New Berman museum-offices open to raves

By Tom Ineck

LINCOLN, Neb.—More than 1,000 people visited The Burkholder Project in just two hours during the April 3 First Friday Gallery Walk, a record attendance for the monthly event and a landmark occasion for the Berman Music Foundation. For the first time in its 14 years, the BMF museum and offices were combined under one roof, and everyone came out to see it and celebrate the legacy of Butch Berman.

Building owner and artist Anne Burkholder said the attendance exceeded all expectations. The previous record for a gallery walk was about 600 people. She attributed the huge increase, in large part, to the BMF’s grand opening. Indeed, it seemed at times that all 1,000 visitors had simultaneously converged in the Skylight Gallery studio apartment, making conversation—and even movement—a challenge.

Despite the claustrophobic conditions, a celebrative mood prevailed both inside the museum-office space and outside the room, where saxophonist Bill Wimmer and keyboardist John Carlini provided live jazz in the narrow hallway of the Skylight Gallery. As music reverberated throughout the building, art patrons became aware that something exciting was happening. Many who were previously unfamiliar with the Berman foundation made their way to the upper level for a look.

If brave enough or inquisitive enough to wade into the assembled snarl, they were greeted by BMF representatives happy to explain the history of the foundation and its long and supportive presence on the Lincoln music scene and beyond.

Earlier in the day, trustee Tony Rager gathered the BMF consultants for a pre-opening lunch and meeting at Lazlo’s restaurant and brewpub, directly across the street from The Burkholder. They had come from as far away as San Francisco (Wade Wright) and New York City (Russ Dantzler), as well as Fayetteville, Ark. (Kay Davis), Pueblo, Colo. (Dan DeMuth), Kansas City, Mo. (Gerald and Leslie Spaits), and Lincoln (Grace Sankey-Berman and Tom Ineck). All had been close, trusted friends of founder Butch Berman, so it was with mixed feelings of joy and sorrow that we shared a meal and conversation that often involved fond reminiscences of Butch.

After lunch, we toured the new BMF facilities, most of the consultants seeing the space for the first time. Everyone agreed that the museum’s relocation from Butch’s house to the lively downtown area was a move sure to heighten visibility and further the foundation’s mission to educate, entertain and celebrate through music.

That sentiment was confirmed when doors opened to the public at 7 p.m. and visitors began to arrive in waves, swelling to a critical mass about 8:30 p.m. and dwindling to a few friends and jazz enthusiasts after the doors had officially closed at 9 p.m.

“Butch would have loved this!” was a frequent refrain among those who knew him best. Not only would he have appreciated the genuine show of support and friendship that the spectacular grand-opening attendance represented, but he would have beamed at the prospect that the foundation he created might reach a new audience who would learn to love music almost as much as he did.

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By Tom Ineck

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By Tom Ineck

LINCOLN, Neb.—Guitarist Ray Gehring has proved that you CAN go home again. He traveled with his band from Brooklyn, N.Y., for gigs May 20 in Minneapolis, May 21 at the Saddle Creek Bar in Omaha and May 22 at the Zoo Bar in Lincoln, the city where he spent his formative years as a music fan and a fledgling musician.

Gehring’s return as a musician to his home town was a long time coming. A varied life as player, teacher and tour manager took him to Minneapolis, Paris and back to the Twin Cities before he finally wound up on the East Coast in 2000. But he fondly remembers the last time he performed in Lincoln, a jazz-rock fusion gig nearly 20 years ago at Duffy’s Tavern, just around the corner from the Zoo Bar, a nationally known blues club that he recognizes as a Lincoln institution.

“I had a little fusion band when I left Lincoln, playing with a couple guys, just a bassist and a drummer," he said in a recent phone interview from his Brooklyn home. "We were just breaking into the scene of jazz, playing whatever we could. Since I kind of came out of the punk-rock scene, Duffy’s was more my crowd of people.”

In 1989, Gehring’s influences were guitarists John McLaughlin, Mike Stern and John Scofield. A second-year sociology major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he dreaded the research work, preferring to hang out with musicians, usually in challenging open-stage settings.

