Dawn Thompson and John D’earth are releasing the second CD of music by The Thompson D’earth Band. When the Serpent Flies will be available for fans at the band’s performance at Fridays After 5 this week, and you can find it at their Thompson D’earth website and Musictoday. TDB’s first CD, Mercury, came out the weekend that Dave Matthews Band first played at Scott Stadium, and it featured Carter Beauford on drums. This time around, the band consists of Pete Spaar on bass, pianist Daniel Clarke, guitarist Jamal Millner, J.C. Kuhl on tenor sax and drummer Brian Caputo. D’earth says that the new CD aims for a live feel, with an even split of original vocal and instrumental tunes. D’earth also says that Thompson likes the band to be as free as possible, “which is unusual for a singer.” Recorded without extra production in order to get the live sound of the band, D’earth credits Crystalphonic engineer Jack Gray as “absolutely fantastic” to work with, and says that Crystalphonic is out to support local bands, an approach that D’earth applauds. Thompson D’earth is also scheduled to play at Blues Alley in D.C. on May 30. If you do not mind a short road trip, you can catch the band at a venerated club.
Producer Greg Howard says, “John and Dawn’s collaboration in life and music are really played out in this record. They’ve found a way to fuse the high-energy instrumental jazz that John has always composed so well and Dawn’s image-laden dreamlike lyrics into a very creative and accessible sound. Dawn is not your typical jazz vocalist. She’s singing about life.”
Howard has always been closely connected to D’earth and Thompson, both as producer (he also worked on D’earth’s Live at Miller’s) and as a performer (he plays the Chapman Stick) with bands like Code Magenta. Howard has recently taken time off from gigging locally to rethink what he is doing with his music. He recently played a festival in Marseilles, France, and he has been working with Stick Enterprises out of California, creating a new instructional book and video, as well as producing a CD for a Stick player from Michigan. Howard will perform in Ann Arbor at The First National Stick Festival this July. You can sample Howard’s musical stylings on his latest CD, Ether Ore, (as well as any of his other CDs), by going to his website, www.greg howard.com.
Locally Howard has also been working with harpist/storyteller Eve Watters on a project, as well as recently remastering a recording from the golden age of Tim Reynolds’ TR3.
It is amazing the number of great, young musicians who have come through D’earth’s bands. For drummers alone, Thompson D’earth has featured Robert Jospé, Carter Beauford and Robbie Sinclair. But also in the Miller’s band (which is distinct from Thompson D’earth), great drummers Aaron Binder and Eric Stassen have sat in, as well as Howard Curtis. Stassen is on his way to graduate school in conducting, and Curtis just got a tremendous job as full faculty member at a conservatory in Graz, Austria. And I just saw Clarence Penn playing in New York with Dave Holland. Penn was a student of D’earth’s at Virginia Commonwealth University, but D’earth says, “I probably learned more from him [than he did from me.]” According to D’earth, Penn showed up at every rehearsal with one or two pieces of fully conceived original music for the band to play, some of which he would crumple up right after the band performed it. In any case, D’earth deserves a ton of credit for giving jazz musicians a forum to play regularly and expand their talent.