Neither the photography on the front and back jacket nor the title of Chris Cheek’s Keepers of the Eastern Door directly bespeak a jazz album, but are certainly intriguing. First, the title takes its name from the Mohawk people, the easternmost tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy who had that name for their role as guardians against invasion from the colonizers. Metaphorically, this quartet becomes the “keepers.”
The album represents a reunion between Cheek and guitarist Bill Frisell, who had worked together in Paul Motian’s band. With Frisell in mind, Cheek invited one of the guitarist’s favorite bass-drum tandems, Tony Scherr and Rudy Royston, for this session, issued on the new analog-focused label Analog Tone Factory. The quartet recorded live in one room in the studio, with the sound directly transferred to two-and-a-half-inch tape. There are more details there, but we’ll spare you the technicalities. Trust that it sounds pristine.
Cheek and Frisell make a good pairing. Both are simpatico about choosing notes judiciously, playing with restraint, and carefully listening to each other. They course through several moods in this richly melodic, harmonic, and evocative session.
The opening original “Kino’s Canoe” features wonderful unison lines between Cheek and Frisell with Royston and Scherr delivering a strong backbeat that’s more prominent here than on the other tracks. The leader and guitarist establish a pattern here that becomes a thread throughout, mirroring the melody and harmony of the song, with unison and counterpoint passages, from which each may jump into brief solos. Here they are outright swinging while Royston is boisterous on his kit. Cheek’s title track begins symbolically with Royston’s tom toms kicking it off as Cheek and Frisell dance around the lilting melody. On his closer, “Go On Dear,” a ballad, Cheek, with subtle hints of vibrato, and Frisell issue warm, intimate phrases as Royston fills in the spaces more forcibly than perhaps expected.
The Mancini-associated “Smoke Rings” is rendered carefully and reflectively. Frisell adds his well-placed and ringing notes without using effects and loops that characterize much of his other work. This makes for a mostly acoustic session (certainly in spirit), in keeping with the natural theme. The feeling of those photographs above exudes a spirituality or sacredness. Thus, the inclusion of Messiaen’s 1937 choral work “O Sacrum Convivium!” with Cheek switching to soprano and Frisell to acoustic while Scherr and Royston provide the gentle underpinning. Cheek also digs deep, presenting baroque composer Henry Purcell’s song of lost love with “Lost is My Quiet,” which begins mournfully but takes on more urgency in Cheek’s second solo, which follows a poignant solo from Scherr.
The other two selections are more playful. The quartet applies a funky rhythm to Lerner and Lowe’s “On a Clear Day, from the 1965 musical of the same name. Unlike others, this has an uplifting tone reflecting the song’s lyrics. There’s an especially nice interplay between Frisell and Scherr in the middle section. They take The Beatles’ “From Me to You” in a slower tempo, with lyrical turns from the leader and guitarist that stay fairly faithful to the original. It may be an unlikely choice, but it fits in nicely with the overall mood of this expertly crafted project, from the artwork to the performance.
