A Free Musical Improvisation night in Dunedin @ Circadian Rhythm: Tussock Happy 20/01/2007

Tussock Happy: 20/01/2007

Venue: Circadian Rhythm Dunedin

"For a moment I lost twenty-five years and it was just Robbie and I as kids in the old house by the sewage ponds in Gore where Robbie taught me how to play on his brother's Hayman drum kit."

On the 20th of January 2007 nine of my friends and myself presented Tussock Happy, a tribute to the music of Derek Bailey.[1] Ten musicians from different musical backgrounds appeared together to create spontaneous musical explorations in small and large groups.[2]

The assembled players in Dunedin included members of CLBob: Nils Olsen, Simon Bowden, Blair Latham, Dave Leahy, Chris Williamson and myself, as well as local musicians: Trevor Coleman, Robbie Yeats, Mike Morley and Alastair Galbraith.

Photo shows the members of ClBob who played at the Tussock Happy improvisation. L-R: Chris Williamson, Nils Olsen, Simon Bowden, Steve Cournane, Blair Latham, David Leahy.

For me, the Tussock Happy event represented a culmination of many aspects of my musical life. I had long dreamed about returning to Dunedin and playing with some of the people I had known back in the 1980's.[3] It was also a chance to play in a freely improvised way, which I love, and a great excuse to play with drummer Robbie Yeats who had taught me how to play the drums in the first place.

One of the most fascinating things for me about the night was the way the whole event actually unfolded. I have to say that I was very nervous for many reasons. Firstly and foremost I was most anxious about how Robbie would perceive the whole thing. I have always respected my friend a great deal as a musician and I was anxious that he enjoyed the experience. I guess I had a great fear that he might not. In fact I had this strange dread that some of the people I had asked from Dunedin just would not show up.

Secondly, the undertaking was a completely unknown quantity anyway. In the tradition of the Derek Bailey Company events we had many different types of players involved, some from jazz backgrounds and others not. There was to be no discussion about musical styles or improvisational characteristics. How would all these different people gel together? Would people want to play in time or without meter? Would we be able to find a common ground? I was a little unsure and even some of the members of CLBob had expressed doubts about the whole thing. This made me even more nervous, but I kept these thoughts to myself.  I have always believed that doubt breeds fear and fear is a remarkably contagious creature.

Arriving at the venue I was happier than you can ever know just to see Robbie, Mike and Alastair already there, having a beer and chatting in a very relaxed way to the other members of CLBob As I sat there enjoying the conversation it seemed that there was a unique happy energy among us.

Being the instigator of the idea, people were asking me at random occasions what exactly was going to happen. I had been quietly thinking about this for many months, but no great pearls of wisdom had entered my brain so I just told the truth and said I did not really know. I continued, as if in my own defence, to say that I thought we would probably begin the night with smaller groups then play at the end as a large ensemble.

Suddenly, instead of feeling worried, as the organiser of an "event," I realised with some wonderment that the night was actually completely out of my hands, that the show had actually started at the moment we had all met and sat down with our beers and started talking and that it would follow its own powerful course. It was a delightful feeling, a kind of confident chaos. It was certainly an event now: the room was already quite full with an expectant crowd.

From this chaos a brilliant suggestion emerged from CLBob guitarist, Simon Bowden. His idea simply being that we could actually start the show with the full group, so everyone could kind of feel each other out. From that we would perhaps discover whom to play with later. I suspect this suggestion arrived within five or ten minutes of the actual start of the show! What an idea. It just felt right and that's how we started the show - with all  ten of us playing on that tiny stage.

And so we kicked off with the large ensemble. It was what you would expect really: a tentative start; there was no amazing music, but also no disaster, and from this a realisation I suppose that we were all on the same page.  The evening followed on perfectly after the large ensemble as we broke into smaller units to perform. Do you know that without any lists, demands or names out of hats, we presented three hours of spontaneous composition. I think the great majority of it was very honest and extremely creative. Everyone just seemed to find the combinations they would like to play with.

I believe the first group was Simon Bowden and Mike Morley on guitars and myself on drums so I can't really comment on the validity of that music, except to say that I really enjoyed playing with two such uniquely individual guitar players (two of the most creative sonically in the country in my humble opinion) and to be with them as they interacted together for the very first time was just sheer joy.

After that Alastair Galbraith on guitar and Chris Williamson on banjo played a delightfully textural piece and then Dave Leahy delighted the crowd with an intense, very high energy bass solo that included a great deal of the physical movement he had been working on in London over the past years. During this solo Nils Olsen and Chris sneakily joined him and something completely new evolved. Somehow, during the resulting improvisation, while dreadfully restricted for space with the double bass, Dave actually fell over! At the time, I thought it deliberate but later Dave told me it had really been a frustrating accident. Of course he incorporated the fall beautifully into the whole improvisation by crawling under the instrument and hiding to great laughter and cheers from the crowd. Meanwhile Nils and Chris theatrically goaded him onward like crazed troubadours.

