Live Music Alert: Willie Waldman Project with bassist Rob Wasserman, drummer Vinnie Amico from .moe, and guitarist Mark Grunhoeffer from Down Lo, The Nestor, Fargo ND, 10 pm.

Jazz trumpeter Willie Waldman is bringing an ensemble to Fargo that music lovers will die to see live. Waldman has been coming back to the region since he appeared at the 10,000 Lakes Festival in 2006.  He’s known for bringing a mix of talent, tapping the region as well as bringing in bigger names. Tonight, Waldman is joined by jazz standup bassist Rob Wasserman, drummer Vinnie Amico from .moe, and guitarist Mark Grunhoeffer from Down Lo!!

Waldman himself has been a studio musician for years and has appeared on many Banyan, Rob Wasserman, Perry Farrell and the late Tupac Shakur. He grew up in California, went to Memphis and infused the blues and jazz sound. But in 1987, he turned toward rock and toured with Freeworld, a band that was often paired with huge name acts like Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Robert Cray Band, Albert King, and Joe Cocker. Then in the 1990s, he edged into hip-hop and recorded with Tupac Shakur, The Dogg Pound, Dazz & Kurupt, K Ci & Jo Jo, Exhibit, and Nate Dogg.

Waldman’s first album, The Willie Waldman Project, was recorded largely in the summer of 2000. Produced and engineered by Dave Aaron, the album showcased the musicianship of: Daniel Shulman (Garbage), John Molo (Mickey Hart/Phil Lesh), Tony Franklin (The Firm/Jimmy Page), Greg Kurstin (Sheryl Crow/Red Hot Chili Peppers), and the dynamic drummer Stephen Perkins (Janes Addiction/Banyan/Methods of Mayhem).

Carrying on that theme of collaboration, Waldman has toured the country in small cities like Fargo, showcasing local and regional talent, allowing them to step up with the best in the business. In Fargo, he has shown off guitarist Pat Linertz (The Legionnaires, The Quarterly, and Heavy Iz the Head) and trombone player Steve Valevan.

I caught up with Willie Waldman a couple of years ago and here’s what he had to say about himself and the business.

Interview Aug 11, 2007

Willie Waldman: I grew up in Westerville, IN, in a small town, sixty miles from Chicago, on a farm there. I started trumpet at 7 and then did marching band and went to Memphis State University on a music scholarship. I’ve been here in Hollywood for 15 years.  I’ve been playing a long time.

I got lucky. My best friend from college, Dave Aaron, was Snoop Dog’s engineer and still is, interned at Sun Records down there in Memphis. When he came out here, it was a good move. He got a good job right away.  Of course, a lot of those guys didn’t want to mess with Snoop Dog. This guy Casey Cohen who was doing Madonna and Prince at the time didn’t want to mess with Snoop Dog in 1994. So, my friend did, and the next year, he calls me up. I jumped on a bus from Chicago and actually rode through Omaha and all those places out to LA and walked right in doing the Dogfather record, Vapors, and stuff, right into it. He became the house engineer at DeathRow Records and walked right into it. At the same time, they’re holding your money and you’re waiting for months to get paid. It’s still a struggle.  The bigger the record the longer the wait to get paid.

I’m an independent contractor…. You go to Disney or Universal. They kind of got us guys at a disadvantage because we’re a vendor. That’s a 90-day wait just to start out.  It drags on from there. Eventually, you get paid, but it’s kind of tough. It made me go back and forth between Indiana and here for awhile.

That was why when we started doing Banyan and all the little gigs, it kind of balanced those things out to have a little cash gig.  We can go to Fargo and make some money. We get that money this weekend. That’s how we started really getting into the Banyan thing. We’re always waiting on the mailman.

I’ve been on a number one record and starving! I have. That is where this whole Banyan thing started. It started with Stephen Perkins. It really is his band. I kind of joined the year after it got going. When I jumped in, I automatically said, “Oh, this is good one.” We can have a little jazz avant garde project. We don’t have to deal with any singers or managers. We can go out and make some cash here and there.  We can go out kind of white, meaning we don’t need trucks and mangers and tons of layers of expenses. We can show up with your instrument and go. The funny thing, it’s been working out.  We’ve been out to Minnesota, Omaha. We do good in Montana, Salt Lake City. It’s interesting. It’s been going well in the boonies.

I love playing the honkytonk. It’s a lot more fun than playing the big stage. I’m telling you it is. I’m telling you I got a kick out of the bingo hall the first time we came to the Nestor. I was cracking up. Me and the painter came walking into the Nestor the first time we were in Fargo and there were the bingo people, and they were serious, too. We couldn’t make any noise.  I got a kick out of that. They all left, and after a while all the kids came.  I thought that was funny.

I wanted to get the drums out of the van. No. I thought those old ladies were going to slice me in half! I’m not getting into World World III with some old lady….It was funny though.

I had one gig in Alabama where the black guy couldn’t play. My black sax player could not play, and they were throwing stuff in a cage. I’m not kidding. That was a long time ago in Alabama…..

But Fargo is kind of fun. We like Fargo. There some good musicians up there. There’s not a lot of competition like say down here on any given night when there’s fifty places with music.  Shoot one day, we played the Jonny Epson Ford Theatre. It’s a really nice outdoor theater. We played with Umphrey’s McGee. But just around the corner was Roger Waters and Pink Floyd. That’s competition there. We still had a half full place. But around the corner was Pink Floyd.

