After a series of EPs released throughout 2016, Austin-based gonzo jazz guitarist Jon Lundbom and his Big Five Chord band are rededicating themselves to the LP format. Harder On The Outside (February 1, 2019 on Hot Cup Records) is the guitarist’s sixth Big Five Chord record and continues along an evolutionary path that nonetheless holds true to his post bop/hard rock/funk ideology and audacious outlook.
The plot twists in this installment involve a little bit about personnel and a lot about method. When we last cast a gaze on a new Big Five Chord offering, Lundbom’s band had Justin Wood on alto sax, Sam Kulik on trombone, Jon Irabagon on soprano sax, Bryan Murray on tenor/balto! saxes, Moppa Elliott on bass and Dan Monaghan on drums. Since then, the group has shimmied back down to a five-piece combo with Kulik and original member Irabagon departing.
More fascinating is how most of this music was made. Murray extracted samples out of prior Big Five Chord records (and other Hot Cup releases) and built beats from them, forming the baseline for new Lundbom compositions, and the new songs were recorded remotely between Murray and Lundbom. That’s all going to come out later in a project entitled Beats By Balto, Vol. 1, but nearly all the tracks on Harder are live performances of songs that will appear on the Murray/Lundbom collaboration.
Except, that is, for the first track (and one cover). Lundbom’s in-your-face brand of bop is manifest on “People Be Talking,” where cagey 6/4 rhythms are constructed by Monaghan and Elliott, the twisting theme leads up to Murray’s balto! eruptions, and brought down a notch or two when Lundbom does his own advanced note patterns on his retrofitted Fender Jazzmaster.
Like the prior tune, the drums/bass beat form the basis for “Basic Bitches,” but Lundbom doubling up with Murray ‘electrifies’ and amplifies the bass line and that balto! squawking and squealing over that ill-tempered groove is hard to resist. Lundbom’s own, chop-heavy solo is actually the jazziest thing about the song. An alternate version tagged to the end of the album doesn’t vary so much from the other rendition save from some production touches along the margins, but I’m not going to complain about hearing this song again.
Wood’s sax style is reserved compared to Murray and he puts it to good effect on the slower march of “Prednisone;” it’s still a rock tune at its core, something that’s underscored by Lundbom’s distortion filled turn. Wood and Murray share a lively back-and-forth on “Booberonic,” which despite is relatively straightforward melody was sourced from an Elliott bass solo form another song. Lundbom’s edgier spotlight eventually devolves into freedom.
There’s no edge at all in Lundbom’s tone for “Cereal,” his feathery flights make a strange connection with Elliott and Monaghan’s easygoing funk construction, but Wood on soprano sax one-ups it. Monaghan’s languid toms pace “Three Plus” and if you listen closely, you can hear three saxes, not two…Murray had overdubbed himself. He dives into a sax solo while Woods does, too, but they don’t get too overheated and mess with the wonderful groove that Elliott and Monaghan got going.
Frank Littig’s 1924 piece “Fussing Blues” was written for tenor banjo, but that didn’t stop the Big Five Chord from turning it into a vehicle for The New Thing that came out four decades later. Murray and Wood stay true to the blues-based melody for the head’ part of the song in the beginning, but beyond that, it’s a free-for-all.
In the end, though, it all comes back to the leader, his songs and the way he gets the best out of his guys. They play with abandon, precision, or a combination of both; it’s always right for the situation and never hackneyed. Playing creative and sometimes complex stuff but always with a wink or a smirk, they never take themselves too seriously. Though the lineup changed and so did the approach to writing the songs for Harder On The Outside, that’s been the constant of Jon Lundbom and Big Five Chord that’s been there for its fifteen year existence. Gratefully so.
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