Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

And your grownups all gone bankrupt

It's not our fault, I swear...

Open letter from IAJE President Chuck Owen

Reactions from around the blogosphere:

Doug Ramsey (Rifftides)

Howard Mandel (Jazz Beyond Jazz)

David Adler (Lerterland)

James Hale (Jazz Chronicles)

Andrea Canter (JazzInkBlog)

Willard Jenkins (The Independent Ear) -- see also Willard's April 4 post, which has generated a lot of heated discussion.

It's a bit surreal to think that we performed at the final IAJE conference. Evidently the organization's leadership was a bit of a mess (to, um, put it mildly), but I heard many unforgettable performances at conferences past: Bob Brookmeyer, Clark Terry, Maria Schneider, John Hollenbeck, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Josh Redman's early 1990's quartet with Brad Mehldau, Ingrid Jensen, Matt Wilson's Arts and Crafts, and his also his quartet with Andrew D'Angelo (wherein Andrew infamously smashed his saxophone to the ground and began to stomp on it), the Industrial Jazz Group...

Links to my tourblogging posts related to our IAJE 2008 appearance can be found here. And here's my coverage of the penultimate IAJE conference:

IAJE 2007: Day 1. Day 2. Day 3. Photos Day 2. Photos Day 3.

Put some madness to the method

Photo by William Paul. More photos below the fold.

SECRET SOCIETY NORTH
JOHN BASSETT THEATRE, METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE
2008 IAJE CONFERENCE
TORONTO
10 JANUARY 2008

SETLIST (click to listen/right-click or ctrl-click to download)

1) MP3: Flux in a Box
Solos: Erik Hove, alto sax; Gordon Webster, keyboard

2) MP3: Phobos
Solos: Jon Wikan, cajon; Joel Miller, tenor sax

3) MP3: Ferromagnetic
Solo: Kevin Turcotte, trumpet

4) MP3: Habeas Corpus
Solo: Mike Fahie, trombone

5) MP3: Transit
Solo: Ingrid Jensen, trumpet

DOWNLOAD ALL (ZIP ARCHIVE)

Well, this was supposed to be the Big One. IAJE is our SXSW, our CMJ Marathon, and there isn't a single group performing at the conference who isn't hoping for a "big break" of some kind... whatever the hell that means these days. (And hey, it happens -- the Industrial Jazz Group's IAJE hit last year led to their appearance Amsterdam's legendary Bimhuis.) With audiences for jazz continuing to melt away, the IAJE Conference, for all of its flaws, is one of the few remaining opportunities for new artists to make some noise in front of people with open ears. Hence my ill-advised scheme to bring an 18-piece band there.

Our experience began somewhat inauspiciously, as stagehands approached the beautiful blond vintage Rhodes piano -- previously used in this venue by Nordic Connect's Maggi Olin, and just moments before by Christine Jensen's pianist, Dave Restivo -- and started to pack it up. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't do that, we need that!" -- me clambering over rows of seats trying to approach the stage, as the designers of the John Bassett Theatre apparently did not believe in aisles. No luck -- although I'd been assured last night that the instrument would be available for our set, apparently some other group had dibs on it. I guess I'm lucky the acoustic piano didn't get wheeled off alongside the Rhodes.

After that, it was just one thing after another -- not enough music stands, no one seems to know where to find more. No signal on the electric instruments. Effects boxes not working. No one can see their parts, no one can hear the people they need to hear. All of of the usual frenetic soundcheck stuff, nothing much to worry about -- until, approximately 20 minutes before we are scheduled to go on, I discover we have no drum music. We send runners all over the convention center but as far as anyone knows, it's gone gone gone. And before we have the opportunity to play a note of soundcheck as a group, they open up the hall and people begin to stream in. Begging the audience's kind indulgence, we have time to test about 30 seconds of our first tune, and take a collective deep breath. Then we're on.

