Peter Erskine will perform at the Wichita Art Museum Thursday, April 24, as part of the Wichita Jazz Festival. Joining him will be pianist Alan Pasqua and bassist Scott Colley.
Erskine is no stranger to the festival, having first appeared in 1973 as a member of the Stan Kenton Orchestra. Between then and now he’s appeared on over 600 albums, ranging from soundtrack work to appearances on releases by Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan in the popular music world to his own solo releases to classic recordings with Steps Ahead, Jaco Pastorius, Mike Stern and Weather Report.
Most recently he composed music for the film “Sacramento,” a film starring his daughter Maya (“Pen15,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”), which was co-written and directed by his son-in-law Michael Angarano, who stars alongside Michael Cera.
Erskine spoke with KMUW about his early days with Stan Kenton, how he’s matured as a musician, and the power of playing quietly.
This interview has been edited for clarity and for length.
Glad to be speaking with you.
I don’t know if you happened to see my post today on Facebook. I kicked up the wayback machine and posted a photo that was taken during my first visit or appearance or gig at the Wichita Jazz Festival, which was the second Wichita Jazz Festival, held in 1973. I was playing there with the Stan Kenton Orchestra. In nearby Dodge City, a gentleman named Bob Beals had a drum head company. It was known as the Evans Drumhead Company and they became my first sponsoring music industry company. We took a photo at the hotel where I was staying. It was poolside. An indoor pool was kind of a luxury back in those days, at least for the Kenton band. It’s a cute photo and, needless to say, I have a lot more hair [in that photo] than I do now.
You were, what, 18 when you were playing with Stan Kenton?
I had just turned 18 when I joined Stan’s band. I happened to get out of high school a year early. They had an optional three-year program and I took some summer course [to finish]. I’m not sure what my hurry was but a hurry I was in. So I got out of high school and I spent one year at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Then I think word got to Stan about my drumming thanks to one of the college music festivals.
I was invited to audition for Stan’s band and it’s wild. I just listened to the first piece I played with them …. At the audition, most of the band didn’t know I was auditioning. They just thought I was this longhaired drummer that was backing up the vocalist June Christy for her portion of the [1972] Newport Jazz Festival. [Stan] thought that would be a good test for me.
The drummer in the band at the time was a guy named Jerry McKenzie. Jerry takes credit. He says that Stan said, “What do you think, Jerry?” And he said, “Hire him!” All thanks to Stan and Jerry, I was asked to play [Christy’s] portion of the show that night and show up to join the band a few days later. So, about a week after all that, I joined the band in the Midwest. By the time we got to Wichita I was fairly seasoned. We’d already recorded two albums and I felt very much at home.
Funny story: We were splitting the concert that evening with Maynard Ferguson’s band and the drummer at the time was a guy named Randy Jones. I was quite thrilled to meet him because I’d been listening to him on some of Maynard’s records. Nice enough guy. Most of the band was British and after a few pleasantries Randy said, “It’s been nice talking to you but I’m going to go out with the lads and we’re going to get pissed.”
[Laughs.]
Of course when the Brits say they’re going to get pissed it means they’re going to get drunk but I took it to mean they’re going to go get angry. I said, “Why do you want to do that?” [Laughs.] He just looked at me like the square I was. Later somebody hipped me to what he really meant.
The festivals were always fun because you got to hear all these other great bands and musicians. Wichita stood out for a number of reasons: It was a great festival. I’ve played it since. One time I got to play with the Steps Ahead group. One time I played there with I think Michael Brecker or Randy Brecker …. It was George Mraz playing bass. It was some kind of thrown-together group. It feels good to be returning to Wichita after all these years.
I have a question about playing with Kenton back then because he represented a different era. Fusion had happened, the music was changing.
I had known Stan for many years because I was a student at his summer jazz camp. In part I think he may have felt that this was some sort of destiny being fulfilled. Good marketing that someone that he’d met 10-11 years earlier as a student at a summer camp was now drumming in his band.
