From Springfield to the sun — A Journey to the heart of jazz
by Alex Pithie
“Hey kid, are you gonna pass me that wrench or do I have to watch you practicing guitar scales on it all day while the refinery manager is chasing my sorry ass to get this pile of steel pumping gas again? Maybe you should get yourself a job carrying Johnny Winter’s guitars around for him ‘cause you sure ain’t no natural-born refinery guy!”
Dan Phillips whispered a silent ‘hallelujah’ to that thought, acknowledging to himself at least that there was no way he was spending the rest of his life as a working stiff, inside or out of this boiling Texan oil refinery.
Not while he had fingers anyway, and not with this growing passion burning inside him to talk to the world through his guitar.
The grizzly old refinery engineer had unwittingly made up Dan’s mind for him, and it was with a huge sense of purpose he left his Dad and his summer job behind that year, heading back to school determined to find his voice in jazz - a voice the world would want to listen to.
A bright, intelligent kid with music in his veins already, courtesy of his choir-singing mom and a grandpa who was no mean fiddler, Phillips had abandoned the drum kit, his first love, messed around with the piano some and then picked up the guitar aged seventeen, only for a light to suddenly go on and blaze there for the rest of his adult life.
Somehow born to the instrument, within a year he was playing jazz gigs in his hometown Springfield, Illinois gigging with seasoned black players who knew his shortcomings but gave him space and helped him get a quick grip on the all-important changes and cool modulations. And all the time he was soaking up the important sensibilities of contemorary jazz, the seeds of his craft while woodshedding all his available waking hours.
Though still playing with an eye on the standard song scores but with a unstoppable willingness to learn, the young white kid was soon enough heading for the centre of the universe as far as jazz schooling went, enrolling at Boston’s Berklee School of Music sporting his raw but straight-ahead jazz chops.
Here the ‘free’ approach to improvisation and ‘thin ice’ improvisational techniques were young Dan’s focus as he approached the world of the avant garde, free jazz. Like a duck to water he took his first footsteps onto a musical landscape which he quickly knew was his home - his to conquer and to discover and to fill with his very own ideas and abstractions however ‘out’ they might seem to the casual listener.
Here in the same rooms and hallways and dorms that the likes of jazz guitar giants John Abercrombie, Bruce Cockburn, Al DiMeola, Kevin Eubanks, Bill Frisell, Emily Remler, John Scofield, Steve Vai, and Mark Whitfield had once hung out and studied, Phillips began clawing his way to the place his instincts demanded he go, working his fingers hard and long to soak up the technicalities he needed to master the craft of jazz improvisation, while laying the early groundwork for the style he could one day could call his own.
Despite some time out to find his feet and focus his commitment to a future in jazz, he eventually returned to Berklee and before graduating, took the stage at the Montreal Jazz Festival representing his school, thereby cementing his unbreakable connection to the future of jazz, as well as establishing himself as an intelligent guitarist committed to his craft and who maybe had something to say worth listening to.
It was quiet in the Village Vanguard as afternoon rehearsals wound down ahead of a new residency at the premier New York jazz venue of its day. The band leader stretched across the table and took a cigarette from the pack John Coltrane offered.
The band leader pushed his trumpet aside and took a drag on the cigarette.
“Sure hope this gig flies. Been strange days of late. Seems the people just love the same old songs, even you take the song and show them the tune inside out and upside down and swinging like a mutha and still hanging in there … they just don’t git the idea that there’re different ways of expressing a cool melody. Simple shit … hum-along humdrum’s what they want if they don’t have the ears for it.”
“I hear you man, but I just can’t go anywhere else. I got ideas and themes and harmonies and licks and melodies just tumblin’ through my head the second I see my horn, and I just ain’t … don’t ever gonna change. If it’s jazz or if it ain’t, it’s all I got to give - to say - and that’s it. It may not be for everyone, but go buy a radio if this don’t cut it for you, s’what I say. I’m just grateful for the cats who come out to hear us and that’s what keeps me high, them people knowing that it’s our art man, truth be told.”
The band leader took a deep pull on his unfiltered Pall Mall.
“Oh they’ll come, they’ll listen, they’ll swoon … you got your shit down big time brother, and whatever the stiffs decide, we playin’ shit they still won’t believe long after we gone. Or my name ain’t Miles Davis,” he grinned.
The pair would have high-fived it right there and then if you had told them that thirty years later young jazz musicians still hung on every note that Coltrane laid down with such passion all those years before.
