Welcome to ” The Jazz Cat Blog “

One of the most enjoyable gigs that I’ve done this year has been as a dep for Jenni Molloy in Tina Featherstone’s trio. Tina, a very accomplished saxophonist and clarinettist, has a regular fortnightly gig at the Brasserie in Harrogate. I’ve done it a couple of times this autumn and have had a great time.

The Brasserie is an excellent restaurant and has regular jazz nights. The patrons clearly come for the music as well as the food and are very appreciative. We play a nice mixture of standards, bossas and the odd tango! The playing area is very cosy and makes a shoebox look spacious! Nevertheless, it is a really fun gig and I look forward to more in the future.

Below are a couple of photos from the gig just before Christmas. Andy Chollerton is the pianist. He is a superb musician. We hadn’t played together for some time and it was really good to work with him again . On the bossas, Andy has a neat trick. He plays piano with one hand and a little egg shaker thingy with the other. The only disappointment was that there were no egg shaker thingy solos! 

Good to have some sex appeal on the blog at last (and I don’t mean Andy or I!) Happy New Year!

As promised, here is another collection of catty pictures. Steve and Heather Lodder are serious cat lovers and have contributed photos of Belle and Lily, whom I have met and adore. We also have an image of Mimi, much loved but sadly, no longer with us. Aren’t they gorgeous? Thank you Steve and Heather. More musicians’ cats in due course!

Belle Lodder

Lily Lodder

Mimi Lodder

For nearly five years, I ran a Quartet featuring Steve Waterman. The other two musicians were wonderful young players from Manchester, Stuart McCallum on guitar and Dave Walsh on drums. I had worked with Walshy in Rod Mason’s band for several years and when I was putting the Quartet together, he was the obvious choice, being wonderfully musical, tasteful yet powerful, as well as being a thoroughly good egg!

Dave recommended Stuart. They were great friends and Dave said that Stu, although only 25, was already a great player. He was right. The band gelled from the start and we had some excellent gigs over the years. All the guys committed themselves fully to the band and I rarely had to use deps. Because of that, we developed into a real band, instead of the collection of individuals that jazz groups sometimes become.

We made two albums and toured, promoting the albums with Jazz Services’ support. After the last tour in October 2004, Dave decided that he wanted to concentrate on other projects and didn’t feel that he could continue to give the same commitment that hitherto he had. I was sad but understood his position and respected him for being so straight forward.

We have worked together since and are still good friends. The Quartet has worked since with Peter Fairclough and Matt Home, both wonderful players who brought something new to the band. I am ‘resting’ the band at present, focussing on other projects, including Threeway and Chain Reaction. No doubt the band will reappear in the future.

I do have fond memories of that original line up, however, and am so grateful for all the fantastic music making with Steve, Stu and Walshy. I have included a photo of Walshy’s last gig with the band at the Silkstone Festival near Barnsley in June 2005. It was a very happy gig and a fitting way for Walshy to take his leave.   

For some time now, Rod Mason (an exciting and lyrical saxophonist and a good mate of mine) and I have talked about putting a band together paying tribute to the wonderful music recorded by the Crusaders during the seventies on albums such as Chain Reaction, Scratch, Free As The Wind and Southern Knights. We thought that such a band would be a really fun project and might be interesting to jazz promoters as there isn’t, so far as we know, another band doing this music.

When we learned that Dennis Rollins, the trombone star (who has his own fantastic band, Badbone and Co and who has recently joined Maceo Parker’s band) was coming to Marsden as the Musician in Residence, that seemed like the perfect opportunity to form that band. We had a clear idea from the start who we wanted in the band. Jami Sheriff (piano/keyboards) and Dave Tyas (drums) are both in my Quartet (which also features Rod) and are incredibly versatile and experienced players. Having a existing group as the foundation would,we thought, work well. We invited Jez Platt, an excellent guitarist with a really soulful feel, to join us and he was keen. We called the band Chain Reaction after the Crusaders’ best-selling album.     

