Trip (Heads Up)
Mike Stern
Released September 8, 2017
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2017
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mgUPAj2QhGy99xAosBH02SuGoGM7pir5s
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/album/2zVZlh1IBR7lDs4gZF802g?si=bHG2mMunTuyjIl7OoCHQGw
About:
On July 3rd, 2016, right before I was to leave on a tour, I learned that when you least expect it, life can change instantly and trip you bad. That is when I was seriously injured from a fall onto the street near my NYC apartment. I broke both my arms and they’ve since healed, but I’m left with what is probably a permanent injury to my right hand. (Not a good thing for a guitar player.)
Even after a couple of surgeries by an amazing doctor, I still have to use glue so I can hold a guitar pick. But I’m very grateful to be able to play and make this recording under these challenging circumstances. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn´t play music.
The support I’ve gotten from friends and family (especially my wife Leni and all the musicians on this recording) has been beautiful.
Also, many people who I’ve never met wrote me and encouraged me to keep going. This all means so much to me and I appreciate the support more than I can say.
Obviously in life there are no good trips and bad trips, plenty of ups and downs emotionally or physically, often both at the same time. But if there’s one thing I keep learning, if you’re down, even though sometimes it feels impossible, you got to try to get right back up and going as best you can.
Mike
Track Listing:
1. Trip (Mike Stern) 07:25
2. Blueprint (Mike Stern) 07:27
3. Half Crazy (Mike Stern) 05:37
4. Screws (Mike Stern) 07:21
5. Gone (Mike Stern) 04:06
6. Whatchacallit (Mike Stern) 06:44
7. Emilia (Mike Stern) 05:33
8. Hope for That (Mike Stern) 05:53
9. I Believe You (Mike Stern) 05:03
10. Scotch Tape and Glue (Mike Stern) 05:37
11. B Train (Mike Stern) 05:20
Personnel:
Mike Stern: guitar, vocals
Randy Brecker: trumpet (1, 2)
Jim Beard: piano, Hammond organ, keyboards
Dennis Chambers: drums (1, 2, 6)
Tom Kennedy: bass (1, 2, 6)
Arto Tuncboyaciyan: percussion (1, 2, 4, 7, 8)
Bob Franceschini: tenor saxophone (1, 6)
Victor Wooten: bass (1)
Bill Evans: tenor sax (3, 10)
Lenny White: drums (3, 4, 10, 11)
Teymur Phell: bass (3, 7, 8, 11)
Wallace Roney: tumpet (4, 11)
Will Calhoun: drums (5, 9)
Edmond Gilmore: acoustic bass (5)
Gio Moretti: vocal (7)
Leni Stern: ghoni (7, 9)
Dave Weckl: drums (8)
Edmond Gilmore: bass (9)
Elhadji Alioune Faye: percussion (10)
Recorded January – March 2017, at Spin Studio, Long Island City, New York
Produced by Jim Beard
Additional Recording and Mixing: Jim Beard
Recorded and Mixed by Phil Magnotti
Assistant Engineer: Yosimar Gomez
Additional Recording and Mixing: Jim Beard
Mastered by Paul Blakemore (3)
Cover Photography by Sandrine Lee
Art Direction: Jack Frisch
Review:
Trip was an album that happened because of Mike Stern’s relentless determination to remain Mike Stern. On July 3, 2016, he was hailing a cab when he tripped over some concealed construction debris, broke both arms, and was taken to the hospital. He fractured both humerus bones and was left with significant nerve damage in his right hand, preventing him from accomplishing even the simplest of tasks — including holding a guitar pick. Following a surgery in which 11 screws were put into his arm, Stern emerged in late October with Chick Corea, playing seated and wearing a black glove outfitted with Velcro attached to a Velcro-fitted pick. A second surgery followed and he gained more control of his nerve-damaged right hand by literally gluing and taping his fingers to a pick. It gradually strengthened his grip, and allowed him to regain his speed and technical precision. The recording of Trip began in January of 2017, six months after the accident. While the title’s meaning has a double entendre, some of its song titles — “Screws,” “Scotch Tape and Glue” –also reference his surgical events.
Stern enlisted an all-star cast playing in different configurations, achieving a diversity that even exceeds All Over the Place. The title track with drummer Dennis Chambers, bassist Victor Wooten, keyboardist/album producer Jim Beard, and saxophonist Bob Franceschini is a knotty exercise in rocking jazz-funk fusion with peeling guitar riffs, solos, and fills. There’s a Miles Davis lilt to “Blueprint” with Randy Brecker guesting on muted trumpet, while Beard plays B-3 and synths, and Chambers offers his best take on Al Foster. Stern eventually touches on the blues before it winds out. “Half Crazy” is blazing, hard-grooving post-bop, with Beard on piano, swinging tenorist Bill Evans, drummer Lenny White, and Teymur Phell on bass. “Screws” commences slowly and quixotically with Wallace Roney on trumpet and the rest of the rhythm section above, as well as percussionist Arto Tuncboyaciyan. While the melody builds in layers and spirals upwards, Roney and Stern each solo hard, adding limber bluesy funk until they deconstruct it to a fade. Leni Stern adds her ngoni to the West African-tinged “Emilia” with Gio Moretti on wordless vocals hovering above the band’s interplay. Stern’s ngoni also adds a lithe dimension to the grooving, midtempo ballad “I Believe You.” “Hope for That” is another intense, even transcendent fusion jam that bumps into rockist Latin terrain with drummer Dave Weckl driving a mean set of crossbeats. While fleet post-bop governs the hard swinging “Scotch Tape and Glue,” with Evans returning on tenor, it is Stern’s overdriven playing that sets the tone and controls its flow. Stern even picks up an acoustic guitar for the lovely quartet ballad “Gone,” offering a side of himself we seldom hear. Stern may have been proving something to himself on Trip. But what he delivers is a tenacious, heartfelt work of imagination, discipline, technical facility, and pure pleasure.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
