Todd McComb:
Jeff & I have been talking for a while, and so this
"interview" takes up our conversation somewhere in the
middle. The starting point here is my comments on Jeff's new
Live Off-Broadway album, posted
on my regular comments page on August 22,
2015.
Jeff Shurdut:
Thanks for posting, Todd. The kitchen's got it all. Murder, fire,
blood, water, sacrifice, and prayer. It's biblical. It's the
spiritual room of the house for me. There have been 3 labels
documenting my work, successively, with countless recordings, over
a dozen years. CMCL is not that label. Creative Music for Creative
Listening will be releasing new and original music, with the first
major project being the progressive and retrospective House Music
Live Off-Broadway, thanks to the MM&A fellowship program.
Listening is one thing, playing is another. I love my Blue Notes, but it's in a certain tradition, with its own history. I have a different relationship with music. Someone at the kitchen show mentioned a comparison made between me and Beethoven, between classical, and jazz, and what I've done with kitchen music here. Call sound whatever you like. Whatever Beethoven did with his environment, I do with mine. I live in the city. That's my environment. His nature walk is beside a brook, my walk is down 3rd avenue, beside cars. When he hears crickets, I hear wheels without power steering. When he hears leaves, I hear the speed on the street. Birds, horns, thunder, trucks hitting pot holes, lightning, late night deliveries.
But I want people who are interested to know that the CMCL collection is going beyond and behind the urban, and my American Classical. We're releasing new and original, vintage unreleased music, and very select, discontinued dates from The Knitting Factory, Tonic, and Ars Nova in the re-mastered, limited edition, downloadable nolabel's "Black Box" (Box Set). Other sets from the now fabled Glasshouse show, where they cut the power, and turned the house lights on because the band was too loud, to another where the police shut us down. There's one from a Williamsburg rooftop in Brooklyn (Ayler Box Set), another in a garage on Bleeker street, and one of my favorites where I recorded in a large music store downtown when I had no working instruments and all the clubs were being turned into parking lots and condos. Jazt Tapes and some other rare recordings from a couple of other labels will be offered too. But my main focus is my duos, concurrently being launched as the 10cm. Series.
TM:
What did you think of me mentioning Barthes & Debord in my
comments? Do you read things like that?
JS:
A lot of people turn me on to a lot of great things after they see
what I do. Two years ago a friend exposed me to Debord. I love
learning about all of these convergences of art and politics and
how art reflects what's happening around it. I always thought
Guernica, Goya's The Disasters of War (The Third of
May 1808), and Diego's Man at the Crossroads were good
examples of this. Kafka's The Trap, and anything Zappa. I
went from Monet, to Magritte, and I've really started to like
Duchamp. I "get it." There's nothing different between
Bukowski, and Monet. It's all about their environments.
TM:
I thought I got a bit of a situationist vibe from your work. You
mention Beethoven. Are there contemporary classical composers you
particularly like?
JS:
I don't listen to classical anymore. I hear it, but it's not really
there. There is no such thing as melody, because there is no such
thing as time. I always had a problem with the written, and
classical's the first that comes to mind. If you throw the paper
out, where does the music go?
TM:
One thing I tend to think of the Dada or various neo-Dada movements
is that it's about stepping away from cults of genius, and foregrounding
something other than the artist. Yet so many of your albums have
your full name emblazoned in big letters. In art, and probably in
general, I don't view contradiction as a problem per se, but more
like a constitutive ingredient. Or in this case, maybe I perceive
it as a tension, and it's a tension I've mentioned in writing about
your work, which is the place of "the subject," a subject
in tension. What does something like a box set documenting Jeffrey
Hayden Shurdut mean to you?
JS:
The Box Set means just a collection of work. :-))
....
You have to remember that it's the record company putting my music out, and they want people to find it.
But, we need tension. Without it, there wouldn't be anything to keep us going. We need conflict, and some stress to push a decision. As contradictory as it seems to my music, try doing something without words, or direction, with a group of individuals, making choices, adjustments, at different times, at the same time, all the time, together. We're held accountable to each other, and to the music. It doesn't matter what we do, or who our bosses are. Everyone has their own thing they have to face. It's as personal as it is social. Music just happens to be the system here.
The arts in general are nothing less than primal. It's like how our hearts pounded when we saw that tiger for the first time outside the cave. We need tension, stress, it's part of our nature, and part of our survival.
Regarding a Box Set, it's about more than the music. It's about what brought us together in the first place, what brought us back, and the lives we brought to it. You would think the music is the entire focus of any set, but when you do something, and you do it enough times, then you know there's something going on.
TM:
So what does it mean to you to gather a group of people together,
especially in a public place?
