Harris Eisenstadt - crashing musical boundaries

Harris Eisenstadt should be a lot more famous.

And, indeed, he's headed in that direction.

Harris was born in Toronto and now splits his time between L.A. and New York but his real home is behind a drum kit of some description.

His love is jazz - mostly improvisational. He has appeared on more than 30 recordings and recorded and performed with Connie Bauer, Big Black, Rob Brown, John Butcher, Les Claypool, Nels Cline, Lol Coxhill, Mark Dresser, Vinny Golia, Graham Haynes, Tristan Honsiger, Wayne Horvitz, Peter Kowald, Yusef Lateef, Bennie Maupin, Butch Morris, James Newton, Sam Rivers, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Adam Rudolph, Paul Rutherford, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Swell, and Bernie Worrell.

The Georgia Strait, (Vancouver entertainment weekly) describes his playing this way -

"(Eisenstadt) does what all great jazz percusssionists do... (he) leads by pushing and prodding the soloists with subtle yet propulsive bursts of rhythmic colour."

Here's a review of one of his early recordings.

"Harris Eisenstadt delivers a set of impressive post-bop improvisation on Last Minute of Play in this Period. Five of the original tunes feature the crack ensemble interplay of a quartet led by the drummer and one piece features the drummer in a spontaneous trio with Vinny Golia and Wadada Leo Smith. The quartet pieces are all driven by a propulsive free groove. The drummer knows how to propel the music while keeping a flexible sense of time that floats across the pulse. Eisenstadt is worth keeping an eye out for."

- Michael Rosenstein, Cadence Magazine

Jazz lovers, drum lovers, and lovers of improv music that crashes all boundaries should definately check out Harris Eisenstadt. His recordings are available through his website.

Frank Rackow - klezjazz

Frank Rackow should be a lot more famous.



His two bands Vibre' and KlezMerovitz should also be a lot more famous.

Frank plays sax and clarinet. A Concordia University alumnus and former student of Dave Clark and Dave Turner, he's a product of the Montreal jazz scene. Frank played in a number of jazz groups there as well as the cult ska-funk band A Dream I Had. He now lives in Calgary.

Frank Rackow is part of a Calgary based quartette Vibre' led by vetran vibraphonist Arnold Faber.

They recently played one of the premier Western Canadian jazz clubs - The Yardbird Suite in Edmonton. Here's what their website says about Vibre'.

Vibre are ready to bring the sound of the Vibes back into contemporary jazz culture with a sound that honors the soft coolness of Vibes-based groups like the Modern Jazz Quartet and Gary Burton while settling in comfortably along side the current usage of the instrument in settings such as Dave Holland's recent group.

They have a great album called Blue Comedy. You can order it here.

Frank's other musical home is a little more raucus. He's plays in the klezmer band KlezMerovitz led by Allan Merovitz, former lead singer with the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band.

Klezmer in Calgary?

Sure the city is famous for its Stampede and that's probably why KlezMerovitz mixes a little yah-hoo with the Yiddish.

The group has a great self titled CD and there's one tune that does, indeed, have a little c&w flavour to it. (Klezmer traditionalists shouldn't be scared away. It's only one.) Check out the KlezMerovitz website for the CD or click on the cover below.

Alex Houghton - guitar chords like ear candy

Alex Houghton should be a lot more famous.

She is a wonderful finger style guitar player from the Ottawa area.

I used to help organize a folk music club in Windsor, Ontario where we booked Alex to play. It was in the mid 90's sometime. She was the opening act for somebody. I can't remember the headliner but I do remember Alex. Her performance blew us all away. I haven't heard much from her but, judging from her website, she is still at it.

Here's a bit about her love of the instrument from her website.

"I'm pretty much a late comer to the guitar. I first picked it up in my mid teens. I managed to learn the basic chords and then stopped playing until my early twenties when I began to play in earnest. I came back to the guitar because I loved to write music. From the very first when even an 'F' chord seemed like an impossibility, I was making up music. I fell in love with fingerpicking because playing a beautiful chord seemed like ear candy to me and fingerpicking allowed me to hear different notes in the chord sounding together or against each other depending on the rhythms."

Alex may become a bit more famous soon because one of her songs is on a new compilation of women guitar players. She's part of a project called La Guitara. It was put together by another wonderful artist Patty Larkin, who is already pretty famous.

Mike Stevens - harmonica cat

Mike Stevens should be a lot more famous.

Okay, if you are into bluegrass music or if you are a harmonica freak, chances are you already know Mike Stevens. But he should be even more famous than he already is.

Mike plays the little ten hole diatonic harmonica - known to a lot of people as a blues harp. He can coax sounds out of it you would not believe. He has played the Grande Ol' Opry over 300 times, many of those with bluegrass legends Jim and Jesse and the Virginia boys.

But don't pigeon hole Mike.

He is equally comfortable playing straight up blues, rock and experimental music. (Check out his CD Normally Anomaly - it is quite bizarre in places - dark and mysterious in others - it's a great recording!). He also plays in a duo with an incredible banjo/fiddle/guitar player Raymond McLean.

Mike is also deeply involved in bringing music (and musical instruments) to First Nations People in Northern Canada.

He has a couple of folk-roots CDs on the Borealis label. You can get all his CDs - folk, bluegrass and experimental through his website. And if he inspires your inner harmonica player, Mike has an instructional book.

