Artist: The Stryker / Slagle Band Expanded
Title: Routes
Label: Strikezone Records 8813 Artists Website: www.davestryker.com / steveslagle.com Release Date: February 5, 2016
UPC Code: 888295 383325 Track listing, track times:
Track Listing 1. City of Angels – Steve Slagle (Slagle Music BMI) 5:24 2. Nothin’ Wrong With It – Dave Stryker (D. Strike Music BMI) 6:07 3. Self-Portrait in Three Colors – Charles Mingus (Jazz Workshop Inc) 6:38 4. Routes – Dave Stryker (D. Strike Music BMI) 7:30 5. Ft. Greene Scene – Steve Slagle (Slagle Music BMI) 5:46 6. Great Plains – Dave Stryker (D. Strike Music BMI) 5:35 7. Extensity – Steve Slagle (Slagle Music BMI) 5:57 8. Gardena – Steve Slagle (Slagle Music BMI) 7:36 9. Lickety Split Lounge – Dave Stryker (D. Strike Music BMI) 7:44 Dave Stryker - guitar Steve Slagle - alto saxophone (soprano sax #2, flute #3, #6) John Clark - french horn Billy Drewes - tenor saxophone and bass clarinet (#2, #3) Clark Gayton - trombone and tuba (#3, #6) Bill O'Connell - piano and fender rhodes (#2, #5, #6) Gerald Cannon - bass McClenty Hunter - drums Horn Arrangements by Steve Slagle
Produced by: Dave Stryker and Steve Slagle
Executive Producer: Rick Simpson Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by: Chris Sulit at Trading 8's Studio, Paramus NJ Recorded December 14-15, 2015 Front Cover Painting: “Columbus Circle” by Gerald Cannon www.cannonmusicnart.com
On
their latest recording, guitarist Dave Stryker and saxophonist Steve
Slagle explore the Routes they've travelled, and the musical Roots
they've explored in their creative collaboration of several decades. The
Stryker / Slagle Band is expanded to include some imaginative and
innovative 4-horn writing by Steve Slagle in an all-original program by
Dave and Steve, as well as a Mingus masterpiece.
Some
good things go right on, others change but are still wonderful. This
terrific album is great news on both counts. What stays in place is that
Stryker and Slagle remain the soul-satisfying, deep-groove, superchops
players they've been across decades, and they continue to manifest their
extraordinary collaborative powers. These guys get each other, and you
hear it phrase by phrase over their careers. They've often been on each
other's many projects, and all the more to the point is the magnificent
series of quartet albums under the heading The Stryker/Slagle Band that
has produced some of the hardest driving, most musically adventurous,
and outright joyous music on the planet.
What
does change electrifyingly in this new project is that the
Stryker/Slagle Band's classic quartet format goes to an expanded lineup
with keyboard and three additional horns. Slagle has written brilliant,
multi-textured, engaging, flavorful horn arrangements that repay
repeated listening. You keep hearing new things. Superb keyboardist Bill
O'Connell is present on acoustic piano or Fender Rhodes on all but one
track, and three ace horn players join the mix: Billy Drewes on tenor
saxophone and bass clarinet, John Clark on French horn, and Clark Gayton
on trombone and tuba. Since Stryker is often a single-line voice in the
ensemble and Slagle doubles on alto and soprano saxophone and flute,
the tonal colors multiply. Driving the band with constant, ripping
energy are bassist Gerald Cannon and drummer McClenty Hunter, who also
weigh in with riveting solos Increasing
the richness of this dazzling project is that Stryker and Slagle have
written songs they associate with the complex geographical and personal
routes they've traveled to arrive in their present lives. Touchingly,
then, this album is also all about roots. Both coasts and the Midwest
come directly into focus, and the album's song titles and music movingly
and impressively turn all of that power loose.
(edited liner notes from Rick Simpson)
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