Windsor Terrace Musician Brings Free Jazz And Sea Shanties To Waterfront Concert
Stop me if you heard this one before: Popeye the Sailor, Herman Melville and jazz legend Albert Ayler walk into a bar. Actually, that’s not the set up for a joke but a shorthand description for a recent recording by Windsor Terrace neighbor Jeff Lederer and a band he recruited especially for the project.
Brooklyn Blowhards is an album that mixes free-jazz interpretations of 19th century sea shanties with covers of songs by saxophonist Albert Ayler. Lederer, also a sax player, was joined by three additional horns, accordion, guitar, three percussionists and a vocalist on the recording. The band will perform live on Saturday, July 23 at The Waterfront Museum, which is located aboard the 1914 Leigh Valley Barge #79, docked in Red Hook.
“I love sea shanties because they embody the spirit of men holding on in the face of a vast and unknowable ocean which combines beauty and fear in equal measure,” Lederer said. “The idea of connecting sea shanties with the music of Albert Ayler seemed to me to be not only completely natural, but inevitable.”
The Park Slope Stoop sat down with Lederer for a deep dive into this intriguing project.
PSS: You’re from Los Angeles, but you lived in Brooklyn long enough that you’re comfortable styling yourself and some horn-playing friends as “Brooklyn blowhards.” How long have you lived in Windsor Terrace?
Jeff Lederer: I moved into a railroad style apartment in 1985. I think that living here for 30 years gives me the right to call myself a “Brooklyn Blowhard,” or at least the second part.
What brought you to the neighborhood originally? Do you find it has amenities especially suitable to a jazz musician?
I came to the neighborhood for the cheap rent – boy, doesn’t that sound funny now! It was also a neighborhood filled with musicians and other creative types, combined with the beautiful mix of people that made up Brooklyn neighborhoods at that time. Gentrification has made things feel a little bit more, um, homogenous now, but let’s not go there just yet.
What are your favorite things about living in Windsor Terrace? What changes have you noticed over the years?
Ok, let’s go there after all – #1 Greatest experience in Windsor Terrace – going to Farrell’s Bar for a “Container” while your kid plays T-ball in the church sandlot next door. Let’s be candid, I have had some experiences at Farrell’s in the past that were not totally positive. But it’s a great bar with some great people in it too and the Bud is delicious.
The changes in the neighborhood are obvious – with gentrification there has been homogenization, a pushing out of some of the folks that inhabited this neighborhood. But as a home-owner and a family man, there are obvious benefits as well – the park is wonderful, the streets have been mostly safe, and the schools were mostly good for my children.
We are also seeing a huge change in the music business and in the way that people discover, consume and share music. But one thing I’ve noticed in the past few years, as successive digital technologies have rearranged the sonic landscape, is that live audiences for music in Brooklyn seem to respond enthusiastically to the sounds of real brass and reed instruments, something modern synthesizers can approach with impressive fidelity but can’t quite capture. Has that been your experience as a performer?
Yes, people react to vibration. Sound is vibration of the air waves, and electronic sound vibrates the air differently than acoustic instruments. A big part of the experience of the Brooklyn Blowhards band for me is the physical vibration that the band can produce out of our horns and percussion instruments.
The idea of doing jazz versions of sea shanties is interesting because they share some very basic connections. They are both foundationally American contributions to music. Shanties developed as white sailors adapted the work chants of slaves loading cotton aboard ships in Southern ports to their own tasks at sea. So that mixing of European and African traditions is common to both genres. Did you feel those parallels as you worked with the sea tunes you recorded on Brooklyn Blowhards?
Sea shanties are work songs. I heard them described as “field hollars of the sea” by one reviewer of our record. There is a real historical connection not only to the English folk song tradition but also to African American musical traditions. That must have occurred in port, but also due to the fact that the shipping industry employed a large number of free African Americans in the early 19th century. One of the striking things about the world that Melville describes on ships in Moby Dick is the diversity of its crew, including white and black sailors, as well as crew members from Polynesia.
You could say that shanties and jazz are actually mirror images: shanties were developed by white sailors adopting some of the rhythm and structure of African-American music, and jazz is the result of black Americans using some elements of European harmony and instrumentation to create their own music. Did you ever feel like you were going through the looking glass in bringing them together?
I have a long history of bringing together disparate elements in my music – my previous groups have included the “Shakers n’ Bakers” which performs “Vision Songs” of the Shaker religious community of the 19th century. When pairing culturally separated musical and cultural elements I always find the process to be revelatory on both sides – I look for the shared elements as well as the striking contrasts.