I kind of lost track after that, just caught up in the whole thing, but there were so were many great moments: some humorous, some dramatic, but all wonderful. I remember hearing some extremely fresh new sounds. One highpoint for me was a moment in an ensemble with Robbie Yeats, Simon Bowden, Blair Latham and Nils Olsen where the band became this kind of bluesy, free, Captain Beefheart-like entity. It was new music that cannot really be described adequately by words and it could not have been played by anyone in the world except those four guys who were playing together as a group for the very first time. It went un-recorded and it will never be heard again, but it exists now in the distant unconscious sonic memory of everyone who was there.

For our last improvisation we re-grouped into the large ensemble again. I decided to start the thing with a groove, i.e. play in time.  Why I did this I cannot consciously say, but it just seemed the right thing to do at that moment. Perhaps I just wanted to go back to my early playing days. Who knows? Gazing at the look on Robbie Yeat’s face, I must say I had my doubts: He seemed slightly concerned, but I remained committed to the idea. I really believe one must back decisions in musical performance unless a true error has been committed. [4]

I think the final group piece evolved with more purpose than the first group piece and I found Trevor Coleman very inspired here, his compositional sense particularly strong. The groove that Robbie and I created towards the end of the piece felt so beautifully organic that I wish we had finished just with the drums or carried on with the ensemble again after a drum solo, though that did not occur. For a moment I lost twenty-five years and it was just Robbie and I as kids in the old house by the sewage ponds in Gore where Robbie taught me how to play on his brother's Hayman drum kit. 

Tussock Happy left me with feelings of great happiness. It re-enforced my belief that life is just a series of circles and that we are all trapped inside circles of our own making. I don't mean circles as a social metaphor nor am I trying to make a value judgment on society’s perception of an artist’s importance because of their style of music or personal success. I refer to the actual physical size of our geographic circles, i.e. the distance that we all move in our lives from the places where we were actually born. Some circles will be very big and some very small but ultimately, as T.S. Eliot suggested  in his wonderful 1941 poem Little Gidding, we can only ever arrive back where we started. Is it perhaps because, in the end, that is that is the only place we have left to go? The place that we have never really left. 

"We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree"

Tussock Happy showed me yet again the power that music has to unite individuals, that it is one of the only true world languages. However, the most important re-enforcement for me was non-musical, i.e. that all events in life run their own powerful course, especially where intelligent minds are concerned. Ultimately it affirmed to me one thing, which I have noted time and time again in my musical life - giving up control always creates un-expected growth. 

I sincerely hope to repeat Tussock Happy or something like it again one day. Next time I would like to record some of the results. My hope is to use a core of Dunedin people and bring in other improvisors from  around New Zealand. I was so happy with the crowd that showed up. Thank you to the adventurous souls of that wonderful city. Dunedin. It is still a unique, special, artistic place.

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[1] Derek Bailey died on Christmas Day 2005, suffering from motor neuron disease. His life had been one largely dedicated to a fresh style of guitar playing and in the moment composition. He was born in Sheffield England in 1930 was based in London after 1966. He expanded the vocabulary of the guitar greatly as we know it and his sound is as identifiable and personal as that of Jimi Hendrix. Another of his outstanding achievements was to author an important book in 1992: Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice. It is one of the finest in its field and still much debated today. If you are any kind of improviser, you should read it.

[2] Inspired by the "Company" concept of Derek Bailey who believed that the most interesting music occurs at that moment when people first play together. Bailey developed Company Week in 1977, a festival where people with remarkably disparate musical backgrounds would be thrust together on stages to create new music. The festival lasted eighteen years.

[3] My ten-year period in the Dunedin music scene from 1983-1993 was a very happy, creative time for me. Today, people speak about Dunedin music in glowing terms. We now regularly hear classic Dunedin music being played as backgrounds for NZ films, soaps and documentaries. In 2018 many of the original Flying Nun two - track masters were catalogued and stored in the Alexander Turnbull Library as taonga or treasured artifacts from the past. It was not always the case. When I was living in Dunedin, though the records were selling in big numbers all over the country, commercial radio stations had no interest in the music at all. In fact it would be fair to say that the the music was despised by a great portion of the population. We were desperately trying to get a Kiwi music quota. It never happened.

[4] Some may say that there are no errors in music and perhaps in a sonic and harmonic sense this is correct. However, rhythm is a different beast.

"One has the right to kill anyone who has turned the beat over without realizing it."

Sadly, I cannot now find the source of the above quote, but I believe it comes from a North African nomadic tradition. Think about it. Though it may appear initially as overtly violent or simply just plain stupid, the saying is likely not literal. The deeper meaning concerns musicianship, particularly within traditional or idiomatic forms where we must comprehend our rhythmic errors and rectify them immediately. Those that do not have the ability to even recognize such errors are out of their depth musically. This is actually a very humble philosophy and speaks more of respect for better-trained musicians. It also speaks of the musical discipline required to become a good rhythmic player on traditional forms.