The results you can hear above. I am incredibly grateful to the band -- and especially to Jon, it goes without saying -- for rising to the occasion. I am unbelievably appreciative of our individual supporters, who made it possible for us to travel to Montreal and Toronto in the first place. (It's not to late to join their august ranks, you know.) And I am moved beyond measure by all of the you who responded to this music, who stood up at the end to show your appreciation, who approached me afterwards to tell me that what we played meant something to you. It means a great deal to us as well, and all we want is the opportunity to keep on bringing it to you.

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Other perspectives...

David Adler:

I heard far less music at IAJE than in years past, but Darcy's Secret Society North gig was nothing less than explosive.

Amy Cervini:

I had seen the NY version of the band and hearing it in a bigger room with a huge sound system seemed to make the music even more exciting (if that’s possible) and cranked the band’s energy level.

Gregory Dudzienski:

  Tonight was the first time I have had the pleasure of hearing his music live (and from the third row!!!) and I am BLOWN AWAY.  I actually had to leave the conference and go to my room to absorb and process everything.

Matthew Wengerd:

He turned this place upside down; drawing from influences to which many a jazz musician refuse to open. Raucous and irreverent, all the while self-assured and honest.

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SECRET SOCIETY NORTH CO-CONSPIRATORS

REEDS

Erik Hove

Christine Jensen

Joel Miller

Chet Doxas

Carl Maraghi

TRUMPETS

Ingrid Jensen

Lina Allemano

Kevin Turcotte

Jimmy Rhodes

Jocelyn Couture

TROMBONES

Mike Fahie

Kelsley Grant

Barb Hamilton

Bob Ellis

RHYTHM

Sebastian Noelle, guitar

Gordon Webster, keyboard

Matt Clohesy, bass

Jon Wikan, drums

COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR & RINGLEADER

Darcy James Argue

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Our Winter 2008 Secret Society North Tour is now complete, but it's not too late to help support this effort by making a tax-deductible donation or purchasing a lovely Secret Society T-Shirt.

More photos below the fold.

Tourblogging 5

Well, The Madness is over, as is our first-ever tour. And in spite of some potentially disastrous mishaps -- missing drum parts, ailing co-conspirators, and oh, did I mention that Matt Clohesy's bass amp died the day before we set out on tour? -- everything worked out far better than I'd dared to dream. The band played my music with such fire and grace, I often found myself barely able to keep conducting -- I'd want to just stand there in slack-jawed amazement at the transformation of my feeble dots on a page into waves of glorious sound. As I said at our Montreal hit, the players in this band are some of the very best musicians in the world -- period -- and there is simply no way I can even begin to properly express my gratitude for all of the long hours of work everyone put into helping to bring this crazy scheme to fruition.

Here is a nice writeup of our final hit at Tranzac, from Carl Wilson (of Zoilus and the Globe & Mail):

As it turned out, the concert that night at the Tranzac by Darcy's Secret Society North band (the core of his 17? 18?-piece New York ensemble along with a pack of great Canadian players stepping in as, er, pitch hitters) was one of the most galvanizing illustrations of that development I've witnessed in a long time. While I've read and traded links with Darcy for a long while, I hadn't taken the time to listen to his music. So what I (and a substantial crowd of IAJE attendees and local musicians) got at the Tranzac came as a wonderful surprise. Fluidly and expressively conducting this "steam punk" big band (horns, reeds, drums, electric guitar and bass, Rhodes piano), Darcy rolled out one after another his incredibly smart, complicated, beautiful, firey and funky compositions. (In the lineage of, but distinct from, the writing and arranging of his teacher Bob Brookmeyer - see Ben Ratliff's profile in The New York Times.)

I told people afterwards that it was like hearing Duke Ellington and minimalism and Tortoise and Funkadelic and Elliott Carter and much else besides melding into one floating, shifting, dodging music, often with political themes (one piece was dedicated to Maher Arar), sometimes with Escher-like overlaps and spirals. I didn't take notes so I can't be more specific (though there were standout moments from saxophonists Christine Jensen and Chet Doxas [whose trio opened], trumpeter Jason Logue [who was subbing in for Lina Allemano, who unfortunately fell ill], trombonist Barb Hamilton, guitarist Sebastian Noelle, pianist Gordon Webster and drummer Jon Wikan, among others). But in short, this is music for people who fuckin' love music. This skinny, scruffy young Brooklyn dude's got it and he knows just what to do with it.

