Ittai Korman (upright and electric bass), Theous Jones (drums and percussion), and Joe MacPhail (piano and keyboards) of DreamRoot joined Six Count in Durham. The trio released Leaf, the group’s second album, on October 28 at the NorthStar Church of the Arts.
Ittai Korman (upright and electric bass), Theous Jones (drums and percussion), and Joe MacPhail (piano and keyboards) of DreamRoot joined Six Count in Durham. The trio released Leaf, the group’s second album, on October 28 at the NorthStar Church of the Arts.
DreamRoot recorded Leaf in the Catskills of Upstate New York (not far from where Six Count originated, in Albany, New York!) in the summer of 2021. The musical collective’s debut album, Phases (2020), was developed as an “emotional and provocative exploration of healing.”
On this episode, the guests discuss the creation process behind Leaf, the concept of jazz as “stretch music” (a term popularized by trumpeter Christian Scott, who released an album in 2015 under the same phrase), and upcoming collaborations with vocalist Myk’l Hanna.
You can find DreamRoot next at the Sharp Nine Gallery in Durham on Saturday, January 28, 2023.
Follow DreamRoot:
Disclaimer: Listeners are likely to hear the sounds of a small animal (a 15-year-old Shih Tzu, to be exact) walking around in the background during the first part of the interview.
Music credits
This episode features the songs, “Yeah,” and “Desiree,” from the album Leaf (2022) by DreamRoot.
This season features the songs “Forged in Rhythm” and “Callous & Kind” by Keenan McKenzie & The Riffers (2017), used by Six Count with permission from the artist.
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(Xara)
Thank you all so much for joining Six Count on this beautiful afternoon in Durham. For our listeners and voice-matching purposes, will each of you share your name and what instrument—or instruments, I should say—that you play for DreamRoot?
(Theous)
All right, I’m Theous Jones. I play drum set and percussion in DreamRoot.
(Joe)
Hey, ya’ll. I’m Joe MacPhail. I play keyboards for DreamRoot. Well, keyboards and piano.
(Ittai)
I’m Ittai Korman, and I play bass, both upright and electric.
(Xara)
Very nice. I became aware of your music by attending your album release party for Leaf at the NorthStar Church of the Arts on October 28. So, first off, congratulations. What were some highlights from that performance?
(Theous)
It’s been a long time coming. We recorded the album . . . What was it, a year ago? A year ago, in Upstate New York. And, you know, with recording music and getting the album out, it’s a process to getting things to the album release. So, just getting there and being on the stage was kind of a breath of fresh air. Like, all right, we’re here. You know, the album is done, we can give them out; it’s legal to give the music out now. So, it’s a process.
(Joe)
Yeah, an album is always kind of a crazy undertaking with like four different processes that all have their own experience, and so being able to play it live and kind of use the album, and to have it in the world instead of just in the computer, was very nice.
(Ittai)
It takes so much to bring an album together. We spent so much time getting the album cover art, all the ticket sales and whatever, and all of that, so it was nice to kind of just give the music life again in a new space.
We recorded the album in August 2021. We went to Upstate New York in the Catskills. And during the pandemic, I kind of learned how to be a recording engineer. Along with Joe and Lynn Grissett, we recorded the album by ourselves in this big house in Upstate New York. We took seven, eight days and just recorded all day, every day. It was intense, but we made it happen.
(Joe)
I feel like, as a band, we’ve been this kind of ongoing collective. And so, we’ve had these two kinds of radically different album-creation processes. The first one, we just went into the studio and did the basic tracks for the eleven songs in two days, which I don’t recommend, but we did it. And so, for this one, it was like the ability to get fewer songs and really work on them in like more of a holistic way, which was really nice.
(Xara)
Yeah, and I’d love to hear your background and how you arrived in Durham, or if you’re from here. You met at different gigs around town, and I imagine that if someone were interested in coming to the Triangle, and to Durham, specifically, they might be interested in knowing what those sorts of essential venues are. So, will you give us a glimpse into how you came together and the sort of places that you were haunting at the time?
