You Don’t Know the Life takes the undefinable, exploratory trio into stunning new directions with a blend of evocative original compositions, inventive free improvisations, and unexpected standards.
 
Over the last three decades, visionary keyboardist, producer and composer Jamie Saft has made a career out of reinvention. His genre-obliterating range is evidenced by the stunningly diverse innovators with whom he’s collaborated – a list that includes John Zorn, Beastie Boys, Bad Brains, John Adams, Iggy Pop, Donovan, and The B-52s. Now, on his third RareNoise outing with avant-jazz greats Steve Swallow and Bobby Previte, Saft shifts his iconoclastic focus to the organ trio tradition. You Don’t Know the Life finds the trio engaging in uniquely electrified explorations of original compositions, free improvisations, and generation-spanning standards.

“It’s always such an honor and a pleasure to get to make music with masters like Steve Swallow and Bobby Previte. The sound of the Hammond organ really resonates with Steve’s gorgeous sound and with Bobby’s very unique tonal approach to the drums.”

(Jamie Saft)

Saft, Swallow and Previte came together for the first time to record 2014’s The New Standard, which featured a taste of Saft’s Hammond work alongside his acoustic piano virtuosity. The session, at the keyboardist’s own Potterville International Sound studio in Kingston, New York, was the first meeting for Saft and Swallow, though the bassist had worked with Previte for decades, and the drummer had given Saft some of his earliest opportunities.
 
Their like-minded sense of adventure resulted in an instant, visceral chemistry, and the trio reconvened three years later for the all-piano date Loneliness Road, highlighted by three vocal contributions from punk icon Iggy Pop.
 
With You Don’t Know the Life, they take another left turn into untraversed territory, leaving the acoustic piano behind to craft an organ-centered sound that is equal parts psychedelic soul, monolithic rock and definition-skirting jazz, fused together seamlessly in a unified voice that references the past as hints of profound memories or half-forgotten dreams while venturing fearlessly forward down shadowy, alluring hidden pathways.

The pieces on You Don’t Know the Life run the full expanse of that gamut. The album opens with a bona fide jazz classic, Bill Evans’ “Re: Person I Knew.” Ushered in by Previte’s shuffling rhythm, Saft essays the tune on the Baldwin electric harpsichord. The rare but gorgeous sound has been used by such pop experimentalists as the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and in Saft’s hands immediately unsettles the listener with an unusual sound somewhere between Hammond organ and electric guitar.
 
“Ode to a Green Frisbee” is a typically eccentric offering from the pen of the late trombonist/composer Roswell Rudd, who had passed away just weeks before You Don’t Know the Life was recorded. Rudd was a pivotal figure for both Saft and Swallow; the former had collaborated with him near the end of Rudd’s life, while Swallow had worked with him decades earlier, playing Dixieland jazz and accompanying piano giant Herbie Nichols.

The title track is a late-60s nugget by guitar wizard Billy Gibbons’ pre-ZZ Top psychedelic blues band, Moving Sidewalks. “That is one of the essential, critical pieces of music that formed my musical identity,” Saft lauds. “ Billy Gibbons is a master of his instrument in the same way that these great jazz masters are. I wanted to find tunes that were soulful, important pieces of music to me that would also resonate with Steve and Bobby. ‘You Don’t Know the Life’ creates this trance-like space that I thought it would be just a perfect vehicle for the trio.”

A sly and subversive “Moonlight in Vermont” starts off in unexpectedly traditional fashion, suitable in sound and rhythm for an elegant ballroom before Previte’s disruptive rhythms begin to take on a mind of their own. A wistful read of the Burt Bacharach / Hal David classic  “Alfie” ends the album on an unironically lovely note, run through with Swallow’s lyrical bass melodies.

Tracklisting and Personnel

Jamie Saft - Hammond Organ, Whitehall Organ, Baldwin Electric Hapsichord
Steve Swallow - Electric Bass
Bobby Previte - Drums

1. Re: Person I Knew 
2. Dark Squares
3. Water From Breath
4. You Don’t Know The Life
5. Ode To A Green Frisbee
6. The Cloak
7. Stable Manifold
8. The Break Of The Flat Land
9. Moonlight In Vermont
10. Alfie
 
Recorded January 2018 at Sear Sound, NY
Recorded by Christian Castagno
Mixed and Mastered by Christian Castagno in Minca, Colombia
 
Art and Design by Steven Erdman
Additional Layout assistance by Graham Schreiner

Cat.No.:

RNR0101 (CD)
RNR0101LP (Gatefold Vinyl - GREEN - heavyweight)