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DAVE EASLEY |
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Guitar fans that follow Dave Easley will note his 2022 album with his trio A.C.E. as well as his vocal-based solo album Easley Rider among other releases such as his side band Kolotov Mocktails. Dave is well versed in pop and rock as much as composing for his neo-classical trio. Dave's Ballads album features classic jazz reimaginations that he has no doubt committed to memory and the sonorous arrangements are equally unique in their own right. Musically, Ballads is an interesting choice of direction for Easley, drawing on his classic jazz background on instrumental-based pedal-steel-based covers written by Sonny Sharrock, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, Prefab Sprout, Billy Strayhorn, Ornette Coleman and Brooks Bowman. With Easley carrying forth his brilliant instrumental pedal steel guitar sound, he is joined by electric guitarist Jeff Parker. Working off each other on Ballads, the sound that both guitarists connect on is exciting and unique. For fans of pedal steel and jazz guitar, this album is as close to heaven as you will get in 2024. The rhythm of David Tranchina (double bass) and Jay Bellerose (drums) lays down a sonic carpet for the guitars to work their magic.
Ballads kicks into high-gear with a potent Easley cover of guitarist Sonny Sharrock’s “Who Does She Hope To Be”, from the late great Sharrock’s 1991 album Ask The Ages. The track is easily a highpoint of Ballads. Following the Sharrock cover, Dave spins magic on an all too brief cover of “Stardust”, penned by American music composer Hoagy Carmichael. Although it clocks in at just under two minutes, Easley makes it his own. From there, a cover of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” shines a light on one of the truly underrated melodic masterpieces. Written in the 1930s and finally released in 1948, the song fits in perfectly on the Ballads album. The final two Ballads tracks are quite obscure, including a cover of Brooks Bowman’s “East Of The Sun” (from 1934) and a take of U.K. rock band Prefab Sprout’s “Nightingales”, from 1988. The album cover of Ballads by M.P. Landis is very cool while the back of the L.P. jacket features insightful liner notes, pics of the players and discography information of the tracks. With a catalog of masterpiece albums already to his credit, Dave Easley’s Ballads gives the pedal steel guitar a new and distinctive perspective as a consummate interpreter of classic jazz. One can hardly wait for master musician Dave Easley’s next musical move.
mwe3.com presents the Ballads interview with Dave Easley
Dave Easley: In these past couple of years I’ve been doing a variety of live shows. I may have mentioned to you in another interview that I’ve already started my next solo CD and that’s going great, but, when I play a lot, I don’t work as quickly on the new release. I was really excited when I found out I’d be playing with my old bandmate, Jeff Parker on Ballads. It was great getting back together with David on bass and this was the first time I’d met Jay Bellarose, such a tasteful player! Jay plays in the band with Robert Plant and Allison Krause who grew up in the town in Illinois that I grew up in. I first met her when she was 13 and she already sounded like a top professional. I think, I worked on 4 or 5 albums with Chris Schlarb in that week when we recorded Ballads. One of them was an album of all Charlie Parker songs rearranged by the horn player who’s record it was. mwe3: What do you think is Chris Schlarb’s idea is when it comes to vinyl only? Is he averse to CD and also isn’t it amazing in a sad way that the US never was able to manufacture CD players the way the Japanese did? Dave Easley: I don’t think it’s a case of Chris being personally averse to CDs. He’s running a business and I guess he found that he could always make his money back when producing vinyl. A lot of people have been talking lately about how online digital music has made CDs less profitable. But, there does seem to still be a market for vinyl. I remember, when I was making the first Brian Blade Fellowship album with Daniel Lanois producing, that was back before vinyl had its big resurgence. Dan told me one day that he really thought in terms of the vinyl records he grew up producing. He felt that the length, no more than 40 minutes, 20 per-side, was perfect for the typical person’s attention span. One thing I notice is that Schlarb is always keeping track of how long the songs are. You have, not just one time limit, but two, two twenty-minute time limits. I’m not complaining! It’s kind of interesting how that works out. The limitations of the format help shape the music just like the range of an instrument helps shape the music that comes out of it, like the time limitation of a TV show influences the shape that its narrative takes on.
