Tuesday night in downtown Flint and that means jazz at Soggy Bottom. On this cool April evening a gust of wind propels several people through the front door just as the smiling drummer John Hill grabs the mic and announces over his drum set, “We’re going to do some spring songs!” Together with Pat Cronley on the keyboard and Jack McDonald on the bass, John opens the first set. The sticks go down and John looks radiantly happy. I think he is the happiest jazz drummer I’ve ever seen.
Jazz Night at Soggy Bottom has been going for nearly three years. It was the brainchild of Andy Sartwell, the Soggy Bottom’s premier bartender. Andy was good friends with Jack McDonald (a Linden High School grad now studying music at Western). Good friends, they played indie music around Flint. Andy pitched the idea for jazz night to Soggy Bottom’s bar manager Ken Laatz and he agreed. Andy called Pat Cronley and Jack contacted John.
The Jack McDonald Jazz Trio was a go.
According to John, the first couple of jazz nights the audience was thin; when he looked over to the raised seating area, he says, rolling his eyes in untypical distress, hardly anyone was there. But attendance grew.
You’d never know there’d ever been a sparse attendance night now.
By the second set the bar is packed, clusters of standees clumped behind the stools; newcomers enter, heads pivoting in search of a place to sit. Sidling along the bar to the back they glance into the backroom pool table. Barely visible through a glass door is a patio where hardy smokers sit under the umbrella tables, overlooked by a Kevin Burdick mural on the building’s back wall. Climbing a couple of steps to the raised seating area that overlooks the bar and band area, the newcomers poke their heads round to the side room. Tables with club chairs (and a second pool table)---all full.
Soggy Bottom is packed. Some sigh and leave, but mostly they make another standing cluster and eye the bar for departures.
Various trumpet and sax players join the trio for Tuesday jazz. Two frequent crowd pleasers are trumpeters Walter White and Dwight Adams. A surprise one night was Ukrainian trumpeter Yakiv Tsvietinskyi, who had met Jack McDonald in Kalamazoo at Western Michigan University. A new foreign music student at Western, Yakiv showed up at the WMU Union jazz jams and met Jack. Jack invited Yakiv to come to Flint (new to Michigan, Yakiv had no idea how far away Flint was from Kalamazoo).
I talked to Yakiv, a veteran of European jazz fests with his own modern jazz trio, “LLT”. Between sets we chatted about Ukraine (Yakiv is from Dnipropetrovsk) and his coming marriage to his love, Marianna, an opera singer, who will join him in Kalamazoo.
Some nights Nick Calandro is on the bass. Nick once took a class from me at UM-Flint (he remembers this better than I do). That’s how Soggy Bottom Jazz Night goes---you never know who you’ll run into. Former Mott Park neighbors who’ve moved to peaceful glades of Flushing or Fenton return to the city for jazz.
The repertoire varies with the soloist, but “Caravan,” “In a sentimental mood,” “Song for my father” are frequent. John introduces the musicians and the numbers---“We’re going to do a ballad,” he says. Or we’ll get some education about composers and styles. Or jazz trivia: “This was the only piece Charlie Parker ever wrote in a minor key. Do we know that?” he implishly queries Pat Cronley. Pre-break signature is a jazzy version of “The Flintstones” theme song.
The repertoire varies with the soloist, but “Caravan,” “In a sentimental mood,” “Song for my father” are frequent. John introduces the musicians and the numbers---“We’re going to do a ballad,” he says. Or we’ll get some education about composers and styles. Or jazz trivia: “This was the only piece Charlie Parker ever wrote in a minor key. Do we know that?” he implishly queries Pat Cronley. Pre-break signature is a jazzy version of “The Flintstones” theme song.
Late on a full night, local singers like Gwen Hemphill take to the mic---here Gwen sings "At Last." Later, people take to the floor to dance.
John is a music educator with 23 years experience in public schools. He taught percussion for 6 years at UM-Flint and he’s also taught 10 years at Mott. Now he teaches music at Oxford high school, and all instruments---piano, guitar, theory, jazz. But not band.
Maybe that’s why John started the bi-monthly blast known as Big Band night. The idea for Big Band night grew out of a jam session music teachers do for their students on Honors Band Day. Each year in January under the auspices of the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association, music educators and their students gather for Honors Band Day. The tradition began about eight years ago. The students practice all morning and then the teachers (20 different band directors) get together in the afternoon and play for them.
For Big Band night John turns to his music educator colleagues to serve as section leaders (trumpet, sax, trombone) and the section leaders pull together their players. John organizes the music and gets it ready. If John can get another drummer, he’s free to conduct and you’ll hear instructions to the players, something about the measures or the coda.
Musicians drive in from a twenty-mile radius and form 20-piece band. It’s all pretty spontaneous after that; ninety percent of the time they have no rehearsals. Different musicians will take a solo.
By 5pm the place is packed. Cars fill the adjacent lots---the Local Grocer and the former Jag the Haberdasher area. The trio will play a first set, allowing time for all the brass musicians to arrive. They gather in the side pool room where John has laid out music sheets on the pool table.
It’s all fun for John. He comes in smiling, even late or rushed, and heaves his drums around chatting with people the whole time. Music fans cluster at the front end of the bar and friends hang over the railing from the table area to talk. John radiates optimism, and a good thing too. He has a non-stop schedule with teaching and his family of four kids---one entering college, two teenagers, and a four-year old. All except the youngest are involved with music. Along with his three eldest, John played in church at Holy Redeemer on Easter.
It’s all fun for John. He comes in smiling, even late or rushed, and heaves his drums around chatting with people the whole time. Music fans cluster at the front end of the bar and friends hang over the railing from the table area to talk. John radiates optimism, and a good thing too. He has a non-stop schedule with teaching and his family of four kids---one entering college, two teenagers, and a four-year old. All except the youngest are involved with music. Along with his three eldest, John played in church at Holy Redeemer on Easter.
Big Band night takes place the last Tuesday every other month. Check the Events list on Soggy Bottom’s Facebook page---other nights and special events are listed there.
Support jazz---celebrate International Jazz Day, Sunday, April 30, with the Soggy Bottom musicians and many others from around Michigan. The music takes place 1 to 5 pm at the Atwood Stadium Parking lot. Hear some of Michigan’s finest musicians and vocalists at this free concert. More information on this Flint celebration go to
http://jazzonwheels.org and its background at http://jazzday.com
http://jazzonwheels.org and its background at http://jazzday.com
For more essays go to East Village Magazine online at http://www.eastvillagemagazine.org
No comments:
Post a Comment