“At the time, I was taking guitar lessons from Steve Lawler at Dietze. Once you start playing jazz on the guitar—or any instrument, for that matter—it’s addictive. It’s been 20 years now, and the love for it increases and increases.”

Throughout his career, Gehring has found himself, like many Americans, returning to the music that shaped his early years. In fact, that music was the impetus behind his new recording, "Radio Trails."

“This was a huge concept record, but the whole thing came together because I really need to purge the ‘70s out of my system. I’m a product of the ‘70s—I was born in ’68—and I listened to the radio constantly in the ‘70s. You turned on the radio. That’s how you found your music. Lincoln was a town where music was everywhere. It informed everything you did, everything you went to, everything you wore. Everything you talked about seemed to be centered around music. No wonder I became a musician.”

Even in his jazz songwriting, Gehring began to hear evidence of his immersion in 1970s pop-culture radio and TV.

“After a while, you say to yourself, ‘Why does everything end up sounding like a ‘70s TV theme? Why is everything sounding like “Cosby” or something that may have been on “Flip Wilson”? What’s going on here? I need to work through this.’”

With “Radio Trails,” Gehring’s addresses his obsession with the ‘70s head-on. From conception to realization, the recording was almost 10 years in the making, says Gehring.

“What I wanted to do was take the songs of the ‘70s that had the biggest influence on me, and then I stretched beyond that to take some of the singer-songwriters that came out of those bands, and then let’s take the originals that we want—that are influenced by that sound—and put them on the record. And, let’s write lyrics to one, and make it a unique, sincere homage to that period.”

With that in mind, much thought went into choosing and sequencing each of the 10 tunes on the CD, from Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home” to The Carpenters’ “Yesterday Once More,” the concluding track.

“It IS yesterday once more. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed politically. Economically, it seems we are repeating the same behavior. We’ve come a long way, but so much has been coming back.”

Among the other notable songs of the ‘70s are “Big Brother” by Stevie Wonder, “Motions Pictures” by Neil Young and “She,” a soulful country ballad by Gram Parsons and Chris Etheridge, which has also been covered by David Clayton-Thomas, Emmylou Harris and Norah Jones.   

As a nod to the Brazilian Tropicalia movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Gehring also chose C. Coqueijo Costa’s “E Preciso Perdoar” and Vinicius Cantuaria’s “Amor Brasiliero.” But the concept album is anchored most obviously by the original tunes, especially Gehring’s haunting “Radial Tales” and the anecdotal “That was the Story.”

To do justice to these tunes, Gehring assembled Commonwealth, a group of compatible musicians and friends, including Bill Carrothers, the German-born Matthias Bublath and Aussie Sean Wayland on keyboards; Dan Gaarder on vocals; Ronen Itzik and Georg Mel on drums and percussion; and Michael O’Brien playing bass on three tracks. Wayland also co-wrote and contributes a fine vocal to “That was the Story.”

“I really hand-selected these guys,” Gehring said. “Carrothers I wanted there to make the artistic calls on the music. I didn’t want to do that. I’m in there to play.” Mixing unique, swinging interpretations of pop standards with a sincere love for the music and a healthy dose of humor, the end result is what Gehring describes as “big-fun jazz.”

Bublath, Gaarder and Twin Cities drummer Joey Van Phillips accompanied the guitarist on their summer tour to the Heartland.

In the last of a series of momentous coincidences, Gehring learned of the death of Butch Berman in January 2008 from an online article that documented Butch’s life as a radio deejay, musician, music collector and all-around music advocate. That was enough to convince Gehring to dedicate “Radio Trails” to Butch.

“My deepest appreciation goes out to the Berman Music Foundation for their contribution and support of this album,” he writes in the liner notes. “May the joy and spirit of music for which Butch Berman worked so tirelessly to perform and promote continue in the hearts of those he supported and beyond.” 

The only time Gehring had a chance to hang out with Butch was in April 1998, when the guitarist was tour manager for an innovative jazz trio called A Band in all Hope, consisting of pianist Bill Carrothers, drummer Bill Stewart and saxophonist Anton Denner. The BMF sponsored a performance by the group at Westbrook Recital Hall in Lincoln, and before the show members and friends of the BMF, Gehring and the band gathered for a relaxing dinner and conversation.

