Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
LowDown
Tulsa
March 2, 2024
Thirty years ago, a group of local high school and college musicians got together to share their collective love of jazz, funk, and running loud improvisational experiments in public spaces. They gave themselves a goofy name (partly inspired by Spinal Tap) and a tagline that was more like a manifestation mantra: “Jazz Millions.” Their first album, Live at the Lincoln Continental (1995), featured 12 tracks with killer hooks, including an iconic tribute (rapped, Beastie Boys-style) to the all-you-can-eat buffet at India Palace. Countless lineup changes, world tours, original songs, and boundary-busting jazz covers later, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey’s actual success turns out to be unquantifiable — way wilder than any human math could compute.
It didn’t hurt that pianist Brian Haas and his friends were all prodigy-level talents. But JFJO was as much about the mission as the music: the mission of reinvention. During two sold-out shows last weekend at LowDown, original JFJO members Haas (whose presence in the group has been its one unchanging element) and Reed Mathis (guitar/bass) reunited, joined by percussionist Jason Smart, who played with the band from 2001 to 2007. Some of Tulsa’s greatest musicians have been part of the JFJO situation through the years, from Peter Tomshany and the late Sean Layton to Chris Combs and Josh Raymer. The crowd at Saturday night’s show was studded with many more.
JFJO has operated as a trio several times, and this iteration brought a special blend of history and ultra-fresh brilliance to the anniversary moment. This two-hour set featured 10 new songs, versions of classics by Louis Armstrong (“Song of the Vipers” as a clackety rumba/island/New Orleans stomp) and John Coltrane (“Naima” as a transcendent, shimmering wash), and the same ecstatic, 1000%-in-the-moment playing and performing they’ve delivered since the beginning.
It only looks relaxed — note Haas strolling into the venue at five ‘til eight with a tiny dog in one hand and a green smoothie in the other, or the beatific smile on Mathis’s face throughout the night, or Smart’s casual posture at the drum kit as he lethally rearranged my sense of what rhythm even is. But it’s the kind of relaxed you get when you’ve been training in something you love for your whole life.
New songs showed off the compositional range of all three musicians. Smart’s “Open Heart” featured crackling sparks between drums and piano with guitar swaying in between, edging deliciously toward a butt-rock power ballad. Mathis’s “Keep Moving On” — about forgiveness, he said — took us from a regretful little melody to a strong walk out the door. “Dove’s Army of Love,” Mathis’s tribute to JFJO’s original guitarist Dove McHargue, wrapped and stretched around a simple arpeggiated line which, at the song’s breathtaking finish, Haas double-timed at warp speed with a flow-state focus on his face that you might see on a neurosurgeon doing a high-stakes procedure. Jaws hit the floor on that one, and several other times throughout the night, but it was no big deal — it’s the sort of explosion into virtuosity JFJO fans have learned to take as “that’s just how they are.”
World-class musicianship aside, the real joy of a JFJO show is in watching the players respond to each other, like expert navigators sailing in all weather. Haas is the wave that sparkles even as it roils; his joyous life force is the same, whether devastating the keys or celebrating his fellow musicians. Smart is the structure, the boat itself, adjusting and readjusting on the fly to keep the thing from capsizing. And Mathis … he’s surfing, paddling, picking up the swells, taking in the clouds, sometimes slipping into a trance and channeling something extra-dimensional, all the while chewing his picks (choosing from many laid out on a stool) like Moby Dick’s Stubb chews his pipe. Mathis switched instruments effortlessly throughout the show, often within the same song, playing a bass on a stand in front of him with his guitar strapped to his back.
At one point during a song in 3/4 time, Haas signaled to Mathis and Smart to switch into 4/4, and then back again after a few measures. After a few repeats of this feat, Mathis turned to Smart and said, laughing, “What’s happening??” Taking the crazy risk and almost losing it — not knowing but also absolutely knowing where you are — breaking and remaking, over and over — and doing it all with humor and ferocity, with razor-thin pauses and oceanic power? That’s been the JFJO imprint from day one. After experiencing it again at home, 30 years in, I wish them a million millions yet to come.
Next at LowDown: Blue Whale Comedy Night Presents Ali Macofsky, March 8
