Interview: Chicago Blues and Musical Heritage with Don Andrews of Spirojazz

Q: Your album City of Dreams is essentially a love letter to Chicago. What is it about that city which inspired a whole album?

A: Chicago is where I grew up and where many of my family and friends are. When I moved away, I was ready to go other places and see the world and I’m glad that I have. But the more time I spent away from Chicago, the more I realized that the intangible qualities the city had that I had just taken for granted. Anyone who has ever lived there knows that the people just have a certain way about them, an ease and confidence, friendly and well-adjusted, that is nourishing. Coming home for even a few days is energizing. And so, musically it is the same. This is where blues gave birth to rock and roll, where Muddy Waters south side, Howlin’ Wolf west side, everyone knows the story. And to so many artists have made the journey – the Stones, Clapton, the Who – Chicago is a musical home to them, and I believe a home to them in other ways. NY is fine as a place where many musical forms are put on display, like a museum I suppose, but Chicago is a place of origin, a place where dreams are born. It’s a working-class town that appreciates its art, its architecture, where working-class people love art and music not only because it’s the latest trend, but because they feel it in their heart.

The blues and rock are actually understood there, because they are actually the stories of the people who live there, it’s not hipster gloss. When you hear the Chicago blues or R & B, the instant you heart it it cuts through the bullshit and you hear clarity. Chicago is a place where it is actually understood that a man or woman who has worked a real job and raised a family might have something more important to say than some guy who has been cloistered in a college or has some sort of allegedly important appellation. The city rejects “class” superiority in a way that NY doesn’t or never could, because NY is built on that. Chicago is a place where a job is just that – a job – and what is valuable in life happens between real people. I miss it everyday.

Q: Why did you leave?

A: A whole lot of factors contributed to that, but one reason is that Chicago is too damn comfortable. I could be happy doing a lot of jobs in Chicago, but moving to New York meant that I had to push myself in ways that wouldn’t have felt natural back home. Because NY is such a highly charged place, stretching yourself comes more naturally because it’s just brutal to get through the day. Of course, it gets to be too much, because the competition becomes ludicrous and friendships tend to be a set of constantly shifting alliances. It gets tiresome. Yet, a certain amount of discomfort and uncertainty is helpful to an artist, something Miles understood because he was always creating obstacles for himself and his band. It’s like the story Keith Jarrett once told about Miles, how he loved to play ballads, so he made sure that he didn’t play ballads anymore. I look for experiences that are jolting and riveting to challenge myself as an artist because I don’t want things to sound the same on every album. I don’t consider innovation to be playing standards using atonal scales. It’s not a slam dunk contest. It’s about telling stories and to be a great story teller you have to live life and have a point of view.

Q: Are each of the songs a homage to a particular Chicago music style? How did it come about?

A: I didn’t have to consciously evoke any musical styles, I just tried to stay in the pocket of what I had been comfortable growing up with and as a result, it sounds like Chicago. I focused mostly on themes or experiences that I had in Chicago, or event in my life or in the life of the city. Growing up during the Civil Rights movement in Chicago had its ugly moments, but Chicago’s redemptive moment is captured at the end of the album. Other songs were based on more personal moments, friends, family, experiences – all with ties to Chicago. Again, they are stories or statements, and I chose the vehicle to do it based upon what I was trying to get across.

Q: Are there any Chicago artists in particular that you are paying tribute to? If so, which ones?

A: Not consciously, but when I listen now, I guess hear plenty of Herbie Hancock and Ramsey Lewis, Gene Ammons. Still, I guess I don’t draw distinctions like that; there is plenty of music that I heard growing up in Chicago that I still associate with Chicago. I heard Booker T. on a soundtrack in a movie theater in Chicago and I associate him on that basis. He’s from Memphis, but I guess everyone remembers the time and place that they heard something that truly connected with them. So Sly Stone doesn’t just belong to New York; he belongs to all of us and his music was heard everywhere in Chicago when I was a kid. Jimmy Smith, Brian Auger, no matter where you were, if you played the Hammond what they did stayed with you. Of course, when Chicago artists heard these guys, they changed things around a bit and it took on a slightly different character.

Q: Do you collaborate with other musicians in your composing process? Or is all that on your own?

A: No, not on the last few projects. I am not ruling out collaboration in the future, but for the last four Spirojazz albums I was pretty clear about the direction I wanted to take and how I could get there. I’m planning a few collaborations down the road and taking things out there in terms of live performances, but it will likely have a different character, and it should.

Q: Which of the tracks on City of Dreams have the most meaning for you?