Carl also talks about our jazzblogging panel (with David Adler and David Ryshpan, moderated by Neil Tesser). I do want to clarify one thing -- I am sure that the gentleman who asked the question about increasing "appreciation" of jazz "fucking loves" Ellington and Mingus every bit as much as I do. It's just that the word "appreciation" carries a certain amount of negative baggage for me, especially at a jazz education conference. But I hope I didn't come across like I was pouncing on him in particular.

I'm currently on a WiFi-equipped train (cool!) heading back to Montreal, from whence I'll depart for NYC tomorrow morning. Once I'm back home in Brooklyn, I'll bring you all up to date with tales and photos from the road -- and most importantly, audio from our tour hits! But until then, a reminder that you can download MP3s of previous Secret Society performances from the right-hand sidebar of this blog, or by going to our live audio archive, which goes all the way back to our very first gig in May 2005 at CBGB. They are yours to download, mix, burn, share with your friends -- you know the deal.

I have been so gratified by the response the band has gotten on this tour. Obviously, this music means a tremendous amount to me, and knowing that it means something to other people is the fuel that keeps me going through all of these sleepless nights. (Well, that plus lots and lots of caffeine.) We got a standing O for our IAJE set and since then I've been just floored, and honestly a bit overwhelmed, by the number of people coming up to me to tell me how much they enjoyed our music.

I am especially happy that so many young players, still in music school, found something that resonated with them in our music. Your support means the world. And, well, I don't mean to get all convocation speech-y on y'all, but seriously, assuming some of you are reading this, I want to tell you guys something -- the fate of this music is in your hands. Not your teachers', not your heroes' -- your hands. Yours.

The jazz tradition isn't about elements of style or a particular harmonic or rhythmic vocabulary, and it's not about some bullshit notion of "progress" in music, either, where "progress" = "increasing density" -- it's about having the fortitude to get out there and make a heartfelt personal statement that only you can make. You want to honor the legacy of Bird or Miles or Trane or Mingus -- honor their searching, individualist spirit. Study the past, but make your own music.

(Okay, end of lecture. I didn't get to do any workshops at any schools on this run, so I had to get that out of my system.)

For about the past month or so, my internal monologue has been almost entirely dominated by the words "I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this" running 24/7 on infinite loop -- often terrifyingly out of phase, à la "Come Out." While it was all happening, everything was far too hectic for much introspection, but now that the tour is over and I'm on my way home, it's like "hey, waitaminute -- I actually did do that." It's a nice feeling.

Of course, there's no way I could have pulled this off without a lot of help, and it's time for some thank-yous. First off, the band -- Erik, Christine, Joel, Chet, Carl, Ingrid, Lina, Kevin, Jocelyn, Jimmy, Mike, Kelsley, Barb, Bob, Seb, Gordon, Matt, and Jon. You guys are the best. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. And if you do not know these musicians, fercrissakes go here, follow the links, and check then out -- almost all of them are themselves bandleaders, and their music is amazing. Thanks especially to Joel Miller and Chet Doxas for opening for us at La Sala Rossa and Tranzac, respectively, and to Christine Jensen for all her logistical help, and to Carl Maraghi for driving me up to Montreal. Thanks also to Bill Mahar and Christopher Smith for subbing during rehearsals, and again to Jason Logue for subbing in at the last minute at Tranzac.

Thanks to Jenny Koopman and John Bickle for hosting both me and (unexpectedly) Matt Clohesy in Montreal. Thanks to Caitlin Smith for not only hosting me in Toronto, but distributing our propaganda around the city, working the door and selling merch at Tranzac, printing replacement drum parts, and just being generally awesome. You should check out her band, Tiny Alligator.

