Second Turn /
by Dave Kirby, Boulder Weekly. September, 2004
As if to dispel any notion that its sophomore effort might betray some self-consciousness about the eclecticism it embraces, Country Road X opens its new CD From Seed To Stone with a gorgeous, supremely confident offering called "Panama Line." Anchored around an Erik Deutsch piano hook, the piece marries James Hoskins' mournful cello lines and Glenn Taylor's buoyant pedal-steel filigrees, then opens up into a broad, melodic ensemble supporting a trumpet lead line, dissolves into earthy groove, then percussion breaks, a restatement of the head and a prayerful "Coda" like a farewell. At once, they capture nightclub-combo jazz, pastoral Americana, a little greasy pop-funk and plausible appeals to avant-garde. All in about six minutes.
So much for playing it safe.
When asked, Deutsch won't cop to lifting the piano riff from "Panama Line" from Horace Silver, but he seems gratified that someone heard something like that in there.
"No, it's just a riff I made up one night," he says. "It's funny, because someone said that the 'Coda' part, which we actually separated into another tune, sounded like a John Mellancamp tune."
That happens a lot listening to this band - what Deutsch's piano mentor (and former EMC recording artist) Art Lande once called "trailer park jazz" is a surprisingly elegant amalgamation of richly rendered voices. Trumpet beside pedal steel beside cello. Nursery-rhyme simplicity ("Moon Man") beside slightly drunken marches ("Grown Men") Outdoors and indoors, something almost forgotten, something remembered. It might be better described as "ensemble impressionism," deferential to the groove here, the melody there.
We tell Deutsch that it sounds more robust, muscular than the band's first outing from a couple of years ago.
"Part of that is simply that the band got larger. We started as a quintet, and then Jon Cray [trumpet] and Jon Stewart [reeds] joined," says Deutsch. "most of the band sound before was Glenn and I playing in the lower registers together. With the horns I think we really clarified the melodies, expanded the sound a little bit. To me, the tunes really came to life with the horns."
"Also, I think part of it was recording like we did at WaveLab, in Tucson," he continues. "Devotchka [with whom Deutsch toured recently] turned us onto them, and they heard about it from Calexico. The place is a gear museum, stacks of organs and synths. We all got to play some cool instruments we wouldn't normally have access to. I got to play a Yamaha CP70 stage piano on a couple of tunes. And, no computers. Everything is done on tape. We rehearsed really hard before we went in and recorded several of the tunes more or less live in the studio. You have to do things a little differently when you're using tape. You don't have all those tricks you can do with digital. It definitely changes the character of the recording process."
For the time being, CRX remains a locally bound enterprise, playing out at Round Midnight, Trilogy and an upcoming gig at Dazzle. Most of the players have other gigs, some have families, and while Deutsch insists, correctly, that a decent market probably exists for this music, their evolution from local side project to traveling show will probably be a gradual one.
"It's kind of funny, playing with Jon Gray again," says Deutsch. "He and I were in Fat Mama together, and we've played together probably longer than anyone else In my whole playing career. I started this group as a quintet, and now it's getting bigger, just like it was back in the Fat Mama days, like I'm inching backward or something."
"I do want to take this group on the road," he continues. "San Francisco, Chicago, maybe Nashville. We've been able to open a wide variety of shows round here We also just did three nights at the Telluride Jazz Festival last month, and that went really well. I think, for the most part, people are really positive towards this stuff. It's a little different, but not too elusive for them."