Chris Stamey’s collaboration with the Fellow Travelers, A Brand-New Shade of Blue, was inspired by the intimate small-combo sound of the late ’50s and early ’60s — a time when the “cool jazz” compositions of such luminaries as John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk lived alongside the expanding pop vocabulary of Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb.
The album was digitally released on Omnivore Recordings July 17th.
The music started as song sheets, in the old style: just words and melodies on paper. Members of an N.C. ad hoc collective of singers and players, known informally as the Fellow Travelers, next gathered in Stamey’s Modern Recording studio in early 2020 to read through the songbook and bring the tunes to life. “I’d put down a rudimentary piano pass, then hand out the sheets,” Stamey explains, “and let the players take it from there.”
First up was vocalist Brett Harris, who became the primary singer on the set. Brett, a solo artist with three excellent albums under his belt, had worked with Chris before, not only as a featured performer with the acclaimed Big Star’s Third concert series but also as a touring member of the dB’s. He was joined by the accomplished trio of Charles Cleaver (piano, also from the Third concerts), Dan Davis (drums), and Jason Foureman (acoustic bass), with Chris on guitar.
Next came thrillingly expressive solos by 19-year-old tenor-sax prodigy Elijah Freeman and N.C. jazz-scene linchpins Foureman, Will Campbell (alto and soprano sax), Evan Ringel (trombone), and Ben Robinson (trumpet), which connected and underlined the detailed, evocative lyrics. Vocalist Django Haskins (the Old Ceremony) chimed in on “Dangling Cheek to Cheek.” And wunderkind Lithuanian chanteuse Ramunė Martin joined for a song (“I Don’t Think of You”) and charmed them all.
The project was well underway when the pandemic stopped in-person sessions cold. But the undaunted Fellow Travelers were able to assemble home studios, some for the first time, and complete the arrangements. As the songs took shape, additional sonic details came from Dale Baker (bongos), Matt Douglas (Mountain Goats) (bass clarinet, bari sax), Karen Galvin and Libby Rodenbough (Mipso) (violins), Peter Holsapple (The dB’s) (banjo), Rachel Kiel (flute and harmonies), Mark Simonsen (vibraphone), and Josh Starmer (celli).
Today Glide is premiering the video for the album’s title track, which Stamey recalls as “somewhat of an homage to Coltrane, through my own blue-colored glasses of course.” Set to grainy footage of police – which may resonate as a negative connotation to many – the song finds Stamey crooning as he conveys a sense of melancholy and riffs on the timeless jazz symbolism behind the color blue. In this song, he muses about different colors all leading to his new shade of blue, as if to say he is redefining something that has existed forever in his own small way. Will Campbell brings a hard bop coolness to it with his alto sax, while Dan Davis dances around the music and vocals with his intense yet subtle drumming and Charles Cleaver layers in just enough piano to keep the music rooted in blues. Through his numerous projects over the last few decades, Stamey has proven himself to be one of the most boundary-less creative spirits in music, and this song encapsulates the fresh approach he takes to tackling any kind of music.
“The color blue was always a reference point for Duke Ellington, who wrote so many compositions with shades of blue in their titles. Its dual connotation—of “having the blues,” sadness/melancholy, and of the color shift that comes when the moon takes over from the sun—is irresistibly attractive for a songwriter. Tolstoy suggested that “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”; sometimes it seems to me that, similarly, songs in major keys are all alike, but every minor-key song has the option of dwelling in its own small universe. For this one, I wanted to find some chords and a melody that were, if not strictly speaking “brand-new,” still not part of a well-trod path, not a traditional 12-bar blues. And in fact, my first passes on this tune were pretty way out . . . and quickly abandoned. I like where it ended up, with a few unexpected twists and turns but also some familiar indigo and turquoise in the mix.
The fictitious notion of having discovered “a brand-new shade of blue” makes me think of the persistent illusion that sadness can bring: If you are really down, it’s easy to think that no one else has ever felt so bad, and that your own sadness is unique and beyond the comprehension of others. Maybe it’s worthwhile to write sad songs from time to time, as there’s a kind of comfort to be found in hearing that someone else has been there, done that?
I love what Will Campbell (alto sax) brought to this. John Coltrane was from North Carolina and casts a long shadow here regardless, but Will has gone deep inside the music, studied it, and internalized it, he can speak the language but in his own voice. Likewise, Eljah Freeman (tenor) has an undeniable passion for that kind of playing and brought something special to this. The song is mine, but the flavors are theirs, along with all the other accomplished Travelers here: Brett Harris (vocalist), Matt Douglas (bass clarinet), Charles Cleaver (piano), Jason Foureman (acoustic bass), Rachel Kiel (flute), Dan Davis (drums), and myself (guitar).
One video for this song might have been a document of a live performance. Another might have had a painter at an easel, struggling with creation, then flinging paint across a loft floor, and variations thereof. But I went with something less literal but in keeping with the sound of the music . . . and, frankly, with the limitations of life during a pandemic. When I was editing this together on my laptop out of bit and pieces of obscure public-domain footage while sheltering in place (and having great fun doing so, in a medium I know so little about), I was thinking of some of the 60s cold-war movies I’d grown up with, where you “knew something was happening but you [didn’t] know what it [was], Mr. Jones.” A time when TVs Secret Agent Man morphed into The Prisoner, and the shadow of the Thin Man movies had become the incomprehensible mystery of Last Year at Marienbad. I think the Night Watchman here is looking for something that he never can find; perhaps he should have looked in a mirror.” —Chris Stamey
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Photo credit: Daniel Coston