JS:
It means I'm going to play, and maybe get a coffee. And if you're
talking about playing in more non-traditional spaces, those things
don't happen too often, and if it does, it's just as spontaneous
as the music.
TM:
Is there a point where you start to feel that a spontaneous gathering
is taking shape in a special way, or maybe I should say, an especially
musical way?
JS:
A session or show starts out like anything else. A lot of emails.
There's nothing spontaneous about it, but once we're together,
anything can happen. The Bleeker Street garage is the kind of thing
I think you're talking about. I was walking out of a show, saw a
garage across the street, and always wanted to play in one since I
get along so well musically with cars. So, I went in, spoke to the
attendant, and got a good spot.
TM:
To what do you attribute your good musical relationship with cars?
How is your relationship with them otherwise?
JS:
I live with them, just like the kitchen. So they're a part of my
life.
TM:
Personally, I'm not very fond of cars: I don't like how they look or
sound or how they've changed the world. That's probably what first
attracted me to your music: It made the sounds of cars & other
random happenings in a noisy environment seem more, well, musical.
I guess you're helping me live with them, then, but I still feel
as though I have a different relation to living things than to
artifacts, particularly artifacts devoted to corporate profit.
Can you find a question in there already? What does it mean for music that the world is so much noisier now than a couple of centuries ago, or even a few decades ago? Does the quiet concert hall environment even make sense anymore? It seems so artificial.
JS:
Thanks, Todd. That's a first for me.
It's not that there's more noise, or less. It's that there's always something to hear. Quiet concert hall, large international festival, it's all there because it speaks to us. Someone makes it, because someone wants it, and if enough people want it, or need it, and can support it, it's there. It's only natural. It doesn't mean it's good. But it's not artificial. Maybe the people producing those things are.
TM:
Does that make car horns primal, then?
JS:
Everything's primal. We have to react, don't we?
TM:
The current dynamic for creative music seems to prioritize small
ensembles: It becomes more difficult to get people together, whether
for economic reasons or others. In turn, this situation has an
effect on the sort of music that people can create. Your discography
has plenty of trios, etc. in it, but many of your recent albums
have been with relatively large groups, octets, etc. That's how I
first encountered your music, so it colors my view.
What led you to these larger ensembles? What's leading you to your new series of duos?
JS:
What leads me to the large ensembles, is what leads me to the smaller
ones. The music. Count Basie, Calloway, Ellington, Lionel Hampton
— it was a different era, a different music. Jazz was
"pop" once. Today there's not enough food in the pond
to support something that large. There are always those who have
something to say, but I've seen too many "look what I can
do" moments from people who are playing just to play.
The message has changed, and the artists in the music have changed. I also hear music that's bigger than how it's being played, and it all may be due, in part, to the lack of venues, lack of money, lack of shows, a dwindling audience, and how many ways the money's going to be split. Artists have been forced into it, and things have been forced out of the artist, putting themselves above the music, for the attention, and the recognition they would otherwise have gotten in the larger groups that don't exist. It's a social music that, with smaller groups, has ironically become impersonal.
Most of my "Big Band" recordings are re-releases from some time ago. What you see now is me getting a show, and getting so excited that I just keep emailing people. That's the music being so much more than the music. But, for the past few years I've been focusing on duos, anything else you've heard was just a social call. The duos go back to what brought me to the music, and what brings me here now.
TM:
So what brought you to the music?
JS:
What brings me to it are the same things that brought it to me.
TM:
What sort of things are those?
JS:
The first things I hear in the morning, to the last things before
I sleep. Sirens, cars, the street. Today I woke up from a truck
going into a pothole.
TM:
Personally, I grew up on a farm, in what was then the outskirts of
a city in Indiana. So street sounds were not a big part of my life.
I was still attracted to the auditory, though, for some reason.
It's hard to say why, because it goes back a long way. My grandmother
gave me a radio when I was a little kid, and I found the classical
station. Then later, I was fascinated by the 60s rock, in part
because of its classical inspiration.
I'm not sure, but I think I was attracted to music because that was the most creative art to which I was exposed. I mean, we had television, which was dreadful. Movies weren't quite the garbage they are now, but we really only got the big budget stuff. Our museum offerings were very limited for the visual arts. Yet, in music, for whatever reason, I was exposed to ideas about thinking differently. I probably could have done something similar with literature, since we had libraries, and I availed myself of them frequently, but that's not how it went for me.
So I guess that's my own (partial) answer. Since I'm talking about visual arts, how does your music making relate to your work in visual arts?
JS:
It sort of just blends in. I don't see where one begins and the
other ends. It comes from the same place: It's part of the same
body.
TM:
Have you done performances that combine your music & visual
art?
JS:
No. No I haven't. I don't see the reason. It would be terribly
redundant, and forced. It's completely unnatural, and not what
it's all about for me.
