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Tin Hat
BAG Production :: 2010

Modern melancholy, modern jubilation, modern swagger and modern volatility – for the last few years Tin Hat has reminded us that things aren’t exactly as they used to be.
           -- downbeat

The 2010 edition of Tin Hat: Mark Orton, Carla Kihlstedt, Ara Anderson, Ben Goldberg

I actually played on the very first Tin Hat Trio concert ever!  Rob, Mark and Carla had me as a guest at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco.  I don’t even want to guess what year it was.  From the very first I could hear a beautiful open-minded approach.  At the time, a lot of musicians were enjoying playing with people from other musical worlds – “free improvisers” playing with “jazz” musicians, etc.  When Tin Hat Trio came along, they had everything in their bag – grooves, beautiful melodies, all kinds of harmonic motion, “free” playing, etc. – and you could hear that for them it was all music.  They did not feel the need to identify with a particular camp.  So that was very refreshing.  When Rob left the group I was very happy to be invited by Mark and Carla to join. It was exactly the right time for me, and it’s been a ball ever since.  For a while, Zeena Parkins was the fourth member, then later Ara joined us. I have learned so much about music from playing with these guys, it has completely changed my perspective.

In 2007 we made The Sad Machinery of Spring.  We were meticulous in the studio to create just the right sound -- a hallmark of Tin Hat records.  But there is another side to the group: unbelievable live performances.  When you're on tour things loosen up night after night, anything can happen, and then it's gone forever -- unless you are lucky enough to have recorded it, which brings us to Foreign Legion. We had recordings from gigs all over the place, and when we listened to them we found a couple of gems: the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley and a festival on the island of Mallorca.  

Mark did the mix at his studio in Portland so he probably spent the most time with these tapes.  Here is what he says:

Foreign Legion includes material from the entire history of Tin Hat, from the title track -- one of the first things we ever played as a group -- to new songs that have never appeared on record.  Berkeley’s Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse has always been one of our favorite venues -- we consider it our home town club, and I think you can hear something special in the lovely performances recorded there.  The other half of the disc comes from a concert in Mallorca -- a really fun show in a far-flung corner of the world.  They put on a great festival there, we had been well fed and provided for, and we were lucky to have it recorded. Even though our other records reflect our interest in sounds you can only get in a studio, listeners know that Tin Hat has always been about live performance -- the kind of group improvisations and chances you take in front of an audience -- so I'd say the live record has been a long time coming, and I couldn't be happier with the results.

Go Home
BAG Production :: 2009

Here is the first record on my new label, BAG Production Records (BAG 001)

The band is
Charlie Hunter, seven string guitar
Scott Amendola, drums
Ron Miles, cornet and G Trumpet
Ben Goldberg, clarinet

Charlie, Scott, and I had been talking for a few years about recording together, and saw an opportunity when Scott and I would be at the Jazz Standard in New York for a week in April, 2008.  Ron Miles was in town with Bill Frisell, and he joined us for two days at the Bunker studio in Williamsburg.  I provided the tunes and a lovely time was had by all. Later, when I was thinking about it, the name Go Home came to me because the sound of the group is so direct and honest that for me it goes back to when I was little and music hit me so hard.  Also, in Get Back on Let It Be, which I listened to a lot back then, I believe Paul says "go home."

This CD combines the studio session with some tracks from a live recording made by Jeff Cressman at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, California in the fall of 2008.  I think the cd captures the unique spirit of the group, with inspired performances, unstoppable grooves, and a beautiful sound throughout, thanks to Mark Orton's mix and mastering by Jon Cohrs of Spleenless Mastering.

Molly Barker took the photograph on the cover and Lynda Nakashima designed the package to create a lovely debut for BAG Production Records.

Ben Goldberg Quintet
Cryptogramophone :: 2006

From the liner notes:

This music is for Steve Lacy.  It was written in 2004 after I learned that Steve had cancer.  I was thinking and thinking about him and I wished there was something I could do so I wrote down all the music I could and I kept thinking of Steve and hoping for the best.

Once Steve Lacy gave me a lesson, I mean I went over to his house for a lesson, I had already been doing my best to draw a lesson from his work.  It was 1985, for some reason I had been in Paris a lot and when I was there I would go to the Sunset and listen to Steve and politely beg for a lesson.  Finally he relented, maybe so I would stop bothering him and also saying, “I have a soft spot for clarinetists.”

I should say that back then I had a hero and it was Steve Lacy.  I mean the kind of hero where you wish you could do what they do.  This was mostly based on the evidence of “Evidence,” a record he made in 1961 with Don Cherry.  I had to listen to that record about four times a day, and though I was in the dark I memorized Steve Lacy’s solos and tried to figure out what he was doing.  The note that lifts all other notes up into the world. Punctuation. The line that’s backwards and forwards and the pop of logic more logical than logic.

At the lesson Steve said he wasn’t really a teacher so maybe we could treat this like a visit to the doctor: play a duet and based on that diagnosis he would prescribe something.  Evidently the fundamentals needed vitality.  Steve said you had to know the difference between materials and material and suggested two lines of inquiry concerning materials.  These were exercises for uncovering the basic elements.

He talked matter of factly about the invisible, and I caught a glimpse of what an artist does.  He said, “If you stay in the dark long enough, eventually you’ll see the light.”  He gave me a copy of “Hocus Pocus” and a book of rhythm by Kenny Clarke and I was so happy I wrote a poem and worked on those exercises for ten years.  The exercises were strong medicine – the first time I played them I got dizzy and almost fainted.

In 1992 I was preparing a concert of Steve’s music and he sent me a fax of “Blinks.”  There was a note at the top, and when I started writing this music the note became a song: “Dear Ben, been out of town.  Probably too late but here’s Blinks anyway.  I am hardly here these days.”  Blinks is my favorite Steve Lacy song, it gets the up and down just right, plus the poem was on it so a few of the pieces here are based on “Blinks.”

I had booked the studio for June 7th; Steve passed away June 4th.  I was so sad, a lot of people were calling each other up.  We had a rehearsal and then went and made the record.  It was a sad time.  The title comes from a poem by Robert Creeley.  Steve Lacy wrote a song called The Door and once he sent me a postcard signed “Chapeau.”  Kenny Clarke sat on a chair.  In honor of the durability of Steve’s music I once made up an exercise called Pursuit of Facts.

Pursuit of Facts.  A fax arrived, with a poem on it.  I am hardly here these days.

Ben Goldberg

October 2005

Ben Goldberg Trio
Music and Arts :: 1998

Trevor Dunn on bass and Elliot Humberto Kavee on drums.  We had a trio for a few years and tried a lot of different ideas on how to play the melodies I was writing.  There was one memorable Knitting Factory tour of the East Coast where we had to keep reminding audiences that we were not New Klezmer Trio, and where I learned what a truly unique and brilliant individual Elliot Kavee is.  I think this record captures the essence of what we were doing very well, as does the cover painting by Molly Barker.  Recorded at Annie's Hall in Berkeley by Jeff Cressman.

Ben and Kenny
33 1/4 :: 1993

Kenny and I recorded this in my living room with Jeff Cressman at the controls.  I think it at least partly reflects Kenny's beautiful homemade philosophy.  Kenny designed the actual packaging as well as the cover images and it was printed at his mother's printshop.  The title is from Robert Henri's The Art Spirit, a book introduced to me by my brother Adam that had a deep effect on many of us at the time.