On the Road with Ellery Eskelin...

One of my favorite facets of the Hat Hut website is the section allocated for Ellery Eskelin. Its scrollable virtual pages contain a plentitude of performer’s insights on par with those available from that other master of econo jamming Mike Watt. Eskelin’s expanded on the material over at his own URL, but my fond opinion of the original home was jogged pleasantly by the advent of this new DVD, entitled simply and appropriately On the Road With Ellery Eskelin w/ Andrea Parkins & Jim Black.

Eskelin packed along a camcorder on the band’s 2003 European Tour. On a whim he taped segments of the itinerary, amassing twenty-five hours of film during the cross-continent journey. In the months following the band’s stateside return he whittled the footage down to an hour-long distillation. Sound and lighting quality varies depending upon the scene under scrutiny. Born out of necessity, the single camera approach lends to the feeling of being an invisible observer, an eavesdropping insect. In the opening scene the POV stays stationary and affords only a narrow field of vision. Ellery sits at a table conversing with a French presenter about the structure of an impending concert. The details of their dialogue end up strangely mirroring the layout of the DVD as a whole. Another short segment later in the program seamlessly intercuts snippets of the same tune from performances at several different venues to create a clever teleportation effect.

Solo performances from a gig in Nancy, France intersperse with a handful of ensemble episodes and plenty of downtime interludes. Eskelin’s solo segment pans in mid-sprint. Sans signature porkpie hat a sheen of sweat beads across his brow under the hot stage lights. His phrasing is feathery and nimble, but the overall impact feels somewhat compromised by the tampered context. He appears visibly fatigued by its end. Parkins’ plays both her sampler/keyboard/lap-top set-up and accordion, even a bit of piano. At one point the camcorder zooms in on close-up shots of her squeezebox, its sparkle-coated keys glinting in the bright club lighting. Elsewhere Black has a brief opportunity to demonstrate his collection of disassembled music box innards before his band mates interrupt his show-and-tell. The band’s humor is a plus too. Black waxes dryly philosophic on the simultaneous constancy and mutability of reality on tour. Later he and Parkins engage in a bout of mathematical theorizing on the expanding dimensions of her posterior.

The reception toward guest vocalist Jessica Constable (who recently completed work on the trio’s upcoming Hatology release) shares uncomfortable similarities to that accorded Irene Iebi in Steve Lacy’s numerous ensembles. Intimations of this skepticism crop up at various points in the program. Constable confronts them head on. I particularly got a kick out of the scene where, upon seeing a playbill for the trio with her name omitted, she requisitions a magic marker and inks herself into a position of prominence above Eskelin. But based on the actual performance samples I wasn’t won over by her style, which blends ululating wails with husky crooning and liberally employs electronic effects.

Touring is especially important in creative improvised music for numerous reasons. The widely held belief that it’s a form of expression is best experienced in person, at the occasion of creation is probably foremost among them. Other reasons involve the severe paucity of funding for promotion and the music’s already marginalized status when stacked against the so-called mainstream. Eskelin seems cannily aware of these realities and continually takes them in stride. The tour preserved by his prescient camcorder is clearly a grass roots affair. Local presenters beat the bushes for the funding and amenities for the trio through grant writing, fundraising and whatever means necessary. The venues are all small clubs, probably familiar to those of Eskelin’s peers fortunate enough to fly across the pond for gigs. No frills, but that’s a big part o the charm. This DVD set succeeds as both entertainment package and archival document mostly because of the idiosyncratic elements of Eskelin’s editing which manage to encapsulate so much of the touring experience.

~ Derek Taylor