Len Wallace - accordion czar

Len Wallace should be a lot more famous.

Len is a singer-songwriter accordion player extraordinaire.

He plays fast and furious. When Len Wallace attacks the keys you can see smoke rise from his fingers. Len's music is a unique style he calls celto-slavic fusion. He goes from jig to reel to polka and then back to a reel in a heartbeat.

How about this quote from Billy Bragg - "What can you say when the accordion player rocks more than the main act? . . . Len Rules!"

As a songwriter, Len writes about issues facing working people. He is a labour activist. He wears that on his sleeve (right wingers stay away)

How about this quote from Pete Seeger - "A great accordionist, singer and songleader."

And he also has a great sense of humour. You should hear his polka version of the BTO hit Takin' Care of Business. We're all waiting for a new solo recording from Len. Meanwhile you can find out more about him and his band the Diggers from his website.

Terry Tufts - musical triple threat

Terry Tufts should be a lot more famous.

Terry is a singer-songwriter and guitarist who lives near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He writes wonderful songs about relationships, the environment and tabogganing. He is also an incredible guitar player.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet I don't have to go into a lot of detail about Terry. I can just link you to his website and his record company's website. Read his bio, buy his CD's or pay to download his latest, The Better Fight, at emusic.com.

You can find one of his truly wonderful guitar instrumentals on a compilation called Six Strings North of the Border, volume II.

Penguin Eggs

Spring 2006(Canadian folk roots music magazine)

critic's albums of the year

1. Lynn Miles - Love Sweet Love

2. Eliza Gilkyson - Paradise Hotel

3. John Prine - Fair & Square

4. Le Vent Du Nord - Les Amants du Saint-Laurent

5. Amadou & Mariam - Dimanche a Bamako

6. The Duhks - The Duhks

7. Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate - In The Heart of The Moon

8. Tom Russell - Hotwalker

9. Melwood Cutlery - Campfire

10. Terry Tufts - The Better Fight

The Better Fight - review from Penguin Eggs, spring/summer 2006 - by Mike Sadava

"It's hard to dispute Terry's promo material. The guy has a rich voice, nimble fingers and serious songwriting ability. This album should give Tufts more of a national stature. There's a lot of depth here, a lot of reasons for coming back to this disc. He can write a convincing love song, an edgy polemic, perform a worthy cover of the Isley Brothers I've Got Work To Do and work an instrumental along the lines of Don Ross.

The Better Fight - review from the Toronto Star by Greg Quill

Ottawa songwriter and guitarist Terry Tufts is a gifted musician with a strong sense of melody and structure, and sensibilities rooted in the golden age of the big-voiced folk-pop troubadour, circa 1975.

This collection of 13 originals, produced by Borealis boss Bill Garrett, is as good as or better than anything those guys ever did. Always eminently listenable, and notwithstanding the anachronistic overtones, Tufts takes a big step out of the folk realm that has been his home for the past few years and onto a musical stage that embraces elegant, almost symphonic arrangements, world music, jazz and progressive pop elements, as well as traditional forms.

Melodies are breathtakingly beautiful, as is Tufts' pure and steely tenor, and his stunning guitar work is allowed to anchor every piece, though he's surrounded in these songs of warning and diminishing hope for a better world by some exceptionally fine players, among whom pianist Mark Ferguson, drummer Ross Murray and back-up singer Jesse Winchester are outstanding.

-Greg Quill

The Better Fight - review from Dirty Linen by Mitch Ritter (Beaverton OR)

Strip away the techno accoutrements of Bruce Cockburn’s last two decades. Filter the Canadian giant of song’s Christian humanism through the less jaded global outlook sported in Cockburn’s jazzier late-70’s/early 80s Further Adventures of period, then add homey charisma amid rhythmically astute session players, and voila! Terry Tufts’s tracks blossom like spring after a dark brooding winter.

Not quite free of den fever or shorn of hibernation’s hairier excesses, such as the uncharacteristically lame instrumental “Pursuant To My Nature,” Tufts gives his sparkling rhythm section its head as Mark Ferguson’s runaway piano noses out Tufts’s own meteor-showering acoustic guitar picking on the very next track, “Awake Ye Drowsie Sleeper.”

Biloxi “Rhumba Man” Jesse Winchester revisits his cool blue northern redoubt joining Tufts’s Ottawa sessions to add giddy backing vocals on “Black Velvet Elvis” (a Briggs-Francey-Tufts co-write, not Rex Fowler’s caped crowd pleaser from his Aztec Two Step hiatus).

Rob Graves adds Afro-Brazilian polyrhythm with Kalimba and a percussion section. Ross Murray’s drums, alongside John Geggie’s bass, accent Tufts’s hammered-on steel string notes as they spring forth, double-helixing a marvelous melody line around Mark Ferguson’s chiming touch on piano strings.

Add Memphis-stacked trombone (Ferguson again) to a solidly bassed Oakland bottom on the Isley Brothers soul-inspirer “I Got Work To Do.” Mix in Tufts’s scatted vocalese and funkily arpeggio’d acoustic guitar, and we get an above-Average White Band activist anthem streaming from suburban windows out to any rainbow coalition ready to get the war-stopping job done.