Banyan…I joined up with it.  The drummer is sort of our Blakey. We let him be the music director.  No one is really letting the drummer be the music director these days like Gene Cruppa or Buddy Rich. Basically, he’s our Buddy Rich.  It’s kind of fun. We make up all this music and follow the drummer around.  They grab different bass players and off to the races.  I’m going to try to grab Steve Valevan from Fargo to play some trombone because I like him. He’s really good.  Some of the other guys from his band are good, but I’ll probably just let the horn player sit in.  Then, I got the Big Wu bassist, Andy Miller. He’s a local guy. He’s really nice, too, from Minnesota.  It kind of helps because it gets really expensive to get around these days on airlines.

It’s a jazz thing.  John Coltrane and Miles Davis played with different guys every week.  A lot of jazz guys when they’d come to town would grab a couple of local guys.  That’s really traditional. You’re Art Blakey and you come to Chicago, you bring a guy or two with you from New York, but you grab the two good guys in Chicago. That’s how I feel about Andy Miller and [Steve] Valevan. They’re the Fargo All Stars. Recently, I played recently up there and I pulled a couple of guys. I just came with painter. Actually, the guys were great.  Chris Larson pulled some guys from Bismarck, ND, a couple of guys from Fargo, Valevan. I had a great band. It was good for me because you’re only getting so many dollars and you don’t have a million plane tickets.  Again, it was a lot of fun. With jazz, you don’t need to know everybody. It’s kind of fun to have different people from different worlds playing together.  We get all kinds of different bass players that we know. It’s just me and him mixing with different people. We got a jazz thing. We got the drummer and the horn player mixing different bass players and guitar players.

It’s sports. It’s like bringing in a European ball player. He’s going to bring different things, but if can work as a team, he can vary the angle. It can make things very fresh. It’s actually good to have people form different styles and worlds, and as long as you listen and come together. If you’re stubborn and want to be set in your ways, then it might not be the best thing. If you fold a little bit and come into the fold, then you start fusing original kind of things. You’re mixing country with jazz or heavy metal Perkins hard rock with this or punk with this jazz. If it works together, it’s good. You start to have problems with guys who just want to play their tunes or sound one way….In fact, you’re not even sure what it’s going to sound like. The bottom line is don’t worry about it. Just let it happen if it’s going to happen.  You’re not going to have much control over what’s going to happen. Don’t worry about. If you worry about it, you might as well get sheet music and write it out and go that direction.

It’s funny. We’re just trying to take it to more to punk and country now. Basically, that’s what’s going on. It’s not really jazz. It’s just a concept of improvising, now coming into the rock world and the street level. In the modern world, that’s where it’s at.  Jazz in the old sense is dead. In this sense, it’s still alive because that what it really is, just mixing all kinds of different people on  the street level together. If we say jazz, everybody thinks 1950s or Miles Davis. It’s not really that. It’s combining.

There’s a great little folk/country scene up in that part of the world. It’s got its own little sound. There’s another one I see up in the Minnesota area. There’s a bluegrass thing that I see that’s totally different than what they’re doing in Memphis…..The Trampled By Turtles is still different but it’s still bluegrass. I like the Minnesota twist on things, kind of like Dylan.  There’s a really cool Yankeebilly vibe. White Iron Band, do you like them? But it’s not southern rock. See it’s that Yankeebilly vibe that’s better than the hills of Tennessee, but it’s in the hills of Minesota. I love those guys. I’ve played with them a couple of times. I think they’re one of the most original things out there.

The trouble with southern bands is that they too much sound like Lynard Skynard. The White Iron Band has its own sound, I think. Trampled By Turtles, too……

I’ve got to admit. I’ve seen it over the last couple of years. It’s kind of interesting. It’s what we want to call Yankeebilly music from the north. Then again, they have a long tradition of Dylan from Minnesota. He’s the king of that stuff.

It’s funny.  Our main bass player is a real fan of some real famous punk guy named Mike Watt.  He’s out with Ziggy Pop and the Stooges right now. He’s the bass player for Ziggy Pop.  I’ve been dying to bring him up there but he’s out with Ziggy Pop in Europe, and that guy is pulling 50,000 people in Europe with Ziggy Pop and the Stooges…

I know that there’s a great punk scene in Fargo and Minneapolis. That’s kind of what we’ve tapped into more than say the country.  We’ve definitely tapped into that punk scene.

They’re cool though. Legionnaires, I like those guys. Actually, the guitar player was in that All Star band that I had a couple of months back. [Pat Linertz]

He’s good. He’s real cool. Our painter has painted with them. They’re nice guys.  I think that’s the way people should be. They shouldn’t be so closed mind to styles and be able to play in a country band one second then have some punk band and then have whatever. It’s more interesting that have four of the same sounding guys. It’s a more interesting mix to me.

There’s a lot of misconceptions out there. Big cities ain’t as cool as everybody thinks. There’s not that good of a music scene in big cities because people are too scared to know everybody.  You get that in a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody calls everybody. In a big city, you’ve got groups of two or three people. You don’t have fifty people knowing each other. When people go to NY, they’re not making a ton of friends with everybody……

The music scene is better in a place like Fargo and Minnesota. We’ll play Chicago. There’ll be a big scene there but there won’t be a lot of people knowing each other….

That’s why bands get a better interaction with people in small towns. I play in Zion National Park in southern Utah. That town’s got maybe 500 people in it, to pull 300 to 400 people at a gig…..But there’s a lot of cool people there…..We have a great club down there and a really cool scene. They’re not saying hi to me in Chicago. Nobody offers to take you swimming in the swimming hole tomorrow…..

We canoed the whole source of the Mississippi River over in Bemidji over the last couple of years. We did the whole fifty miles of it. This year, I did the Boundary Waters. After these little events, I’m doing a week in the Boundary Waters. Last year, I did about sixty miles. How many LA guys offer to take you fishing. This guy a couple of year ago offered to take us canoeing and he showed up and we’re out there fishing. These guys are cool. They bring their boat and sandwiches and some Budweiser and we’re off to the races, man.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2010 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.