{"id":16324,"date":"2024-08-17T11:32:13","date_gmt":"2024-08-17T16:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=16324"},"modified":"2024-08-17T12:09:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T17:09:04","slug":"trumpeter-jamie-breiwick-and-guitarist-andrew-trim-conjure-ordinary-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=16324","title":{"rendered":"Trumpeter Jamie Breiwick and guitarist Andrew Trim conjure “Ordinary Poems”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ordinary Poems\u00a0<\/em> – Jamie Breiwick and Andrew Trim\u00a0 (B-Side and Float Free Records)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is an enhanced version of the album liner notes I wrote for the 2024 recording “Ordinary Poems” by trumpeter Jamie Breiwick and guitarist Andrew Trim.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The noir mist clears and, amid shadows, the glint of a battered old trumpet and six steel guitar strings, maybe caught too long in the rain, perhaps the pickup bolts are beginning to rust. It’s the sound of Americana in the venerable street jazz vernacular.<\/p>\n

In the haze one readily imagines legendary New Orleans trumpeter Buddy Bolden blowing over the rooftops and a seminal blues guitarist like Blind Lemon Jefferson. Call them \u201cordinary poems,\u201d at once versified and an utterly common musical dialog between two bards of Highway 61 and The Long and Winding Road.<\/p>\n

The actual musicians, trumpeter Jamie Breiwick and guitarist Andrew Trim, have previously worked and recorded in a myriad of contemporary contexts, from hip-hop to psychedelic, especially the voracious and prolific Breiwick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conversation for the album actually started about 10 years ago when Jamie hit me up while I was still living in Chicago,\u201d Trim recalls. \u201cI had shared a solo guitar recording of \u2018Monk’s Mood\u2019 that laid the groundwork for getting to know each other and finding lots of musical common ground. Another big influence is a gorgeous album from 2002 called Heaven<\/em> by Ron Miles and Bill Frisell. I knew Ron when I was coming up as a guitarist in Denver and studied guitar with Frisell’s old guitar teacher Dale Bruning. We wanted to make something that carried the spirit of that encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, lean in, ordinary listener. Be entertained, enlightened, perhaps transported. And let’s toss a few dollars\u2019 worth of affirmation into the buskers\u2019 guitar case.<\/p>\n

Breiwick reflects that no single word encapsulates the vast landscape of this nation’s vernacular musics — blues, folk, rock ‘n’ roll, country, gospel, bluegrass, and jazz — as well as does “Americana.”<\/p>\n

You can’t get much more Americana than the first tune, by Trim, titled \u201cOne for Bill\u201d \u2013 as in Bill Frisell — perhaps the paragon of a capaciously democratic genre of creativity that follows the road-weary troubadour over the rainbow and back. It\u2019s mooning intervals whistle folkish-yet-American weird, old-timey-yet-timeless, Trim\u2019s refrains drenched in back-alley blues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote (it) on Frisell’s 70th birthday,\u201d Trim says. \u201c \u2018Ordinary Poems\u2019 describes the beauty I found in the ordinary when deeply exploring black-and-white photography. The album cover is a collaboration between Jamie’s design and some of that photo work.”<\/p>\n

The ensuing title tune is a thoroughly engaging melody, a contrast of tart pizzicatos and warm horn mewling, sharps and flats, hard and soft. It rides a catchy, upbeat groove recalling the Southern rock of The Allman Brothers.<\/p>\n

” \u2018Light Pollution\u2019 is my attempt at merging the feeling of Ellington\/Strayhorn with the energy of night in Chicago,” Trim explains. It may be the most eccentric piece, sounding perhaps like aural infections of sensory poisoning, the kind more starkly discernible beside the road less taken in snowy woods. Still, the wry elegance of the two simulated composers is evident.<\/p>\n

Trim adds, \u201cNearly the whole record is recorded with my guitar tuned down a whole step to match the B-flat trumpet\u2026or the lower range of a bass player. I jokingly called it \u2018B-flat Guitar.\u2019 ”<\/p>\n

Well, no joke. Such are things that simpatico voices, like Ellington and Strayhorn, do by artistic necessity.<\/p>\n

Trim’s \u201cMKE Blues\u201d tells a story all too vividly familiar to losers for a day, to urban graspers for hope.<\/p>\n

Among Breiwick\u2019s compositions, \u201cJack\u2019s Corner\u201d is the most daring and beautiful so far, as if interval leaps elegantly soar and twirl through wind currents, like a master carnival acrobat — in slow motion. The tune describes his son\u2019s \u201ccreative little escape corner in our den — nod to Neil Young.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Politely\u2019 transcribes the harmonic base of early 20th-century American composer Charles Ives\u2019 complex and dissonant The Unanswered Question<\/em> with a simple, but\u00a0 tonal melody atop, its shapely curvature seems to suggest a question mark, or two.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommon Origin\u201d precisely evokes wind chimes, each sonic “cell” improvises a fragment of the chimes, like Terry Riley\u2019s minimalist masterpiece \u201cIn C.\u201d “Each melodic fragment is interpreted by the soloist. To perform it you move through each succession of 40 melodic fragments,” Breiwick explains.<\/p>\n

Finally, \u201cDreamland\u201d sends you off to Monkland with tenderly Thelonious turns-of-phrase evoking \u201cPannonica.\u201d This is a Paul Motian-credited tune recorded by Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano. Monk allegedly composed it, as there’s a (never-published) bootleg recording of him playing it. Trim continues, \u201cSomehow, I came into possession of Frisell’s hand-written chart for it which says at the top \u2018Monk Played This\u2019 (!). Dreamland is, of course, also the name of Jamie’s long-running group that plays Monk’s music.\u201d The duo’s fine contrapuntal interplay here especially reveals guitarist Trim’s deftness at phrasing and voicings.<\/p>\n

So, follow this wondrous road, hidden in sleepy and windswept hollows. And come back to your prosaic, ordinary life haunted in the noir of sonic wizards, drifting along the street like spirits begone.<\/p>\n

________________<\/p>\n

Ordinary Poems<\/em> may be purchased in several forms at:<\/strong>\u00a0https:\/\/bsiderecordings.bandcamp.com\/album\/ordinary-poems<\/a><\/p>\n

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Jamie Breiwick (left), Andrew Trim, and Warhol’s Elizabeth Taylor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ordinary Poems\u00a0 – Jamie Breiwick and Andrew Trim\u00a0 (B-Side and Float Free Records) This is an enhanced version of the album liner notes I wrote for the 2024 recording “Ordinary Poems” by trumpeter Jamie Breiwick and guitarist Andrew Trim.\u00a0\u00a0 The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2529,2521,1429,1019,1434,2530,2523,2522,2532,2528,104,404,2519,2524,21,996,2526,2520,2531,2535,2527,2534,2525,2533,105],"class_list":["post-16324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com","tag-allman-brothers","tag-americana","tag-andrew-trim","tag-b-side-records","tag-bill-frisell","tag-billy-strayhorn","tag-blind-lemon-jefferson","tag-buddy-bolden","tag-charles-ives","tag-dale-bruning","tag-dreamland","tag-duke-ellington","tag-float-free-records","tag-highway-61","tag-jamie-breiwick","tag-joe-lovano","tag-monks-mood","tag-ordinary-poems","tag-pannonica","tag-paul-motian","tag-ron-miles","tag-terry-riley","tag-the-long-and-winding-road","tag-the-unanswered-question","tag-thelonious-monk"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-4fi","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16324"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16348,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16324\/revisions\/16348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}