Vol. 1 no. 5
"Ed Bickert...just keeps everything up at the level where it's supposed to be."
AW: How does your band differ from Time Warp?
BE: Well, it differs immediately in that Time Warp performs only original compositions by its members. As Time Warp has come along over the years, Al's contribution has grown. The bulk of the writing for the band is Al's, not because he particularly wants it that way, but he is much more prolific than I am. There was a period where I was doing a lot of playing as a sideman, working a lot, and he wasn't working as much, so he spent a lot of time writing and writing and writing. He writes about five or six tunes a week all the time, and I don't write that way; I write very sporadically and slowly. He'll write six tunes and discard some of them. I just don't work that way. His influence compositionally is much stronger in that band.
I had written a number of pieces over the years that had never been played by Time Warp because they really were meant to be played by more horns, or different combinations, or I heard other sounds, piano or whatever. I had an opportunity, a self-created opportunity to do my own record. That was the Climbing record. There was no band; I put it together for the record. The compositions determined the instrumentation. In my head I could hear Ed Bickert playing on certain tunes, so I called him and he was interested. I knew Murley and Turcotte's sounds and I called Terry Lukiwski on trombone and Gary Williamson on piano. They were all just so good. I could hear Steve Wallace on some tunes just because of his feel; I'd known Steve ever since I'd come to Toronto, but for a variety of reasons we'd rarely worked together. I saw this as an opportunity to do some playing. I also had some tunes with a bit of bowing involved, and not a lot of 4/4. I thought Jim Vivian would be the obvious choice for that.
Out of the recording came the opportunity to tour with the band. It was probably the first time I'd had a chance to tour with my own band. I couldn't take everyone, so I pared it down to a quintet. Today that remains the band; the second CD was called East West . The new one is a bit different; I started hearing other voices for this project, and I was lucky enough to get Sonny Greenwich to play, and I always look forward to playing with Gary Williamson. The compositions determined who played on what.
AW: Did you find it interesting to play several nights in a row with musicians of that caliber?
BE: Oh yeah. I often think
unless you're incredibly astute, if you were to go out and hear Ed Bickert
play, it would be very difficult unless you were a gifted listener to appreciate
how good he is, and to really get the full package. It's so fantastic for
me to have him in the band, because you play night after night, and you
start to realize the depth of what's going on in his playing. He plays perfectly
and creatively every time. There's a standing joke about Ed; I was in Moe
Koffman's band for ten years plus, and Ed was in it before I got there,
during my stay, and he's still there. I got to know him fairly well, and
Don Thompson said to me one time that he'd never heard Ed play a wrong note,
ever. I said, "Well, I'm not trying to be a prick, but I did hear Ed
make a mistake." We were playing at George's Spaghetti House one night,
and Ed was sitting there with a cigarette going, and in the middle of his
solo, a glowing ember fell off the cigarette onto his pant leg, burnt through
his pants, and started burning his leg, and he played a wrong note! Aside
from that...
AW: You're still waiting for the second one...
BE: Yeah. He's so subtle, and what he brings to my band on the road is so remarkable. Everybody knows that when he's on stage, you don't mess around. That's the way I was taught; you know, you're on the road, you can clown around during the day if you like, you do whatever you want, but the instant you're on the bandstand, it's serious business. It doesn't matter whether you've been fasting or have drunk a case of beer, that's your problem. You better be ready to play. If you're on the bandstand with Ed Bickert, to waste that opportunity, you'll pay the price. He just keeps everything up at the level where it's supposed to be. He approaches his life that way; it's just wonderful.
AW: Did you find your playing changing on the tour?
BE: Yeah, but my biggest problem
was trying to deal as a bandleader with the whole thing. It took me ages
to get the nerve to talk over the microphone; it doesn't happen easily for
me. On the first announcement I usually say something quite stupid. Every
now and then I'll try to break the ice, and say something that's mildly
amusing, and then I discover that it's not amusing at all. You can tell
by the silence in the room. It's a very humbling experience, but I love
it. I wouldn't want to just have my own band, because it's nice to be a
sideman with other leaders; it's nice to be able to play all kinds of different
music with other people. I enjoy the responsibility of having my own group,
and it's a pretty heavy responsibility if you make it what it can be. The
musicians are good players; you want it to be good. And it always is good.
I've never heard the band play badly, not ever.