Bird Land

Every now and then, the most creative jazz you’ve never heard is performed in St. Paul. On a recent cold night, as noisy hordes in green and red Wild jerseys hustle along on the sidewalks, in the basement of the Hamm Building, past a sign that says Artists’ Quarter, an all-star quartet of Twin Cities musicians fires up their drums, piano, and electric guitar and bass, then launches into inventive expressions of familiar sounds.

Depending on the source, How Birds Work is either an accessible band with an experimental bent or an experimental band with accessible rhythms and melodies. The most accurate answer to the question, “Well, which one are they?” is “Yes, they are.”

“When you walk into the club, you can immediately catch on,” says Don Berryman, jazzpolice.com editor and Twin Cities jazz expert. “But the more you listen, you realize how much is going on.”

“It’s not crazy stuff,” says Andrea Canter, Berryman’s jazzpolice.com comrade. “But it’s not swing from the big band era. It’s challenging, but there’s rhythm. It’s not shrieking and horrible. It’s accessible sounds put together in creative ways.”

AQ owner and HBW drummer Kenny Horst says he and the other guys—keyboardist Peter Schimke, bassist Chris Bates, guitarist Dean Granros—all grew up hearing and occasionally playing free jazz, but were reared just as much on bebop, funk, soul, and rock. “We have more elements of those types of music than other bands that are called experimental have,” he says.

Even though there’s no stated controlling principle behind the band’s approach, Schimke says he and his bandmates—who have about 115 years of professional playing among them—are trying “to have fun with musical vocabulary.

“We all listen to what’s happening moment to moment and try to contribute a part that no one else would think of. When we open it up, it's like, whoa. It might not be obvious to listeners where the top or the bridge of the tune is. But we always come back.”

All four members of HBW grew up and still live in the Twin Cities. Though they’ve been playing together for years, in various incarnations of twos and threes, they didn’t play as a quartet until a few years ago.

In 2002, while organizing a release party for her chapbook How Birds Work, Twin Cities poet Paula Cisewski created her dream jazz lineup for the event: Schimke (who’s also her boyfriend), Granros, Horst, and bassist Billy Peterson. “Paula picked the musicians she liked,” says Granros, “and that set the tone for the thing. Conceptually, it was ‘Let’s play together and see what happens.’ ”

Good things happened that night, the name was adopted, and the foursome started playing a weekly gig at the AQ and, in 2004, released a live CD. About a year after the CD’s release, Peterson’s touring and recording gigs precluded him from playing with HBW, and Bates, who had filled in for him a few times, took over.

With the exception of Wednesday nights this month, HBW no longer has its regular weekly show at the AQ. But when the band does play, it’s always at the AQ. “I suppose it would feel strange to do it anywhere else,” Granros says, “just because we haven’t.”

HBW’s musicians may be local, but they can—and do—hold their own when they’re playing with their other bands in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, and other cities bigger and ostensibly more cosmopolitan than Minneapolis or St. Paul. Likewise, their chops equal those of nationally and internationally prominent musicians who tour through the Twin Cities. “I interact with national acts every day,” says Horst. “There’s some stuff here that’s every bit as good as bands that are famous and playing a lot in New York. A lot of folks who live here blow off resident musicians because there’s a constant influx of national people here. There’s this perception that, ‘If it’s local, it can’t be that good.’ ”

“People who don’t know jazz tend to know more about the Twin Cities’ rock scene,” says Pat Courtemanche, a public relations specialist who does promotional work for many Twin Cities jazz musicians and clubs, including the AQ. “In other cities, if you say you’re from here, the average person will say, ‘Oh, that’s where Prince is from.’ But the insiders know about our jazz. If you meet the owner of a Chicago club and say you’re from the Twin Cities, they’ll immediately say, ‘That’s a great scene.’ ”

According to everyone interviewed for this story, Granros is the epitome of a local musician whose artistic talent and perspective are global. He worked full-time as a musician for twelve years—“It was pretty much all I did through the ‘70s,” he says—before becoming a computer programmer. “The thing about doing a different sort of job,” he says, “is that it sort of freed me up to play what I wanted to play.”

