# Donny McCaslin finds unconventional new terrain between jazz and rock: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/10/26/donny-mccaslin-finds-unconventional-new-terrain-between-jazz-and-rock-video-photos/
- Published: 2023-10-26T00:02:17+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**The New York City artist works collaborative magic with the likes of B.C.’s Ryan
Dahle and Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann. In the weeks leading up to the West
Coast tour that will bring his quartet to the BlueShore at CapU this week, Donny
McCaslin found time to prepare a gift for his local promoters: a short cellphone
video in which he enthusiastically sings Vancouver’s praises.**

“It’s just such a beautiful place,” he says, speaking into his cellphone camera 
with unfeigned enthusiasm. “And I feel like there’s a warm arts community there 
that I love tapping into.”

Our operatives have not yet determined whether he made similar recordings for Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and Monterey, California, but it’s obvious that the saxophonist’s ode
to our town wasn’t just an ingratiating stunt. McCaslin really does love B.C., and
with good reason. On previous visits to the Lower Mainland, he’s struck up enduring
relationships with the students and staff of Capilano University’s jazz program,
where he’s taught master classes and guested with the resident choir. This summer,
he spent a few weeks on the road with part-time Vancouver Island denizen Elvis Costello,
and some of the most powerful moments on his 2018 release _Blow_ came from collaborations
with Mayne Island’s Ryan Dahle, best known locally for his work with the radio-friendly
rock band Limblifter.

Should the California-born, New York City–based saxophonist spend more time here
he’d be well advised to apply for dual citizenship—and in recent years McCaslin 
has resided in two very different zones: rock and jazz.

Most notably, he was the bandleader on the late David Bowie’s posthumously released
_Blackstar_ album, after the British superstar caught him soloing with Maria Schneider’s
big band. That relationship has been covered at length elsewhere, including by this
writer. The Coles Notes version, though, is that the two influenced each other: 
McCaslin and his bandmates brought state-of-the-art electric jazz sophistication
to Bowie’s eerily prescient meditations on mortality, while Bowie encouraged the
jazz players to mix their unparalleled chops with more populist moves. That led 
to McCaslin’s collaboration with Dahle, which is ongoing, and also to his quartet’s
new _I Want More_, mixed and monkeyed with by multi-instrumentalist and Flaming 
Lips producer Dave Fridmann.

“The music for _I Want More_ was conceived during lockdown, and I was pondering 
if I would ever play live again, and if I did, what would it look like. What would
I want to do?” McCaslin explains. “I was ruminating on that, just that I wanted 
to get back to playing instrumental music with these folks that I have a lot of 
shared history with. So it was conceived and recorded during Covid, and the Dave
Fridmann connection happened, actually, through Ryan.

![](https://i0.wp.com/images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f10a7f0e4041a480cbbf0be/
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1)

“After we get into the melody and the saxophone solo starts, there’s just all of
this low-end distortion and, like, awfulness…”

“He was one of the folks who was a guest on my last record, _Blow_,” he continues.“
We cowrote some songs together, and he sang on the record, and subsequently we did
some touring together. We also started writing new songs—we have this whole record
of material that is yet to come out—and it was during that process that he had mentioned
his admiration for Dave Fridmann. He gave me some examples of mixes that he really
loved, and then Steve Wall, who produced and mixed _Blow_, had also mentioned Dave
Fridmann at some point. So I thought ‘Okay, here’s this name coming up from two 
different people who I really respect, so it’s worth investigating.’ I started listening
to things that he’d worked on, and just immediately I found his sonic imprint very
compelling. So an introduction was made, and we started working on things. I would
send him these tracks that we’d recorded, and what he came back with was, to me,
astonishing.”

By jazz standards, Fridmann definitely made a few of what McCaslin calls “provocative
choices”.

“‘Body Blow’ comes to mind,” he says. “After we get into the melody and the saxophone
solo starts, there’s just all of this low-end distortion and, like, awfulness.” 
He laughs, and continues: “I’m not sure how to describe it to you, but there’s this
whole world of sound that happens. Of course, it’s really related to what we played,
but he’s also added some more danger in there, which I love. Another example would
be ‘Fly My Spaceship’, the way the bass is so upfront in the mix. It’s so, you know,
meaty, and it’s not how jazz records are mixed.

“Not that this is a jazz record per se—I mean, that’s another conversation—but that
was a choice where I went ‘Wow! The bass is really in front, and it’s really powerful.’
I might not have turned the bass up that much if I was doing it myself, but he did
it—and once I got over my initial surprise, I could hear the beauty of it and how
compelling it was.”

One area in which _I Want More_ hews to jazz orthodoxy is that the music is more
or less collectively composed, although with McCaslin very much in the driver’s 
seat. He returns to “Fly My Spaceship” as an example: it started during a soundcheck
in which bassist Tim Lefebvre was toying with a new ring-modulation pedal and came
up with the aforementioned bass part. McCaslin made a quick cellphone recording,
took it home, and then turned it into a tune. Drummer Mark Guiliana worked on the
beats, keyboardist Jason Lindner added dubbed-out synth effects, Fridmann worked
his unconventional magic, and the recording was done.

“Those guys have such rich imaginations that I just leave it to them, or I give 
brushstrokes,” the bandleader says. “But part of the beauty of the way we play together,
I think, is just the implicit trust that we have, based on all this shared experience
we have on the bandstand and in the recording studio. I just want to create an environment
where everybody feels free to bring their creativity full-bore into what we’re doing.”

That certainly sounds like jazz, even if the music doesn’t always.

![](https://i0.wp.com/images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f10a7f0e4041a480cbbf0be/
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