A: Because they are all stories, they all mean something. “Rock Me Daddy” is a homage to Booker T., who influenced me so much when I was a kid and made me want to play the Hammond. But it is set in a Chicago blues framework and the piano is definitely in the Chicago style, as is the guitar. And it is dedicated to my late father who first brought the Hammond into the house that my brothers and I shared. My Dad was a working-class guy who loved music and film and read great books not because he got some kind of special degree or thought he would impress people with it, but because he really loved it all. In “‘Lil Brother’s Groove,” I reworked a song that my sister-in-law Gilmary, a wonderful composer in her own right wrote for my brother, and I jazzed it up a bit. “Amit’s Blues” is dedicated to a dear friend of mine, a real lover of Chicago blues, who lives around the corner. “City of Dreams” speaks for itself, but it is about that redemptive moment for Chicago that came when a native son was elected to be president. I don’t like to discuss politics and have no particular affiliation. But there is no question that the impact was profound on the city and its people and will always be there. And since this album is about dreams, this was a pretty big one for a lot of people.

Q: What is it about Chicago’s music scene, past and present, that appeals to you so much?

A: I am a pretty big believer in serendipity, being in the right place at the right time. So there was 5th century BC Athens, where Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Euripides were all contemporaries and they changed the course of western civilization, just one generation in Athens, thousands of years ago. And so Chicago was the musical Athens in the ’50s and ’60s, just like Vienna was in Mozart’s time. Muddy, Wolf, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, all the cats at Chess records – they absolutely changed everything. And just like people didn’t completely figure out the impact Aristotle had until about thirteen centuries later, it’s inconceivable to think about where music would be if Muddy hadn’t plugged in. No Beatles, no Stones, worse still, none of the cultural shift that went with it.

Music was the primary form of social protest and change for that generation in a way that it isn’t now. So going back to Chicago now, there are a few guys playing in blues bars who were there when it all went down, but their numbers are dwindling. I have a lot of footage captured of these guys that I will release one day, but the trend in the blues bars is less about creating something new than preserving the past. But although there really isn’t anything new – at least right now – preserving the building blocks is what makes creative spark possible. The Renaissance happened when the artists and writers found the old forms and built on that. I think that the next creative wave will occur when people go back to those musical forms that landed in Chicago during that great creative period and hear something new in them. They will re-interpret their discovery and the next great musical period will begin. The kids are getting warmer; they’ve now backed up to the early ’60s and tried to emulate some of the early ’60s garage bands. They just need to go back a little further to find the real treasure and then when they hear it in their own way, something pretty cool may happen.

Q: Your latest effort, Space and Alienation, ventures beyond jazz and into the outer limits of the genre. There’s no question that refuse to fit into a certain mold. Do you feel that the blues is held back by the same limitations by purists like the mainstream jazz scene is?

A: Sure, there is some of that. There were some guys back there, stuck in the past, that would even get all bent out of shape about who the blues belongs to and who should be entitled to play it. But the last I checked, once you put the idea out there anyone can and should pick up on it, and musicians should never set boundaries. We’re not trying to create some kind of exclusive musical club here or what should be entitled to be called jazz or blues or worse yet, who should be entitled to play it. And Muddy and Wolf got over that, because they played with the Stones and with Clapton and passed their legacy onto them. But there are still players I know back in Chicago who are mad about that as if Muddy “sold out” when he played with Johnny Winter or Eric Clapton. That’s just jealousy and nonsense and those people don’t know what they are talking about. Freddie King could have had a 100 sons, but no one would continue his work more loyally than Eric Clapton. And Jimmy Reed comes alive every time Keith Richards picks up a guitar. The truth is that with blues as opposed to jazz, the purists have already lost the war; otherwise, we wouldn’t have rock and roll. With jazz, the purists are losing because their numbers are dwindling and although jazz will live on, it will not be in a form any of them approve of. In the end, music to be powerful, needs to be about the people who are alive right now. Otherwise, we’re just collecting relics. So to the extent blues and jazz adapt and change – and they will – they will find real vitality.

Q: Are there any particular spots in Chicago that are reflected in these songs?

A: Chicago is all over this record, but it’s more about the Chicago I remember than the Chicago that exists today. I guess to be fair, I have taken the old forms and updated them and gone in kind of a new place with it. But this record is based upon the experiences I had in the Chicago of the ’60s and ’70s, re-interpreted in 21st century musical language. For something to survive, you really need to find a way to re-interpret it for the next generation. And so I am telling the story of those times in a way that hopefully the people of today can understand. Those forms still have so much life in them and those memories are so powerful, we have not begun to exhaust the life in them. Every time I go back and listen, I hear something new.

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