Self-released, May 2024
BY ERIC OLSON
In the boonies of West Colorado, a seven-story steel water tank stands on some foothills above an irrigated valley formed by the White River. The exterior looks rusty and forgotten, an unused scrap of railroad Americana, but inside is a wildly dynamic recording studio named, appropriately, “The TANK.” This reverberative wonder features on a new solo album from trombonist Andy Clausen of The Westerlies.
The album is entitled Few Ill Words: Solo Trombone at The TANK, Vol. 1. If you’re thinking that a solo trombone can’t hold its own on eight tracks spanning up to nine minutes a piece, well, you’d be forgiven. You’d also be wrong. The TANK’s unearthly soundscape fills Clausen’s songs with a lush carpet of harmonic interplay, so rich as to border on the bizarre. (See: Clausen’s take on “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka.) Notes can resonate in The TANK for up to 45 seconds.
It’s a sonic phenomenon that can’t be replicated even with advanced pedals – and Clausen uses some of those as well, most perceptibly the Eventide Harmonizer. This echoing effect precludes certain types of tunes and enables others. Songs with quick, abundant chord changes are a no-go; it would get too muddled. Clausen knows this and focuses Few Ill Words on measured, ruminative playing dedicated to musical heroes who have specialized in similar styles, among them trumpeter/composers Jon Hassell and Jim Knapp, Juilliard professor and pianist Frank Kimbrough, and trumpeter Ron Miles.
Central to everything is the guitarist Bill Frisell, a musical mentor from Clausen’s early days in Seattle and an aficionado of meditative pastoralism. After all, is there anything more bucolic than a seven-story rusted-out water tank in the Colorado desert? (I’ll wait.) Along with Frisell’s piece “Justice and Honor” – from 2001’s With Dave Holland and Elvin Jones – Clausen’s brooding, breathy playing shines on a composition entitled “March, Again (For Bill).” Frisell is a master of open strings, resonating guitar notes that endure as other plucking takes the reins. Clausen mimics this style on Few Ill Words, his reverberated phrases forming a harmonic sea on which the ship of melody might float. And speaking of melodies, he stretches out for some good ones here, including the most meandering head to Duke Ellington’s “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” in recent memory.
Depending on microphone engineering and the settings on Clausen’s Eventide pedal, his harmonic backing occasionally resembles a pint-sized strings section, other times an army of attentive synthesizers. With this amount of echo, things could easily get out of hand. Clausen keeps it in check, adding some tasteful low-end with his bass pedal. Wrapping things up with the title track, an anagram of Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers” featuring a spin on that song’s chorus, Few Ill Words is an adventurous outing from one of Roosevelt High School’s finest jazz products. Keep a look out for Vol. 2.