Finally, my most profound gratitude and appreciation to those who contributed to our tour fund: Lori Kirchen, Jack Brown, David Rothschild, Mwanji Ezana, John Murphy, Gerard Hogan, Richard Kamins, Amy Cervini, Patrick Boyle, Steve Bellamy, Suzi Beyerstein, Janet Allen, and most of all, my folks, Gord and Nancy Argue. Apart from a very modest stipend from IAJE for performing the ASCAP/IAJE premieres, we did not receive any grants or any other form of institutional support at all for this tour -- and believe me, it was not for lack of trying. So I am grateful beyond measure to those people who believe in what we do enough to make a contribution -- this tour would not have happened at all without the support of these individuals. I should add that it is not too late for you to show your support -- those tour-related credit card bills will come due soon, so anything you are able to contribute is very sincerely appreciated. Remember that thanks to Fractured Atlas, your contributions to our Winter 2008 tour fund are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

And if you'd prefer something more tangible, those fashionable Secret Society t-shirts are still available.

I had a lot of people at IAJE asking me why I don't have a CD for sale, and the answer is simple -- I can't afford to make a studio recording. Yet. You can help us make that happen sooner by making a donation or buying a t-shirt.

Stay tuned for post-tourblogging and tour audio, coming up soon. It's been a hell of a week, and I can't wait to tell you all about it.

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MANDATORY DISCLAIMER GOES HERE: Darcy James Argue's Secret Society North's Winter '08 Tour is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Darcy James Argue's Secret Society North may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Tourblogging 4.1

Godfuckingdammit.

I had a long post about my Ray-Liotta-at-the-end-of-Goodfellas-like day yesterday, running around Toronto trying to make everything happen for our Tranzac gig last night, but just before I hit "Publish Now," my usually trusty laptop decided to shut down without warning. (I still had plenty of battery power left, so I don't know what's up.) I will try to recreate it for you later, but meanwhile, I just wanted to give a big shout-out to trumpet player Jason Logue for stepping in for a food-poisioning-stricken Lina Allemano at the very last minute. I had actually contacted Jason earlier about doing this tour with us, but... he was unable to make the rehearsals. Huh.

Anyway, he jumped right in and did an amazing job of reading the book down cold. You Torontonians are lucky to have him.

Thanks so much to all who came out to hear us during our first-ever tour. It's been a kick. I am off to try to actually take in some of this conference. Meanwhile, kindly check out this interview I did with Josh Jackson of WBGO. He's also got some audio of our IAJE performance of "Ferromagnetic."

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Our winter 2008 tour is now complete, but it's not too late to help support this effort by making a tax-deductible donation.

Tourblogging 3

What I said up on stage last night -- I was not kidding. Jon Wikan played our entire IAJE set without a single drum part in front of him. Those parts you saw on his music stand were piano parts -- Gordon Webster didn't need the "regular" piano book because he had printed his own parts from the PDFs I sent him. So Jon wasn't flying completely blind, but this situation was, ah, somewhat less than ideal, for a number of reasons that you can probably imagine.

Here's what happened: at the conclusion of the afternoon ASCAP/IAJE performances (which, incidentally, you can listen to here, thanks to WBGO's Josh Jackson), I asked everyone to hold on to their own music folders for the next three hours. This turned out to be a terrible idea, for reasons that are, in hindsight, all too obvious.

The fault is entirely mine -- normally, I am totally anal about making sure I know where everyone's music folder is at all times, but I am seriously running on fumes here. I had so many other things on my mind (mainly wanting to go catch at least some of the Altsys set with Donny McCaslin) that I forgot to sweep the stage afterwards to ensure that no one had left their music behind.

