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Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
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“Not in a million years, man,” said saxophonist Jeff Coffin about imagining if he’d be inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. He was last year.
(Photo: Rodrigo Simas)If the DownBeat Critics Poll had categories for “most eclectic musician” and “working-est man in show biz,” there’s a good chance that Nashville-based multi-reedist Jeff Coffin would win both for his remarkably diverse output and frantic schedule through the final half of 2024. Just check the record.
On July 19, Coffin released his 20th album as a leader, Only The Horizon, on his independently run Ear Up Records label. Joining him on that typically ambitious, wildly eclectic project were the West African percussion group Yeli Ensemble and the Charleston, South Carolina-based Gullah Geechee. The Yeli Ensemble appears throughout Only The Horizon but factors in most prominently on the 12/8 groove number “Pharoah Rise,” Coffin’s homage to his saxophone hero Pharoah Sanders, and the 6/8 Fela Kuti-flavored “Bom Bom.”
Elsewhere on the album, a handpicked and expansive crew of all-stars make significant contributions: saxophonist Bill Evans; bassists MonoNeon, Tony Hall and Viktor Krauss; guitarists Keb’ Mo’, Cory Wong and Nir Felder; drummers Nate Smith, Keith Carlock and Derico Watson; pianists Jon Cowherd and Leo Genovese; former Béla Fleck & the Flecktones bandmates banjoist Fleck, bassist Victor Wooten and drummer Roy “Futureman” Wooten; and current bandmates in the Dave Matthews Band, drummer Carter Beauford, trumpeter Rashawn Ross, bassist Stefan Lessard and keyboardist Buddy Strong.
“There’s 42 people on the entire record, and so it was a lot to coordinate,” Coffin said. “But I think I made all the right choices.”
Three months after that album’s official release, in October Coffin was inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a longstanding member (since 2008) of the Dave Matthews Band. In the ceremony from Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, the reedman accepted his award from presenter Julia Roberts. “I got to hug her,” he giggled, recalling his brief onstage encounter with the actress.
When asked if he could ever have imagined back in the late ’80s that he would one day be inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, he replied, “Not in a million years, man.” Back then, he was a student at the University of North Texas, studying saxophone with Jim Riggs and playing in the highly touted One O’Clock Lab Band.
But he’s there now, and rocking. On Nov. 22–23, the Dave Matthews Band played two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, then participated the following night in Soulshine, a star-studded, five-hour benefit concert for hurricane relief and recovery at MSG that featured the DMB along with the Warren Haynes Band (featuring Greg Osby), Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats as well as special guests Robert Randolph, Trey Anastasio, Trombone Shorty, Mavis Staples, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks.
November also saw the release of a holiday album, This Year At Christmas, with yet another ongoing project of Coffin’s, Band Of Other Brothers (with bassist Will Lee, guitarist Nir Felder, keyboardist Jeff Babko and drummer Keith Carlock). This third BoOB release on Coffin’s Ear Up label (following 2016’s City Of Cranes and 2021’s Look Up!) features radical re-imaginings of holiday favorites, including funkified versions of “Silent Night,” “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” and “Little Drummer Boy” as well as a psychedelic interpretation of “Good King Wenceslas” that has more in common with the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” than the original Victorian Christmas carol.
Beyond all of that, Coffin busied himself by running his label, booking gigs for his bands, doing clinics across the country for Yamaha and self-publishing instructional books while teaching at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University.
“It’s pretty constant,” he said of his current activities. “I’m in my studio right now working on a new project that I recorded and another one I’m producing on West African drummer Ibrahima ‘Ibro’ Dioubate, who is leader of the Yeli Ensemble and involved in a project that I co-founded called AfricaNashville. So it’s challenging in a lot of different ways, but it’s all stuff that I really love to do. It doesn’t always feel like work.”
Founded by Coffin and dancer Windship Boyd, AfricaNashville promotes cultural exchange between African and American artists by hosting workshops, residencies, local performances and community outreach in Nashville and the surrounding area.
