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From the album
Album Title: All Species Parade
Label: Royal Potato Family
Released: 2024
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About the Album
“Ornette Goes Home” is about how things grow, and the influence of our childhood bioregions, from the imagined perspective of musician Ornette Coleman.
It imagines Ornette going back to Fort Worth from NYC and wrestling with – in the most playful sense – his native sounds. What is the expression – you can take Ornette out of Fort Worth, but you can’t take Fort Worth out of Ornette. You can take Jenny Scheinman out of the wilderness but you can’t take the wilderness out of Jenny Scheinman.
Why do we swing this way or that? Why did I think that? Why does this turn me on? Where do we get the ideas that come to us in solos, and in dreams? Part if the answer can be found in our formative childhood landscape, cultural, biological and geological. Smells. Traumas. Our first definitions of beauty, fun, freedom, family. The melody of “Ornette Goes Home” is the answer, but it’s written in code, and we musicians spend all 9 and a half minutes trying to crack that code.
Over twenty years ago I played a week of trio concerts with Paul Motian and Jason Moran at Smoke, in Manhattan. The brilliant music critic Ben Ratliff reviewed the show, and though it wasn’t what you’d call a bad review (he liked the show and was an early champion of mine), he included a bit of constructive criticism that I feel like I’ve finally answered in this album, and in this song “Ornette Goes Home.” I don’t have the review on hand, but in so many words, he said that I was restricting the natural expansiveness of the players, and that he wished I had let them “spill over the edges” a little more. It’s something that I’ve thought about ever since – how to balance my natural songwriter’s inclination toward concision while bringing out the freedom in the music. This is especially important on this album which is about the growth and variation of the flora and fauna of Northern California.
Shortly before recording this album I made a record with a Bay Area musician named Richard Howell (father of the rising start drummer Ele Howell who was also on the gig). He had assembled a huge band and, with relatively simple songs, was able to entrust us to expand them into these epic tracks – I think one was 15 minutes long. It lit a fire in me to challenge myself to let go at my session. To let the musicians “spill over the edges.”
“Ornette Goes Home” gives all the musicians in the band a chance to introduce themselves, and establishes the rules of the game which put high value on exploration, expansion, interaction, listening, and PLAYfullness.
When Bill was listening back to his solo on this song he said “that’s what I’ve always wanted to do, but just never had the nerve.”
This track reaches that balance of gravitas and humor that is my holy grail.
Tracks
Ornette Goes Home; Every Bear That Ever There Was; Jaroujiji; The Sea Also Rises; All Species Parade;
Shutdown Stomp; House Of Flowers; The Cape; With Sea Lions; Nocturne For 2020.
Personnel
Date featured
September 11, 2024
This song appears by permission of the contributing artist and/or record company.
It is for personal use only; no other rights are granted or implied.