BIRD, ANDREW

"When I was in my 20s, I lived in an old apartment/hotel in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. It was a relic from better times (the 1920s), cheap and mostly occupied by retired Jesuit priests and nuns from nearby Loyola University. The gym had old 10-speed Schwinn bicycles on concrete blocks for cheap pelotons, an old swimming pool where operas were performed, and the steam room was a clubhouse for the local Russian mafia. Most Saturday nights I would stay up and listen to a radio program called "Blues Before Sunrise" on WBEZ from 12 to 4pm. The DJ, Steve Cushing, played old, rare 78 rpm records of blues, jazz and gospel. Then I slept for a few hours and woke up to Dick Buckley's program, also on WBEZ, where he played "Golden Era" jazz from the 30s and 40s. My preference for a particular era of jazz up to the mid-20th century has continued to change in my own work, most of which is not jazz at all.

I admit that under the banner of jazz we are blessed with some of the greatest moments in music history (Coleman Hawkins' "Body and Soul") and perhaps some of the worst (I won't name names). My point is that this American art form comes with a lot of baggage and lore that is hard to navigate. After gaining some distance from that time when I was under its spell, I wanted to dive back into jazz. Working with the masterful rhythm section of Ted Poor and Alan Hampton, we were walking a fine line. Each song had to try to combine nostalgia and jazz with a capital J, and that meant we played fewer notes and sang a lot more than I expected.

I wanted to try myself out as an improviser and see if I could get into the same solar system as Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins through a lifetime of listening and chopping wood. And speaking of those tenor saxophonists: I wanted to make my instrument do what a reed instrument does with breath and phrasing, but with my bow on a string and blasts of air through my vocal cords. In short, "Sunday Morning Put-On" is all about the sound."