Last Sunday in Central Park we were approached by a lovely woman named Inez. She was taking pictures for an ad campaign for Dali, a Danish manufacturer of home speakers. Here’s their website. It looks like they are going to use the photo they took of us after all. According to Inez, the plan is that the concept – “Nothing added. Nothing Subtracted” will run for 2 years. They’d like to give their audience a chance to follow our moves. She wrote me recently and asked me to talk about the band a bit. I’ve decided to post my reply here in this space:
I started Tin Pan just about two years ago. I had been playing early American music for a few years before that and figured I should start my own group so I could delve more deeply into the sound that was best for my spirit and inclination. Musically, I have had a lot of experiences and influences – I started playing the trumpet over thirty years ago as a boy and since then have been experiencing music as a personal extension of who I am. Rock, Soul, Blues, Pop, Jazz, Free Jazz, Avant Jazz, I even created my own genre called Jazz Noir. Ultimately, the truth and simplicity of early american music has moved me to perform mainly in the Tin Pan style that we are honing. My experience of the music so far shows me that enjoyment of this music transcends race, age, cultural upbringing, language, financial background, whatever. It seems that every different type of person has been able to enjoy it. I’m not sure why. One story I tell myself is that we actually play things a lot slower than most bands in New York City. Just the simple fact of not rushing through something, taking the time to explore the emotions of a moment, getting people to rock gently back and forth, gets people to pay attention and smile a bit.
The first step of putting the band together was committing myself to be picky about all the kinds of music I was NOT going to play. I feel very strongly that there are many types of music and styles that are no longer working for our culture or for people’s enjoyment. I wanted to find musicians that were willing to put aside many of the standard ways of doing things that the last 60 years of music has required them to study. Ultimately, I wanted music that would connect and musicians that were focussing on creating dramatic moments in time. This became very very important as I was putting together a rhythm section. I started with trying to find a guitarist. After about 20 tries I found Clifton Hyde who has been so instrumental and helping to create this sound. He’s from Hattiesburg, Mississippi and thankfully so well versed in gospel, rock, metal, avant-garde, and blues. Clifton is a guitar guru. He really knows almost everything about all the best guitars. Please ask him about the gear he is playing and he will have hours of fascinating lore that is as personal as it is historical.
Clifton is also very well connected and he introduced me to our reed-man, Stefan Zeniuk. Stefan also has long roots in the avant-garde scene here in New York City. He is a native New Yorker, raised by artists, musicians and photographers. The great saxophonist Tim Berne was his baby-sitter! I did not know this when I asked to come for the first time but for Stefan, walking the length of a bar with his horn, spinning on his back with his horn, or diving off the stage and grinding through the crowd with his horn are all nightly occurrences! Stefan is a terrifying little monster. He gets such a huge sound out of his instrument and really brings the fire to the blues. Both Clifton and Stefan force me to commit 110% to my vocal delivery and horn playing just to keep up.
The most recent member of the group is Rob Adkins on Bass. There’s a session every Tuesday in the East Village at a bar called Mona’s and we heard Rob playing their one night and began asking him to play with us. He has great time, understands groove, has enormous hands and can pull an enormous amount of volume from the Acoustic Bass. He is a pretty quiet guy at first but you can tell he’s got a lot going on upstairs. He is from the Boston area and studied bass at Ohio Wesleyan university Oberlin college in Ohio. I think he’s only been in New York for a few years.
We play primarily out in Central Park. Often six days a week if the weather is good. So far, this year alone, we have performed 164 times as Tin Pan. I am proud of that number. We are out there as a working band. There are somethings that only bands that work this regularly can do. To wit: We have developed an almost telepathic understanding of the forms and arrangements of our material. Very slight cues and inflections can expand or contract a song based on the need of the moment. Stefan and I have developed a wonderful way of breathing together and creating vibrato together. We have developed a whole series of musical inside-jokes, melodic fragments that remind us of different contexts and situations. If you ever see us laughing for no apparent reason, it’s because someone just combined something special in a unique way – the clever humor, the wry wrinkle around the eyes is evidence that we are developing our own unique language.
You also asked abut whether we write our own material. I have written an handful of tunes that are suitable for our sound. I’ll bring in a tune and we’ll see if it works for us. Ideally, I’ll keep writing and we’ll keep adding the good ones to our repertoire. The themes vary but tragic love songs are always on my mind. Also, a lot of the earlier songs we do, do not have lyrics or have lyrics that seem outdated or less relevant to our culture. In such cases I’l write or re-write some lyrics so we can have a fun time singing but not come off as precious or dated. For example: one of the songs you heard out in the park that day was a tune that we are now calling “Gambler’s Blues” which came from and old old melody called “Hear me Talkin'”
The Lyrics I wrote are as such:
“Roll me slowly like loaded dice.
Spin me round easy. It feels so nice.
Lyin’. Cheatin’. layin’ in the sun all day.
Hear me talkin’
You gambled your life away.Round and round and round she goes.
Where she stops well her man don’t even know.
Lyin’. Cheatin’ Stretched out by the pool all day.
Hear me talkin’
You gambled your life away.Roll me slowly like loaded dice.
You take tour chances when you take a wife.
Lyin’. Cheatin’. Layin’ in the bed all day.
You choose and you loose.
That’s called the Gambler’s Blues.©2008 Jesse Selengut
Of course, with all the shows we do, we play the same songs over and over and often new lyrics will just pop up when they’re ready. So, I just try to stay present with myself and with what I’m feeling and the right thing to say will often surprise me by coming out of my mouth.
I hope this was helpful and if you need any more info or want to follow up with anything, please let me know.
Some more background info can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_selengut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Zeniuk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton_Hyde
My best,
Jesse
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