Hudson, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 8 p.m. For more details visit coastaljazz.ca/hudson.
For decades, artists have flocked to upstate New York, often to the Hudson Valley, for quiet respite and careful reflection. When the mood strikes and inspiration hits, they’ll create.
A rag-tag group of Canadians, affectionately called The Band, did so in 1966 when they joined a reclusive Bob Dylan at his home in Saugerties, N.Y. and attempted to re-examine the Great American Songbook.
There’s also Joni Mitchell, who was so moved by the peace-and-love mantra of 1969’s Woodstock Festival that she penned arguably its most impassioned appreciation with her song “Woodstock.”
Jimi Hendrix, too, managed to electrify festival-goers when he performed a psychedelic rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that came to define the zeitgeist of the era.
And then there’s another group that has drawn inspiration from upstate New York and the Hudson Valley’s alluring charm: the group calls itself Hudson, a recently formed jazz supergroup that features legends of the trade Jack DeJohnette, Larry Grenadier, John Medeski and John Scofield.
The band’s self-titled debut was released in June and now the group is taking their set on the road.
Not only do all four members call the Hudson Valley home, but Hudson also features warmly crafted covers of songs by the aforementioned rock stars that pay homage to their upstate New York sensibilities.
“Hudson Valley has more artists per capita than anywhere else in the country,” explains drummer Jack DeJohnette. “It’s a place where you can have some peace of mind and create. That’s why we were there.”
Asked why the Hudson Valley region of New York, an area that encompasses nearly 20,000 square kilometres, is such a fertile ground for inspiring artists of all creeds, DeJohnette calls out the Big Apple. “Well first of all, it’s not in the city,” he says with a laugh.
DeJohnette has lived in the Hudson Valley for more than 40 years and has been active in the jazz scene since the early 1960s.
Hudson’s roots aren’t quite as well-worn. The band’s four members first got together in 2014 when they performed at the Woodstock Jazz Festival. From there, a mutual appreciation for each other’s abilities, a shared love of 1960s rock music, and a desire to celebrate music from musicians that lived in the Hudson Valley at around the time of Woodstock ’69, led to the group’s urge to get back together.
“Last year I said, ‘Well, my 75th birthday is coming up. It’d be great to get together with the four of us again, because it was such a great feeling, and get a chance to actually play more,’” DeJohnette says.
Hudson spent five days in the studio churning out the record that features half original compositions and half covers, including Hendrix’s “Wait Until Tomorrow,” Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek” as well as Dylan classics “Lay Lady Lay” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
“They’re great, man – they’re creative artists,” DeJohnette says. “They left some great songs and I don’t know anyone else in the jazz area has recorded these tunes … so putting a jazz sensibility to them just seemed a natural thing to do for us.”
DeJohnette’s laundry-list of jazz accomplishments is extensive. He’s constantly heralded as one of the greatest drummers ever and has played alongside the best of them.
He was instrumental during Miles Davis’s early forays into experimenting with electric instrumentation and has routinely rounded out the Keith Jarrett Trio on drums, just to name a few.
Equally comfortable playing jazz in a more acoustic or traditional setting as he is diving into a world of jazz fusion and funk, DeJohnette sees precious little difference when it comes to so-called genre – whether it’s rock music or some form of jazz.
“The point is these categories were created for marketing purposes. But music is music and all music is world music,” he explains. “Jazz is a limiting term, really.”
With Hudson, the music leans towards the electric end of the spectrum – largely due to John Scofield’s plugged-in guitar skills and band members’ desire to pay homage to rock classics.
But the four bandmates carry the load in equal measure, DeJohnette says. “The conversation gets passed around rhythmically, harmonically, melodically.”
The overall goal of the band might be even simpler: “I would just want to go out and play music and make people feel good and have a great time.”
