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.