In the case of Blowhards, there is a remarkable sense of the push and pull of the beat in the shanties that I think is shared with “jazz” music. Additionally of course there is the aforementioned sense of “blues” which is shared in the work songs of the sea, most jazz music I like to listen to, and especially the music of the genius Albert Ayler.
Most of the pieces on Brooklyn Blowhards are instrumentals, where sea shanties were typically performed a capella. You’ve often kept the melody and structure from the originals, but the emotional content originally created by the lyrics seems to come from improvisation in your versions. Can you talk about that process?
I have been pretty faithful in my treatments to the original melodies and structure of the shanties, using not published versions but rather my own transcriptions of recordings I liked. They have wonderful quirks to them, in their phrasing and sense of balance between individual and group. When we improvise on this material in the Blowhards, we do not hold tight to a form or structure from the original, or even necessarily a key center – what we aim for is the heart of the tunes, or the “emotional content” you refer to.
I think this is a richer and more “authentic” reading of the material rather than adherence to original forms a la playing over a jazz tunes with changes and form. This is also the primary technique Albert Ayler uses in his music as well, with starkly clear and brilliant melodies followed by improvisations which unfold in disparate directions.
Even with the parallels between shanties and jazz, the choice of Albert Ayler as the artist to complement the seafaring songs isn’t the first one that comes to mind. What provided the initial impulse for you to make that connection?
My dear friend, the drummer Matt Wilson, related to me a long time ago the story of listening to the Albert Ayler album Love Cry in his mother’s kitchen, and her saying that the music sounded like sea shanties to her!
There is clearly a churning, yearning quality in Albert’s music that evokes the sea to me. It was in a rather disturbing moment that I realized that Albert met his own end at sea – I don’t like to dwell on that fact in talking about this music, but it is there, make what you will out of it.
Listening to the entire sequence of recordings, my initial impression was that the common elements between the Ayler covers and the shanties came from the tone and voice of the particular band you recruited for this project. But going back and listening to the original Ayler compositions, there do seem to be facets of his vision that you’ve brought into your own arrangements of the shanties. What were the lessons you learned from Ayler that helped you open up the folk tunes and produce such striking contemporary interpretations?
Despite his clear place as a icon of “free jazz”, Albert Ayler was primarily a melodicist – he stated his themes clearly in a folkloric, and archetypal Howl. The directions of his extended technique improvisations all spin out totally naturally from the themes – this is the part of the music that some of his idolators seem to miss.
The sound that Albert created on his horn was one of the natural wonders of the world, right next to the other eight. It is a sound that is at once futuristic and ancient and speaks to so many people in a personal way. I included members of my band who also speak clearly in their own voice – not Albert’s.
One thing people often identify in Ayler’s music is the persistent influence on his later iconoclastic recordings of military marches he encountered as a member of the U.S. Army band serving in France. Music developed to bring order to men working together, to create kinesthetic as well as auditory harmony, describes shanties as well as marches. Does that provide another connection between Ayler’s compositions and the shanties you’ve chosen Brooklyn Blowhards?
Thank you for observing this physical aspect of the music, both Albert’s and the sea shanties. Clearly the best thing about music is the way it creates community, both spiritual and physical. The work aspect of the shanties derives from the fact that some of these songs were actually sung as a way of keeping the timing of chores on the ship – the physical connection could not be more real, just as in the marches you speak of that Albert played. From the physical aspect of the music, community is formed.
Speaking of community and Windsor Terrace, one of the best days of the year for me is the Reeve Place Block Party, where I have assembled the “Brooklyn Real Big Band” for many years. The band is made up of a mix of young-ish jazz hipsters and older community members. I co-lead the band with my next door neighbor Tommy Riviello. He suffered a stroke this year, but he’s coming back strong and will be there with us the first Saturday after Labor Day as always. (The gig is sponsored by my wife, Mary LaRosa Lederer’s real estate company, Brooklyn Real.)
Let’s talk some about the other musicians involved in the project. I mentioned most of the music was instrumental, but there are a couple of beautiful vocal performances as well.
Yes, the vocalist on the band is my aforementioned wife and musical partner Mary LaRose. Mary doesn’t talk a lot about it to the Windsor Terrace community that knows her as the hometown realtor, but she is one of the most brilliant and forward looking jazz vocalists of the last 20 years and has an amazing catalogue of recordings which focus on the jazz vocalese tradition of creating lyrics to jazz compositions and solos.
I have drafted her into many of my esoteric projects over the years, and this one is no exception. She sings a couple of Shanties, as well as a song that Albert Ayler created along with his partner, Mary Maria Parks called “Island Harvest.”
