With a New Trio, JD Allen Channels an Eruption of Emotions

Interview, From the Magazine, JD Allen, Rudy Royston

By Philip Freeman I Sep. 27, 2019

JD Allen’s latest effort, *Barracoon*, is predicated on emotion more than charts.
(Photo: Robert I. Sutherland-Cohen)

“I had a feeling for music, but I had a hard time writing it down,” he continued. “I wrote all these different ideas, but it didn’t quite fit what I wanted. So, I stripped down a lot of things and said, ‘Well, I have a feeling. I have a skeleton and we’ll play the skeleton and we’ll push the feelings to the forefront.’ This is a ‘how I feel’ situation. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, this is a good tune, we’re gonna play it and people are gonna like it.’ It was like, ‘Hey, I have these emotions, and it’s hard to write down what they are—but I can play it because this is how I feel.’”

The title track is built on one of Allen’s bluesy, hook-filled melodies, as Cacioppo’s drumming seems to originate from multiple directions at once, and Kenselaar is strumming the bass with a Jimmy Garrison-like force. Later in the album, on “Beyond The Goldilocks Zone,” Allen heads into David S. Ware territory, digging deep into hypnotic phrases and unleashing long, screeching cries.

“The Immortal (H. Lacks)” was inspired by Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 non-fiction best-seller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which tells the story of a woman whose cells, harvested without her knowledge, became crucial tools in the advancement of medical science and made billions for pharmaceutical firms.

“Henrietta Lacks is a hell of a story,” Allen said. “I first became aware of it a couple of years ago, and it’s amazing that her cells are still alive. So, to some degree [Cudjoe Lewis] and Henrietta Lacks have a lot in common. It’s about bondage—that’s the connection between the two. I was originally gonna call the song ‘Wonder Woman,’ because she is the wonder woman. I mean, [we should be] thankful that science was able to have a lot of advancements because of her cells, but it’s also sad because she’s being kept alive for the advancement of Big Pharma, really, and her family hasn’t been compensated for that.”

The piece has the feel of Ornette Coleman’s ballad “Lonely Woman” crossed with something from his At The “Golden Circle” Stockholm trio albums from 1965. Allen wades deep into the blues as Kenselaar plucks out individual notes on the electric bass and Cacioppo flutters and dances all over the kit. “I feel like [Nic] really captured it,” Allen said, “the way he played the brushes behind it—me and Ian kept it a more ballad-like situation, more romantic, and Nic was busy, which is why he’s perfect for this particular trio.”

The raw emotional power of the music on Barracoon is a perfect fit for Allen’s unique working method. Rather than play multiple takes of a single piece, he gives the band all the tunes and they perform them as if onstage at a club. “We end up doing probably three or four ‘sets,’ five at the most. Then I go home and listen to what worked and what didn’t work, and I put it together,” he said, referring to an album’s program and sequence. “I tell the guys, ‘If you make a mistake, don’t stop, just keep going.’ And usually the mistakes are pretty hip. By the time the day’s over, we’re crawling out of the studio, but then there’s no need to go in the next two days, or the next week, because we’ve done it all in one day. Maybe extra days would be overkill.”

Allen has king-sized praise for his new bandmates, not only as players but also as people. “Ian has a swag about his playing, man,” Allen said, regarding New Jersey native Kenselaar. “He’s a great player to be so young, and even if he wasn’t young, he’s a hell of a swinger—I know when it’s time to swing, that base is covered. And he’s inquisitive; you can ask him to check things out that might be outside of his realm. He’s a lover of art, and film. ... I like to have people like that around me, where I can learn something from them, and I’m definitely learning a lot from him.”

“[Allen has] turned me on to some Don Cherry stuff, and Ornette, and a lot of different sounds,” Kenselaar noted. “He turned me on to some Moroccan music, and so much different shit.” The bassist recalled meeting Allen at a Jersey City jam session hosted by drummer Winard Harper. They were introduced by one of Allen’s friends—saxophonist Stacy Dillard.

“He’s been very influential on the past year of my playing,” Kenselaar said. “This newer music that we’re doing is reaching out into a little bit more of the avant-garde vein, but still coming from straightahead, swinging stuff. That’s been really fascinating for me, just to delve into that.”

Kenselaar switches back and forth between an upright and an electric bass on Barracoon; he plays the latter instrument on “G Sus,” “The Immortal (H. Lacks)” and “Ursa Major.” “I love the energy of [electric bass],” Allen said. “It’s a different sound. It can be very melodic and focused. It feels like another [lead] voice, but it can hold the bottom down at the same time. So we’ve been experimenting with that.”

Cacioppo is a fascinating drummer, and Allen seems to feel fortunate to have him in the group. The bandleader perceives differences between Cacioppo’s style and Royston’s style, too: “They have a lot of similarities, but [they have] different characters who are, more or less, their heroes. I always felt that the basis of Rudy’s [style] was Ed Blackwell, which ... is a direct link to New Orleans, so that was important. Whereas Nic, his main guy is Papa Jo Jones. That’s his man. Papa Jo Jones—and Milford Graves, Billy Higgins and Elvin Jones.”

The drummer, a Philadelphia native and son of two classical musicians, describes his influences as “any guys getting different sounds out of the drums.” He cited Papa Jo Jones, particularly his cross-stick technique, and Baby Dodds, whom he described as “the first guy I ever heard doing pitch bending with his foot on a floor tom.” And Cacioppo has been developing a pitch-bending technique himself: “I’ve been really into that. I don’t know why, but I don’t ever see anybody else doing it. Maybe they think it’s silly, but I love it, and it’s a whole different world of sound. Every drum has a world of sound within itself, and then the rhythms just come from the cosmos.”

For all the precision of his playing, Cacioppo’s keen interest in sound is what he pulls from avant-garde players like Graves and Ra Kalam Bob Moses. “It’s a sound thing with the so-called free or avant-garde. There’s a lot more sounds available, you know? Then you can apply that to the straightahead. So, if I play more open or so-called free music, that informs my straightahead playing, and the straightahead informs the more ‘out-there’ stuff.”

Allen’s trio has built a rapport both onstage and in the studio. The saxophonist, Kenselaar and Cacioppo all worked on trombonist Peter Lin’s sophomore album, New Age Old Ways, which was recorded in December 2018. About a month later, Allen took his trio into the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in Queens to cut Barracoon.

Allen says of his new rhythm team, “The one thing that they have in common, is they really have energy, man. They never get tired, the intensity doesn’t go down and they can go the distance. They have a sense of history, which I like, and they have a sense of adventure.”

That combination defines Allen’s aesthetic. He’s keenly aware of the past and sees himself as part of a lineage, which is why he still seeks opportunities to learn from veterans like David Murray. But he’s also living in the moment, expressing his feelings through music and passing on whatever knowledge he’s gained along the way to younger players: not just Ian Kenselaar and Nic Cacioppo, but also his sons, who are now picking up instruments. Barracoon is a snapshot of where JD Allen’s head is at in 2019, but where he’ll go next is impossible to predict.

“It has re-energized me,” Allen said of the Barracoon sessions and his new trio. “It’s made me take a look at playing with different players and trying to configure things to the new guys that I have now. It’s a work in progress, but I feel like we made a pretty good step toward the future.” DB