Gehring’s return to Nebraska to share “Radio Trails” with his live audiences not only brings the CD project full circle but re-establishes his early ties to Lincoln and the BMF, a long way home but a serendipitous trail, indeed.

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By Tom Ineck

When a jazz group has the good fortune—and tenacity—to stay together for nearly a decade, it develops a personal and musical rapport that is well-nigh telepathic. So it is with The Bad Plus, an acoustic piano trio that defies both categorization and the critics.

On their latest venture, “For All I Care,” pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King have taken another bold leap forward by adding vocalist Wendy Lewis on a recording that eschews original material for a mix of classic pop songs by artists ranging from Nirvana and the Bee Gees to Pink Floyd and Roger Miller. Tastefully sprinkled among these tracks, as though they were “palate cleansers,” are the band’s unique instrumental interpretations of modern classical melodies by Igor Stravinsky, Gyorgy Legeti and Milton Babbitt.

On its five previous CDs, the Twin Cities trio has occasionally dabbled in audacious covers—Black Sabbath, Blondie, David Bowie and Burt Bacharach, among others—but never to this extent. Since the CD’s release in November, the band and Lewis have spent a lot of time on the road, a tour that brought them to Omaha for an April 24 performance at the 1200 Club in the Holland Center for Performing Arts.

In a recent phone conversation during the band’s week-long hiatus at home, Anderson attempted to answer the persistently nagging question, “How would you describe what you guys do, and how the heck do you do it?”

“The best description that somebody came up with was avant-garde populism,” he said. “It’s just the result of the three of us coming together in a situation that we created so that we could all be ourselves.”

The three of them first came together as The Bad Plus almost 20 years ago, but subsequently went their separate ways before reforming in 2001. Their major-label debut, “These Are the Vistas,” was released in 2003, and they have never looked back.

Anderson cites their common Midwestern roots as a significant factor in their musical compatibility. He and King hail from Minneapolis, while Iverson is from Menominee, Wis.

“I think we share a certain tribal language with each other and a certain sense of the surreal, but also a love of song, a love of clarity in music and we try to just bring it all together and allow that personal voice to come through.”

From its inception, a large part of that personal voice has been composed of irreverence and a tongue-in-cheek approach to familiar melodies. But the end result is never disrespectful.

“We have a basic respect for all that music,” Anderson said. “It starts and ends there. We do these things out of respect because we feel like there’s something to be said, with any of this music. That sets the whole process on that course. That’s why it works together. We don’t do things that we aren’t connected to in some way.”

Two brief liner notes on the band’s first CD illustrate the guiding principles. Their take on Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is described as “lovingly deconstructed,” whereas the cover of Deborah Harry’s “Heart of Glass” is called “ruthlessly deconstructed.” Anderson explains:

“You’ve got to have some ruthlessness. You can’t treat all these things like precious pearls. We’re all just here to try to bash out some form of personal expression. That can take a lot of different forms, but you can’t exclude ruthlessness.”

Whether inspired by love or ruthlessness, the music exudes good humor and a wildly adventurous spirit.

“We definitely believe in enjoying what we’re doing, and I hope that comes across in our performances and recordings,” Anderson said. “At the same time, we take music very seriously. The fun part is all the possibilities. Certainly, music should have the capacity to put a smile on your face.”

Anderson said their famous eclecticism was not a product of financial need, as in some cases where a young musician capable of playing in different styles is more likely to make a decent living from his craft.

“That’s never really been the issue. It’s more that we’re just genuinely interested in all these different things. Our gateway into music, in general, was just listening to rock radio and playing in rock bands. We’ve all played jazz in every imaginable stylistic situation. I have a degree in classical music performance. Ethan has played in tango bands. We’ve written music for dance. We’ve kind of done it all, and I think that’s part of the sound of the band. You have all of this authentic experience in all these different things, so when there’s a rock beat in The Bad Plus it’s a real rock beat.”

