The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and pianist Taylor Eigsti. A prolific leader and sideman, Eigsti has played with a massive cross section of the jazz landscape – most closely Terence Blanchard, Gretchen Parlato, Ben Wendel, Kendrick Scott, and others. His new album, Plot Armor, was released 1 March via GroundUP Music.
“At some point, we’ve told each other secrets.”
If you’re wondering why music as complex as Plot Armor sounds like falling off a log, sheer musical experience doesn’t cut it: it’s the fact Taylor Eigsti has known these musicians absolutely forever. Which means 90 minutes on Zoom with him is an anecdote-stuffed riot.
Touring with singer Gretchen Parlato, Eigsti would successfully dare band members to do nutty things, like giving the sign-holder at baggage claim an awkward, four-second hug, or daring someone to go to a random table in a restaurant and excruciatingly read their setlist top to bottom, as if it was tonight’s specials.
Saxophonist Ben Wendel – who Eigsti’s known for more than two decades, and also appears on his new record – has gotten him back. (Let’s just say: a compromised Do Not Disturb sign, and a covert, comically manipulated video of Eigsti rushing down to the lobby, flustered.)
This fraternal energy may lead to yuks on the road, but it also leads to uncommon synergy and solidarity within the music. Said new album, Plot Armor, is enriched by audible layers of musical siblinghood, and the five-dimensional inside jokes that follow. Through this lens, even the titles, like “Let You Bee,” “Look Around You,” and “The Rumor,” faintly suggest this camaraderie.
The music, filled with guests in every instrumental slot (Parlato and Becca Stevens on vocals, Wendel and Dayna Stephens on saxophone, et cetera) bears this out, in its conceptual concision, zest for adventure and fizzy sense of chemistry – and that’s to say nothing of guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Harish Raghavan, drummer Kendrick Scott, and other heavyweights.
The ideas-laden Plot Armor bears an atmosphere of maternal grief, strings, and singers salving the emotional sting. Read on for an interview with Eigsti that elucidates this work.
UKJazz News: How would you characterise the bridge between [2021 album] Tree Falls and Plot Armor?
Taylor Eigsti: I see them as connected in a lot of ways; it’s kind of a continuation of that record, sonically.
But initially, I didn’t know what I wanted to do on this one. I thought I’d maybe go smaller and more tourable, or do something crazy big; it turned out to kind of be the latter. Eric Lense from GroundUP told me, “Why don’t you do another one that tells the next chapter in that story, and builds on that album?”
So, I got the idea to do that. I think given how expensive [Plot Armor] was [slightly exasperated sigh], the next album is going to be solo piano, done on the iPhone. You know, get that sucker done in a couple of hours.
To finish something that had this many moving parts… it’s just really satisfying to be done with it. Hopefully people will enjoy it. I’m really proud of it, but really sick of it too, because I’ve heard it like 35,000 times, in every possible sequence imaginable. But just like anything else that you listen to 35,000 times, it feels new again when I listen with someone else. Releasing it, it’s like a big, vicarious listen now.
UKJN: You made it, you lived with it times a million, now you have to talk about it. I imagine that’s a little tedious.
TE: Talking about the record is actually really fun. I really care about the process of making a record that is so detail-oriented, and this album was more detail-oriented than Tree Falls.
Specifically, I wanted some things to be blurry, sonically. Sometimes, engineering can turn into a thing – especially when they’re mixing – where the idea is to have every little thing clean. And I wanted this hybrid that felt more 3D. So, there are certain places where instruments turn into other instruments. Like, a viola will turn into a sax, which turns into a flute, which turns into a reverb trail – things like that.
Playing around with the details, and obsessing over them, I think we spent 70-plus days in the studio. That was my tally.
UKJN: That’s quite a lift.
TE: It was a massive amount of work, because I was on the road the whole time too.
I pretty much started the process of this record when my mom passed away. Incidentally, two days later, I was supposed to go in and start recording this. She was extremely supportive of my music and all that.
[In the midst of the pandemic], I didn’t plan her service for a year, and I could hear her telling me, “Just finish this thing first.”
I dedicated the whole record to her, but there are two tunes, especially. On one [“Fire Within”], I actually took her words and turned them into lyrics. In a weird way, that helped me process that I didn’t have any immediate family anymore.
She had dementia, so there was a big handful of years where it was constant. Take care of this, get her moved across the country, put her in assisted living.
Once she died, there was no time to really process everything, other than to throw the heart of the good stuff into the music itself, and turn the music into the thing that I can do for her.
UKJN: I’m sure making this record with your chosen family was cathartic.
TE: People always say that friends are the family that you choose, but as of last year, it’s all literal for me. These are my family. I have an uncle and aunt and two cousins that I see every once in a while, but I don’t have any immediate family, and it’s weird.
My mom was mentally gone for three, four years at least. But then it means something when she’s [physically] gone, because there’s that void. And that void has to be filled with some version of family, so my family are these musicians.
UKJN: You sure spend a lot of time in close quarters.
TE: I only like touring with people who actively wear deodorant, and that kind of thing. So, I know what Kendrick Scott smells like 24 hours around the day. That wafting smell could come in, and I’m like, That’s Kendrick, about 6 a.m. It’s intimate, you know?
UKJN: What does your intuition tell you about the rest of 2024? Where do you want to go from here?
TE: I want to be doing a lot more bandleading. I want to finally hit up all those spots that I frequently play at with other musicians, and I want to go back in there with my group. It’s the right time; I feel ready. The music’s been ready.
I am incredibly lucky. I really have a cool life of playing with badasses all the time, different badasses, different music. There’s variety. That’s the thing that I cherish the most when touring and recording and everything: to have variety.