TM:
It seems that you feel strongly about not mixing your visual art
& music. Mixed media performances are very trendy right now,
as I'm sure you know, but not doing that makes sense to me too.
Music by itself is often plenty.
But then, it's never really music by itself, is it? Everyone brings all sorts of thoughts & feelings to the experience, whether in making music or in listening to it, or in doing both at once. You mentioned spirituality earlier, in conjunction with the kitchen, and Yad, the first of your albums that I personally heard, has a specific spiritual reference. What makes for spiritual music?
JS:
Spirituality is just how you look at it. It's a feeling. I think
maybe it's not always the things you say, or do, but the way you
do those things, and the message in things you may say without them
being taken literally.
TM:
So spirituality points to something else? Outside of ourselves,
perhaps?
JS:
Of course. It can. Is consciousness in us, or outside of us,
something that fills us, or something we connect with on the outside,
or all things? Our environment is a reflection of who we are, AND
influence on what we do and how we see ourselves.
TM:
Right, in some sense, inside & outside are the same. Even in
a sense that isn't particularly spiritual, our environment permeates
us. Chemicals, microorganisms, etc... they're inside us &
outside us.
What is it about music, specifically, that lets people connect with each other, even at a distance, e.g. via a recording?
JS:
Vibration.
TM:
Vibration is powerful, yeah, both much bigger & much smaller
than us, and all the sizes in between. In your conversation with
Jan Ström leading up to the kitchen concert, he mentions that
you've been called the underground Buddha. What do you think of
that label? Is Buddhism something you relate to in a more specific
way?
JS:
I've never studied Buddhism, and am not sure that I know any
Buddhists. But if that's what I'm called, OK. I try and think
that there's something to relate to in everything.
TM:
A Zen koan (riddle) contains an incongruous element in order to get
people to shift their thinking or perspective. So I can imagine
people getting that impression from you, but Zen is only one strand
of Buddhism. Would you say your spirituality is Jewish, then, or
is there some other element?
JS:
I don't know that I'd call anything spirituality, because you can't
single it out. Since it's something different for everyone, it's
everything.
TM:
Would you say there's a spirituality to the vibration through which
people connect?
JS:
That's sort of like looking through an endless mirror.
TM:
Some people say that mirroring is the only way we have to know
ourselves at all. Would you describe your music as intimate? Is
there an intimacy to, say, performing in a kitchen?
JS:
It goes without saying. Everything we make is in our own image.
A kitchen isn't any different.
TM:
You mentioned earlier that there is no such thing as melody, because
there is no such thing as time. There are a lot of narratives these
days about time having ended. Most of what you play probably
wouldn't be described as melodic, but there are times when something
melodic seems to occur, usually off to the side of some other
activity. A melody is prominent in the last section of Yad,
for instance. To me, that engages intimacy, in part because it
brings a different sense of time. Would you describe these occurrences
as melodic?
JS:
To me intimacy is not melody. Intimacy is just there, it's just
your ability to connect with it.... Maybe you just feel closest
to the last section of YAD.
TM:
Would you say there is melody there?
JS:
I think maybe there is something that comes out of "some other
activity," as you said, naturally, because people want it to.
We live through stories, we "feel" a passage of something,
look different, we need to fill in things to make sense of it all,
so maybe that's what we do. We're probably hard wired to find
melody. We want it, and need to believe in it, even though there's
no such thing as time..
TM:
Is that like needing to believe in progress?
JS:
No. It's needing to believe in time.
TM:
Well, to believe in progress, one needs to believe in time.
JS:
I'm not too sure that what we've been experiencing is progress.
TM:
Oh, I don't believe in progress. But a lot of people do, and they
seem to take anything that happens, and call it progress. That
comes from a desire or need, I think.
You mentioned earlier that we need tension (or conflict or stress) in order to "push a decision." Why do we need to push a decision? What sort of decision?
JS:
What would anything be if you didn't have to make a decision?
TM:
Good question about what something would be if there was no decision,
forced or otherwise. What would it be? A lot of things just happen,
don't they?
JS:
I think we have to feel as though we are changing something. We
can't let things just happen, we need stress, again, to feel we're
doing something, to feel like we're making a difference, and we
need to feel needed, even though certain things will happen no
matter how we try to force, or change them.
TM:
I sometimes feel as though I'd be happy if I could just exist, but
that people won't let me. Or maybe I'm wrong about that —
either part.
So I guess you're searching for meaning? Is that what we hear in your music?
JS:
I'm constantly searching, and finding, and searching, and sometimes
that leads ultimately to existence, and I hope people get that, and
get inspired by it.
TM:
I don't know about other people, but for me, inspiration can be
rather oblique, and difficult to specify. Something unpleasant
might inspire. Or something ephemeral that I might not really even
remember.
