Back to Page 1

Skerik is a tenor-sax lord. He's played with Les Claypool, Roger Waters, Mark Eitzel, Ivan Neville, Peter Buck, and Jesus Christ. Well, maybe not Jesus, but Skerik is so good, he doesn't even need a last name, like Madonna, or Pelé. His Syncopated Taint Septet are touring in support of their debut studio album, Husky, which was recorded at Hollywood's Sound Factory on 2-inch analog tape by Grammy Award—winning engineer Husky Hoskulds, whose resumé includes Tom Waits and Elvis Costello. A five-man horn line, backed by Hammond B-3 organ and drums, the Septet mix funk and dirtied Zappa tendencies with Count Basie swing. Hiphop beats pervade and run with rangy, embossed horn lines. Think Charles Mingus mixed with punk. TRENT MOORMAN

The second CD from the single-named Seattle saxophonist Skerik fractured funk ensemble has a little bit of something for everyone. Well, maybe not the people who think American Idol is music at its finest. I have to assume that 9X Online is read by an eclectic, self-selected audience. So maybe not everyone, but you might like it. Recorded in a single day after a tour, the CD has the kind of rubbery discipline of a band relaxed but still engaged. The mix of written and improvised bits is pretty seamless, sometimes chaotic ensemble wailing suddenly shifting to spare trio interactions. The songs have titles like “Fry His Ass” and “Go to Hell, Mr. Bush,” potentially appealing to both sides of the political aisle, unless they both refer the current President. The Lounge Lizards once made simultaneously serious and wiseass records like this, as did John Zorn before he found religion, or at least founded Masada. There is more cleverness than greatness here, but it’s all fresh, fun and fast-moving.

The steady, implacable beat of “Fry His Ass” keeps leading soloists into thickets of madcap ensemble playing that they suddenly yield to quiet. “The Third Rail” teeters between hard swing and harder funk but ultimately maintains an absorbing balance. “Irritaint” aptly combines rolling, N’awlins-style brass writing and a breakbeat passage from Wicks, and “Song for Bad” begins with a chill groove laced with organ chords but builds into the biggest smile of a chord progression you’re ever likely to hear. Even “Go to Hell Mr. Bush” surprises, as a lovely flute pastorale from Hans Teuber bracketing an elegiac central section. A song about our current president that doesn’t break down into clamorous disarray? Now that’s unexpected.
- Andrew Lindemann Malone

So fresh and so clean

Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet makes each night its own with pair of Oregon concerts

By Jake TenPas
The Entertainer

When jazz legend Wayne Shorter was a young man, he and his brother were in a band together. Legend has it that they entered a battle of the bands, and when they set up their music stands, instead of putting sheet music on them, they arranged copies of that day’s newspaper.

“They wanted to show how fresh their music was,” says Skerik, bandleader of the Syncopated Taint Septet. “It wasn’t written yesterday, last week or last year.”

Clearly, this is a lesson Skerik took to heart at a young age. Getting his start in the mid-’90s with underground Seattle psychedelic jazz band Critters Buggin, he’s plowed his way through a number of ensembles in the years since, playing with everybody from jazz keyboardist Wayne Horvitz to alternative rocker Les Claypool of Primus.

Critters Buggin was known for its chasm-like stylistic range, willingness to indulge in risky experimentation and penchant for bizarre stage antics. When they played Eugene four or five years back, Skerik stepped onto the stage wearing a lizard mask and a feather boa. Though he normally plays saxophone, in Critters Buggin he played a range of instruments from percussion to keys, and that night, he wailed on a bright red Nord electric keyboard.

“We wanted to make the whole thing of playing serious music not so serious, because there’s so much pretentiousness in instrumental music, especially with jazz and fusion stuff or whatever,” he says. “It’s like instrumental music gets lumped in with all these really sad-core, really pretentious people — dudes thinking they’re some kind of god or whatever.”

In his own music, Skerik has deftly avoided such pitfalls. While his style might have changed in the years since, the two things that remain are his commitments to squashing the ego and self-congratulatory nature of instrumental music, and keeping each night’s performance as fresh as can be.

Whether playing with Horvitz, drummer Bobby Previte and keyboardist Dave Palmer in Ponga, joining Claypool in the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade or indulging in some good old southern funk with Charlie Hunter and Stanton Moore in Garage a Trois, predictability seems to be one doom that Skerik is doing everything in his power to avoid.

“You don’t have to compromise the music, and you can actually have fun at the same time,” he says.

With his Syncopated Taint Septet, whose second album, “Husky,” came out earlier this year, Skerik is continuing his mission to bring fresh ideas to jazz, a music with a rich legacy of innovation and popularity.

This time, his band throws elements of hip-hop into the mix on songs such as “Irritaint”, although as Skerik is quick to point out, it’s not an intentional appropriation.

“ ‘Irritaint’ or any of those songs, there’s a lot of freedom for people to interpret and play the songs how they want to sound,” he says. “We just play them different every day. I think what you’re feeling there is the drummer’s choice of a beat, and that day, that’s what he’s playing.”

That drummer’s name is John Wicks, and Skerik points out that what makes him such a great musician is that in addition to being trained in jazz and a number of other disciplines, he’s also extremely open to new sounds, including drummer Questlove, aka Amir Thompson, of rap group The Roots.

“I’m always playing with musicians where you want to play your record collection. We all love music, and you’re studying the music that you love, so it’s going to creep in as an influence,” Skerik says. “None of my bands are ever contrived in such a way conceptually. We don’t overtly say, ‘Oh, we need to have a jazz frontline horn section with a hip-hop rhythm section.' In no way has that ever been articulated.”

When it comes to planning out the songs, Skerik yields the pen to his fellow band members, who he says tend not to dictate to the rhythm section how to play. In fact, instead of following the exact marks on the sheet music, the band usually plays a unique set every night, sticking close to Skerik’s commitment to keep the music alive and changing.

“This is a collection of seven very like-minded people from Seattle that happen to just gel very well together and improvise together,” he says, “And that’s what makes a great band for me.”

Saturday and Sunday, Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet will demonstrate their danceable group dynamic, playing everything from old-style swing, to swift and merciless beats to smoking solo skronk in Portland and Eugene. Saturday they’ll be at the Goodfoot Lounge, 2845 S.E. Stark, Portland, at 9 p.m., and Sunday they’ll play Eugene’s WOW Hall at 8:30 p.m. They’ll also perform in-store gigs at Portland’s Music Millennium and Eugene’s CD World before each show.

Wherever they’re playing, one thing’s for sure. It will be the only time the music will be performed exactly that way.

“I don’t think we’re doing anything new or really innovative,” Skerik says, “But in the context of today — touring a band like that — I think it’s probably the only band doing that.