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The Peter Malick Group: Chance & Circumstance
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The Peter Malick Group: Chance & Circumstance Jess Klein
Peter Malick's album of collaborations featuring Norah Jones, Jess Klein, Mercy Malick, Kirsten Proffit & Antje Duvekot Fasten your seat belts and strap yourselves into the proverbial time machine and I'll take you on a crazy journey with me. It was 1973, Boston, and the band of the moment was this wild sextet called the James Montgomery Blues Band. They were like a freight train down a mountain, but tight and slick and showy and, for we babes in the woods, unapproachable musically and personally. Our crew never missed a gig. As for me, at 16,I was a wanna-be, gonna-be Chicago blues picker of little to no roots, knowledge or real dexterity, but I knew one thing; like a holy roller knows Christ, if I was gonna get somewhere, I'd better be watching, learning and copping licks and quick. So, I'd elbow and slither and wheedle my way up (muscling was outof the question then, not to mention bad-form, hippie day -wise) front to get my spot in front of the lead player. He was this wild-eyed bearded cat who'd carved an eagle on the cutaway of his vintage Strat and you'd best believe I was front and center and goggle-eyed before he'd even plugged the sucker in. Peter Malick was his name and he was New England gunslinger number one-he sounded like all four kings (B.B, Albert, Earl and Freddie, but you knew that) rolled into one and his tone stung like a hornet. (Unbeknownst to me, Malick had already put in time with Big Mama Thornton, Muddy, Otis Spann and JL Hooker) I learned more about the primal cry holding my precarious position stage front than I did from whatever English copycatwas dominating the airwaves back then and it's remained filed away ever since. Chance and circumstance, man---Standing outside a Hollywood nightspot 25 freakin' years later, and I was actually introduced to the man (didn't recognize him, mea culpa, his beard gone and he wasn't in some flower-child regalia, praise the Lord) and I did a serious cretin hop on the spot. I couldn't believe it was the Man, Zeus down from Olympus, and humble and happy and amazed at the recitation of gigs and players past. Said he had won some W.C. Handy awards, his daughter now wailed the blues, he'd done many years dealing and playing Texas Hold 'Em in the card rooms of Vegas and Commerce, he lived the life James had been merely singing about back in the day. I grilled him like an ahi about everything and anything and his tales of survivorship were about as entertaining and crafty and sly as any Hook stomp or Lightnin' Hopkins, free-forming talking fable. I figured, if this cat is still cutting tracks, they're bound to be wise and I can't wait to hear what rolls from out hissleeve. Chance and Circumstance again, but this time in the formal sense, because he delivers a disc bearing that prophetic title to you now, the document of a lifetime. Malick's credo and cross to bear, this sucker is a soundtrack to the nomadic, better you listen to it than have experienced all of these detailed ups and downs for real recording. Dues, manhood, disappointment, scraping by in New York City and best of all, optimism and newness, that's the plot here. Gotta emphasize the last point, because I reckoned that this saloon-vet would turn in a 12-bar excursion with much of his patented string assault. Fine with me, but hardly busting out for the rest of the world's attention. Pulling my fool's head out of the past, I was more than happy to be totally wrong on this count. Instead of standard issue regurgitated shuffle and strum, this is muted and restrained and gorgeous, for lack of a better word, "beautiful music". As the boss-man says it himself, "you can't top Wolf or Muddy, or even come close to them at their game, so why try?" and besides the ''get up and floor 'em" ethos of the bars rarely works in the studio anyway. It hits you and it feels like a kiss. Recorded bi-coastally over the span of the last few years in dribs and drabs (because that's what you do when corporate America isn't subsidizing you) with some of the most ace players not yet replaced by synth or loop, C+C is as relaxed and unhurried as it was tracked. Surrounding himself with a bevy of known and unknown women wailing this blend of quiet nouveau folk ("Opium"), old-timey Ray Charles cover ("What Would I Do Without You?") and even invoking the disparate influences of those ancient Manhattan kings Dylan and Lou Reed ("Midsize City Girl" and "Things You Don't Have To Do" respectively, can someone get the latter track to the Stones so thatthey might remember from whence they came, Lou, too?), Malick is like a point guard setting up the star scorer in basketball. He's content to let the ladies take the reins as he plucks pretty and low in the background-four straight tracks pass before he even ventures a solo, his best ever, on "Deceptively Yours". This is new music in the best sense, rooted in the deep past of restrained R&B grooves, yet forward in the asymetrical verse structures and released from the chains of block chording. The vocalists-from Malick's gospel-loving pride and joy, daughter Mercy Malick, to the conversational tones of Jess Klein, from the neo-jazzy restraint of Norah Jones to the little girl innocent timbre of Antje Duvokot and Kirsten Proffit-are given the spotlight as the master sits back and directs the songs. Little stories they are, the musical fabric of a lived life and the kicker is this-the cat is on the Jersey side of 40 and doesn't even remotely sound done. In this disposable era, that might be the greatest gift of all-grown-up music for grown-up people that doesn't sound exhausted. Peaceful, but far from dead, ain't that how YOU want your life to be? And I'm still trying to figure out his sound. Probably never will! Johnny Angel, 2003 |
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