Search - Rob Ickes :: What It Is

Jazz, straight up, with a dobro

Nobody important | 02/05/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Take a standard hard-bop quartet of sax, piano, bass, drums. Now, add a dobro. That pretty much describes the sound of this album. On Hard Times, Rob Ickes sounded like he was trying to stretch a bit from the sound of his other band, Blue Highway, although he never strayed too far from the blues-based bluegrass sound. On Slide City, he bounced around between the Hard Times sound, and hard-bop, occasionally blending the two. On this album, he has all but abandoned bluegrass in favor of straight ahead jazz. Unfortunately, the backing band is competent, but nowhere near Rob?s calibur. Occasionally, while listening to this album, you may ask yourself, why bother, when you could just put on Art Blakey-- Moanin?, or Cannonball Adderly-- Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. Then, that soulful sound of the dobro comes in and the only man other than Jerry Douglas to win the IBMA award for dobro provides another lesson in what the instrument can do.Bluegrass musicians have been trying their hands at jazz quite a bit since the Grisman forays into Django Reinhardt territory, and taking a bluegrass instrument and inserting it into a jazz quintet may not sound all that new. Bela Fleck comes to mind as the most widely known example. However, while Fleck and some of his followers lean towards a world-beat/fusion/smooth jazz sound, Ickes sounds like he would be right at home on a 50s or 60s Blue Note release. Every once and a while, you can even hear a funk/soul-jazz influence. The album falters occasionally when it dips into the smooth/fusion realm, particularly on some slower numbers, but will still be pleasing to those who are turned off by Fleck-style fuzak.Further listening: There is not much precedent for this type of playing, but it isn?t unheard-of. Several tracks on The Great Dobro Sessions (on which Ickes also plays) place the dobro in a jazz context, and many other odd contexts as well. Mike Auldridge, of course, has been expanding the scope of what a dobro can do for decades, including some pure jazz, and his self-titled album has several examples of that approach (he also makes an appearance on The Great Dobro Sessions). Finally, some of Tony Trischka?s banjo jazz experiments come to mind, particularly those that can be heard on The Early Years. The oddity and eclecticism on those recordings made his work with Psychograss sound like a Flatt and Scruggs carbon copy. Trischka borrowed from hard-bop as well, but even more strangely, there was a dissonance reminiscent of free jazz to some of his playing."

Sometimes these fusion things really work

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 04/18/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Not often, but sometimes, and this is one of the better ones I've heard. Not really jazz beat or world jazz, but somewhere in the middle between jazz and bluegrass, with a nod toward jazz. This is a very enjoyable disc. It's not IMPORTANT MUSIC, such as, say, Henry Threadgill or Marilyn Crispell might make, but it's a heckuva lot more listenable and way funn(i)er. It seems to me that something genuinely new is happening--the heart of bluegrass transmitted through genuine jazz voicings. Quite a feat.I especially like Union Pacific, a wonderfully soulful shuffle, 50 Years Ago, a gorgeous little piano/dobro duet that fairly drips pathos, and Killeen, a faux Irish ballad marvously rendered, especially the soprano sax part. But there's not a weak cut in the bunch.Really, this hasn't left my cd player since I bought it a week ago. Check it out."