Joe McPhee is not only an exceptional saxophonist and trumpeter, he has also been a man of words, a poet. On the one hand he can be a classical storyteller in the tradition of West African griots, musicians and historians of sorts who have preserved the oral tradition and cultural memory of their communities. These griots have played an important role in festivals and everyday situations, using stories, songs and music to tell and convey the history of their peoples. Joe McPhee, though, takes a very free approach to this cultural heritage. Recent examples of this are his contributions to “ECHOES: I See Your Eye Part 2” on the last Fire! Orchestra album or the title tracks of Tell Me How Long Has Trane Been Gone and Keep Going, his duos albums with John Edwards and Hamid Drake. On the other hand Joe McPhee’s music is infused with an enormous awareness of black history, which could also be seen on Musings of a Bahamian Son: Poems and Other Words by Joe McPhee, a collection of his poems. I'm Just Say'n now focuses on the fusion of music and poetry, backed by his longtime collaborator Mats Gustafsson on baritone and bass sax, flutes, piano mate, piano harp, organ, fender rhodes and live electronics.
On I’m Just Say’n three types of lyrics crystallize. There are the more lyrical and coded pieces such as “Short Pieces”, which have seemingly unrelated associations with all sorts of things, here with Eric Dolphy, Peter Brötzmann, David Murray, Don Cherry or simply with silence; or “Words”, in which McPhee compares the COVID pandemic with the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. In this piece he throws out nouns in an acrostic, seemingly unrelated, but only seemingly, because the listener’s associations can create a connection. Another type are pieces with political significance, in which McPhee criticizes social conditions. Examples of this are “They Both Could Fly”, an allegory of a homeless woman in New York, Old Rita, trying to keep her dignity (perhaps the most touching piece on the album) and “BYOBB“, on which McPhee sings: “Annie had a baby, she can’t work no more”. It’s a classic blues beginning (McPhee has always been a blues man) and a renewed indictment of policies that leave young families alone. The third type are personal anecdotes such as “When I grow up”, which McPhee dedicates to a friend to whom superhero qualities are attributed. At the same time, however, these narrative styles intermingle here and there, as in “I'm Just Say'n”, a piece that already existed on “Musings of a Bahamian Son”, but here it is extended and McPhee also sings, he doesn’t just recite. The opening lines are repeated at the end and are actually something of a motto in these dark times: “No buzzards shall pick these bones tonight/We are not dead/We must not sleep/Rise up, fly high and wander far”. Another example is “NYC Nostalgia Redux”. Here, too, there’s the sung introduction. New York is displayed as a city charged with symbolism, McPhee refers to the state of affairs in the 1970s in a mixture of narrative, political indictment and cynicism (the past wasn’t great, they have never existed, the good old days - and so nothing can be made great again).
Joe McPhee concentrates entirely on the delivery of the words, musically they are congenially accompanied by Mats Gustafsson, who puffs and steams and pants into his saxophone, or contributes a heavily psychedelic space organ that meanders through the lyrics. He also frequently creates wind noises that seem to press against huge sheet metal walls. All of this is done to perfectly support the lyrics.
I’m Just Say’n anticipates the forthcoming McPhee memoir, Straight Up, Without Wings: The Musical Flight of Joe McPhee, written with Mike Faloon, a book that will be published later this year by Corbett vs. Dempsey. I’m really looking forward to this one, too.
The album is available as a download and an LP, you can buy and listen to
it here:
The LP is sold out on the band camp site, but it’s available at several places, for example at the Downtown Music Gallery.
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