Jacques Willis photo by Daniel Sheehan

 

Seattleites may have bumped into multi-percussionist Jacques Willis dancing up and down the vibraphone, keyboard or drums, with anyone from country wanderers Brent Amaker and the Rodeo to blues rock wailer Star Anna. The instrumentalist has also performed with Julian Priester, Mark Pickerel, Duff McKagan, Skerik … all kinds of crazy musicians. At the risk of utter corniness, one might say that he is something of a “Jacques-of-all-trades.”

 

Hearing of all these affiliations, one might wonder – what does he do with his own time, anyway? Well, here’s the thing – Willis likes to get electric. He likes jazz, but Willis really likes some fusion and prog. The two groups that he leads, Bubble Control and Jacques Entertainment System (both with saxophonist and ongoing collaborator Kate Olson), are vehicles for exploring the hyperkinetic worlds of tricky time signatures, twisted genre boundaries and really fun, nerdy stuff like 8-bit Nintendo covers, which just happen to suit the vibraphone in a special way that no other instrument can capture. 

 

Hailing from the great northern city of Anchorage, Alaska, where every musician in town knows one another on sight, Willis was scooped up into the world of Latin ensemble performance as a young lad by none other than his percussion teacher, the nationally renowned John Damberg. Damberg recognized that throwing the bright but inexperienced 13-year-old up on stage to mix a little freshness in with the usual cast of 40-somethings would not only provide valuable experience for an aspiring youngster but would most likely make for a prudent business move to boot.

 

The young Willis quickly proved himself to be worth more than sheer novelty. Sure, he started out as the token shaker boy, but soon he progressed to emperor of the shaker, and from there…congas! Timbales! Drum set! Anchorage was feeling smaller by the minute. All it took was one summer at Centrum in Port Townsend to leave Willis’ heart set on the big city. Having already fostered familiarity with a number of the faculty, who doubled at Centrum and at Cornish, Willis enrolled at Cornish College of the Arts in 1999. 

 

A lot changed for Willis upon his arrival in Seattle. “It was really an eye-opener,” he says. “There was such a large collection of people who could play, and they were playing so many different kinds of music. It made me feel like the low man on the totem pole, so I was really inspired to practice and get to work.” In retrospect, it was this diverse environment that led to Willis’ newfound fascination with electricity. 

 

After growing up absorbed in the world of acoustic instrumentation, the beauty of notes emboldened and brightened by the warm flow of electric amplification and modulation possessed Willis’ musical imagination. Notes from the vibraphone transmogrified through filtered pickups were only the beginning. Soon, Willis was knee deep in the wondrous world of synthesizers, firing neon moon trails from every corner of the sonic globe with nothing more than a press of a button here and tap of the keys there. 

 

This sudden development didn’t come a moment too soon, as after a few years, some realities of the musician’s life began to hang a little bit heavy.

 

After college, Willis found himself becoming a bit uninspired, despite a reasonable level of success and regular performance schedule. He says, “I was becoming really frustrated, questioning the quality of my work … we would finish a gig and everyone would be saying, ‘That was really good!’ and I would be thinking, ‘Yeah, but … was it?’”

 

It’s difficult to picture a vibe hammering, drum thrashing rogue such as this one experiencing an artistic lull, but sure enough, that was exactly where he found himself. The gigs got to be too many, the pursuit too serious, the sense of purpose too diluted … for a brief moment, it looked like Willis might go so far as to ride right off into the sunset, at least as far as music was concerned. In a shocking twist, however, just when things were looking most grim, he managed to cure his troubles by entering the world of submission wrestling.

 

Yes, indeed, a solid dose of good old-fashioned brute competition set the creative part of his brain straight. From the very first day that Willis stepped into Tukwila’s Ring Demon Mixed Martial Arts gym, something about the wrestling world’s intense physical duress and winner-takes-all spirit got Willis right back on the musical horse – or rather, got him back on after an enjoyable sabbatical. Willis took a much-needed break from gigging and settled in to a nice, aggressive four-days-a-week training schedule.Which, years later, has brought Willis to where he is today. Having long since returned full speed ahead to the world of teaching and performing music, he now enjoys a life of getting slammed to the floor by day and leaving the audience wanting more by night. With faithful best friend Oscar the dog at his side, Willis feels ever-increasingly confident about both the present and the future. A new solo album comes out later this year. Victoriously titled Jacques One, Music Zero, the album features overdubs on overdubs of the man himself playing a wide array of instruments, along with guest spots by some familiar faces. “It’s sort of a personal experiment,” Willis explains. “I figured if your goal from the get-go is to work with layering, you might as well push the limits of how far you can go with it.” Encouraging words, for Willis’ story is nothing if not evidence for the untold bounties that experiments can bring.