American-born drummer Jeff Williams has enjoyed an illustrious fifty-year career playing with the likes of Stan Getz, Joe Lovano and Lee Konitz. A founding member of the acclaimed quartet Lookout Farm (with Dave Liebman, Richie Beirach and Frank Tusa), he spent much of the last two decades in London but recently moved to Portugal. Now settled there, we caught up with him to discuss his new album with Liebman, recorded live in 1991 and coming out on Whirlwind later this month.
UKJazz News: You and Dave Liebman go way back… how did you first meet?
Jeff Williams: I had been at Berklee College of Music for a couple of years, then left the school and went back to Oberlin, Ohio where I’m from. My plan was to save up money and move out to New York, and I was lucky enough to get a well-paid job at a factory through the general manager there, whose son I had been teaching drums. So in 1971, I took the $3,000 I had saved up and moved east. A friend of mine from New York who was just finishing his studies at Oberlin College mentioned the name of Dave Liebman to me, how he had this organisation of musicians called Free Life Communication (a cooperative founded by Liebman in 1970) which consisted of a lot of the musicians in my peer group or slightly older (Randy Brecker, Richie Beirach, etc.). I knew these guys were somewhere, but they weren’t playing at the Village Vanguard or the Village Gate (yet).
I’d been in New York for a few weeks and I had Dave’s phone number, so I called him… He was very nice, said that Richie Beirach, Frank Tusa, another drummer and he were playing that night, and why don’t I come by. So I sat in, and Richie and I hit it off immediately so we started hanging out. I can’t remember the exact sequence of events from there because the next thing that happened to me was running into Dave Holland. Circle – the band he had with Chick Corea, Anthony Braxton and Barry Altschul – had just broken up, so he was in town. I’d seen him at a few Free Life Communication events and previously watched him playing with Miles. He was someone I really felt a connection to and wanted to play with. It so happened that I was playing a session at Glen Moore’s loft, and at some point, Dave (Holland) came in and we played a few tunes. After that he said he was working with Stan Getz and they were looking for a drummer… was I interested? It was like a dream come true! I was out of money by then, so luckily Stan hired me.
Getting the gig with Stan changed everyone’s opinion of me. Dave (Liebman), and probably Richie too, were taking me more seriously. We ended up forming a band with Frank Tusa on bass called Lookout Farm, and when Manfred Eicher approached Dave about making a record, we suddenly found ourselves on ECM and had work around Europe. It was exactly what I aspired to do, to be in a band with my peers playing original music at that level, opening for Weather Report and John McLaughlin and various others. We didn’t really make any money to speak of, but it was a nice three-year run. It felt like we were a small army, conquering any stage we occupied.
UKJN: How did Liebman’s leadership compare with Stan Getz?
JW: It was a different relationship, of course, because Dave was virtually my peer, more like an experienced older brother, whereas Stan was old enough to be my father. He had been in show business since the Bossa Nova craze and had a different view on presenting music to the audience. He would occasionally remind us not to forget that the gig we were playing was a show. Also, his dynamic range was huge, so I had to learn to play with intensity but without volume unless necessary. Compare that to playing with Dave… I can’t count how many cymbals I cracked! With drummers, he just wants more and more. He had a very good sense of presenting music as well, but it was more open for us to see where it could go and how far it could be taken. As far as dynamics and structuring a set, Dave and Richie are quite a force. They were in charge of the material for sure.
UKJN: How did you reconnect with Liebman and what were you doing in between?
JW: From 1976 to 1991, I don’t think we played a note together. After freelancing for the remainder of the ’70s, I needed to get a job. My life took a turn because I ended up in Maine running a publishing company. I was still playing, I would drive down to Boston and do gigs with Jerry Bergonzi and various others. Anyway, I finished that whole thing and moved back to New York in 1982. Later in the early ’90s, I discovered this place Bar Room 432 on 14th Street in Manhattan, all the way west in the Meatpacking District, and started a scene there. I played once a week with Ben Monder and Scott Colley, and occasionally with a band that I put together with Kevin Hayes on piano, Patrick Zimmerli on sax (originally Adam Kolker), and Doug Weiss on bass.
