Scintillating, celebrated Britjazz marvels Empirical call in at Newhampton Arts Centre in Wolverhampton for a keenly awaited gig – with a fresh line-up.
The reconfigured band comes to the Midlands minus vibraphone player Lewis Wright, who had been a stalwart member of the questing, rhythmically complex, multi-award-winning outfit for 16 years.
Founder members Nathaniel Facey (alto sax) and Shaney Forbes (drums) are joined by bassist Tom Farmer, who was added to the band in 2007, a month after the recording of their gong-festooned debut, following the departure of Neil Charles, with guitarist David Preston propelling the four-piece in a very different direction.
Farmer told me: “Lewis hasn’t officially left – he’s just moved to Nashville [laughs], so it makes planning dates with him really hard, obviously! We still need to figure it out to be honest. I think we will try to play together again.”
Preston, whose 2023 album Purple / Black (Whirlwind Recordings) drew excellent reviews across the board, has already played with Facey, Forbes and Farmer.
“Dave has been around, because he’s a London-based musician, he’s been playing with Shane and Nathaniel for almost 20 years as well!” Farmer said.
“So it felt like a really good match, and we’ve done loads of stuff over the years, but actually it was during the lockdown, we did one of those livestreams from a club in London called the Green Note with Dave, and we were like ‘this is great!’ It was just myself, Nathaniel and Shane and Dave. And we did a mixture of material. And we thought ‘it’s got that thing!’ And also the nature of a guitar as well, not being a piano, it’s a bit more transparent, especially the way Dave plays – he uses some effects and it’s not traditional jazz guitar.”
Thrilling footage from that 2020 show exists on YouTube, under the name of the Nathaniel Facey Quartet, revealing a forceful unit with plenty of scope for on-the-spot inventiveness (Link below). To this writer, it brought to mind Dave Holland’s superlative Extensions band, with guitarist Kevin Eubanks, altoist Steve Coleman and drummer Marvin ‘Smitty’ Smith.
Farmer agreed: “Eubanks for sure – he’s bringing a different flavour to it, but yeah, to a certain extent. I’m thinking of Lionel Loueke – it’s not ‘normal’ jazz guitar, so we really liked it. That’s how it came about, and we did a gig at Ronnie’s, we did some stuff at 606 Club, a few things around. This month we’re doing the Vortex to launch our vinyl [of latest record Wonder Is The Beginning], so we’ll be bringing a flavour of that up to Wolverhampton.”
Road-tested, then…
“Absolutely. And we’re gearing up to record. There’s a bunch of music written by Shane which actually we released on an EP called Like Lambs – it never really got the traction and delivery, so we’re going to record a version of that again, but with Dave, and Ivo Neame.”
The band has had the further challenge of working round Facey’s commitments outside of jazz, as a London Underground worker.
“Yeah, it’s amazing – inspirational to me that he can keep it going,” Farmer said.
“It must be getting on for seven years now – he’s a customer service supervisor at London Bridge, so he was managing a team, and it was shift work but he was public facing, so he was just dealing with customers. But now he’s in the middle of a quite high-level promotion so he’s hopefully getting this new job which is to be in charge of a whole line, so a controller, effectively. Yeah, it’s been difficult but I would say, since he started this job he has been playing better than he ever has, and it’s to do with, it’s like a weight lifted off of him, of having to make money and relying on music. So now he just plays for enjoyment – he plays what he’s into, and that really comes through in the performance and I would say that the last few years he’s just been playing so good!
“When it was shift work that was really hard to manage, but now he’s in this training so it’s more 9 till 5, so he’s been able to say yes to a load of people in the last year or so, which is great, because nobody plays like Nathaniel – he’s a really unique voice in our scene. The way he approaches music and the dedication to it, the discipline and the study. So yeah, he has been around a bit more, and also he only does the gigs that he wants to do which is really good. So if you get him on a gig, it’s like, wow!”
(*) Steve Bradley is Jazz Development & Programme Officer at Newhampton Arts Centre