Rod and I shared the arranging duties and we organised a rehearsal gig at Sleepers in Huddersfield as a five-piece: the tricky thing about this music is to get the feels and grooves right and to do that, you need to play the music in. The gig proved to us that this music still has the capacity to entertain and excite an audience. We also knew that the band worked. 

We sent the music to Dennis and had a rehearal on the afternoon of the gig. Apart from being a really good egg, Dennis Rollins is a great player with exactly the funky feel that this music requires. The rehearsal was fine. The gig was sold out.

Right from the start, the audience reaction was enthusiastic and the whole gig was excellent. We featured songs like Put It Where You Want It, Stomp and Buck Dance, Eleanor Rigby, So Far Away and, of course, Chain Reaction. In addition, I wrote a tribute to Joe Sample, Soul Sample, as well as a piece dedicated to two members of the Festival Committee, Cynthia Rollo and Mick Guile, who had sadly passed away during the course of the year. Dennis fitted in beautifully and played, as we expected, wonderfully. The band rocked. We received many complimentary remarks during the festival weekend which have persuaded us to keep the band going.

I’m pleased to say that Kevin Holborough, a very busy and talented trombonist and a member of Jami’s Octet, has joined us and we are looking for gigs at clubs and festivals. We do have a gig at Sleepers on 6th March 2008. 

Happily, Alan Burnett, the festival photographer, was on hand with his trusty camera and below are a selection of his photographs. For more details of the Marsden Jazz Festival, go to www.marsdenjazzfestival.com

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I thought that you jazz cats out there might like this!! (thank you to www.dramatails.com:80/contact.htm)

As those of you who know me will testify, I am cat mad: its as simple as that. My website and record label pay homage to cats and Threeway’s album ‘Conversations’ has two songs dedicated to the delightful furry creatures that allow you to live with them: ‘Miles Delight’ is for my cat Miles (named, of course, after a certain trumpet player) and ‘Jasmine’ is inspired by my mum’s cat. In those circumstances, it would have been unthinkable not to have a feline presence on the blog. So here they are. The Jazz Cats. Miles is the cool black and white dude and Jasmine the gorgeous tortoiseshell. No doubt more cats will appear in due course: it seems inevitable. Any fanmail can be sent to the Jazz Cats via me at ben.crosland@jazz-cat.com.  

For several years now, John has made the journey North, usually in the autumn, and he, Dave Tyas and I undertake a short tour of the region’s jazz clubs. Occasionally, we add a guest soloist: for example, we have worked at Wakefield over the years with Ben Castle, Ed Jones, Brandon Allen and Theo Travis and we appeared at Marsden Jazz Festival last year with Martin Shaw. Generally, however, we work as a trio. We recorded an album, ‘Stitched Up’ last year, which attracted some favourable reviews: see my Reviews page. We also appeared at this year’s Lichfield Jazz and Blues Festival, where we had the surreal experience of being introduced by my great friend and long term playing partner, Rod Mason. If any of you have heard Rod at a microphone, then you will know what I mean! We are starting this year’s tour tomorrow night at the Puzzle Hall Inn, Sowerby Bridge. We play Hull Jazz, Cooper’s Jazz Club, Guiseley and Padgate Recreation Centre on the following three nights and finish at the Vortex, London (hardly a northern gig, but there you are) on Saturday. More about the tour later. In the meantime, I leave you with a picture of John and my mum having tea a couple of years ago!

The band is nearing the end of our tour that has so far taken us to Wentworth in South Yorkshire, Wakefield, London, Boxford in Suffolk, Liverpool and Ambleside in Cumbria. We are due to play Darlington on 9th November. Here are some images from Wakefield Jazz Club (courtesy of Mike Porter) and from the 606 Club, London (copyright Alan Ainsworth 2007 www.jazzshot.co.uk). More later.

A track from the Jazzcat album “Conversations” performed by my group - Threeway - featuring myself on bass, trumpet player Steve Waterman, and Steve Lodder on piano and keyboards, was requested and played on the BBC Radio 3 programme - Jazz Record Requests.

This album is available on the ‘Jazzcat Label’ album sales page: http://www.jazz-cat.com/docs/ukcd.htm

Ben Crosland welcomes you to the Jazzcat blog.