released June 20, 2022

Piano, acoustic bass, drum programming - Adam Ponting

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INTERVIEW with Adam Ponting, June 2022

Q. So, how did the idea for this album first come about?

Well... Early last year I'd been playing just guitar for a couple of years! (laughs) I'd hardly touched a piano in at least five years. I got a microphone to record some overdubbed guitar pieces. I started doing the bass part by putting guitar down an octave, and then thought to get an acoustic bass. I never knew the instrument existed until very recently, or I would've got one 25 years ago! I used to play "bass" on the bottom two strings of a guitar - along with records, for hours every morning in the late 90s. Mostly Miles, Herbie, Coltrane records. Until the morning coffees wore off! I've always been a massive Paul Chambers and Ron Carter fan. No-one else comes close for me, well, except Charlie Haden.

Anyway, then I started recording a guitar trio - guitar, acoustic bass, drums - and soon my piano joined the band. The quartet soon after decided to sack the guitarist - he just wasn't very good - and it became a piano trio.

Around then, I was working through Alec Wilder's wonderful book "American Popular Song", which introduces you to a whole lot of great songs and songwriters, as if he's talking to a fellow songwriter. "You Forgot Your Gloves", "Alexander's Bagpipe Band", you name it. (laughs) There are long chapters on Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers. I knew hardly anything about those guys - strange, considering I'd played their songs my whole life. Also I listened to and studied Cuban and Brazilian music a lot. Maybe more of that stuff will come out on the next album. So I was learning a lot of new songs, and some I'd always really liked but never played. The ones that turned out best are on this album.

Q. The drum part on some tunes seem, um, homages to, or imitations of, great jazz drummers. "Actual Proof" sounds very like Tony Williams' approach, and "They Didn't Believe Me", Jimmy Cobb. No?

Yeah, I was learning drums while making this album! The first tune I finished the drums on was "The Greeting". I was studying Elvin Jones, and late 70s Tony. Both absolute beasts! For "Actual Proof", mid-60s Tony. I'd heard that a million times but never asked "Yeah but what is he actually doing?" - it was very surprising! The inspiration for "They Didn't Believe Me" was that live recording of the Wynton Kelly Trio with George Coleman of "Surrey with the Fringe on Top", from '68. I only discovered it recently. Man, that swings! I wanted to see if I could make a tune swing 1/100 that much. I never really appreciated Jimmy Cobb that much before, being for decades mainly a Tony and Philly Joe Jones devotee, but he's amazing on that record, as is Wynton. Now I'm a huge fan. Also - I've always really loved Jack DeJohnette and Paul Motian.

Q. There are also rather a lot of, uh, "references" to McCoy Tyner, on "Prism" and McCoy's own tune "The Greeting". Is he your biggest influence?

Sorry McCoy, I didn't mean to! It's painful every time I hear all the McCoy licks that came out. But I wanted to stick with the piano first takes instead of editing out bits. Oh well. Biggest influence? Uh no, I don't think so. I've listened a lot more to Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett. Or Red Garland or Art Tatum. There's only a few McCoy records I know well. Although the second solo I ever transcribed was McCoy, when I was about 14. I wanted to know what the hell he was doing!

There were a couple of latin songs that got cut from the album for being too Erroll Garnery. For a couple of years, from about the age of 12, I had one Erroll Garner tape and almost nothing else. "Up in Erroll's Room". It's from the late 60s, with conga and horn section - just like "Prism" on my album. Erroll's playing on that record is in my blood and my DNA. Oh, I also had a Louis Armstrong album from the 1960s, which I'd play along with, on trumpet and trombone. I can still hear it clearly in my head, although I haven't heard it in.. gee, almost 40 years! (laughs) Louis is incredible. Also I had a Morrison Brothers Big Bad Band record, which I dearly loved. I grew up on a farm in the countryside, far from a city, pre-internet, so musically isolated it's hard to imagine now, when youtube is just a click away.

Then, thanks entirely to Lisa Parrott sending me an enormous number of tapes, within a year or two I'd heard almost everyone - Herbie, Keith, McCoy, Hank Jones, Bill Evans, Monk, Oscar Peterson, Tommy Flanagan, Ahmad Jamal, Wynton Kelly, Red Garland, Bud Powell - to name just some of the piano players. And I loved horn players like Miles, Bird, Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Brown, more than any piano player. I think that of all the people she exposed me to, Miles and Tony Williams blew my mind the most. Only later I got really into Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Sonny Rollins...

Q. Are you influenced just by jazz?

I've been into a lot of different stuff. Classical, North Indian classical, reggae, gospel, funk... For a year in the mid 90s I just listened to, played, and sang Debussy's opera, which felt like a whole education in itself. I really love Rachmaninoff, mainly the stuff without piano, like "The Bells", Symphony No. 2, "Symphonic Dances". Also Ravel and some of Mahler. Around 2010 I spent five years writing orchestral music, mostly slow and beautiful.

Q. What are you listening to lately?

In the last couple of years I've been very into: Twinkie and Karen Clark, Le'Andria Johnson, Cuban and Brazilian music, Knower, and MonoNeon. And always Miles.