Goner Records, often tagged as the premier punk presence in the Bluff City, is actually all that and more, and their recent show bookings have included music that’s decidedly not punk, yet nevertheless decidedly out there. That is to say, artists that are beyond category, and that’s about all one can say about artists like Tatsuya Nakatani, Jack Wright’s Wrest, Quintron’s Weather Warlock, or even the ostensibly Afrobeat Etran de L’Aïr: All of them defy categorization.
This Friday, February 23rd, Goner presents another artist who fits that description, the irrepressibly inventive drummer Chris Corsano. Gonerfest fans may recall that he performed with no wave/noise guitarist Bill Orcutt last year, but that only scratches the surface of Corsano’s creativity. “Jazz” fans may also know him from a release on our region’s premier free improv-friendly label, Mahakala Music in Hot Springs, who brought Corsano together with two other luminaries from the New York improvisation scene, trombonist Steve Swell and tenor saxophonist Joe McPhee, on the 2022 album Sometimes the Air Is.
He’s also worked with Tennessee’s free jazz luminary Zoh Amba, several “rock” artists (Sir Richard Bishop, Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke), not to mention Björk on her Volta album and world tour. And while those are just a few of the artists he’s appeared with on over 180 albums, he’s a renowned solo performer in his own right, with a record due out later this year on the Drag City label.
The Memphis Flyer caught up with Corsano yesterday to hear more about this pioneer’s solo work and what to expect at the Goner show.
Memphis Flyer: How would you describe your approach to music as a solo performer?
Chris Corsano: I’ll do different things as a solo set. I’ve been on tour a bunch since August, doing a lot of solo shows, and I’m trying to keep them different. So I’m improvising, and it’s kind of heavy on the prepared drum aspect of it, maybe more so than a lot of other people. I’m just trying to get the drums to not sound like a drum solo. Or what people tend to think of as a drum solo. Like, I installed a couple of cello strings on the snare drum rack tom, and with bowing techniques that accentuate the harmonics you can get little melodies happening, even though you’re not playing like a violin or a cello. You come up with a third path. It’s not drums and it’s not another instrument. But you know, drums are great resonators. And I’ve got other things that I make myself and then a lot of extended techniques, which are pretty common in the universe of improvised music.
That “third way” makes sense because in free music you’ll often hear horn players or other kind of instrumental players playing percussively, tapping their valves and that sort of thing. So it makes sense to kind of blur the lines in the other direction from the drums into tonal instruments.
Sure, but there’s also a long history of melodic playing. Drums are awesome melodic instruments in the right hands. Ed Blackwell was a huge influence on me; Ornette Coleman was some of the first stuff that I heard on record. And Blackwell’s melodic sense on that stuff was always life-affirming and also really eye opening in terms of how you can play melodies.
I’ve also played with a lot of sax players. In doing so, basically playing as a duo, you can fill up a lot more space and you have a lot more responsibility for bringing the music, whatever that means. Playing solo, it’s all on you. It’s up to me what I’m going to do, what I should do next, and how I’m going to make a piece of music. So yeah, melody and things some people don’t associate with drums, that’s all open to me because nobody else is covering that space.
I’ve read that you also incorporate reeds, circular breathing through reed instruments. Is that happening?
Yeah, I’ve been doing that for about 20 years now. My first solo record was in 2006. You know, it was always a fascinating thing that some sax players would do, so I tried to see what I could do with it. Right now I have an alto sax mouthpiece playing through half of a clarinet, which doesn’t really do all the things a clarinet can do. But I play it alongside the drums so the drums resonate with certain pitches and harmonics, and that fights against the pitches, or works in conjunction with the pitches, coming out of the bell of the half-clarinet.
The way I think about it, what I’m looking for is that chocolate and peanut butter kind of thing. That third thing happening that is different than either of the two things together, and hopefully unexpected. And hopefully somebody enjoys it.
It sounds like what you’re doing involves paying very close attention to overtones, and playing with those almost as a melodic element.
Yeah, definitely. I don’t have a lot of things which are pitched, but I’m a little bit more trying to get those harmonics and have those be the thing that are creating the melodies, instead of just the fundamental.
We’ve recently heard shows by the Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra. Do you use gongs and bells also?
A bit, but also a lot of thrift store pot lids — there’s a certain kind that sounds a certain way. If you get the right ones, they’re not made to be a specific pitch, but if you get the right pot lids together, you’ve got these microtonal things happening. You might you hit it a certain way and hear the fundamental an, then hit it again, and there are other harmonics in there. So sometimes I used gongs and things, but mostly using things in the “wrong,” quote unquote, way. I’m always trying to repurpose them somehow.
Chris Corsano will appear with Robert Traxler at the Goner Records store on Friday, February 23, 9 p.m. $10. Click here for tickets.