Radio cuts; pick hits.
Ken: That's definitely a big part of what we do, the more ballad and introspective stuff, and also the more swing stuff. So that's definitely representative of what we do.
LV: "Careen" on the CD "Single Piece Flow" for Jackie Chan.
Ken: Oh yeah, he's amazing. My favorite movie of his is "Drunken Master II." The kung-fu in it is just mind blowing. It's impossible, the stuff he's doing. I like "Super Cop" a lot. It's pretty entertaining. I actually like the woman in that better than him as far as the action sequence and stuff. But if you've never seen "Drunken Master II" you should defiantly see it, it's just amazing.
LV: At Schuler's, a mega-bookstore, you'll be playing for a general audience that's shopping.
Ken: It will be interesting to hear how they react to it, because you've got to bring the music to the people.