“Dean’s on a different level,” Schimke says. “Talk about someone who’s hidden away, but plays on a world level.” He recalls a night when jazz-influenced classic rock band Steely Dan was in town at the Xcel, and after the concert, their sound guys caught HBW’s show. “We covered the Steely Dan song ‘Do it Again,’ ” Schimke says. “Dean was on Mars. Those guys had a riot.”

Schimke has the group’s most eclectic musical resumé. He got his start in the Twin Cities’ influential early ‘80s pop scene as a drummer with an outfit called The New Psychenauts. Over the years, he’s worked with Gary Louris of The Jayhawks, Julee Cruise, who sang much of Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks music, and other prominent musicians. Last year, he put out a CD of engaging piano-and-sax duets with legendary Irv Williams, and he’s in constant demand for various rock, jazz, and other projects.

As soon as HBW took the stage that cold night, the members’ distinct personalities were apparent. Schimke, whose swept-forward hair and skinny frame screamed “rock-flavored-alt-country,” sat on the left at a Yamaha grand. Granros, center-left on a stool and hunched over a guitar modeled after the Black Guitar made famous by Howard Roberts—a player to whom Granros is often compared—could have been a serious-minded high school math or science teacher. Horst, all the way right, behind a simple kit, was the closest thing to flashy, with tinted glasses, gold jewelry, and suede high-heeled boots accenting his black shirt and slacks. Bates, who currently gigs with a shifting set of about fifteen different, mostly jazz- and funk-based, bands, was in the back, as bassists often are. He wore a tight-fitting stocking cap, jeans, and untucked flannel, and looked as if he’d been at the Wild game earlier in the evening.
But then they started to play, and the sound was so tight their eclectic appearances became both surreal and irrelevant. To the casual observer, Schimke, Horst, and Bates seemed to be reacting to Granros. He wasn’t demonstrably leading—calling out or signaling solos and other changes—and they all say the band is run by egalitarian committee. But he possesses an undeniable sense of gravitas. He’s the performer most difficult, even for his bandmates, not to watch.

“As time goes by,” Granros says, referring to the band’s cohesiveness, “the things that are important in what you’re doing last and the superfluous things fall away because they’re not worth the energy. At this point, we’re all about the music.”

“The music is what we gig for,” says Bates. “The greater, collective thing that happens when we’re in that zone of creating something. It happens in every gig, and that’s the essence of jazz and improvisation—that spontaneity.”

They all agree that a certain freedom exists within HBW—“I can try things with this band that I can’t do with 95 percent of the bands I play with,” says Horst. “There are more chances to take musical risks”—and though none of them can say exactly why, Bates seems to come closest. “My approach is that we don’t need to play songs the same way every time, and the end result is more satisfying,” he says. “The overall approach is not playing it safe. We play in the moment, in reaction to the input coming at us right then and there. We all have to trust each other. In the current lineup of the band, we’re relying on that trust, and on the joy of playing with guys who can play that way.”

The music in both sets was ferocious—not banging and wailing, but swinging with lovely aggression—and never swirling among the musicians for their own benefit, but constantly heading straight toward audience. Less than a minute after wrapping up a fierce version of “Do It Again,” with Schimke on vocals, the guys were coiling cords, packing instruments, and quietly chatting. The last few people settled their bar tabs with Horst’s son David, while Horst sipped a glass of red wine at the bar. As a young man, Horst, who was raised on St. Paul’s West Side, played often enough in typically black clubs—the Jet Away, Big Al’s, the Blue Note—that he was once named by KUXL radio as the Twin Cities’ “Best Black Drummer.” For six of the eleven years he’s owned the AQ, it was on Jackson Street in St. Paul. Before that, he worked at the club’s Minneapolis location for five or six years. “I ended up [buying the AQ] because—and this sounds egotistical—I’d been the lifeblood of the place before I owned it. Basically, the owner didn’t want to do it anymore, and I wanted to keep the music going.”

“Are you glad you bought the club?” someone asks.

“Sometimes,” Horst says, with a warm, wry laugh. “The way it is now, almost all musicians have some sort of a day job. They teach or tune pianos or do something like Dean or Chris. I just figured I may as well stay this close to the music.”

Jan. 3, 10, 17, 24 & 31. Artists’ Quarter, 408 St. Peter St., St. Paul, 651-292-1359

Chris Godsey profiled The Current DJ Mark Wheat in January 2006.