I mentioned Jerry McKenzie. When he wasn’t drumming he was a cop outside of Detroit. He looked like a cop, and I looked like a hippie and that was much more appealing to the student audiences that the Kenton band was courting. We worked a lot in schools back then. I can’t tell you the number of musicians I know now who I met when they were students back then.
So Stan had an open mind and an open ear always to what was current. I think he recognized that the audiences liked the influence of rock, fusion, whatever. I certainly represented that. He enjoyed the fact that I had long hair because when I cut it — I wanted to look more like the other guys in the band — he got upset, so I grew it back.
Stan wasn’t the hippest guy. [One day], I said, “Stan, I want you to hear what I’m listening to. This is what’s informing me.” If I could go back in time, even though I grew up listening to Kenton records, I would have spent more time listening to certain specific albums [so that] I could have nailed the stylistic demands of the band better than I did.
At any rate, I was always playing Weather Report to the other guys in the back of the bus, Billy Cobham, who was kind of a big hero of mine, with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I girded up my courage, I go up to the front of the bus and I give this little introduction about why I wanted Stan to listen to it, give him the headphones.
It was a short tune. It was three minutes or something. It’s the longest three minutes of my entire life. As soon as I start playing it I can just see that he completely doesn’t like this. At all. But he’s going to be polite and listen to the whole darn thing. I was partly embarrassed, I was partly resentful that it seemed like, “He’s old and he’s a square.” When he was finished he took off the headphones and said, “Thanks, that was interesting. It’s not something I would ever listen to more than once.” A sentiment I now understand very well.
Throughout two or three albums at least that I made with the band Stan was trying to “play the music the kids are listening to.” Not quite patronizing but I never really knew how much his heart was in some of that. But all the bands did that—Maynard, Woody [Herman]. Not Duke [Ellington] so much and the [Count] Basie band not so much either. It seemed like a lot of the bands were trying to play stuff that had more backbeat. So I might have been in the right place at the right time.
We should mention too that that first time you played the festival here the fact that the Ferguson band was on the bill is a point of interest because you joined that band just a few years later.
I was very surprised to get the call. I’d been in Stan’s band for almost three years and I decided to go back to college. I wanted to continue my studies and after a very satisfying year of learning I get his phone call from someone associated with Maynard’s management. I thanked them but politely turned it down and they called at least three more times. They said, “Look, if you could do up to this date, you’ll have a day to get back. You’ll still make your college registration. Everything will be fine.” I said, “OK. Change of plans but it’ll be a fun way to spend a summer.”
Even before the first night was over I knew that I wasn’t going back to school. It was too much fun. I enjoyed playing and I enjoyed performing. Big bands represented an opportunity to be part of something that was much larger than yourself. The Maynard Ferguson gig led to my joining Weather Report. That led to all kinds of things, including my eventually moving to New York, working with the Steps Ahead guys and then all the ECM artists and then meeting the woman who would become my wife and then we decided to move to California.
I’m sitting here in my garage studio which we built shortly after we moved here about 38 years ago. We’re spending too much time in the past here, Jedd.
[Laughs.] Sorry.
I’ve been really lucky. I count myself as so fortunate to play with so many great and interesting musicians and to have been allowed to bridge styles that could have very easily [been cut off from each other]. My playing in a big band being one. [Weather Report bassist] Jaco [Pastorius] heard me playing with Maynard but I think if [Weather Report keyboardist] Joe Zawinul or [Weather Report saxophonist] Wayne Shorter that they may not have been too keen on the prospect of me being the drummer in Weather Report.
But two things played in my favor there. One was that Joe and Wayne, their first gigs were with Maynard. Maynard was a sponsor for Joe to come to the United States from Austria. I had that going for me. I think when they heard that I had been in the Stan Kenton band they were imagining the Stan Kenton band of the 1950s which was very adventurous. There was something about that that appealed to them. They thought, “Well this is interesting, we’ve never really had a drummer who had ever played in a big band.”
Big band drumming will teach you a lot in terms of playing with other musicians. All of this I think has in some way informed me to where I am now and playing the music that’s my greatest joy. Playing in a trio, specifically a piano trio, an art or stylistic challenge that eluded me for many years. I didn’t know how to do it. It was working with the guitarist John Abercrombie where I finally learned to somehow let go of musclebound reactions to things I was hearing and to really hear everything and to fully understand tone, the tone I was getting and the tone of the entire group.
