“Ribot’s style [is] embedded in jazz vocabulary, but angular and gritty” – Sound of Boston
DAKOTA DEBUT
Marc Ribot’s four months with jazz organ legend Brother Jack McDuff were his first ever with an internationally touring artist. Although the two never recorded together (due to artistic differences that became apparent in Ribot’s later work… Brother Jack reportedly spent much of their stage time fixing Ribot with what side musicians referred to as his “death ray”), Ribot never lost his affection for McDuff’s music and the Hammond organ-dominated soul jazz scene from which it emerged.
Says Ribot: “McDuff’s US audiences—the so-called ‘Chitlin Circuit— were just the hippest in the world: sophisticated about the music, definitely…but also demanding the deepest soul while rewarding restraint in its expression. What this brought out in the musicians was every bit as intense as the music taking shape at CBGBs at the time. In fact, I always felt the two scenes had something in common, and I’ve been trying to express exactly what ever since.”
Fellow Jazz-Bin, Greg Lewis, is not only one of the greatest virtuosos of the Hammond b3 organ alive, but perhaps the only one willing and able to haul a real Hammond b3 and Leslie speaker cabinet to live gigs in NYC! Says Ribot: “Greg is NYC’s best-kept secret. He can tell a story on the Hammond like nobody else”.
The band’s rhythmic driver is New Orleans’ own Joe Dyson, who lists among his credits Dr. Lonnie Smith, Ellis Marsalis, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Jon Batiste, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and Pat Metheny among others. Marc says: “Joe gets the organ jazz tradition perfectly: but wherever we take it, he brings groove, soul, and fire”.
The Jazz-Bins use deep grooves and over-the-top improvisation to channel the spirits of Newark’s Key Club and Sparky J’s Lounge, and NYC’s CBGB circa 1977 into a quest for punk/soul salvation. The Jazz-Bins go— not exactly ‘ancient’, but ‘back’— to the future, to tap into a scene that never really existed (but should have, will, and does whenever people drop their preconceptions about ‘genre’ long enough to feel the groove), and a vibe that never really stopped. Dig it!
Recommended for Fans of Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Tom Waits and The Lounge Lizards.
Learn More: https://www.marcribot.com/