Jon wasn't the only one who didn't fully absorb my request for everyone to please hold on to their folders. (We are all very, very tired.) A few other guys in the band saved my ass by grabbing up all the stray books they could find -- but as fate would have it, the drum book was not among them. Further efforts to locate it proved fruitless -- we put out an APB for the folder, but no one seems to know what happened to it. I could have printed them from my laptop if I'd had it with me, but I didn't bring it to the conference today because I was instead carrying 18 fucking music folders on my back, you see. (They are extremely heavy.)

So Jon played our set almost entirely by memory. He was virtually flawless. I will post the recording so you can see for yourself, but you will not believe it.

Did I mention Jon is the most awesomest drummer ever?

If you missed the conference gig, you can catch us at Tranzac tonight (i.e., Friday -- not Sunday, as the Globe and Mail unfortunately has it) -- this time with freshly printed drum parts. Also, I am on a jazz+blog panel at 3 PM -- should be fun.

Gregory Dudzienski (The Ear of the Mind) is blogging The Madness. His writeup of our hit is all too kind.

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Our winter 2008 tour is in full swing. Please consider supporting this effort by making a tax-deductible donation.

Tourblogging 2

Okay, evidently I suck at tourblogging. Between traveling, rehearsing, setting up and tearing down, logistical organizing (aka herding cats), and some badly needed post-gig hanging in Montreal last night, the hours are too few and internet access too sporadic to post much right now. But I am taking a ton of pictures and will have a lot to say about the tour when I get back.

These past few days have felt like running a marathon at a championship pace. The band played astoundingly well last night -- putting together music of this difficulty with only three days of rehearsal is nothing short of miraculous. I am seriously humbled to be working with such unbelievable players, and also to have played for such a supportive Montreal audience at La Sala Rossa last night. Thank you all for coming out -- I could not have asked for a better homecoming. The recording turned out well, I think, and I will post it as soon as I am able.

Two very generous reviews, courtesy of the Montreal Gazette music blog -- one by the indefatigable Juan Rodriguez and one by Adam Kinner. There is also a nice preview of our Tranzac show by Dave Morris in Toronto's Eye Weekly.

After a long and apocalyptically windy drive, we are -- to the best of my knowledge -- all safely arrived in Toronto, and gearing up for our big day at The Madness tomorrow. For all you conference-goers out there, we will be premiering the ASCAP/IAJE works by Tim Hagans and Ayn Inserto at 2 PM in Constitution Hall, and then performing our own set at 7 PM in the John Bassett Theatre. Then on Friday, I am on the jazzblogging panel at 3 PM in the afternoon, and that night, we hit Tranzac with Tim Hagans "subbing" for Ingrid.

Watch this space for updates. I think I am having a blast, but perhaps it's merely sleep-deprivation induced delirium. I'm always getting those confused.

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Our winter 2008 tour is in full swing. Please consider supporting this effort by making a tax-deductible donation.

Tourblogging 1

We are up in Montreal and have put in two very long rehearsals this weekend. The band is sounding very, very good -- I feel incredibly lucky to be working with such incredibly dedicated and generous musicians. Still a lot to do before our final rehearsal tonight, so I've got to keep the posting short and sweet.

Matt and I are staying on Avenue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville with an incredibly gracious couple and their adorable, surreally well-behaved 8-month old baby. I was worried about the winter weather, especially on the drive up, but these past few days it's been freakishly warm -- which means there are perilously wet icy patches and puddles of freezing slush everywhere.

Saw Nordic Connect at Upstairs on Saturday (with Secret Society North's Gordon Webster subbing for an ailing Maggi Olin on piano), and Lina Allemano's quartet last night at Casa Del Popolo -- so yes, that means many of the players in Secret Society North are plugging away at our marathon rehearsals during the day and then going out to play two or three sets at night.

We've been lucky to have some very nice advance writeups -- here's one from Irwin Block at the Montreal Gazette, and here's a great post from Juan Rodgriuez, who I met last night at Lina's hit.

Hope to see some of you Montrealers tomorrow night at La Sala Rossa!

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Our winter 2008 tour is in full swing. Please consider supporting this effort by making a tax-deductible donation.