When I first started making self-produced CDs I was making them pretty close to full CD length almost double the length of vinyl. To be honest, I’m not sure how many people listened all the way through in one sitting. I hope they got to it all eventually because I saved some good ones for near the end. But my more recent CD productions haven’t been quite as long. Maybe there’s always the question, what if we put this out on vinyl. I’d had to have to cut a bunch of songs. So, I just don’t put quite as many on. Save em for the next one. Schlarb seems to be doing quite well making 40 minute productions. mwe3: Tell us about the band on Ballads. What made you want to add Jeff Parker on electric guitar and is this the first time you added a second guitarist on one of your albums? Also tell us about the Ballads rhythm section. Dave Easley: Well, Jeff and I are old friends from the first iteration of the Brian Blade Fellowship band, when Brian was first breaking out into his own sound after having been a sideman for many great artists. I think Jeff is still playing the same Gibson 335 he played then. No reason to change. He’s got his sound. I’m a steel player who plays guitar as a second and I’m seeing about 8 guitars hanging on my wall right now and there’s a couple more in cases. So many of my friends wind up being guitar collectors as well as players and that’s really cool. But it was awesome to shake Jeff’s hand after all these years and see him pull out his trusty 335! He’s got his sound and he knows where he’s going with it. He also does a lot of work for Schlarb. On the two Heartifacts records, Boatmen Waiting On The Wind and Icicle Man Minus Two, Ethan Leaming was on guitar. We had some nice harmony and counterpoint things that we did. Schlarb picked Trachina and Belarose for Ballads and I’m glad he did. They had just the right vibe! I don’t really question Schlarb on a lot of things. mwe3: The front cover art is wild. Tell us about the front cover art for Ballads. Also who wrote the insightful liner notes? Dave Easley: That is the same artist who did the cover art for Byways of the Moon, M.P. Landis. He listens to the album he’s doing a cover for while painting. So, it’s an expression of how the music makes him feel. A guy from Colorado named Tyler Wilcox wrote the liner notes. I’ve never met him. Maybe I’ll run into him one day when I play out there. Of course, Colorado’s a big place. It’s not like running into somebody at Whole Foods or Walmart.
Dave Easley: Like with the Byways Of The Moon album, Chris chose the material and running order. He’s gotta do something! He’s the producer! Haha! And I like his ideas. When I make my own records I make all those decisions, so it’s fun to do material I’d never thought of doing. The song, “Nightingales”, I’d never even heard before. Of course, some of these tunes I’d played before. Actually I chose the old Frank Sinatra classic, “East Of The Sun”, or I requested it and Schlarb okayed it. But the basic idea of doing an album of all ballads may have been my idea from a conversation years ago. If you have an idea, put it out there! It may happen one day! mwe3: The Ornette Coleman cover goes back to the late 1950s. Tell us about choosing “Lonely Woman” and your history with the track. Dave Easley: I’d always been an admirer of Ornette’s music. So when Chris gave me the list I was glad we were going to tackle that one. There was a time a few years ago when a good portion of the gigs I was playing were free-form gigs. I hadn’t played “Lonely Woman” with any groups before and was glad for the opportunity to have a crack at it. mwe3: The Duke Ellington cover of “Fleurette Africaine” is very upbeat and happy. How did you work out the arrangement with Jeff Parker? Lots of guitar on that track. Dave Easley: I’m glad you liked it! It strikes me as being very different from other Duke songs and I love it that it’s a meeting of minds of the giants, Mingus and Ellington. To me, it’s a bit mysterious sounding but, I can see how the juxtaposition of the major and suspended sounding top partials with the minor lower parts could sound happy. I remember, when I was around 21, I played with Lin Halliday and he influenced me quite a bit because he had particular ways that he loved to hear chords voiced. He liked to divide complex harmony into simple parts. So, for example, a C 13 b9 would be a C7 on the bottom and an A major triad on top. One really cool thing that came up somewhere along the way was that Jeff Parker, and myself AND Chad from the Byways Of The Moon album had ALL played with Lin when we were younger. I don’t even know what formal music schools we all went to, but we were all alumni of the Lin Halliday school of music. Every Lin gig or rehearsal was also school because he LOVED to share his knowledge and ideas with the younger players. mwe3: I was very impressed with your Sonny Sharrock cover. I knew he was from New York but he was underrated as a composer to say the least. How did you come by “Who Does She Hope To Be?” Dave Easley: Again, thank Chris for that! He chose most of the material. I merely suggested in passing, years ago, that it would be cool to do an album of all ballads. And I requested “East Of The Sun”. Yeah, Sonny’s awesome! I identify strongly with where he went with his music! mwe3: Why is the Hoagy cover of “Stardust” so short? It’s probably one of the most played covers of all time. I think only the bass is added on your cover. Sounds like you must have played that song before. When did you first hear that song? Hard to believe “Stardust” was written in 1927. Dave Easley: When we did “Stardust”, I thought Jeff and I would improvise a bit. But it turned out that that song would be just a simple statement of the melody due to the vinyl format. We already had long songs on side one and needed a very short number.
