Mike Frost Project | Comin’ Straight at Ya’ (Blujazz)
When the MIKE FROST PROJECT released their debut, Nothing Smooth About It, in 2004, it took listeners by surprise all over the country. Practically no one had heard of these guys, even here in town: their regular gig was on the Odyssey, the touristy floating restaurant that sails out of Navy Pier. But when jazz DJs discovered the album, lots of them played it–and its sure-footed 60s postbop, which shared the rough-edged attack of so much Chicago music, impressed plenty of reviewers too.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The recent Comin’ Straight at Ya’ (on the Chicago label Blujazz) proves that the band’s early success wasn’t a fluke. Saxist Mike Frost and his brother Steve, a trumpeter, front the group, but its cornerstone is keyboardist Tom Vaitsas, whose crisp swing and running chordal commentary provide an enviable foundation for the horns. He also consistently contributes the most intriguing solos. Here as on the first disc he plays mostly organ, switching to piano for effect only on the quieter tracks. Organ groups are usually trios, with drums and either sax or guitar, but this sextet has trumpet, sax, and guitar, recalling the powerhouse bands Charles Earland led in the 70s and again in the 90s. The group sometimes uses vibraphone too, courtesy of percussionist Tim Mulvenna, who also adds terrific conga accents to drummer Dave Bernat’s engaging rhythms. Mulvenna, who currently anchors the space-dub combo the Eternals, spent much of the past ten years drumming in some of Ken Vandermark’s bands, most notably the Vandermark 5, and having walked on the wilder side of jazz he approaches the standards that dot the Mike Frost Project’s repertoire–“Little Sunflower,” “I’ll Remember April”–with the relaxed abandon of a returning traveler greeting long-lost friends. Guitarist Bill Boris is the band’s second wild card, complicating the tunes with aggressive colorations. On “Midway’s Lament”–written by Vaitsas and Mike Frost, like all the album’s originals–Boris spins dervish obbligatos around the leader’s tenor solo, increasing the song’s emotional depth by pushing its somber, seductive theme into even murkier waters.
For pianist JOAN HICKEY, the new Between the Lines (on the Seattle imprint OA2 Records) is a triumph of another sort: because the only previous CD under her own name barely got distributed, this will be her debut for most listeners. For me the disc is something of a revelation for other reasons. As I’ve come to expect from her, Hickey holds together this forceful but supple quintet in part by providing solid foundations for the soloists with her comp work, which relies on emphatic chording. The difference comes in her own solos, which in the past have almost always struck me as pedestrian–her heavy touch and blocky chords, assets in the rhythm section, don’t necessarily make for a versatile or even interesting solo style (a weakness shared by predecessors like Tadd Dameron and Horace Parlan). In Hickey’s bands the other soloists have usually carried the weight, and given the strengths of her sidemen on this disc–trumpeter Tito Carrillo, saxist John Wojciechowski, bassist Dennis Carroll, and drum dynamo Dana Hall–that easily could’ve happened again. But Hickey holds her own: sounding relatively relaxed, she spins thoughtful, measured single-note melodies, modest and simple in their strength. They provide an unexpected bonus to her other assets: her arrangements, her talent for corralling disparate sidemen, and her willingness to seek out unexpected chords.
