Brass Exodus: The sad ending of the Thad Wilson Big Band
Former Thad Wilson Big Band saxophonist Brian Settles
The Thad Wilson Big Band was on the bill last Thursday night at HR-57—but that’s not what took the stage. Instead, trumpeter Wilson led a quintet (with tenor sax, piano, bass, and drums) through Miles Davis’ score for the 1957 film Elevator to the Gallows, which showed as the band played. The change wasn’t inappropriate, since Davis had used the same instrumentation in the film…but why not the big band, as advertised?
“The band basically mutinied on me,” Wilson explains during a set break. “So I shut it down.” This was a surprising bit of news from an ensemble that has been a staple of the Washington scene since January 1998. It had become something of a required course for D.C. jazz musicians—most of the scene’s regulars have passed through its ranks—and was, one member remarked, “the only game in town.”
“The bottom line? Money fucks up everything,” Wilson says. “The gigs just weren’t there, and so the money wasn’t there. But I also felt like the discipline wasn’t there with a lot of people. They didn’t get the hard work and rehearsals that come with a big band, and they weren’t into the ensemble work either. It was more an attitude of ‘Hey! I can solo in this band!’”
“We didn’t quit because of the money,” says Brad Linde, the band’s former baritone saxophonist. “It was because the time and effort wasn’t worth the musical direction. The band has potential with a book of originals, but Thad was playing the same 10 tunes every week.”
Linde refers to the band’s engagement at Bohemian Caverns, where it had played every Monday night for nearly two years. Economic realities forced the venerable U Street NW jazz club to end the arrangement in August.
“With a couple of exceptions, the operation was in the red every week,” says Omrao Brown, the Caverns’ co-owner and booker. “There’d be 12 people on the bandstand and five in the audience. The money we were paying them was coming out of our pocket. It just didn’t make any sense to continue.” Brown did offer the band a once-a-month slot, but when they played elsewhere to make up for the loss, cracks began to show.
“The last couple of gigs outside of the Caverns put a lot of us over the edge,” says Linde. “Thad was beginning to be too much to deal with: late starts, same repertoire over and over, not getting paid.” In particular, Linde and others (who didn’t wish to be quoted) point to an April performance at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, for which they have still not been paid.
Pianist Amy Bormet recalls the gig that sent her packing, at Bangkok Blues in Falls Church. “Everybody was questioning everybody else: ‘Are we getting paid?’ Nobody knew, and Thad wasn’t saying anything,” she says. “We finally got paid, like, 20 bucks apiece. People were there because they wanted to be in a big band, not to make millions off of it, but there wasn’t a lot of openness or honesty going on. And irritation had just built up to a maximum after a summer of playing to nobody showing up.”
Within a week, Bormet, drummer C.V. Dashiell, and trumpeter Mark Chuvala all left the band.
The final straw came Sept. 14, when the band returned to Bohemian Caverns for a live broadcast on WPFW. That night, alto saxophonist John Kocur, one of the band’s star soloists, announced that he was quitting. “With John leaving I figured it was time to go,” Linde says. “We all sort of left with that last Bohemian Caverns gig.”
Kocur, however, doesn’t cite the internal conflicts in his decision. “It becomes difficult as a jazz musician to compound doing something for a living, with doing something for the love of the art,” he says. “Sometimes you have to make some choices about the amount of time you’re putting into things. I just got married; I’m teaching music now at NOVA; and I’m trying to make things happen for my own quartet. I was just so busy.”
“Thad is an eccentric cat,” says trombonist Reginald Cyntje. “But he knows what he’s doing in this business. These musicians who are complaining, they didn’t ask advice from their elders in the music about working in a big band in D.C. They didn’t take the initiative to promote their own performances, to get people into the clubs to come see them. They just complained about things on Facebook.”
Wilson acknowledges he never paid the band for the Kennedy Center, but he says he’d paid them for a previous gig out of his own pocket and asked them to wait a few days for him to deposit the funds. Instead, he says, “About 10 checks bounced because people wanted to cash them right away. Now, the Kennedy Center was a $500 gig, and nearly all of that went just to covering the bounced checks from the last gig.” (Several members of the group confirmed this sequence of events.)
Of the repertoire, Wilson explains, “I could never get rehearsals to come together, because people were never able or willing to make it to them. Why introduce new tunes into the repertoire if we’re never going to rehearse them?” (Linde takes the opposite tack: He never came to rehearsal because there was never anything new to rehearse.)
