| Q & A: David King of The Bad Plus |
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| Written by Steve McPherson | |
| Friday, September 21, 2007 at 02:19 PM | |
 The Bad Plus (l-r): Reid Anderson, Ethan Iverson, and David King Reveille: How's it going? David King: I'm heading north at 110 per [laughs] ... That's the best line in "Repo Man." R: You weren't really doing 110, were you? DK: I was doing about 80 but I'm hitting traffic, so I'm slowing down. R: So where are you right now? DK: We're heading into Chicago right now and then playing Madison tonight. We played Ann Arbor last night and Cleveland two nights before that. Indianapolis tomorrow and then Chicago Sunday before the Guthrie on Monday. R: And how's the tour been going? DK: It's been really nice. It's always great touring the states. You know, we've been touring this kind of music in the states for so long as a band. It's nice to see that it gets people out. It's like, "Wow, people are actually checking out this kind of music." R: How's it been compared to Europe? That's really the place for improvised music, seems like. DK: Europe and Japan have sustained American jazz as far as artists. I don't think many people who play this kind of music tour the U.S. as much as we do anymore. There are some jam bands and then established acts like Pat Metheny, but in the middle, where there are building ensembles that do progressive stuff, they're not out touring. But we always love to do it. R: And what kind of venues have you been playing? Clubs? Theaters? DK: It depends on the town. In some towns, we've been playing larger theaters or multiple nights at smaller clubs. Cleveland was a jazz club-size place (like the Artists' Quarter) and we sold out both nights. We played a performance center in Ann Arbor called The Arc and last time through there, we played the Michigan Theater, which is a little more intimate. It just depends on the town. In Boston, we'll do a theater, and then the next time, three nights at Regattabar [in the Charles Hotel] or even at a fine arts museum. We can roll in a few times a year and play different venues. R: That must be nice, because for rock bands, there's often just the one place in any given town you always play. The Triple Rock, or The Fine Line here, or Middle East in Cambridge or The Mercury Lounge in New York. It's cool to be able to play different types of rooms. So this is a Midwest tour? DK: A short one. We did a few one-offs in August and then went to Brazil and did a couple of one-offs in Toronto and a show in Idaho. We were looking for a larger tour and it just ended up being shorter things. Europe is so about the summer and fall, so we were out there, but also did a full month out west. Even ended up at the Atlanta Jazz Festival (weird routing on that one). We were hoping for a big Midwest tour for all of September, but it ended up only being six or seven towns. Something went down with putting it all together, but we're looking for something bigger and hitting the east coast stuff later in the fall. R: So have you started working on a new disc? DK: We're working on concept for it and we're slated to start recording in January. We're probably going to be at Pachyderm again, where we did Prog. It's still a total work-in-progress, but we might use Brent Sigmeth, who assisted on Prog and who I worked with on Haley Bonar's record. He was in the band The Great Depression. He might engineer and then we'd send it to England and have Tchad Blake mix it. R: Have you played the new Guthrie and did you ever play the old one? DK: We played the old one in 2004 for the Give CD release. I've never really been inside the new one. They haven't had too much music at the new Guthrie yet, I think. R: It kind of looks like an Ikea, but it's cool. DK: [Laughs] It definitely has that color scheme. I wonder if they realized that. I think it's won some heavy architectural awards. But I also heard a rumor that they had a heavy spider problem. Like, serious spiders biting people everywhere. Just some rumors that spiders had overrun the new Guthrie, which we can't have. You can't have no spiders interfering with improvisation. The Bad Plus performing "Flim" in Boulder, Colo. |
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| Last Updated: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 08:30 AM |
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