Music can be that ephemeral thing, particularly improvised music that might never be heard again. I know a lot of music, including yours, only from recordings, though, which in a historical sense is a strange development, but the result is that I can hear your albums a bunch of times, and so they take on more concrete & specific associations. I already mentioned that your music has helped me feel better about living with cars, and it's changed how I listen to my environment in general. If I'm staying somewhere noisy, maybe with people yelling at each other outside, or power tools going, that's an environment I can find challenging sometimes, just trying to relax or do my own thing, and I've found your music to be very helpful in those situations. It integrates the sounds around me, such that I can still hear what might otherwise be described as noise, but it's not such a distraction. I've tried it in some really crazy situations, sonically speaking, and it's been very effective, all without cranking up the volume and trying to be louder than my neighbors. (That kind of escalation usually seems like a bad idea.) So it's been very useful to me in a specific way. I feel like that's better than inspiration, which I consider to be kind of vague.
But I'm also kind of a crazy experimenter in my own way. I'm sure other people need different things, including inspiration. I've been amazed by how some of your albums seem like they were made for these situations, though. It's uncanny.
So what inspires you?
JS:
There's something in everything. And sometimes there is so much
in the littlest thing that it's too overwhelming for me to do
anything. Inspiration paralyzes me.
I can't walk, talk, I become non-communicative. I get stuck. I'm overcome when it's right.
TM:
Then what happens?
JS:
Something else.
TM:
At some point you make some music?
JS:
At some point... but what do you mean? Do I play when I feel
inspired? Right after I feel inspired? Do I run home to play, and
stop everything I'm doing? I have to let the inspiration go. It
just goes. I have nowhere to put it. And that's 90% of the time.
TM:
I guess I was asking what sort of inspiration leads to something
musical, and it seems you're saying that it isn't so much the
inspiration that determines it, but other circumstances. Is that
right?
Is that 90% really gone, or does it stay with you somehow? Personally, I forget a lot of my own ideas, but I just have so many of them.... I'm better about taking notes in recent years, but that only works for ideas I know how to express in words, or maybe with a diagram.
JS:
Sometimes it's anything. Sometimes it's nothing. Sometimes it's
everything.
Whatever happens in the moment of that inspiration is that inspiration, so that's it. I borrow a pen (never bring one), get a piece of paper from the receipt roll at the cash register, or napkin at the counter, and try and capture it, take notes, make plans, put it in my pocket. By the time I get home, I'm onto the next thing, and the paper turns up in the wash in my pants pocket. But I have some papers that have survived my jean's on a hot summer day, and sometimes the notes are better than whatever I'm doing, but I can't begin to approach it. I back off. I try to set it up like the notes, but I can't stop what happens on the way to that idea on the paper. I guess anything that's happening is more important than what could happen. I'm sort of stuck in the now.
TM:
I bet a lot of people envy you being stuck in the now. It seems
many people never manage to reach the now. That reminds me of how
much passion you always seem to have. I only talk to you over the
computer, but it seems like you're always working on something.
Where does that passion & energy come from?
JS:
I think I'm just a naturally excitable person. People are drawn
to each other through our commonalities, and what I've found is
that people have treated me, and acted toward me, according to what
they've felt in me. So people have connected with that inspiration,
I think, and some of that excitement, and that has led to some
incredible experiences, with those same people, who gave that feeling
back in ways I could only have imagined.
But inspiration also comes from hard work.
Will.
And work comes from other work. And although there is no greater inspiration than nature, when I am doing something, I usually want to do more of it.
TM:
And intimacy can also come from work?
JS:
Of course.
TM:
It seems as though the world is becoming increasingly impersonal.
How do we fight that?
JS:
Oh no. It's still very personal, very personal for me.
TM:
What about the other people in the world? If they're behaving
impersonally toward us...? That's something art & music can
address, isn't it?
JS:
I'm not sure exactly what that means?
TM:
I'm thinking of art & music creating a sort of intimacy where none
had existed.
JS:
I think it always existed.
TM:
So music might discover intimacy?
JS:
I can't really make the distinction. But, yes.
TM:
Well, I've kind of worked through my questions at this point, Jeff.
Do you have anything you want to ask me?
JS:
That's all? :-))
TM:
Is there something else you want to talk about?
JS:
Anything you like... is there something else that would help the
music, or the interview?
TM:
I think that's enough for now. Thanks for the conversation, Jeff.
I'll send you what I have shortly.
JS:
I have a couple of lines, or so, to add somewhere along the line.
Thanks for the interview. Really nice, Todd.
TM:
OK, we can do some minor edits, as long as we keep the flow. I
like to let the reader see the original order of thoughts in something
like this.
To main page.
Todd M. McComb