It’s a Philly Thing: Guitarist Kevin Eubanks goes from pretty to gritty on his duo project with pianist Orrin Evans. I remember doing the first story that appeared in national print on guitar marvel Kevin Eubanks. This was back in 1983. His debut album on Bruce Lundvall’s newly activated Elektra-Musician label, Guitarist, had just come
You’ve reached a Premium article. To continue reading, please login or start a 3-MONTH TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION for just 99 cents/month. You’ll receive unlimited digital access plus a complimentary issue of our award-winning print magazine.
The two kindred spirits take a similarly melodic approach on Evans’ beautiful ballad “Dawn Marie,” which opens with some virtuosic solo guitar from Eubanks before resolving to a patient conversation. They also turn in a mellow rendition of Omar Hakim’s bouncy groove number “Dreams of Loving You” from trumpeter Tom Browne’s 1980 album, Love Approach. “Again, we slowed it down into a ballad and it just felt good to play it like that,” says Eubanks. “When we were working on this stuff, I said to Orrin, ‘Man, we’re bringing back pretty, we’re bringing back sweet to jazz.’ I mean, we need pretty things, we need beautiful things, we need flowers. It doesn’t always have to be just grit and grime. You know, can we touch other things in people? We can always do the aggressive thing and let that out, but let’s not be pushing it in people’s face. Let’s focus on the beauty of things.”
On the rawer side of the coin, there is the blues-soaked, gospel-tinged “I Don’t Know” and the open-ended “And They Ran Out of Bisquits!,” which has Evans improvising freely over Eubanks’ low-end drone. Two tracks recorded live at Chris’ Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia — “Variations on the Battle” and “Variations on Adoration” — lean more to the fusion side of things, involving intricate, chamber-like unisons and fretboard fusillades from Eubanks. “I was so affected by that whole era of music for guitars in the ’70s,” he says. “I grew up playing a lot of rock music and funk music — Sly and the Family Stone, Wishbone Ash, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Zappa. I would go to the Spectrum all the time in Philadelphia to see everybody. It was just so full of music, an amazing time.”
And while Eubanks still flaunts some of his searing fusion chops in the energized setting of Dave Holland’s trio with powerhouse drummer Obed Calvaire (documented on 2021’s Another Land on Edition Records), he is operating on a much more intimate level with EEE. “This duo project has turned into a lot of different, interesting things,” he says. “It’s a Philly thing, so it’s kind of easy for us to communicate. Sometimes you can take that for granted but when you do hook up with someone like that, the music kind of finds you. Tony Williams said to me one time, ‘When you find a musician that you make the most music with the least amount of energy, you don’t even realize how much energy you’re putting out.’ It feels like that when Orrin and I play together. You know, we can follow each other and a lot of intangible things can happen that way. So our attitude for this project was, ‘Man, let’s just play! Let’s just let it hang out. We can bring the pretty back but keep the grit in there, keep the vibe in there of what we came through in Philly. I need some prettiness in the world but at the same time, I still like some grit.”
He adds, “I just love the duet vibe. There’s a simplicity that kind of follows the duet thing. It’s easier to move, easier to navigate, but it doesn’t mean that there’s less music. It’s not the quantity of the band, it’s the quality of the music.”
https://open.spotify.com/album/190Tbnc6yuB5ennJIP6gMH?si=jf-hYBYCSkeoXBbcMWDijQ
The one-time Anthony Braxton protégé has released two new companion pieces (her debut on the Nonesuch label) in 
Veteran guitarist Will Bernard, a Berkeley native and longtime Brooklyn resident, has been known over the past 20 years for his funk-laden rhythm chops in Meters-inspired settings such as Robert Walter’s 20th Congress and the Stanton Moore Trio, John Medeski’s Mad Skillet (with members of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band) and the wonderfully eccentric ’90s Bay Area band T.J. Kirk (with fellow guitarists Charlie Hunter and John Schott and drummer Scott Amendola). Bernard’s own 2020 outing as a leader, Freelance Subversives, was an exceedingly funky/edgy affair. But on the guitarist’s latest,