One of the best examples of that “real rock beat” is the band’s incredible nine-minute recording of Anderson’s intense, stop-time masterpiece “Physical Cities,” from the 2007 release, “Prog.” King’s drum bombast rivals Led Zeppelin’s magisterial tub-thumper John Bonham. Anderson describes the tune’s evolution.

“It actually started at a sound check. Dave and I just started improvising this thing. We thought it was cool and thought it kind of sounded—like you said—like John Bonham. Also, in that tune I was thinking about some things that certain metal bands do, these intense, heavy rhythmic figures that are not immediately discernible. You don’t know exactly what’s going on and kind of get lost in the mantra of it.”

King is responsible for recruiting Lewis for the latest project.

“Dave and Wendy played together about 10 years ago, with her bands, and they had a really good creative relationship,” Anderson explained. “I had heard a little bit of that music, and I always thought about her voice since I heard a couple demo CDs. We were thinking a lot about who to get for this recording, what kind of qualities that person should have. Wendy came up and it just seemed like the right move to make. Ethan had to just trust us. We didn’t even get together with her to try it out. We just gave her a call and said, ‘Hey, do you want to make this record?’ and took a chance, and it worked out great. She’s been incredible to work with.”

Was there any apprehension among the three long-time bandmates about the prospect of working with a vocalist for the first time?

“Yeah, a little bit, at first, just because none of us had worked with Wendy in this kind of a context. She didn’t know what to expect. None of us really knew what to expect or how it would work. We just started from zero, getting together in a room and working out these arrangements. It’s not a process that completely falls into place, even when it’s just the three of us, so we were definitely taking a chance with it.”

From the start, Lewis was an integral part of the recording, from choosing the tunes to working up the arrangements.

“We definitely wanted her to feel like a part of the process and to sing songs that she felt good about singing, even though we did force her to do a couple that she wasn’t at first that enamored with, but now she admits that she likes doing them.” One of those, the 1950s doo-wop classic “Blue Velvet,” didn’t make the cut to CD, but appears on the vinyl version of “For All I Care.”

As usual, the songs underwent a thorough process of deconstruction and reconstruction, but Anderson said the evolution of each track was unique, from Nirvana’s depressing grunge rocker “Lithium” to the alt country drone of Wilco’s “Radio Cure” to the romantic light pop of the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love?” to the slick rock bombast of Heart’s “Barracuda” to Miller’s traditional country weeper “Lock, Stock and Teardrops.” 

“Each one of these tunes is its own world. In doing this kind of music, there is no real road map for how you approach it. We kind of just take every one as it comes and try to agree on what’s the essence of the song and try to make it our own. We were still tweaking arrangements when we were in the studio, so we spent a little time working out some details.”

So how did Stravinsky, Babbitt and Ligeti find their way to the recording studio?

“It was just something that we happened upon as we were conceiving the record. Ethan was practicing these classical music excerpts for something that he was doing. One day Dave started playing along and we all kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do this in The Bad Plus?’ From there, it just made sense to us to put that music on the record.”

For listeners who may not be comfortable with instrumental jazz, the lyrical content may bring new followers to The Bad Plus, but that was never by overt design.  

“I think all of our music has crossover potential, but what do I know?” Anderson joked. “That’s not the intention with which it was made. If it gets us a few more fans, that’s great. It’s a noble challenge to try to present your music and get as many people to enjoy it as possible. It’s very open. We’re not sitting there in our exclusive clubs saying, ‘You’re not going to get this.’ You know what I mean? We’re making music that we want to reach out to people.”

While reaching out to new listeners, the new record also has drawn some criticism.

“It has been a very polarizing record,” Anderson admitted. “We’ve gotten some really extreme reactions on both ends, but we’re kind of used to that, at this point.”

The best testimonial to the phenomenal appeal of The Bad Plus is in their wide-ranging audience.

“Our audience is quite eclectic,” Anderson said. “We have as many hard-core traditional jazz fans as we do young indie rock fans. One of the great things that we see is parents and their kids coming to the show and everybody enjoying it. That’s important and it makes us feel good. It’s not music that’s targeting a certain generation or a certain clique of people.”

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