In his last recordings Albert and his Mary created some amazing songs with lyrics. The public shunned Albert for these works which were deemed to be a “sell-out”, but they are wonderful songs with great words.
You also have a four-piece horn section on the record, with yourself and three other players. Did you recruit the brass section from Brooklyn musicians?
Yes, the group was drawn from the percolating creative community in Brooklyn and all of us lived in the borough, although recently cornetist Kirk Knuffke has moved into Manhattan for a nice apartment that was more affordable – dig that!
There are also three percussionists “on board,” and in addition to more familiar instruments they are employed on ship’s bell, chum bucket and chain. Certainly appropriate given the subject matter—whose imagination went wild to give us those sounds?
Thank you for the nautical pun – you get five points for that one, but be careful, it’s a slippery slope, or deck. I knew that the sound of the percussion would not be created by a traditional drum kit for this project. I wanted the drums to create the sound of the ocean, and for that I needed multiple players which are spread out on stage, as well as mixed wide apart in the recording.
The key sound was the concert bass drum, but I think the identity of the group really came together when I added the ship’s bell, chain and chum bucket. I ask the percussionists not just to keep a “groove”, but to play with the push and pull of the sea – especially the pull of the sea, you can’t push with a rope.
Brooklyn Blowhards also features accordion and guitar. How did you choose those players?
The accordion is the only part of the group that actually probably reflects historical musical performance practice a little, and it’s very practical to travel to different venues with. Our accordionist Art Bailey plays with an amazing breadth of sound, from the brawl of a bar room one minute to the abstractions of the sounds of contemporary classical music the next.
The guitarist on the band is the great Gary Lucas, who is best known for his work with Captain Beefheart for many years and his incredible collaborations with songwriter Jeff Buckley.
There’s one big influence on the record we haven’t discussed yet, which is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The record closes with an extraordinary reading of a famous text from the novel, which you set to music and titled “Insular Tahiti.” The online video of the song, as well as the cover of the CD, uses images from the book Moby Dick: A Picture for Every Page by Matt Kish. Was it serendipity that brought you to this striking visual representation of the quintessential novel of seafaring just as you were developing your own take on sea shanties?
I discovered the Matt Kish book of Moby Dick art at the bookstore at Nantucket Historical Association. Matt is a wonderfully gifted artist who has a very intuitive and deep read of the whole Moby Dick gestalt. I felt right away that this was a striking visual parallel to the music we were making in the Blowhards, and reached out to request rights to use the images along with this project. He was very gracious with my request and we have used a slide show of his work behind our performances, which is very effective I think.
Moby Dick is the book we all hated to read as young people, it was thought to be…boring. Please hear me well: Revisiting the novel as an adult is a revelation, nothing less. It is a book about everything. It reveals the human condition through the tiny details of every aspect of the activity of whaling in a way that is a real satori for the modern life.
The passage at the end is really deep, it sums up the notion that examining our human physical and spiritual condition is a dangerous activity – be very careful when you step off the isle of our self-assured precepts of life ( our “Insular Tahiti”), you may never return. Albert Ayler stepped of his Insular Tahiti and truly examined what it is to be a physical and spiritual man in a rigorous and dangerous way. He was aware of the danger, and he knew that it would lead him to a watery end; he took his own life to protect the life of his brother Donald. He knew what he was getting into.
The Barge Museum at the Red Hook waterfront is the perfect venue for performing this material live. How did the gig come about?
I specifically approached the Barge for this performance. I have taken this group to non-traditional “jazz” venues for performances. I am very into the idea of place in musical performance.
The Barge is a wonderful place, and creates connection for many people with the sea that is all around them, but they rarely engage with. This site is also very close to the location in New York Harbor where Albert Ayler’s body was found many years ago. One of Albert’s most well known compositions is called “Ghosts”, and I do believe that spiritual energy remains in physical locations. I hope that the audience at the barge will also experience the physical and spiritual energies which reside in the waters of NY Harbor. Lots of ghosts there, believe me.
Speaking of ghosts, the group will be playing at Herman Melville’s gravesite in the Bronx on July 16 in an event sponsored by the Bronx Heritage Music Center – again, the idea of place is very powerful for me. I work in my studio everyday under a wonderful print of a Elliot Landy photo of Albert Ayler playing his saxophone in 1967, right in Prospect Park, across the street from me. Place. Vibration. Energy. Ghosts.
The Rundown: Brooklyn Blowhards Perform Live
When: Saturday, July 23 at 8pm
Where: The Waterfront Museum, 290 Conover Street (near Fairway), Red Hook
How Much: $10, purchase tickets online.