Circuit Rider: Bill Frisell, Ron Miles, and Brian Blade. Photo by John Spiral.

Circuit Rider comprises three of the most accomplished—and most generous—musicians on the planet: cornetist Ron Miles, guitarist Bill Frisell, and drummer Brian Blade. They ride into Albuquerque on February 25 for an Outpost fundraiser, and they bring with them a timely musical message that is reflected in both their material and their approach to it.

For Miles, the first among peers in this splendid trio, the metaphor of the circuit rider, a clergyman who rode on horseback from town to town to minister to rural communities, speaks to the life of touring musicians. Just as the peregrinating clergy carried a message to their congregations, so does the trio. “The message that we’re carrying is, in some ways, not too terribly different than the message that the circuit riders were carrying,” says Miles, “which is that through togetherness—this band is really about collective playing—that through our collective vision, we can make something positive, generate some positive energy in the world.”

You can feel this intention from the opening notes of the trio’s eponymously titled album. Indeed, the first word in my notes on the album—and the last word, too—is “affirmation.” The album’s nine tracks—six Miles originals, two Charles Mingus compositions, and one from Jimmy Giuffre—maintain an optimistic point of view. It’s not pollyannish, though. The recognition of struggle, as in Miles’ minatory song “The Flesh Is Weak,” underscores the authenticity of the optimism.

The trio’s music—as abstract as it is demotic, as complex as it is accessible—embraces the entire canon of American music. You can hear the Brill Building in Midtown Manhattan, the hollers of Appalachia, the winds over the western mesas, and the bayous of Louisiana. It’s music in which Jimmie Rodgers, Thelonious Monk, Hank Williams, and Louis Armstrong could all feel at home. You’re reminded of Armstrong’s statement that “all music is folk music,” and that sentiment underlies every track on the album.

“The divisions that people put in the music are not real,” says Miles, who experiences the music as a collective unity rather than as a series of distinctive genres. As evidence of this unity, he cites Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #9,” the 1930 recording of which included jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Lil Hardin backing the country-fried Rodgers. “A song is a song. You know what I mean?” he adds. “That’s what I write. I’m a songwriter.”

Miles’ songs do have some interesting qualities. The album’s title track, for example, features an 31.125-beat A section. Miles explains that it’s not as weird as it might appear. “It’s like those old hymns or the Carter family songs, stuff like that. You count that stuff out, too, and ‘Wait a minute. What? Is there like an extra half a beat in there?’ You realize the beat is there because the word is there.” Similarly, Miles adapts the time signatures to the songs, not vice versa, and the band works together to internalize his unique structures.

What a band it is, too. Miles’ urgent and clarifying lyricism illuminates every song. His long lines have a gently soaring, singing quality, and while he never searches for complexity, he delivers surprising discoveries at every turn.

Frisell, the guru of spaciousness, has the gift of making everyone sound more like themselves. Miles says it’s like being in a photo with a supermodel. “People look at the picture and say, ‘You two look fantastic.’ Well, yeah, I guess so,” he says, laughing, “because they look so good, how bad can you look to make the picture look bad?”

Then, there is Blade, perhaps most widely known as founder of the Fellowship Band and as a member of Wayne Shorter’s quartet. He can play circles around any beat you can choose, and he has an uncanny gift for anticipating where things are going.

“What both Bill and Brian do—the important thing is they are truly selfless musicians,” says Miles. “They haven’t already decided what it’s supposed to sound like. They actually listen to what’s really there. . . . Their genius is then to be able to realize it and support it and amplify what it is that is already there.”

In true improvisation, you can’t know what is coming, says Miles, “because nothing has happened yet. So if you can embrace the mystery, then you can really find your way and find something beyond the surface.”

Circuit Rider in the studio. Photo by John Spiral.

Miles calls his colleagues “great song players,” a title that applies equally well to him. In a typical jazz performance, he notes, the theme is stated and then you get to the blowing, which becomes the focus of the performance. He cites Ornette Coleman, who said that musicians are too fixated on the background and not enough on the foreground, which is the melody, the song. He wanted people to play the song and then their version of the song. “Keep the song going as long as you can,” says Miles. “You don’t have to worry about the form [the background]. It’s not as important as the song is. . . . We don’t want the song to ever end. It’s not like there’s a cutoff at the end of the song and the blowing starts. No. It’s all one continuous thing.”

That may be key to the accessibility of the trio’s music—their commitment to the song, as well as their embrace of the mystery. In Circuit Rider, the three musicians trade off their versions of the song. One now steps forward, then gives way to another. Then, they may all fall into a song-expanding conversation. None of them really knows what’s coming next. You the listener can’t know where things are going, either, so you get pulled into listening just as these three musicians are. What you hear is the open and humanizing affirmation of three beating hearts.

Circuit Rider,
with Ron Miles, Bill Frisell, and Brian Blade
A Special Jazz Club Style Outpost Benefit Concert
Sunday, February 25
Doors: 6:00 p.m./Reception: 6:30 p.m./Concert: 7:30 p.m.
Weil Hall at the Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE, Albuquerque
Tickets: $75 (member/student); $100 (general)
For tickets or more information, click here, or call 505-268-0044.

© 2018 Mel Minter