Joe Lovano, whom I’d known for quite a while, suggested that we play duo there. So we did that – Dennis Irwin also joined us for part of that evening – and I think Dave caught wind of it. He said to me, “We could do that”. I had a pretty good cassette recorder at that time, so I was able to record it. So that’s how it happened. It was just one night, we hadn’t played and we didn’t discuss anything.
UKJN: On the subject of Bar Room 432, there is very little information that remains about it…
JW: It’s long gone. It lasted maybe a year or two. It was owned by three partners and they had different ideas of what they wanted to do with the club. I first came across it because I played a private event there. It was not a big place but it was really nice in the sense that it had this beautiful wood aesthetic, so the sound in the room was pretty live but it was very warm. So after this private event, I got talking to one of the partners – his name was Jim, that’s about all I can remember – and recommended to him that he start a jazz club there. I gave him a bunch of names that he should hire, and it sort of snowballed into something where pretty much everybody played there. Then the other partners brought a connection to beat poetry, so Allen Ginsberg and all the beat poets from the ’50s would be there. We were double booked with them one night, so we traded sets. It was kind of a launching pad for me to start recording as a leader, writing music and putting bands together. It was a nice scene for a while, but then it turned into a sex club… I don’t want to say the name of it because it’s kind of off-colour. That was the end of the jazz and I don’t know what happened after that.
UKJN: This latest recording with Dave Liebman (1991) is all free. You said there was no discussion before you played… none at all?
JW: Right, we just started playing.
When Lookout Farm ended in 1976, Dave asked me to do a duo tour with him. We were opening for Gary Burton’s band. There was a record that came out of that called The Last Call; half of it is Mark Isham with Liebman and others, and the other half is us playing duo live, so we had done that. But again, that was fifteen years before. What I knew was that Dave has a very fluid musical mind. That was something that separated him: Like in Elvin’s band, Steve Grossman was very exciting; but as far as compositional awareness, Liebman really had that. Getting to play with him consistently at one point gave me a lot of insight into how to play with him and also what he was able to bring out of me. If you have the opportunity to play consistently with someone, you know how they respond musically: you kind of know where they’re going, what they need, what activates certain things. Both of us had developed a great deal since 1976, so we had more to draw from. We tended to just burn out with Lookout Farm, but this recording has a degree of subtlety at times. It has a sophistication that we didn’t have before.
UKJN: Why has it taken over thirty years for you to release it and when did Whirlwind come in?
JW: I think I had only listened to it once after the event and didn’t consider putting it out at the time. Then for a long time after that, I couldn’t find it for some reason. One day I was going through my cassettes and finally, I found it. I then digitised it and made a copy to send to Dave. Once he signalled his enthusiasm for me to put it out, I went in search of a label to release it. As I already had six albums with Whirlwind under my name, and Michael Janisch (the founder of Whirlwind Recordings) and I have been working together since the label started, it seemed the logical place to go.
UKJN: You recently moved to Portugal… what’s the scene like there?
JW: I’ve already done a couple of recordings since I got here, as well as some gigs. But I’m still brand new and although I’ve been fortunate to have played with some great musicians, like Gonçalo Marques and Demian Cabaud who reside here. I’m just getting to know the scene. I don’t think there’s a lot of work, but there are a lot of excellent musicians. There was a place called the Hot Club, a real jazz club where you could play four nights a week – the only one like that in the country, so far as I know. Unfortunately, the building was recently condemned because it was about to collapse, so they’re now looking for a new home. There are other smaller places, even one in Parede, where I now live. I’m currently contemplating my inability to speak the language and what to do about that. The people are nice, they will speak English. But that gets pretty old for them, I think. Luckily for me, there is an American contingent – John O’Gallagher, Michael Formanek, and our wives – and we recently celebrated Thanksgiving together.
UKJN: What’s coming up over the next few months for you?
JW: I just finished a tour of Slovenia and various places, kind of an Eastern Europe tour, with the great saxophonist Igor Lumpert. Then in February, I’m coming back to the UK for about a week to record with Steven Saunders with some gigs in Birmingham, then in March I’m out in the US MidWest with Leo Genovese’s trio. In April, I’ll be back in Birmingham and London with Andrew Woodhead’s Swing You Sinners.
In Duo by David Liebman & Jeff Williams is available for preorder through Whirlwind Recordings now (release date: 26 January 2024).
