RockOm

By Trevor Harden, trevor@rockom.net

Since The Bad Plus's self-titled debut album was released in 2001, the critically-acclaimed “bad boys of jazz” have been bringing their rocking, avant-garde music to the masses, inspiring even non-jazz listeners to perk up their ears. Through wild, humorous, and irreverent rearrangements of pop and rock songs (among them “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Iron Man,” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) as well as their wonderfully crafted original pieces, The Bad Plus presents a unique musical offering for fans of jazz and rock alike.

The trio's latest record For All I Care was released February 3, their first album with a vocalist (alt-rock singer Wendy Lewis) and includes arrangements of songs by Pink Floyd (“Comfortably Numb”), Heart (“Barracuda”), and Nirvana (“Lithium”).

Bassist Reid Anderson shared with RockOm about the new album, music's ability to communicate in the absence of lyrics, and the excitement of a new U.S. tour.

RockOm: Can you talk a little about the band's “process” for reinventing a song? I'm sure it's different for each track, but could you walk us through how you take a three-minute, straightforward pop song and flesh it out into a Bad Plus arrangement?

Reid: Sure. It's a pretty democratic process. We get together and one of us might have a certain idea about a starting point, where to start working on the piece. But we really throw all our ideas at it and try to come up with something that we feel where we've sort of claimed a part of the song as our own. But also I think the three of us are pretty objective about what's working and what's not working and nobody fights for an idea just because it's theirs. It's always based on what's really working for the song.

RockOm: Did you feel like you had to stay more “in bounds” with a vocalist than you did without one in order to support the lyrical structure?

Reid: [long pause] Well... we definitely had to consider a vocalist, that there would be vocals. I wouldn't call it “in bounds,” I would just call it another clear parameter that we had to work with... and those can also be liberating as well.

RockOm: RockOm.net is a site about the bond between music and spirituality and one of the topics we've discussed in the past is how the relationship between composing and improvising is somewhat a mirror to different approaches to life. One approach is to intentionally plan and create and compose the life you want (outside circumstances be damned) and another is to react and jam or play off life's circumstances without being so structured. Just out of curiosity and for fun, since musically you play in both of those camps, which of those life approaches does Reid Anderson tend to subscribe to?

Reid: [Laughs] Oh my goodness. Let me refer to my notes here. I guess not having contemplated these two things I would say - and in music as well - it's something where you're responding to what's around you and what the given moment has to offer. I guess I wouldn't fall into the “reality be damned” camp. But I think that's something that's true about The Bad Plus as well – we like to have a certain clarity and even if we're freely improvising, we're still responding to each other, how the moment feels and all of that. I think personally, philosophically speaking, it's important to at least be aware of and acknowledge the reality around you and then take it from there.

RockOm: Some people that we speak with like to talk about the depth or spirituality in music based on the lyrics alone. As a jazz-based artist, and this recent album aside, can you think of any Bad Plus songs from the past - or other of your favorite artists' tracks - that you feel communicates depth or meaning in a powerful way without doing so verbally?

Reid: I think all great music does that. I think that's the magical thing about it – we all have a response to melody and harmony, one way or another, to one degree or another. I wouldn't say that spiritual depth or the spiritual content would be dependent on lyrics by any means. A classic example of that – which a lot of people would say – is the John Coltrane recording of “Love Supreme.” It's an overtly spiritual record that actually, truly comes across that way too. It’s very clearly a deep spiritual statement.

RockOm: As you get ready to head out in support of a new album with the addition of Wendy, your vocalist, what are you most excited about or looking forward to in this next stage of The Bad Plus' career?

Reid: As we've done some concerts with Wendy in Europe already, it's been really thrilling. We look forward to experiencing that more here in the States; it definitely adds another energy to the concert. Every concert is going to be a good share of Bad Plus music without Wendy and then when she comes out and we start playing these songs, it communicates on another very powerful wavelength.

www.thebadplus.com

myspace.com/badplus

Edited by Andrew Hoogheem
Photos by Michael Dvorak

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Tags: Communication, Composition, For All I Care, fusion, Improvisation, Jazz, John Coltrane, Love Supreme, music, Philosophy, Reid Anderson, spirituality, The Bad Plus

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