Dave Easley: My favorite version is the one from the Coltrane/Hartman equal billing album. It’s a unique progression written when Strayhorn was a teenager. It’s so wonderful that, at such a young age, he didn’t feel like he had to write songs that are very much like other songs. It seems like he felt free to write whatever came out of him even if it had a sound that was very different from everything else going on, almost like from another planet. And the storyline definitely sounds like it was from the perspective of a much older, world-weary person. So, that’s even more incredible that it came from a teenager! That sort of reminds me of the time my brother was getting married and our 4-year-old nephew noticed everyone giving toasts to my brother so he stood up and, began his toast, “well, I’ve known Uncle Rob all my life…”, as if 4 years was a really long life. mwe3: "East Of The Sun" is pretty historic. I'd heard it before but didn't realize it was written in the 1930s by Brooks Bowman. They said he died in a car crash when he he was 23. What version impressed you and inspired you? I did hear the Sinatra version of it. Dave Easley: I can’t remember the first time I heard “East Of The Sun” but I think it might have been in a movie. I’m also aware that it was a Scandinavian folk tale before it was a jazz standard. But, it’s always struck me as a very romantic and mysterious way to indicate the location of a destination. In these days of google maps, in which, by the way, google knows everywhere we go, Santa Claus was REPUTED to know everything about our doings throughout the year. Google DOES know all that and more things we probably don’t want it to know. In these days of Google maps, it’s especially refreshing to think of the location of a place being given in such an evocative way. Kind of like, a “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” type of thing. mwe3: What’s the latest word on your other projects with A.C.E. and or a new solo album? Are you always writing new music and what else are you planning and looking forward to as we move into 2025? Dave Easley: The next thing will probably be either the new solo CD or we’ll get together and mix some Anderson-Chute-Easley sessions that are already in the can. Mixing those is a fun thing. Usually, you DON’T want the whole band present for the mix downs because then it takes forever with too many slightly different ways of hearing things and, in the end, if you do a good job, everyone will like it anyway. But, with only the 3 of us, and I’m engineering, we can actually get a lot done and the creative input of each player is really helpful.
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Among the most versatile and well-rounded American pedal steel guitarists, vocalist / composer-arrangers in the US today, Hawaii-bred, New Orleans based Dave Easley returned in late 2023 with a new album called Ballads. Similar to Dave’s 2021 solo album Byways Of The Moon, the seven-track, 40-minute Ballads was released only on vinyl LP and as a digital download on Chris Schlarb’s Long Beach, California-based Big Ego Records. It’s too bad that labels are starting to eschew CD productions for a flashback to the vinyl dominated era but maybe Mr. Schlarb is on to something with his Lp-only productions. 
Recorded in Long Beach California on March 4th, 2022, the 7-track, 40-minute CD kicks off with an intriguing, nearly 9-minute arrangement of the Ornette Coleman classic “Lonely Woman”, the track that started Coleman’s 1959 album The Shape Of Jazz To Come. The album proceeds with an ornate Easley take on Duke Ellington’s “African Flower”, from Duke’s 1962 Money Jungle album. 
mwe3: What have you been doing these past couple years? You recorded Ballads back in 2022 for the Big Ego label. Tell us something about making Ballads, working with producer Chris Schlarb and putting the band together and picking the tracks. Interesting the Ballads album was recorded in one day on March 4th 2022.
Also, on our previous record, Byways Of The Moon, I remember we had to not only choose the much shorter version of “Giant Steps”, but we even had to cut that down a bit. And on this album, we had to cut “Lush Life” up a bit. Chris told me we’d have to cut the guitar solo and I was like, “wait! If we cut here and here, this is basically repeated material anyway, it will be the right length and we can still have Jeff’s solo”. I remember he put a smile on my face when he played that so, it had to stay! 
mwe3: It sounds like you know the songs on Ballads quite well. What was the idea on choosing and arranging the songs and running order?
mwe3: What about the Billy Strayhorn cover of “Lush Life”? What about that song fascinated you from the start? Another song written in the 1930s and released in the late 1940s. What version impressed you most?