(Theous)
A lot of the universities around here are like hubs for jazz musicians that are majoring in music and are looking to get into the real world and start working. I’ve been in Durham since 2006, and you know, been playing gigs in the area and stuff like that. You know, through networking, we kind of crossed paths. I think Ittai and I met on a gig in downtown Durham at a location that’s not open anymore. It was called Cuban Revolution, and it was a really cool spot. But yeah, we used to play down there a lot.
Joe, same thing with him. I can’t remember where we met, if it was on a gig or something, just through networking.
(Joe)
It was on a hotel gig. I remember the second or third gig that we did, Shara Nova, from the band My Brightest Diamond, was like, doing a performance, and was like, “Oh, you guys are doing all right. You should keep working at it.” And that was kind of a nice foundational thing.
(Theous)
Yeah but doubling back on the venues for people coming to Durham or the Triangle area. For Durham, I recommend King Fisher. That’s a good spot. They have live jazz down there. You may catch a jazz trio there. Oh, like in Raleigh, there’s Watts & Ward. I don’t go to Raleigh that much, but they have live music there. And I mean, usually, once you come to the Triangle area, once you talk to a few people, they’re going to tell you where the spots are at, and you’ll just kind of end up there.
(Xara)
Would you say that the culture is more collegial then, in people wanting to network, or is there still some competitiveness? How do you think of the Triangle scene?
(Theous)
I think it’s still collegial, but I think there’s a sense of competitiveness to keep the music at a certain level, you know what I mean, because everybody’s playing this music as like a whole. So, we’re trying to hold it to a certain standard from like, you know, the oldies, like they did back in the day. They held music to a certain standard. That’s why it sounded so good. So, you know, there’s a little bit of both, in a sense. And, you know, a little competition isn’t bad.
(Xara)
That’s true.
(Theous)
It’s all fun.
(Ittai)
Yeah, coming from New York, it’s definitely a lot more cutthroat in New York than it is here, just in terms of like, if somebody doesn’t like you or your playing, then you’re out. Here, there is a really nice standard that everyone holds each other to, like Theous was saying, but people will take the time to bring you up, as opposed to just cut you out.
(Xara)
I know you’ve described yourselves as “political jazz” and “neo soul,” using R&B, so, how are you thinking about the utility of genre in this latest album. Is that useful or is it more so the drawing what you want and being able to express different things through that difference?
(Joe)
Well, I feel like some of these early tags, in like, calling ourselves political jazz, it was kind of this attempt to fuse neo soul and funk into the music. But I think there was the realization that we are kind of a jazz band, but in an expansive manner, I guess. You know, people like Christian Scott talking about “stretch music,” and I think it was Nicholas Payton who had the concept of Black American Music, BAM. And kind of that idea of jazz as an expansive genre, it’s not necessarily a limited box, is what we’re going for. And we all have our own distinct voices on the instruments, so a lot of it is just a negotiation in like what comes out after all that negotiation.
(Xara)
Using the word “negotiation” I like because that’s true in how each person brings a different flavor and their different preferences. So do you have to have a sort of agreement of the sound you’re hoping to achieve, or is the sound you create the product of all these other different decisions that go into it?
(Joe)
I feel like you have the goal, and then you have the journey, and then you end up kind of like 45 degrees away from the goal, but it’s a new goal that has its own thing to it. And that’s kind of the process, but there’s something kind of beautiful in that because you kind of find that thing as much as force it.
(Xara)
Yes, and I was reading about Phases and how the meaning perhaps changed a bit from when you recorded it and releasing it in May 2020, when there was the beginning of this craziness that it’s been. So, I’d like to ask what Leaf is in contrast to Phases. Is it a continuation and still an exploration of music as healing or in expressing the struggles of life, or what other messages do you hope to convey?
(Theous)
It’s a continuation of Phases in a different manner. You know, music is about emotion. It’s the push and the pull. You know, going into this latest album, we didn’t go into it with the intention of like, “Oh, this song has to mean this for this particular audience.” We were just producing a product that people can love and accept and just feel. You know, something that feels good. And you use your imagination for your own intent and purpose.