It's a magical thing because we can bring the volume, the dynamic level, the music to such an intimate place that audiences are leaning forward in their chairs. We’re not pushing them back with the volume. I’m anticipating that the Wichita Art Museum, where we’re playing might be the perfect venue for this.
I remember a music professor I had in college who didn’t like to go to rock concerts. The whole thing bothered him through and through but it also bothered him that people will talk while there’s music playing. He said his remedy for that was to play more quietly. Suddenly, people perk up and pay attention to why they’re there.
I saw the great guitarist Jim Hall do that. He was playing at a club out here in Santa Monica and there were a couple of people at a table who just didn’t factor in what was going on. They just weren’t reading the room. I don’t know what they were doing there but they were chatting quite loudly. [Jim] was about to play a guitar intro. We’re all looking at these people kind of outraged and we look at him, worried. “How is Jim Hall going to react?” He smiled, he turned down the volume of the guitar, played. They didn’t get it. We’re getting more agitated. Jim Hall just smiled, turns down a little bit more. Finally, they got it. They heard that they were too loud. They stopped and I thought, “Wow.” Not only just for the sheer mental health of it that was such a delight to see but that there was more power in quiet than there would have been in loud. I don’t say this to disrespect the fine professionals in the sound reinforcement field but [it reminds me of two things].
One, I heard a very funny comment about the creed of front-of-house sound engineers, which is: We’re not happy until you’re not happy.
[Laughs.]
When I tour with the trio we have a pretty simple contract. We’re not very demanding and our rider doesn’t ask for or require too much of the promoter but we do have one page that only has two words on it: No subwoofer.
[Laughs.]
We don’t want to throw out ultra low vibrations when that’s just not the way that these instruments sound. You’re not supposed to hear a drum as if your ear was right next to the front head of the bass drum. The front head of the bass drum functions to project the sound. Sometimes it has very blended tone with everything else in the audience. So micing and sound reinforcement is somehow the cart before the horse. It’s ruining a lot of music and people are, like, “Oh well.” When the bass plays a solo I’m going to play softer, you don’t need to make the bass louder than all three instruments combined just because it’s a solo. That renders us dynamically impotent. That’s not why we do this. We do this because there’s an arc dynamically, the tension of the rhythms, what’s going on harmonically, what the drums and piano are doing and even how the drums might suggest harmony. It’s a very interactive, joyous kind of thing.
This came up a while back with another musician who mentioned that there’s something about the communication that happens when you’re playing in a small group and in a small space—the drummer is close to the bassist and they can really hear each other and share in the energy that’s happening. They contended that it changes the way you listen.
When we play as a trio we don’t want to be spread out on the stage because the lighting designer thinks that might look cool. We want to be as close as possible so we can hear each other acoustically. My rule, even with big bands, is that if I can’t hear any single part of the music, if I can’t hear any single instrument on that stage, then I’m playing too loud, which was not my point of view when I was 18.
Someone asked me, “How has your playing changed over the years?” I think it’s very evident that when I joined the Kenton band I was playing as if my life depended on it. As time has gone by I think I play more as if other peoples’ live depend upon it. It’s just a different approach, a different point of view. By not fighting the instrument, it just allows for things to not only breathe but to blossom.
Today, when you sit down behind your drums at the start of a gig is there still a sense of, “I wonder where we’re going to go, I wonder if there’ll be some kind of adventure with this”?
Every time that I get out of bed, the day is going to be an adventure and when I play, yeah, anything can happen. I don’t dread it like, “Oh my god, what’s this going to be like?” I look forward to it. I’m 70-years-old now. I started playing the drums when I was five-years-old. So there’s a level of familiarity and confidence that I have. It would be strange if I didn’t feel some sense of [that]. I don’t get nervous but I don’t get complacent because I’m aware of what a great opportunity it is to be able to [play]. There are days when you’re in a recording studio with other musicians and all this music will be created. There’s an energy when people gather to do something with so much intention.
