The Eternal Internal

But as a leader, he was just getting started. On both acoustic and electric bass, Washington was touring with two highly interactive trios, one with Belgian musicians Erwin Vann on tenor sax and Stephane Galland on drums, and his American band with tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and drummer Gene Lake, showcasing both his supportive and solo roles. Creatively, Washington’s star was on the rise.

Then there was the accident.

“It happened at home one morning; I slipped on the stairs and broke two bones in my left hand. I had surgery to repair the 4th and 5th metatarsal bones, so now I have two titanium plates and ten screws in my hand. There was a period when I was wondering, ‘Am I gonna play anymore?’”

Washington had surgery in early May 2006, and began rehab to get the muscles to work again. “I did my first gig with Oliver Lake two months later,” says Washington, who has been rebuilding his strength since. “During that two-month period when my hand was in a cast, I started listening to all the gigs that we had recorded on tour before the accident. So I took the best moments from two different concerts and made the new CD.”

Recorded during two separate European tours in October 2005 and March ’06, A Lot of Love, Live! highlights Washington’s distinctly different approaches to the upright and electric bass while also demonstrating his melodic penchant as a soloist on both instruments.

People who associate you with electric bass might be surprised to hear you playing so much upright on the new recording.
I played upright before I ever played electric bass. Actually, I’m originally a cellist. My brother and my sister both started playing violin in school, but that seemed like a girly, wussy instrument to me. I wanted a bigger instrument, so I started playing cello, and then they switched me around to acoustic bass in the school orchestra.

When did you start checking out electric bass?
When I was in junior high, my brother, Kenny [drummer], was going to [Manhattan’s] High School of Music and Art with Marcus Miller. They were in the stage band together, and Marcus would come over to the house all the time because Kenny had this huge jazz record collection. Kenny used to say to Marcus, “Man, you gotta check out some jazz records instead of learning all that damn funk.” Marcus and Kenny would sit up and listen to records and eat food all night long, and I sat in the corner and watched them the whole time. Marcus had his electric bass there and would let me fool around on it, and he also showed me a few things, and I took to it really quickly.

Who were your early upright bass influences?
My teacher Paul West, who I studied with at the Henry Street Settlement, was a big influence early on. He studied with my all-time favorite bass player, Sam Jones. I love Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, and all those cats, but Sam Jones just had a certain thing; his note selection was different from everybody’s. Ron Carter is similar to Sam Jones in some respects. I’ve been trying to reach out to him to get a couple of lessons, because I could definitely use it.

You’ve played with so many great drummers, from old-school cats like Jimmy Cobb and Bernard Purdie to younger guys like Dafnis Prieto and Gene Lake.
I’ve learned from so many. Besides Gene, one of my serious favorites is Marvin “Smitty” Smith. I played with him in Five Elements, and he showed me how to be internal with your counting and conceptualizing music—listening to music in its long form instead of listening measure by measure. I think that for a lot of players, there’s too much counting and overconceptualizing. People flip out over Steve Coleman’s music because they try counting it; they call it odd-meter, but it’s not odd at all. What makes it odd? A number? I think not. It’s all even, it’s metric, it’s perfect. And it’s a groove. Your body can feel it; it’s not odd if your body can feel something like that. Smitty taught me about the eternal internal clock, and by playing with him all the time I got that really strong in myself. So drummers nowadays—man, they defer to me because they know I won’t rush or drag.

It must be challenging to hook up with drummers who have different interpretations of where the one is.
I look at a beat as having space, and it all depends on where you want to sit in it—to the front or to the back. Drummers like Amir Thompson (a.k.a. ?uestlove), Terreon Gully, and J.T. Thomas sit so far back in the beat it almost sounds like they’re draggin’, but they’re not. Instead, there’s so much tension in it. When I was doing stuff with D’Angelo, his drummers were pulling on the beat to create this extreme groove tension where it’s almost not on the beat, but it is; it’s just hitting you in another place. Playing with those cats, you have to find out where they are and find your place in it. It all comes down to saying, “Okay, where am I gonna sit here?”
Playing with someone like Dafnis Prieto is an adventure in itself because of his Cubanisms. His playing is fiery and sometimes he gets very excited; he sits up a little bit further on the beat, so I have to lean back a little to pull him back. Afro-Cuban music’s momentum and drive can sweep you away, and you can end up rushing the beat. It’s really enjoyable, but it can also get kind of out of hand. So sometimes I try to pull the reins back on Dafnis to keep it at a slow gallop, so to speak.

