Description
AAA 180g Vinyl LP!
Second Album from Kevin Grays Cohearent Records!
Recorded All-Analog/All-Tube at Cohearent Recording (aka Hackensack West) on June 20 & 21, 2023
Produced by Joe Harley
Engineered & Mastered by Kevin Gray
Deluxe Tip-On Gatefold Jacket
Produced by Joe Harley & Pressed at RTI!
Recorded by award-winning mastering engineer Kevin Grays record label, Anthony Wilsons Hackensack West is Cohearent Records follow-up to Kirsten Edkins Shapes & Sound album. Produced by Joe Harley and recorded all-analog/all-tube at Grays studio, Cohearent Recording, the AAA vinyl release is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI and housed in a deluxe tip-on gatefold jacket.
From the liner notes:
The week before these sessions in the summer of 2023, I sat down each morning with the goal of composing one new song by days end. I knew Id soon be in the room with my dear friends Gerald Clayton, John Clayton, and Jeff Hamilton, three musicians whom I trust the most, and with whom Ive played the most over the last couple of decades. I tried to imagine themes that would feel natural to us, the kinds of songs we could simply dive into without much thinking. When we headed to Kevin Grays studio to record, I brought seven new songs along with me. Five are included on this album.
Daido is dedicated to Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, who became known in the late 1960s for his grainy, sometimes blurry, high-contrast black and white images made throughout Japan. I love his pictures taken on the streets of various Tokyo neighborhoods such as Shinjuku. His portrait of a menacing stray dong, from his series A Hunter, is the kind of picture that, seen just once, is unforgettable. These days Daido is still out on the street making pictures, at the ripe young age of 85.
Verdesse has a sinuous, chorinho-like melody and rhythmic feel. The tune seems to weave and bob playfully in a space of brightness the way a grapevine seems to curl towards the sunlight. So I named it after a wine grape native to the pre-Alpine region of Isère, near Grenoble in eastern France, that makes a particularly delicious and drinkable white wine.
I wrote Sunday, wellon Sunday. It unfolds slowly, like a good Sunday does when theres nothing to do, you can sleep in, youve got your person beside you, and you just relax into the day.
The Lands is dedicated to a family very dear to my heart: that of tenor saxophonist Harold Land. My mother met Harold when they were both teenagers growing up in San Diego, California. The two of them became lifelong friends, and a little later, Harold enjoyed a fruitful musical association and close friendship with my father, Gerald Wilson. Harold, his lovely wife Lydia, and their son Harold Jr. were extended family for us; they looked after me with love and care. Some of my first gigs ever as a young guitarist were with Harolds incredible band that included Oscar Brashear, Billy Higgins, Richard Reid, and Harold Land Jr.
Ive loved Todd Rundgrens Marlene since I first heard it on his epic double-album Something/Anything. With its tender, well-contoured melody buoyed by a few special harmonic surprises, it almost seems like something from the pen of Burt Bacharach. It tells such a complete musical story. Rundgrens recorded version has a beautiful endlessly repeating tag. So we played the melody simply, and used the tag as a small staging area for a bit of improvising.
Hackensack West is our alias for engineer Kevin Grays studio Cohearent Recording, a place inspired by Rudy Van Gelders first studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. Located inside Van Gelders parents home, the musicians played in the living room! It was there, in 1954, that Thelonious Monk recorded his classic tune Hackensack, a contrafact melody over the chord changes to the Gershwins Oh, Lady Be Good! In contrafact-like fashion, my own bebop-spirited melody Hackensack West seems to nod toward the changes of a few recognizable standards, without corresponding to any particular one.
Musicians:
Anthony Wilson guitar
Gerald Clayton piano
John Clayton bass
Jeff Hamilton drums
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