Dennis Rea Photo By Daniel Sheehan
Stackpole Reunion
Zero-G Concerts: Hal Merrill Quartet, Stackpole, Vunt Foom
Sunday, July 7, 8pm
White Rabbit, 513 N 36th St, Fremont
Can it really be – 12 years? In that golden way-back-when, the Stackpole quartet performed a few searing, scourging, elevating concerts, issued one highly memorable CD and took an Earshot Jazz Golden Ear Award for … I forget what, but it could well have been for Seattle Free-Jazz Juggernaut of the Setting of the 20th Century.
Stackpole breathed fire. It exorcised. It flushed ears with its committed, headlong, take-that drive and sheer volume.
Stackpole was quite something. Like many a stellar outfit – in rock as in jazz, whose transit Stackpole lit up – it did seem, on balance, destined for a sulphurous burn. It was that mercurial rarity: the supergroup. But it was not one that featured and flattered a succession of soloists with a spotlight. Instead, the whole was spring-loaded, as one: locked-in, intuitive, and cohesive, but short-fused and verging on mayhem.
Its membership was as outstanding as its output. It was – and now is again – Dennis Rea, electric guitar; Wally Shoup, alto sax; Geoff Harper, bass; and Gregg Keplinger, drums. Each is an honored figure in Seattle music circles with a long CV of performance at high levels of jazz, non-idiomatic improvisation, or other music. Each has credits as long as a bass fiddle’s neck, but they don’t need much rehearsing, here.
Harper demonstrated, when Stackpole emerged, that his muscular but attentive bass could drive and secure the most unhinged of jazz forms, just as it had long locked in more straight-ahead outfits like the grooving, tear-it-up foursome Bebop & Destruction. Keplinger is renowned among progressive jazz musicians and aficionados far and wide, not only for his unleashed, pulsing style, but also his skill as a maker of the drums he so distinctively plays. By the time Stackpole formed, Shoup had devoted many years to honing his craft as a non-idiomatic free improviser; soon after the foursome’s passing, he attracted the much-deserved attention of kindred outriders like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and of one of the foremost of labels for provocative modern music, Leo Records, of London. Rea is enormously admired by other guitarists – in fact, all champions of individuated musical statement – not just around Seattle, but far afield. Earlier in his career, he roused crowds of many thousands in China; around rather-less-populous Seattle, his bands old and newer – most recently the genre-defying Moraine – have deserved no fewer accolades.
Stackpole’s performance is in the monthly Zero-G concert series at White Rabbit, Fremont. Also tonight: Pedal steel guitarist Hal Merrill’s Quartet and Vunt Foom with Birch Pereira (electric/acoustic bass), Ben Krulewitch (keyboards, accordion), Adam Gross (drums, percussion), Art Brown (saxophones) and Cameron Peace (guitars).
Admission is free; 21+