“I’ve been listening to African music since the late ’80s when I was at North Texas,” he explained. “It’s completely changed the way that I hear music, and the way I share it and the way I write it. So it’s inspired and informed the way that I approach music. And so learning from the tradition that these drummers in the Yeli Ensemble bring is really something else.”
Coffin met the Yeli Ensemble on their second day after arriving in Nashville, but they soon got to know each other through the process of recording Only The Horizon. Since then, the Yeli Ensemble has worked with students at festivals and colleges, high schools, junior highs and community centers. “Their reach is really seeping into the community in a beautiful way,” he said. “That’s one of the things that I’ve always felt that Nashville lacked — a very authentic kind of African music. And now we have it.”
Added Boyd, whose roots are in Nashville though she lived abroad in France for 25 years before returning to Music City in 2016, “I’m so thrilled to have these exceptional artists in Nashville. Recreating the unmatched energy and joy of their gatherings is such a gift to all of us.”
A poignant moment on Only The Horizon comes on “Bom Bom,” which features an extended solo by the late Albert Ayler-inspired tenor saxophonist Mars Williams, who passed in 2023 after a long illness. “Mars was a very dear friend,” said Coffin. “I met him a number of years ago at a festival in Colorado where he brought [his group] Liquid Soul. We hung out together and ended up talking gear and reeds and mouthpieces, as saxophone players tend to do. And every time I would go to Chicago, where he lived, I’d hook up with him. We’d go out for Chinese food or go to The Green Mill and just hang. We had a great friendship. He came to Nashville with the Psychedelic Furs to play at the Grand Ole Opry (Sept. 17, 2023, on a split bill with Squeeze), which was a trip. The afternoon before that gig, we had a Thai food lunch together and he ended up bringing his horn down to my studio to play on that tune, ‘Bom Bom.’ He was already going through chemo treatments by then so his energy was not great. But there’s a little solo section in the middle where he’s just screaming on it. I just loved him so much, man. What an incredible spirit. And I’m so happy that he’s on the record.”
The album’s moving finale, “Yeli Geechee,” which recalls African-American spirituals like “Wayfaring Stranger,” “Steal Away” and “I’m Going Home,” has guest Keb’ Mo’ turning in a stirring performance on resonator slide guitar.
“I’ve known Keb’ for many years and we’ve collaborated on various live things,” said Coffin. “So I called him up and said, ‘I got this tune I’d love to send you to see if you’d consider playing on it.’ So he listened to it and said, ‘I’m totally down. I love it!’ And I then told him, ‘Listen, I can’t afford to pay you like what you would normally get. What are you cool with?’ And he said, ‘Man, you remember that ginger tea that you made me last time I was at your house? That’s all I want. That tea is amazing. Let me come over and we’ll have some tea, we’ll hang out and we’ll do it.’ And it was magic watching him work. He would kind of carve these parts out as we’re sitting in my studio. And I would watch and listen to him react to the music in the moment, finding his place in it. By the second or third time through, what he had carved out was just magnificent.”
Elsewhere on Only The Horizon, Coffin is joined by his DMB bandmates on “Pickin’ Pockets,” which also features his Nashville neighbor Bill Evans on soprano saxophone. The funky opener, “Here We Go,” is grounded by frequent collaborator and former Flecktones bandmate Victor Wooten. Coffin plays an effected tenor saxophone on that tune, recalling the envelope filter-soaked lines of his hero Michael Brecker on 1978’s iconic Heavy Metal Be-Bop. Béla Fleck guests alongside the Yeli Ensemble on the funky “A Hat For My Beard,” which features Coffin overdubbing a horn section to rival Tower of Power. And Nashville-based pianist Jon Cowherd (of Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band) stretches out in McCoy Tyner fashion on the churning title track.
While Coffin admits to wearing a lot of hats these days, he said, “I try to wear them well. And I hope that I’m able to keep the bar at a certain level on all these different things that I do. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun also. I love composing, I love recording, I love getting projects out there and I’m constantly working on things. I’ve already got four or five records that are basically completely done. So I’m going to release a bunch of stuff on my label in 2025.”
Stay tuned. DB
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