David Haney - Blues Royalle

CIMP 354

A piano and bass sandwich with extra bass, please. Not the sort of short order readily available from most creative music establishments, but CIMP, ever willing to test out new ensemble recipes, delivers just such a menu item. Pianist David Haney spices the meat with a program steeped in Pre-War blues and hymnal sensibilities. It’s barrelhouse and Baptist church ivory tickling interpolated with strong chamber music overtones and late 21st century improvisation. Covers of songs by Johnsons as disparate as Tommy (“Big Road Blues”) and Blind Willie (“Soul of a Man”) grace the set’s first twenty minutes. Haney makes the most of them, pulling in protean elements from other sources, both blues-related and beyond, themes still recognizable, but largely transformed. Also under the microscope are stirring and at times downright peculiar readings of the spirituals “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” and “Old Landmark.” Haney’s method of instant collective composition comes to play on later numbers like the stomping freeish romp “Cardboard Watch Dog” and the balladic coda “Blue Savannah.”

Bassists Mike Bisio and Adam Lane are more than suited to the peculiarities of the session, situated at Haney’s flanks for easy differentiation and stereo separation. Hearing the interplay of the three my immediate parallel was to Andrew Hill’s classic Smoke Stack album sans Roy Haynes, though the bassists here are more enterprising in their mixing of pizzicato and arco patterns. Taped at the height of last summer, the session wasn’t without obstacles, most notably through an enervating spate of humidity, an atmospheric condition that always seems to have the effect of dampening the already unadorned CIMP piano sound. Haney’s instrument does sound a bit muted, but the basses actually benefit from the sticky acoustics with the rich sonorities of each audible in sharp detail. It’s hard to choose a favorite between the pair, but Lane’s corpulent grooves and muscular articulation occasionally garner a slight edge. Listening to the two race along at a fierce plucked gallop on “Variation on Big Road Blues, pt. 2” on either side of Haney’s pedal-weighted rolls is an exhilarating experience and the skewed instrumentation is surprisingly resistant to stasis. A second volume from the session is supposedly forthcoming and I’m certainly looking forward to it.

~ Derek Taylor