Photo Credit: Mahdi Gransberry
Over the past couple years, sax player and songwriter Jay Anderson has slowly made the transition from Milwaukee to New Orleans resident. While he has found plenty to love about his new surroundings and has filled up his schedule on a weekly basis, he’s far from done being involved with his birth city of Milwaukee.
Not even New Orleans jazz and French Quarter fests could sway him from making a special return recently. He reunited with his longtime band Stomata—also featuring drummer Dave Schoepke and bassist John Simons—in Riverwest to record its sophomore album Crawfish and High Life.
“Stomata is really the heart and lungs of my musical body,” Anderson says. “When I play with them, it’s like a psychic connection and we just get it. It’s because of the level of trust… With all the material I’ve been thinking about and cooking up, it just made total sense.”
The album’s songs were shaped by Anderson’s experiences in New Orleans and Milwaukee, hence the references in the title. “A recording is a documentation of a moment in time,” Anderson says. “It’s like my own personal diary entry.”
For example, on the Paul Cebar co-write “Wildflower Honey,” which features Cebar on vocals, Anderson muses about a New Orleans cop that he has a crush on, who let him off easy. “Lan Dog” is about his roommate Lana, who is “one of the toughest and hardest party animals you’ve ever meet, that just keeps on going.”
“It was hilarious working with Paul,” Anderson says. “He’s so incredibly humble and easy to work with. And he’s a funny guy. Right before we tracked his song, we did a song with Genesis Renji and Paul was in a corner dancing around because he liked the groove. Him dancing in the corner to a song I wrote the groove for was almost just as much of a compliment as him agreeing to be on the album.”
|
|
Milwaukee is represented sonically with a multitude of guest musicians. The album also features Foreign Good’s Randy K, Rick Aaron, Mrs. Fun’s Connie Grauer, Wisconsin Conservatory of Music’s Mark Davis, Peter Roller, Don Witt and Dylan Ovanin.
“I got to hire some of my favorite artists from the city of Milwaukee,” Anderson says. “It only worked because of the level of talent in the other musicians in the room… I feel very honored and humbled by the level of talent that we were able to get in one room. And I felt honored and humbled by the level of professionalism everyone acted with and performed with.”
He also appreciated their blunt honesty. “One of the tracks, my saxophone solo was just gratuitous. The song was seven minutes long and I was soloing for four minutes on it,” Anderson says. “And my drummer said, ‘Hey Jay, you can say a lot less.’ So, let’s cut the track again and I’m going to say more in a shorter amount of time.”
The album further shows evidence of Anderson’s natural ability to weave between different genres.
“[As a sax player] you have to be versatile and learn everything,” he says. “It wasn’t easy and I’m still learning every day. I’m constantly being introduced to new music styles that sometimes I’m completely unfamiliar with. But at this point, I like the challenge.”
He’s taken on the philosophy of a New Orleans drummer he’s played with—“it’s all just music.”
“There are barely any styles that don’t have bleed-through to other styles,” he says. “So, I just enjoy playing music. I don’t really see it as jazz music or Latin music or hip-hop or swing. I don’t really see genre anymore. I see the song. If the song is written in a certain way, I’m going to play the song the way it’s written. I don’t even know what to call Stomata. I can’t really call it a jazz band. Can’t really call it a funk group. It’s all just music.”
The album features his recorded vocal debut, something he’s worked on in recent months in New Orleans. The jazz standard “St. James Infirmary” was one of the first songs he felt confident enough to sing. “When you’re a horn player in New Orleans, or any kind of instrumentalist, you have to sing something at some point in time,” he says. “Some of the people I’ve had the opportunity to perform with here have been incredibly encouraging in the development of my singing voice. So, if I’m going to do a new album about my experiences in Milwaukee and New Orleans, and singing is a thing I learned here [in New Orleans], then I wanted to incorporate that. And songwriting is something I also wanted to incorporate.
“It’ll be my first time singing in Milwaukee after I started studying singing. And maybe the audience will be surprised with my voice out, and honestly, the level I’ve been able to grow as a musician since I left.”
Stomata will perform with B~Free on Friday, May 3, at Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts at 7 p.m. Crawfish and High Life will be released on Anderson’s label VoodooHoney.