Dan Phillips too knew the entire body of Coltrane’s work better than most kids knew their own neighborhoods, and he knew when he first heard it that whoever Coltrane was, he was talking to the young guitar player with a depth of musical intellect, integrity and intensity that Phillips recognized was to be a major part of his inspiration for the rest of his musical life.
He wasn’t rejecting the majestic power of Pat Martino or the joy of Wes Montgomery’s awesome harmonic powers nor Joe Pass or Charlie Christian’s naïve mastery of a young genre. But Coltrane came from a deeper place and the freedom in his styling and phrasing and vocabulary were a revelation to Phillips. And so with the discovery of Coltrane’s genius, his journey to the heart of jazz began in earnest.
“It’s what I hear is what I play. Not what I think people want to hear but what I want them to hear. But not whether they like it or not, but because they want to come on the adventure with me - searching, probing uncovering, experimenting … but all the time I am communicating on a level that the listener can maybe learn to love and groove with, identify with. Sure you need to have the best of the jazz standards under your belt, the tunes you know have stood the test of time and the methods they demand from your armoury. All that and a range of techniques that will carry you through any gig. That’s the craft, the discipline, the groundwork. And that’s what I teach my students today – learn the ropes, practice, master your instrument – then learn to fly!
“Then there’s the business of self expression, the joy of applying your emotions to your music in your own compositions. The fascinating process of building often abstract structures over which you can really express yourself – and the more outside the envelope you can do that, almost the better.
“Because what we do is art. Who says all jazz should sound the same or follow the same lines and structures and times? Not me. Not Coltrane nor Ornette Coleman and on and on. Where would Thelonius (Monk) have gone if he had listened to his critics telling him he was way off track, rather than ahead of his time?
“I and artists like me are not jerking off or showing off or full of shit when we say we are on a mission to make music that demands the intellect and emotional commitment be applied to the expression involved. The deeper I dig, the deeper my satisfaction with what I am doing … and yes, I know I am guided by Coltrane and players like him when I am getting near the zone, that place I want to bring my audience. And if I succeed with just my guitar im my hand and all my senses on full power, then just how much better could it get?”
As a young working musician Phillips did all the right things, first leading an ensemble in the Boston area before taking the giant and geographically correct step of moving to New York City to really kick off his performing career. There he continued to lead his own groups as well as perform in a variety of settings as a ‘freelance’ guitarist in the vibrant downtown scene working with the pick of the new voices in improvised music including Jim Black, Ben Street, Owen Howard, John Arruci, Chris Speed, Pat Zimmerly and Mike Sarin.
In 1996 he moved to Chicago and his chops took a major hit.
“OK guys, let’s just do it…or find it!”
Phillips felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck as his coach Chicago sax legends Ken Vanderbark and Fred Anderson issued the cue to go for it, to randomly pick a theme out of fresh air, with no form discussed or any idea what they were gonna play or where they were going when they even got started.
No surprise then that here he made the first of his recordings featuring original compositions, “Journey in Mind” and “Moment of Clarity” with help from the likes of Tim Mulvenna, Chad Taylor, Krzysztof Pabian, Phil Gratteau and Tatsu Aoki among others.
In 1997 he returned to school to hone his craft and to receive his Masters in Jazz Pedagogy from Northwestern University.
But his earlier taste of Asia had bitten and in 2001 he relocated to Bangkok to teach full time and act as Director of Jazz Studies at the celebrated Mahidol University College of Music.
In the Big Mango he gigged with the best of the best and led concerts featuring many first performances of his work before heading in 2004 to Tokyo, Japan for several months, developing his trio concept in the local scene there before returning to Thailand. This time he took up the post of lecturer in jazz guitar a new position at Rangsit University Conservatory of Music.
As cash dwindled and the Bigger World called, 2005 brought another big change and Dan accepted a position at Minnesota State University Moorhead where he will work as Assistant Professor of Guitar until the end of 2007.
“I got a fantastic buzz teaching the kids in Thailand and helping reveal the wonderful talent that is waiting here to be tapped in young Thai and Asian musicians. Sure the jazz establishment here is a little suspicious of new jazz or more abstract compositions and ideas. But I respect that and have concentrated on teaching the craft of jazz guitar playing, and where possible exposed my students to the more avant garde and the experimental too. Not to convert them, but to make sure they understand there is more to jazz than cheesy covers to be dusted down for hotel lobby gigs.”
Editor’s Note: Dan Phillips is performing July 2nd at the Auditorium at the Alliance Francais. More details here.