(Joe)
I feel like we were just trying to push ourselves to create something kind of unique that we could call our own. We’re all creators and songwriters, where with each album, we’ve all contributed a few different songs, and then also co-created songs. So, it’s kind of this mesh of that we’re building with all the different people who have come by and done melodies. You know, as a collective, we’ve just kind of created these kinds of pieces together.
(Xara)
And why do you say “collective”? Is it the idea of community or those who you feature, or where does that come from, as opposed to just saying “trio”?
(Joe)
Well, we’ve had all these melodists play with us over the last six or seven years. Where we’ve got, you know, Serena Wiley, Lynn Grissett, we’ve got Myk’l Hanna, Karee Sheroy, Phinehas Ngang’oro. And so, we’ve had all these people come through. And they, as much as us, lend their voices and their melody and kind of bring different things out of us in the creation process.
(Xara)
To what extent are you thinking about the audience in terms of the kind of engagement you hope [to have]? Do you want an audience or a listener at home to be listening to everything that you’re doing, and have that deep interaction, or is it more so the kind of feeling overall that you want people to get . . . Yeah, do you think about the listener experience much in your work?
(Theous)
From the drummer perspective, I look at things as a whole. Like when I’m playing the drums, I mean, I want you to hear everything that I’m doing, but I want you to feel the beat, feel the rhythm, feel the groove as a whole, instead of listening to every little detail, you know. But yeah, that’s from a drumming perspective.
(Joe)
It’s the same with my over dubbing, where might have, you know, four-to-eight different keyboards in a track, but I don’t necessarily want it to sound like eight different keyboards in a track. I just want to create an atmosphere that still leaves room for the melody but kind of creates a feeling. So, I think, yeah, I hope people feel it, and then feel compelled to dig deeper.
(Ittai)
Yeah, I mean I hope that listeners listen to what we’re doing, because we’re really kind of expanding and coming in, coming out of different types of music. But also, we don’t want to prescribe anybody to listen any kind of way. If they want to listen to it while they’re washing the dishes and zoning out, great, if they want to just sit and close their eyes, you know.
(Theous)
The shower tune?
(Ittai)
You know, enjoy it any way the listener enjoys it. But there are a lot of intricacies that we have, especially in this album, like we really went into studio mode and ironed out a lot of things.
(Xara)
What have you learned from the process of communicating with your bandmates about what you’re trying to achieve, what kind of journey you’re hoping someone goes on when you’re playing with different aspects of the music?
(Ittai)
I see it as feeling and energy transfer. So, it’s hard to communicate that but I think that that is what the music comes down to. It’s like, how do we transfer an energy or a feeling, and how can somebody understand that, and I think that’s what a vibe is. It’s somebody’s energy or something’s energy or their feeling, and how we try to communicate between us and between the audience. Every time we play in a new space, it feels different. Something that was hard during the pandemic was . . . We did a lot of recordings, like we did a whole PBS special at the North Carolina Museum of Art but there was no audience. There were like six people behind cameras, and we talked to them after, and they were like, “We wanted to clap.” But there’s an energy transfer when we perform and when we improvise that is different than us just being in a studio. So, I think that’s the whole idea there.
(Xara)
I liked your stories, Ittai, between each of the songs. You referred to standup. I think that would be really hard, where you want to focus on your music but know you have to say something funny or interesting, but those tidbits are always so useful to me because it’s fun to contextualize the thought process behind the songs. Can I ask the sauna story, and why you were in a sauna, and how that might’ve affected the song?
(Ittai)
Yeah, well, okay, so before that . . . We’ve been—Theous and Joe and I—have been working on our banter. Because we kind of hide behind our instruments and do our thing. But at performances we’ve been trying to say more. So, at the show, yeah, at one point, I found myself talking for a while and was like, “Oh, I guess I’m talking here; I guess I’m doing standup.” But, yeah, the sauna story is that we were in Upstate and there’s this beautiful music room in the house that we were recording in. The house was owned by a vocalist named Amalie. She created that music room. And right next to it was her warmup room, where she would warm up her voice. And that room became a sauna, and we were trying to figure out where everybody would be, and then, it so happened that that just made sense for where the upright should be recording. It sounded amazing because it’s made of all wood. So, I was basically playing a base, but it felt like I was inside of a base. So, I was like playing a base inside of a base. Every note that I played resonated so much that it felt like I barely had to play at all. So that was the story there, but it definitely got hot in there.
