Jim Weider, Ray Mason, Gizzi and Coolidge
By Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. , Sept. 14, 2000) – Jim Weider: Guitar man

There was a time back in the ‘60s when guitar music meant something very different than it does today, when musicians like Dick Dale, Chuck Berry, Lonnie Mack and the Ventures actually played instrumental songs on guitar and scored big hits with them.

While Jim Weider is perhaps best known as the guitarist who replaced Robbie Robertson in The Band in its post-“Last Waltz” incarnation, it was always Weider’s intention to pick up where Lonnie Mack and Roy Buchanan left off: making guitar music the old-fashioned way, on a vintage Telecaster. Now, with his new album, “Big Foot” (EKG), Weider is hitting the road with his band, the Honky Tonk Gurus, spreading the Telecaster gospel, along with a sprinkling of classic tunes from the repertoire of The Band. Jim Weider and the Honky Tonk Gurus will be at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington on Friday night at 9.

“Telecaster players are a different breed,” said Weider in a recent phone interview from his home in his native Woodstock, N.Y. “They play guitar differently, like Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton. It’s such a harder instrument to play. You’ve got to really play it hard. The pickups aren’t as powerful as the Les Paul. You end up snapping the strings against the neck. You have to finesse the notes to make them ring out. I use pick and fingers like James Burton and Buchanan did. You have to really work the guitar in a little harder to get creative on it. You develop your own kind of touch and tone.”

On “Big Foot,” about eight years in the making, the core band of Honky Tonk Gurus includes Weider’s fellow replacement members from The Band, keyboardist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante. The latter is currently touring with Weider’s group, which now includes Jeremy Baum on keyboards and Malcolm Gold on bass.

The group will mix in some Band tunes among the guitar instrumentals, including a funk version of “Life Is a Carnival” and a reggae version of “The Weight.” But mostly, said Weider, “I like to bring back guitar instrumentals that you can dance to and that have melodies. I like to have fun with it. We’ll give them a good, long show, too.”

Mixing poetry and jazz

Poetry and jazz have long been artistic bedfellows. In his work of the late Teens early Twenties, William Carlos Williams was one of the first to adapt jazz into poetry, according to Lenox poet Michael Gizzi. “Williams was very interested in the vernacular, and jazz was the vernacular music,” said Gizzi in a recent interview. “Williams wanted the voice of the guy in the street, and jazz lent itself to that. He realized jazz musicians were using natural rhythms, and he liked them and realized he could write to them, more to the natural cadence of human speech.” But it wasn’t until Jack Kerouac – who called his own writing “spontaneous bop prosody” -- teamed up with beboppers that musicians and poets really collaborated in any substantive way. “Now It’s Jazz,” a new book by Gizzi’s friend and fellow poet, Clark Coolidge, is both a critical and imaginative meditation on the connection between Jack Kerouac and jazz. Other poets whose works were greatly influenced by jazz include Robert Creeley and Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones).

On Sunday at 2, Gizzi and Coolidge will join forces, reading from their works in collaboration with jazz quartet Facing East, featuring Wayne Morris, drums, Paul Trapanese, guitar, Ted Daniels, trumpet and Dan Broad, double bass, at the Spencertown (N.Y.) Academy (518-392-3693). Coolidge, formerly of the Berkshires, has long brought a jazzman’s sense of rhythm and improvisation to his poetry, as a ground-breaking experimenter with the sound qualities of language. Coolidge, whose work strongly influenced a generation of American poets, had the rare advantage of actually being a jazz musician; he is an accomplished jazz drummer who has gigged widely with instrumental groups as well as with fellow poet-musicians David and Tina Meltzer in several bands, including Serpent Power and Mix. Coolidge is “a poet of gargantuan talent and concentrated momentum which jazz suits perfectly, because he has studied it so closely,” said Gizzi. Coolidge toured Russia with the Rova Quartet, a jazz saxophone quartet, an experience which formed the basis for his volume of poems called “The Rova Improvisations.”

Among Coolidge’s recent and upcoming works are “Bomb,” written with Keith Waldrop, the collection “On the Name Ways,” and “Alien Tatters.” Gizzi’s recent work includes the poetry volume “No Both,” the upcoming “Pianozona,” and “Cured in the Going Bebop,” a CD with text featuring the poet reading his own work. Gizzi and Coolidge toured together in the spring of 2000 and collaborated on a book of poetry, Lowell Connector, published by Hard Press. Facing East is based in Chatham, N.Y. Drummer Morris performs frequently in the New York City area and in the Hudson Valley with Sonny Sharrock, Ted Daniel, Charles Campo and Paul Trapanese. Trumpet player Ted Daniels is a veteran performer and recording artist whose most recent work has been with Henry Threadgill, Luther Thomas, and Michael Marcus. Guitarist Paul Trapanese studied jazz with Barry Galbraith and Sal Mosca and plays in clubs in the New York City area.

Ray Mason: Making it look easy

No one makes it look as easy as Ray Mason. For more years than anyone wants to count (actually, a recent press release proudly announced that he turns 50 this year), the Pioneer Valley-based rock singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has been churning out giddy pop-rock which stands up alongside the work of Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello, Alex Chilton, NRBQ, and a couple of guys named Lennon and McCartney.

Mason’s latest collection of catchy pop tunes – his 11th in all -- is “When the Clown’s Work Is Over.” It ranges from the upbeat “I Own the Ending” to the mournful rock balladry of the George Harrison-like title track. “Up But So Loose” is powered by a new-wave-ish guitar riff, and “Got It Right” is a rootsy ditty that pokes fun at trend-chasers in the music business. Mason is one of Western Massachusetts’s most valuable natural resources. He ’ll be celebrating the release of his new CD locally at LaCocina in Pittsfield on Saturday night at 10.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Sept. 14, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

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