Bill Bruford is talking about recording with Eddie Gomez, about shaking hands with the great American double-bass player for the first time at 10am, spreading one of his own compositions in front of him half an hour later, and preserving the piece for posterity half an hour after that.
''It was a little intimidating,'' says Bruford, giving a reasonable impersonation of someone who has just touched a kettle and discovered it's already been boiled. With his highly articulate manner and air of self-possession born from years of drumming on the world's stages with rock giants Yes, Genesis, and most notably King Crimson, it's not easy to imagine Bruford feeling intimidated.
But as sideman to pianists Bill Evans and Chick Corea, to name but two, as well as possessing a fantastic technique and sound, Gomez has a history in jazz that easily equates to, if not eclipses, Bruford's rock CV. And as a jazzer who detoured into rock in the late 1960s and is steadily moving back to his first love, Bruford knows the value of Gomez's experience.
If the result of their meeting, If Summer Had Its Ghosts, which also starred Oregon guitarist/pianist, Ralph Towner, and was released to much critical purring last summer, has yet to be followed up by the three protagonists, it has certainly acted as a fillip to Bruford.
Around the time of the CD's release, Bruford had just finished a busy period with yet another incarnation of King Crimson - a relationship that goes back 25 years
and began memorably with Bruford sharing percussion duties with
a gorilla-suited, stunt-pulling, ketchup-smearing Jamie Muir in the Larks' Tongues In Aspic line-up.
To accommodate Crimson, Bruford had put his band, Earthworks, which he formed in 1986 with leading young British jazz musicians Django Bates and Iain Ballamy, on hold for two years. Rather than pick up where they'd left off, Bates and Ballamy decided to move on - amicably - and Earthworks Mark 1 was ''wrapped up with a pink bow'' via the compilation album Heavenly Bodies.
''Django and Iain had given Earthworks loyal and intelligent service for 10 years and I understood how they felt,'' he says. ''But having established the name in 15 countries across three continents, I didn't see why Earthworks should stop. I was pleased with the way the album with Eddie and Ralph turned out. I had my music from that and from the previous Earthworks repertoire. Plus there are some terrific players around in London, so I thought let's take this on to the next stage.''
Changes in more than personnel have occurred. In came Stirling-born keyboards player Steve Hamilton, now building a strong reputation in London and last seen in these parts with Tommy Smith's quintet, and saxophonist Patrick Clahar, of Us3, to join Bruford and bassist Tim Harries. Out have gone the electronic drums which Bruford championed and which
featured so strongly in the original Earthworks sound - the end,
says Bruford, of a 10-year love/
hate relationship.
The new Earthworks is, therefore, ''more jazz'', he ventures, wincing slightly at the term. ''Jazz is such a fast-changing, movable feast, but basically, as a band we're moving more and more towards an acoustic sound. If you listen to bands like Joshua Redman's and Bill Stewart's, young players who are playing all acoustic instruments, you can see that, by using imagination, there's still a lot of fresh stuff to come from the traditional quartet or quintet formats.''
Scotland gets its first taste of Earthworks 2 when the band plays Dundee Jazz Festival on Thursday, June 11, a gig arranged by Bruford's own efforts at hustling for work. Having recently separated himself from the rock management which handled his business for the bulk of his career, he is having to get on the phone and chase gigs for the first time in ages.
''I suppose it was bone idleness that stopped me doing it before,'' he concedes, adding that, as a calling card, the Yes-King Crimson connection can be a double-edged sword. ''Jazz promoters are a bit suspicious about putting on this 'rock guy', but the young guys are more open-minded; a lot of them actually like King Crimson. I can't hear a lot in rock that I can do now. I prefer to see myself as a kind of British Art Blakey, surrounding myself with young players. Mind you, they probably think of me as grandad.''
n Dundee Jazz Festival takes place in the Rep Theatre and also features Humphrey Lyttelton, Tuesday, June 9; Salsa Celtica, Wednesday, June 10; Roots Salutes the Saxophone, Friday, June 12; and Violet Leighton and Alison Burns, Saturday, June 13.
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