Track By Track: Jeff Sipe Trio’s _Jeff Sipe Trio featuring Mike Seal and Taylor Lee_
Jeff Sipe first garnered renown in the early ‘90s as the drummer in The Aquarium Rescue Unit. Over the years, he’s also performed and recorded with, among many others, Jonas Hellborg and Shawn Lane, Leftover Salmon, Project Z (also featuring Jimmy Herring and the late Ricky Keller), the Zambiland Orchestra, Debashish Bhattacharya and Warren Haynes’ Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration. His new studio effort, out on Abstract Logix, marks the recorded debut of the Jeff Sipe Trio featuring Mike Seal (guitar) and Taylor Lee (bass). The eponymous all- instrumental album presents eight originals, along with covers of John Coltrane’s “Naima” and Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” By turns tender and invigorating, the album highlights the group’s range, guided by a bandleader who describes himself with a laugh as “a jazz drummer in the land of the banjo.”
Trumpets
“Trumpets” is real funky, real syncopated. It’s a Michael Seal tune that was written much slower but, over the years, you start playing stuff and it ends up getting quicker. I think that’s universal.
I met Mike Seal 10 years ago in Knoxville, Tenn., when I was invited to sit in on a gig. I thought he was one of the most amazing musicians I had heard in my life. His note choices, his temperament, his ear for harmony and his mastery of rhythm: He already had it. So I called him for some gigs and we’ve been working together ever since.
Alberta
Taylor had two different sections worked out and the three of us sat together with our headphones on to write and record on the fly. It goes interesting places and that is because everybody had something to say about it. Some of the melodies that came out naturally are quite beautiful.
The trio is able to go in a lot of different ways. It is able to be super funky or it can be super delicate. I like the ECM sound with Jan Garbarek and Keith Jarrett—and this kind of stuff is the ECM classical, American blend that we are trying to go for.
Banana Pudding
“Banana Pudding” is kind of an islandy-sounding song [written by Taylor Lee and Jaron Bradley]. I met Taylor in Wilmington, N.C., when I was down there playing with Lee Venters—a great drummer— who I went to Berklee [College of Music] with. Taylor was the bass player in Lee’s band—he was 19 when I heard him—and we started playing together.
It was an obvious choice. I thought Taylor and Mike would get along fine; they both have such huge ears and such a drive for playing that kind of soulful music.
April
There is a side of Mike Seal’s writing that is profound. Some of it reminds me of Ralph Towner in Oregon with Paul McCandless—that super high- end, soulful stuff. I’d like to see a whole album of that kind of stuff. That would just send me to heaven.
Lightning Man
This was actually a cartoon that Taylor Lee used to draw when he was a kid. So he put a soundtrack to it and it’s really fun.
Renee
This is another Mike Seal tune. A lot of his stuff has a classical feeling, a lot of it has the Appalachian feel, but it also has the sophistication of jazz harmony. This tune, like a lot of his tunes, combines so much of the greatness of all the genres.
Naima
“Naima” is one of my favorite songs of all time because it is so soothing and comforting. The magic of that melody is timeless, so whatever feel you put to it, the melody is always going to be gorgeous, no matter what. We had fun putting a fast rhythm underneath a slow melody. I have always wanted to play it, along with “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and a desert-island handful of songs that just put you in a magic place and never get old. “Naima” is one of those.
Home Town
Mike Seal is so prolific he doesn’t bother with the titles, so it’s up to other people to name the songs. Mark Chester, a friend of ours, named it—he thought it sounded like someone sitting on the porch in their hometown. It seems to be a favorite when we play it live. It really speaks to people and I think it’s destined to be among the classics. I think everybody is going to be playing it down the road.
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
In our live shows, so much is exciting and fast that we wanted to balance it out and offer some relief from the notes. This one came naturally one night, and we played it as tenderly as we could and people dug it. Then, we went back to uptempo stuff.
As a drummer, I like to accompany and I think there is an art to accompaniment. It is a fantastic world because it’s never the same twice. On this particular day, on this particular recording, it felt a little bit stronger, but sometimes we play it so delicate that it’s almost invisible. It’s a tune that we enjoy playing because it can be played a little quicker or it can be played really slow. It can be really dripping sad or it can be a little bit more melancholy. It depends on the day.
Happy Evil Happy
Years ago, I was playing with Aquarium Rescue Unit, and it was such a happy day. I was in my kitchen, I had breakfast, I was going out to practice in my garage and as I opened the screen door and stepped out, I was singing this tune in my head. It was one of those tunes that was gifted—all of a sudden, you are singing something and you don’t know where it came from. It was a simple little ditty and I decided I would play that for a while, but it was so happy it needed some contrast. So we put an evil section in there. Then, of course, we wanted to end up happy, so we come out of it all good.
