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
Posted by derek on August 25, 2004 9:24 AMHaven't seen it Derek but Steve Griffith gave it a bit of a rough ride in PT a month or so back, which prompted a reply from Ellery (still up on the PT Letters Page, folks).
Posted by: dan warburton at August 25, 2004 9:42 PMThey don’t call him Cap’n Hate for nothin’ ;) Thanks for the word on Steve’s write-up, I think he makes some good points. The music segments could definitely be construed as frustrating since a lot of them appear to involve only the endings of tunes/performances (even the solo numbers are edited). And I’d agree that they don’t compare to the trio’s more ‘complete’ work on albums. But as Ellery mentions in his rebuttal the dvd is far more a tour diary than a concert video. Considered under the former criteria I think it succeeds. Plus Jim Black is one funny mofo.
Posted by: derek at August 26, 2004 8:04 AMThere's also a review in One Final Note I recall--again, a fair bit of con to go with the pro.
Posted by: nd at August 26, 2004 8:06 AMNate, just did a quick drive-by over @ OFN and couldn’t find the review you mention. Could you paste a link? I’d love to read it.
Posted by: derek at August 26, 2004 9:18 AMWanted to say thanks for the attention paid to my work. Also, given some of the post-review comments I thought I'd drop in...perhaps I can share my thinking as regards the issue of musical excerpts.
Above all I wanted this DVD to be as visually interesting as possible. One of my considerations when editing the program was what the video would look like if the sound were off. Unless you have multiple cameras and unfettered access to the musicians, watching someone sit and play is of limited interest after a few moments, at least for me. So for example, when I shot the video of Andrea's and Jim's solo concerts I let the camera move away from them from time to time to get a feeling for the space we played in and to react to the music. (A review in Cadence took this as an indication that the music must be boring since it did not hold the camera-person's attention...oh,well). I also decided against using entire musical selections because doing so adversely affected the overall flow of the film, which is a tour diary and not a concert film.
Derek Taylor alluded to the form of the program but allow me to sketch it out. As I describe in the opening, for the Nancy concert we each played 20 minutes solo and then 20 minutes together. I use this material as the backbone of the film. The entire program is one hour, a length I feel was the best aesthetic choice for the material. I had several longer versions but ultimately they each collapsed from their own weight. It was not easy to hack away so much material but in the end the program spoke and moved as a whole rather than a collection of scenes which were ultimately fatiguing, even to me. And this also gave each scene that much more punch.
The musical portions of the video go basically like this:
Eskelin solo concert
Paris - band rehearsals and concert (with Jessica Constable)
Germany - band sound check and concert
Poland - band concert
Parkins solo concert
England - Birmingham and London band concerts
Black solo concert
All told there is about 30 minutes of music, roughly half the program. Of that the three solo sections make up about half of that (15 minutes) and the band excerpts the other half (15 minutes). Interspersed with these excerpts are scenes in cabs, trains, buses, backstage, in the BBC recording truck and of various street scenes and street musicians.
So I think that if folks realize that it's a tour diary (and it's pretty clear from the text on the package) it'll work for them. If they think it's a concert video they may be disappointed although remember that I chose the music from three weeks worth of touring so personally I think they're pretty good excerpts.
Also, as it is a tour diary, I initially made the decision not to send review copies of this DVD for press. I was simply going to sell it on our concerts and via my web site and concentrate solely on our fan base since it is a pretty specific piece of work and I don't know how it would speak to someone who didn't know us or our music very well. But it got picked up by a couple distributors and has been screened so I consented to a few promo requests (Bagatellen being one) because I felt that ultimately more folks should know about it since it is the band's 10 year anniversary in 2004.
Together with the upcoming "TEN" (Eskelin Parkins & Black with guests Marc Ribot, Melvin Gibbs and Jessica Constable due this fall) I think this makes a nice companion piece to commemorate our decade of music even though neither disc is a full on Eskelin/Parkins/Black musical experience. For that we've made seven CDs. I think these offerings offer greater insight to the band. Due to the solos in the case of the DVD one can re-assess the band as a whole after examining each player separately. In the case of the guests on the new CD the listener can hear how the band functions in differing combinations with other musicians, from duos to sextets. If anyone would like a preview of the liner notes for "TEN" you can go to:
http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/temporary.html
Thanks again for the forum...
Posted by: Ellery Eskelin at August 26, 2004 2:09 PMOh I must be misremembering.... aha, found what I was thinking of--Dupont in Cadence (August issue).
Posted by: ND at August 26, 2004 2:51 PMEllery, thanks for swinging by & elaborating on the process/intent behind the dvd. Looking forward to hearing TEN.
Posted by: derek at August 26, 2004 2:56 PMBrief note: one of my favorite bits is the hysterical "Jim-Black-cam", when Jim is holding the camera during rehearsal, and playing one-handed while filming. Fun-ny.
Ellery, I'm ok with the excerpt aspect of the tour diary, but I think a great dvd-extra would've been a couple complete performances that could be viewed on their own.
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