Spectrum Road is a new and exciting collaboration between four superstars of music.Jack Bruce is a pioneer of British jazz defining the crossover potential of mixing rock, blues and boundless improvisation with his colleagues Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker in Cream. Vernon Reid built different bridges between genres through the groundbreaking group Living Colour and with the Black Rock Coalition. W...
Spectrum Road is a new and exciting collaboration between four superstars of music.
Jack Bruce is a pioneer of British jazz defining the crossover potential of mixing rock, blues and boundless improvisation with his colleagues Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker in Cream. Vernon Reid built different bridges between genres through the groundbreaking group Living Colour and with the Black Rock Coalition. With his trio Medeski, Martin and Wood, John Medeski singularly redefined performance practice and extended the boundaries of possibility for the Hammond organ. Drummer Cindy Blackman Santana has embraced mainstream, free, funk-flavored and all shades in between through multiple solo albums as well as work with Lenny Kravitz, Joss Stone, Wallace Roney and other artists.
Varied as their perspectives are, all four members of Spectrum Road share a willingness not to just push but shatter perceived borderlines between musical styles. They also have in common a respect for those who showed similar courage in years past, which is what drew Reid one day into a conversation with Bruce as the two were on the road with Bruce’s band Cuicoland Express.
“Jack is a real witness to history and I really wanted to get direct information from him,” says Reid. “So I asked him about Cream, and West, Bruce and Laing. And I asked him about Tony Williams because they were very close. What he told me changed some of the misconceptions I’d had about the chronology of electric jazz, fusion or jazz/rock, if you will.”
Bruce had worked with the Tony Williams Lifetime in the early Seventies, alongside guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young. “It was actually Tony Williams that started jazz/rock in that McLaughlin played with him before he went to Miles Davis,” Reid says. “So I started thinking about who would take care of Tony’s legacy.”
His search for that answer led him to connect with Bruce, Blackman and Medeski. They began playing shows in 2008, basing much of their sets on Lifetime repertoire. But they also left plenty of room to use the energy they generated together to create original material. Both elements are represented on Spectrum Road, where diversity is a constant and the unexpected is to be expected.
The performances within and beyond represent Spectrum Road’s identity as the band unleashes the essence of the Lifetime compositions through their own incendiary insights and energies. The free-tempo, filmy introduction and spectral, questioning vocal that kicks off “Where,” the sizzling give-and-take between the players on Carla Bley’s “Vashkar,” the extraordinary textural organ “solo” (an inadequate word for Medeski’s sonic sculpting with dissonances, drawbars and rotary speakers as tools) on the opener “Vuelta Abajo”.
And then they go further, adding original songs that blend into while also stretching the range of the Lifetime titles. “A couple of our pieces began as improvisations, like ‘Blues for Tillman’ “, says Reid, referring to a freely swinging track distinguished in part by a Medeski mellotron solo that sounds at times like a bass clarinet slowly melting down. “That’s almost a straight-ahead thing that just came out of the ether.”
There’s even a traditional Scottish tune, “An t-Eilan Muileach,” sung by Bruce over a shimmer of guitar and electronics, with drums and bass mirroring the lyric. “I’d never heard Jack sing in anything other than English, so hearing him do this in Gaelic is really very moving. It’s one of my favorite pieces, even though I can’t pronounce the title,” Reid says, with a laugh.
Bruce’s vocals are one of Spectrum Road’s key resources, throughout the thrilling crescendo on the John McLaughlin tune “One Word” and the enigmatic Williams penned “There Comes a Time”. “Tony generally got bashed around for singing,” Reid says. “But I think everyone got it wrong. He was incredibly ahead of his time because I hear his style of singing now in alternative rock bands. And having Jack sing these songs, he just kills it.”
Medeski and Blackman each plays with passion, conviction and authority throughout Spectrum Road that defies any preconceptions. “John is a great improviser. And he creates a tonal palette on really old keyboards and analog effects that is entirely his own. He plays a Mellotron on some of these tracks,” says Reid, referring to the Sixties-vintage keyboard that triggered prerecorded tapes. “It was associated mainly with prog rock, and it was never intended for improvisation. But the crazy thing is that Medeski solos on it! That’s very, very rare.”
As for Blackman, Reid comments that “she has been unabashed about Tony Williams’ influence on her. But she has a different kind of energy from his. There’s a difference in her focus and intentionality. Cindy is so devoted to the spirit of Tony, but she’s also kicked it her own way with Lenny Kravitz and with her husband, Carlos Santana. And she’s a big part of what makes this band sound so different from anything else.”
What makes Spectrum Road unique is that it comprises four outstanding artists drawn together by the spirit, much more so than the sound, of the late drum virtuoso and bandleader Tony Williams. Inspired by his exploratory fearlessness, they honor his memory on this project by exploring anew, on their own terms. They celebrate Williams by not imitating what he had done but by using his example to launch their own collective journey.
That, of course, reinforces Reid’s insistence that “we are not a tribute band.” But in moving music forward by applying the lessons of past masters to the climate of our time, Spectrum Road merits the respect of tomorrow’s innovators.
