Sax player

Here’s a nice review of Plainville’s recent performance at NYC’s Undead Jazz Festival By Daniel Lehner @ allaboutjazz.com:

Toward the wee hours of the morning, the streets were quiet, the audience was dwindling and this was the most appropriate group to close the night set up on stage at Homage Skatepark. Saxophonist Jeremy Udden‘s group Plainville allowed the weary audience to mentally leave New York for a brief moment. Made up of keyboardist Leo Genovese, drummer RJ Miller, bassist Eivind Opsvik and guitarist Ryan Scott, this music is part of the aesthetic practiced by musicians like Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny: a painting of small-town life and optimism, mixed with Southern gothic maturity, folk song simplicity, and garage rock pathos.

Plainville’s writing took rock and folk die casting, and colored it with an advanced harmonic and rhythmic sense. The composition “Red Coat” walked around different key centers that had a playfulness as well as a gentleness. “Hammer” was a strummed folk tune with a pulse from Opsvik and Miller that thumped like a heartbeat and “Thomas” featured the steely twang of Scott’s resonator guitar under Udden’s alto. Compositions like “Sad Eyes” turned up the heat a bit, with Scott churning out melodic riffs with the same knowledge of the medium as jazz musicians have about theirs.

Udden’s sound was a steampunk arrangement of ideas, as if Lee Konitz were reimagined as a folk hero, with lines that flowed in effortless threads. When the music picked up intensity and thrust itself into garage rock wails, Udden and the band stayed composed, too at peace to get ahead of themselves. Even Genovese’s ear-bending outside harmonies seemed within the calm of the storm. Udden, face obscured by the shadows of the skatepark, looked at the audience and said, “It’s 2:00 am and we’re still here.” The statement ended up not being just a thank you, but rather pointing out the dedication and resilience of the festival and its participants.