Jeremy Dutton’s Debut in the Spotlight

By Bill Milkowski I Aug. 22, 2023

Since moving to New York in 2012, Houston-born drummer Jeremy Dutton has been highly in-demand.
(Photo: Jason Rostkowski)

He’s played on Blue Note recordings by pianist James Francies and vibraphonist Joel Ross while also making sideman appearances with pianists Vijay Iyer and Gerald Clayton, saxophonists Chris Potter, Immanuel Wilkins, Melissa Aldana and Maria Grand, trumpeters Keyon Harrold and Marquis Hill, guitarist-singer Camila Meza and bassist Harish Raghavan.

For his auspicious debut as a leader, Dutton recruited some prominent new voices on the New York scene, including trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, saxophonist Ben Wendel and guitarist Mike Moreno as well as the aforementioned Francies and Ross. Co-produced by fellow Houston drummer Kendrick Scott, who like Dutton is a proud alumnus of H-Town’s famed High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Anyone Is Better Than Here is a fully realized, startlingly original first statement from a visionary drummer-composer.

Dutton is part of a rich lineage of Houston drummers, starting with his teacher and mentor Sebastian “Bash” Whittaker, the first blind student to graduate from HSPVA, and continuing with fellow HSPVA alumni Scott, Eric Harland, Chris Dave, Reggie Quinerly and Jamire Williams.

“It was really inspiring working with Sebastian,” said the 29-year-old Dutton. “I was inspired as a young person by just how seriously he took the music and his depth of knowledge about everything. He also passed on his love of Art Blakey to me. In a more technical sense, we studied a lot of rudiments and a lot of feel-related things about playing the ride cymbal and some brushwork. All of it was amazing. He could play brushes like nobody else.”

Dutton draws on Whittaker’s example by supplying some sublime brushwork on two ballads from Anyone Is Better Than Here: “Mirrors” and “Dreams,” the latter an atmospheric showcase for Akinmusire. Dutton’s more conceptual side comes across on two ethereal pieces that bookend the album: “Opening Credits” and “Closing Sequence.”

As he explained, “‘Opening Credits’ was a small something that I had written down many, many years ago. During pandemic time, I was going through old files and found that. Originally, it was just a piano figure and there was a recording of me playing it, somewhat poorly. But it was a reminder, and when I heard it again I sat down at the piano and started messing with it until that melody came around, and suddenly it was a whole thing. ‘Closing Sequence’ was just a completely new composition I wrote during the pandemic. And for me, it’s about a level of endurance and just a sort of quiet calm that can bring you through moments of uncertainty.”

Sequencing “Frenzy” right after the mellower “Dream” was intentional. “The contrast between those two things was on my mind,” Dutton said. “‘Dream’ is about this intention of where you want things to go in this sort of ideal place, then ‘Frenzy’ is about that sort of need, the urgency of feeling like, ‘I have to get to this place, I have to achieve, I have to strive.’ I think they play well right next to each other.”

Other pieces like “The Mother,” a meditation on the Daoist concept of nature, and the Weather Report-ish “Truman (reborn),” based on the 1998 satirical comedy-drama The Truman Show, reveal the full scope of Dutton’s creative reach. And in terms of sheer playing, he unleashes on the kit with controlled abandon on tunes like “Vulnerable,” “Unfolding,” “Waves,” “Shores” and “Shifts” with a power-precision pulse that brings to mind Tony Williams and others influenced by that style of playing, including Jeff “Tain” Watts, Brian Blade, Eric Harland, Tyshawn Sorey, Marcus Gilmore, Justin Brown and Chris Dave.

“Marcus Gilmore is definitely a source of inspiration to me,” Dutton said. “He is one of the people who is really pushing things forward. And for me, it’s a very logical extension of things that have been happening for many, many years, starting with Tony Williams, who did so much in such a short time.

“But one of the things Tony did that he doesn’t get a lot of recognition for is he had a way of merging this sort of avant garde playing that he was doing with a more traditional, standard-y context. And in his approach to playing time and also soloing and even comping, as well, you start to get this real blending of this sort of free undercurrent while also still using the ride cymbal to push things forward. Plus, the precision and the power of how hard he hits are important parts of that Tony esthetic.

“So for myself and Marcus, Chris Dave and Justin Brown and all the guys who are out here right now playing these super-intense grooves and executing these super-syncopated, off-kilter rhythmic feels in such a precise and powerful manner, I think the context and the way we’re doing it maybe sounds new, but in my mind it’s directly related to everything that’s happened before.” DB