You favored the electric bass through the ’80s.
I did my first electric bass session in 1982, for John Purcell. By that time I didn’t feel like lugging around an upright, so focused on playing electric. I got pointers from lots of players, like Kim Clarke, Melvin Gibbs, and Rev. Bruce Johnson. They poured all kinds of information into my head, which proved to be really helpful.

What made you return to upright?
Around 1986 my brother started getting on me: “Look, man, you need to play acoustic. You can get some more work doing that.” So I hunkered down and started working on my acoustic stuff again. I studied with [drummer] Keith Copeland at the New School. I played nothing but upright during that period and tried to avoid playing electric altogether.

When did you hook up with Steve Coleman?
I had met him back in 1979 when he and my brother Kenny were playing together with [bassist] Curtis Lundy. I hooked up with Steve in ’89 when he was looking for a bass player, and Greg Osby recommended me. I showed up for a session and Steve pulled out some music, and I played it on the spot. That was the Rhythm People record; Smitty also played on it. I was only supposed to play on one tune, but I wound up playing the whole CD, also doing a couple of tunes with Dave Holland. Dave and Bob Cranshaw were instrumental in helping me conceptualize upright bass in a different way. Prior to that, I was trying to look at it all as bass; I was putting my electric bass concept on the acoustic, and that just does not work. As Bob told me, “They’re two different instruments—play them two different ways.” That made sense to me.

Coleman’s music sounds rhythmically challenging, but it grooves. There’s a simplicity there—a pulse that people can grab onto, no matter what the time signature is.
We used to fool a lot of players. Cats would check out our sets and afterwards say things like, “It grooves, but then all of a sudden Steve plays something else and you all go over there.” Steve calls these phrases drum chants, and you have to memorize them in order to know where to go when he plays them. It’s African stuff—in an African drum troupe if you play a certain drum chant, everybody knows to go to something else. A more recent example would be James Brown: When the brother said, “Take it to the bridge,” the whole band went there. So in Steve’s band you have to be listening all the time onstage.

You recorded more than a dozen CDs with Coleman. What about his music is most challenging for a bass player?
Steve wants you to understand the music, and then get off it. That can be really difficult. The music is based on specific drum chants that work in a certain way, and if you’re not playing your particular chant, it affects everything because it’s a subset of the whole. But when they all work together, everything opens up and you can see the lines between everything. Music is a language, and I had to learn Steve’s language before I could get comfortable in it.
Nowadays when I encounter some music, I try to erase the barlines—forget the counting and make it into one big bar and just use the universal metronome. I keep a continuous pulse, read it as a song form, and understand the music. I can learn pretty much anybody’s music now. It just comes down to conceptualizing what they want.

What about your longstanding experience on the bandstand with Chico Hamilton?
Chico taught me about cultural exchange: how to conduct myself as a black man in Europe, how to conduct myself with dignity and class—and to respect the bandstand and the music. Chico’s attitude was, “Always come to the bandstand and hit. You can be tired, you can be drunk, you can be sick, whatever—but when you hit the stand, be professional.” And if there’s sad motherfuckers on the stage, make them better, too. Don’t sit there and vibe, because you never know who’s watching. Bring your best stuff, because folks will talk about you if you vibed and sounded sad. That was one of the most important things he taught me.
One time we were playing at the Vitta Bar in Zurich and I had a sweatshirt with this huge Mickey Mouse face on the front. Chico frowned at me through the whole set, but I didn’t understand why. At the end of the set he grabbed me and said, “Don’t you ever wear that fucking shirt on my stand again. You come up on my stage like you’re ready to play. Don’t be coming up there playing games!” And I never did that on his stand ever again.

What do you like about playing in a trio with drums and sax?
Playing in the trio has been special. I remember hearing Sonny Rollins’s “Freedom Suite” at home with my brother Kenny in 1968 or so. I didn’t know it then, but the musical space between Sonny and [drummer] Max Roach and [bassist] Oscar Pettiford—that idea of no chords—inspired me. The creative directions to go in were infinite, and that’s what I’m trying to generate in my own trio. I actually experimented with this concept when I was playing with Five Elements. Steve and Gene Lake and I did an off-shoot trio project called Reflex, which gave me the opportunity to use electric bass and incorporate chords into the bass groove from there. The openness of a trio challenges your musicianship, especially from a bassist’s point of view. You have to bring the chordal while keeping the groove and also incorporating counterpoint methods and tonal shapes. It’s an ongoing, never-ending learning experience. It’s my adventure.