“The part that cats are having a hard time understanding is that I don’t want any more from them than they’re willing to give—but at the same time, just showing up for the gig and saying, ‘Hey, where’s my money,’ is not enough,” he says. “It’s an issue of maturity: understanding what’s necessary and required to keep things moving.”
In the meantime, his former band members can now establish themselves on the scene through other means. Linde already leads his own nonet, currently playing reworkings of Thelonious Monk’s and Miles Davis’ repertoires.
Bormet plays with several groups, including Kocur’s, and is earning a master’s degree in music from Howard University. Other members, particularly Cyntje and tenor saxophonist Brian Settles, are having no trouble finding work.
Wilson says he intends to rebuild the band from the ground up. “I will always be doing something with the big band configuration,” he says.
He also promises to remain active in smaller group configurations, and has even found a steady gig once again: He announced from the stage last Thursday that Movie Night—playing a film score (often his own) as that film screens—will now be a monthly feature at HR-57. Given the opportunity, he says, he hopes to find opportunities to work with many of his old bandmates again.
Photograph by Darrow Montgomery /file
12:55 pm
Why introduce new tunes into the repertoire if we’re never going to rehearse them?”
^Good point. To me,Seems like Thad aint the rotten, bad leader he's being made out to be by a few. He will bounce back! Its hard to keep a band together whatever the style of music.
10:58 pm
Not paying people isn't rotten? I'd say that's a pretty big offense. In fact, its stealing. There's absolutely no excuse. These musicians played in his band every single week for $20. Some of them came from far away. They were devoted and they played at a very high level every single Monday for years. Shady shit would happen all the time. After a while, you just have to say "enough is enough" and leave.
Also, I know what went on at those "rehearsals"...and it wasn't rehearsing. These are PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS who have degrees in music. They know the value of having rehearsals and wouldn't object to going to some if they were held for the right reasons.
The question is...should you believe one person saying shit in an article or an entire group of completely different people who are entirely independent of each other? I'd say the answer is pretty clear.
9:23 am
"These are PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS who have degrees in music." Except the leader. No degree, DC school of hard knox. Which proves the music is too hip for the audience, as the audience proclaims some as local jazz icons due to charm and color, not musicality or intellect, or drive.
There are players in town, writing and arranging, putting in the time, really trying to improve and promote jazz and jazz education. They are taking jobs in Philly and NYC with their ensembles. However in DC they take back seat to the "local jazz mainstays" lowering the bar daily.
This mutiny hopefully is only the beginning of the reform of DC jazz.
11:48 am
Person2, its kind of hard to tell what you're getting at, but the context in which I stated “These are PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS who have degrees in music.” seems to have been misunderstood. Like I said, these people know the value of a rehearsal. People like chronwell who have no idea what happened from the inside shouldn't be saying anything to the contrary of what the musicians in the band were expressing. The band gave these rehearsals a chance, but the leader would start late, give them incomplete music that he was in the process of working on (that isn't how it works, by the way...you can't bring in an entire band to work on a chart that isn't finished...rehearsals are for perfecting the fine details).
The players in town whom you speak of, Person2, are and will be very successful because they are hardworking, HONEST (someone who doesn't pay their musicians is not honest, I'm not sure why this fact, which Thad clearly acknowledged in the article, is so quickly dismissed) and talented people.
Also, if the music is "too hip for the audience" (this band wasn't that kind of thing...they were not adventurous, for the most part, they were not playing new or modern music, they were playing mostly Basie and Ellington...VERY standard repertoire [which I love deeply and study on a daily basis]), then the musicians aren't going to get paid. That's completely irrelevant to this argument though.
12:11 pm
Alright, let's set the record straight. Thad's a good guy and a great player, but I can't tell you how many stories I hear about him not showing up to his own gigs, showing up extremely late, not paying the musicians, calling a gig off right before it's supposed to happen, etc. Completely unprofessional behavior, both as a person and a bandleader, and impossible to deal with as a musician. Seems he seized this article as an opportunity to canonize himself. The talented musicians who have put up with his antics for years are the ones the City Paper should be paying attention to.
1:22 pm
This article doesn't "canonize" anyone. Everyone I talked to can tell you that I asked them what else they were involved with, and requested that they keep me in the loop on these things. I'd love for other DC jazz artists to do the same. You can contact me throughCity Paper, or, better yet, find me on Facebook.