(Xara)
And how do you know when your work is finished for an album. You mentioned, Joe, the four stages. How do you know, “Okay, we have enough here. I think we can live with the sound that we’re creating.”
(Joe)
I guess, you get to the point where you kind of . . . not dislike the album, but you’ve just heard it so many times that you kind of lose perspective. It’s like, somewhere around there, it’s like, “Okay, it’s time to finish this up or shelve it for a year.” So, it’s kind of, just doing like little micro edits, and these little sort of finishing touches. It’s kind of a harsh process, but it’s good to feel the harshness of the process because that means you’re near the end.
(Theous)
That’s very true. You know, as musicians, we’re like our own worst critics. So, the more you listen to your work, the more critical become. You’re like, “Oh, there’s not a period there, or there’s a comma missing.” It’s like writing something. So, it’s that whole perspective. Like Joe said, that final listen where you don’t want to listen to it anymore, when you’re like, “Okay, I’m good. You take a listen and let me know what you think.”
(Ittai)
Yeah, and something that was freeing for me was the recording engineer who we worked with on the first album, Scott Solter, really amazing recording engineer, and we were talking at one point kind of in between sessions, and he was like, “Remember that a recording is just capturing a moment in time.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah.” And so, it was freeing for me in that what we’re doing when we’re creating a song is that we’re creating some kind of art, and when we’re recording it, we’re just capturing that moment at the time. And it can be different later in terms of how we play, but that is what is captured. That has been freeing for me in when I’m recording music because I don’t put too much, you know, as Theous said, you’re your own worst critic. I don’t put too much into it. It’s like, “Yeah, let’s do this. I think it sounds as good as it can be, right now, for what it is.”
(Joe)
I feel like the biggest shift between the first album and this album is that the first album, we were in this quintet formation that was performing at Beer Study over in Durham. You know, monthly or semi-monthly, and were kind of just getting the hours in. So that was very much capturing the band that existed, playing the songs that that band had created together. And then this album was much more of a sculpture, with more of a quartet sound, where we were capturing a moment and then building all the missing pieces around that moment to create some weird macro sculpture, macro structure.
(Xara)
Yeah, I like that analogy. I think of that sometimes, too, when I’ll listen to a live recording and then one that was in a studio, and it’s just totally different. If you hear the audience in the recording, that’s cool, too—to hear what [the musician(s)] got feedback on, which I imagine is sometimes not what you thought was the most impressive or interesting part of the song.
As you all are thinking about the next project, is there anything else that you’d like to share about—the Myk’l Hanna collaboration, where people can hear you all next, or anything else you’d like to share with Six Count listeners?
(Theous)
Yeah, we’re playing in January. What’s the date? At the Sharp Nine Gallery in Durham.
(Ittai)
January 28, 2023.
(Theous)
We’ll be there. You can check us out there. I think Myk’l will be on that show with us. Come to the Triangle. Check out music when you get here. There are a lot of musicians flourishing in this area. So, this is the place to be.
(Joe)
Yeah, we have some tunes with Myk’l Hanna coming out. And before then, we’ve left quite the digital footprint because a lot of our functioning as a band ended up happening during the pandemic. So, there’s plenty of things to check out, basically through YouTube.
(Xara)
That seems like a silver lining, perhaps, in not being able to gig in person?
(Joe)
Yeah, it makes it a little less ephemeral than a gig, which is both good and bad, depending on, you know . . .
(Ittai)
Yeah, listen to our music. Check out the album. Enjoy it. And we will be coming out with some more things. I think the next album will be very different. This one was instrumental, and the next one is going to be Myk’l Hanna on vocals, so we’ll see where that takes us.
(Xara)
Very cool. Ittai, Theous, and Joe, thank you all so much again.
(Theous)
No, thank you. Thanks for having us.
(Ittai)
Thanks for having us.