3:33 pm
Unfortunately, Thad does not have (and never has had) the unconditional support from an institution/record label/pr firm. He has simply tried to further THE MUSIC with through his own humble means; this includes investing his own money into mics, speakers, cardstock for charts, custom music stands, etc. Again, with no financial backing. No manager to take care of the logistics. No PR firm to promote gigs. You can't hold him to the same standard as a Wynton Marsalis or Wallace Roney who have a machine supporting everything they do; they don't have to worry about driving around town putting up fliers to promote a gig. Even still, he was a finalist for the DC Mayors Arts Awards last year--the only individual in his category among 4 well-funded institutions. No institutional support along with band members who have not taken the time to digest the music-- internalize it. Complaining about not playing new music when you have not memorized the "redundant" standards is immature, further highlights your arrogance and lack of humility to the music. You think Basie's band walked onto the bandstand looking at charts?
Thad is among a tiny handful of people in this city who are striving to be dynamic in their expression of the music; humble to his elders; patient with the process of developing a concept/sound; while taking care of his kids full time. Anyone who strives to do something truly exceptional will testify that the road is wrought with bumps, potholes, and snakes. Keep your head up, Thad. People have shown you what they're really about--learn from this and keep "Movin' On"...
10:33 am
"Unfortunately, Thad does not have (and never has had) the unconditional support from an institution/record label/pr firm. He has simply tried to further THE MUSIC with through his own humble means; this includes investing his own money into mics, speakers, cardstock for charts, custom music stands, etc. Again, with no financial backing. No manager to take care of the logistics. No PR firm to promote gigs."
Aren't those responsibilities of a band leader?
11:13 am
Observer,
Further on your comments about the band.
Thad had a venue, group of musicians and an opportunity. A formula most don't get often.
Musicians that showed up week after week for little to no money. Musicians that write and arrange. Talented guys from different backgrounds with the same goal of having a successful bigband.
A weekly gig, with an owner willing to support and promote. Week after week paying out of pocket to have a house big band.Despite the number of people in the audience, the owner always paid.
Week after week it got worse and worse. Thad not letting musicians bring in new tunes, boredom setting in among musicians due to playing the same stale arrangements and questionable "free jazz" songs that would last 40 minutes or longer. Extended solos that should have been replaced by ensemble work.
Not showing up on time, gigs being canceled with out letting members or public know. Disorganization. Missing instrumentation. And oh yes ego and personality issues.
One by one musicians quit. For reasons mentioned above, or onstage antics from Thad. Thad's self image of an omnipotent jazz musician, turned off player after player.
Thad's band should have been great, instead it was squandered. To have the want and desire from a club AND the musicians to have a weekly big band hit ala Village Vanguard to be thrown away is a sin.
10:38 am
Zing!!
8:44 am
“Thad is an eccentric cat,” says trombonist Reginald Cyntje. “But he knows what he’s doing in this business"
Really?? What could that statement mean?? By stiffing musicians (not paying for gigs), band members wanting nothing to do with him, club owners thinking he is more drama than he is worth, and being swingproof, means he "knows what he is doing in this business"??
Thad has charm and a following (not musicians but local wanna-be hipsters in the district) He might do better as a promoter than a bandleader. (As long as somebody else is in charge of writing checks).
11:50 am
person2: Pick a name. I've fixed that for you above. Commenting under multiple pseudonyms gives the appearance that you are more than one person, which is not the case.
5:31 am
Person2, This music is about making a beautiful sound out of an impossible situation at will. Thad do that with his horn week after week in DC and everywhere else I've seen him play in a variety of situations. You are a dick. Obviously one with a degree. All of the degrees that people boast of have produced nothing in music in decades, not in the community or recorded. It's garbage. So don't act like like these musicians are doing anything substantial for the Jazz community or the recording industry. Most of them don't have a name, and never will. They are just not that good. What are they doing with these so called piece of paper degrees? No Music. Who the fuck are you anyway. Go do something with your degree. Are you a critic. Learn how to give credit where credit is due. Let's see who will take up the mantle and write charts for a big band. Which one of your degreed musicians will do that in their spare time after their 9 - 5. Who has earned a degree but Thad in this situation as full time musician. I know it sound really hard for you, but try not to be such a dick, dick.