Year: 2013
Style: Jazz
Label: Cobra Basement
Musicians: Billie Davies -
drums; Daniel Coffeng -
guitar; Adam Levy -
bass
CD Review: On the
first
anniversary of her last CD release:
The Billie Davies Trio -
All About Love (Cobra Basement: 2012),
'lifelong natural musician' drummer
Billie Davies has released another unimpeachable work:
BILLIE DAVIES -
12 VOLT. Whereas,
All About Love featured some of the music of venerated composers, including
Victor Young,
Miles Davis,
John Coltrane and
Mongo Santamaria, 12 VOLT features exclusively original compositions of
Billie Davies, revealing yet another formidable creative talent in Davies' impressive artistic arsenal; making this an important CD for Davies, since it adds the crucial tyne of '
composer/arranger' to her sterling artistic fork, augmenting fearless innovation, and superlative drumming technique.
For
12 VOLT, Davies employs again the trio setting, but with a significant change in players. On
All About Love, Tom Bone Ralls appeared on trombone, and
Oliver Steinberg played bass. Now guitarist
Daniel Coffeng supplants Bone Ralls, and bassist
Adam Levy takes the place of Steinberg. Davies describes
12 VOLT as an
ode to
Manitas De Plata, the renowned French-born gypsy guitar master,
Django Reinhardt, considered the king of gypsy guitarists., and
"all Gypsies, Tsiganes, Manouche and Bohemians all over the world," sure to stir
wide appeal, and escalating excitement among her expanding music public.
In
12 VOLT, Davies' trio presents a collection of musical images of the world of the Gypsy in portraits of untouched natural beauty, as well as its untouchable rugged other side, seen in the fierce pride and passion of a forgotten, invisible people, and their way of living; heard in the inspiring Gypsy Flamenco music; felt in the fiery guitar, the dancers' movements and expressions; a mountain of vital culture that demands an odyssey to experience; and Davies went, with her 12-VOLT
'Band on the Run"; no APBs, like the
McCartney & Wings 1973 model, but free-spirited bohemians that
"... went everywhere the wind was blowing..." (Davies)
, like
(Collioure) with its bewitching European artists' light captured in uncomplicated droplets of color from
Daniel Coppeng's guitar, and the easy-listening resonance of Davies' polyrhythmic exchanges.
Davies' other signature contribution to the date, beyond drumming ability, and creative energy, is a remarkable facility to remain unhurried, not irrationally exuberant, but attentive to pristine artistic environments, so as not to provoke uneven corruption or distracting, grainy, biases in the fine textures, natural colors, and flowing sequences of sights and sounds she sees, hears and plays back with impeccable sonic balance, and an almost reverential cadence
(Meeting Manitas).
Davies' selection of guitarist
Daniel Coffeng, and bassist
Adam Levy for this project is noteworthy in its astuteness. Coffeng brings extraordinary facility for transition and energetic flow to avant jazz improvisation
(12 Volt) with an extended, progressive, detailed solo, alternating between jazz and rock, but always clear and precise, like the sounds of crickets at night time. Coffeng's musical experience is deeply rooted in music cultures which reach into
jazz,
blues,
soul,
reggae, through to
classical,
rock,
Eastern music,
Latin American and
West African music.
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| L - R: bassist Adam Levy; drummer Billie Davies; guitarist Daniel Coffeng |
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Adam Levy is a well prepared and accomplished upright bass player. His mom was
"feeding him boogie woogie piano in their home at a very early age." He gets tons of experience from his brother, Mike, who Levy says is a prodigy on bass. Levy pursued a Jazz degree at the
University of South Florida where he studied upright bass. He puts his
bona fides in play with a superbly conversant passage depicting peacefulness and harmony, never bitter,
(Grapes, Plums and Tomatoes) during exchanges with Davies' expressive drums, and Coffeng's descriptive guitar
; reviving the intimate stories of Gypsies toiling in the fields; their loves, lives, prides and passions, against the unending rhythmic drumbeat of moving hands and feet. These two talented players bring to the date, a collective of experience that compliments, and fuels Davies' dauntless search for fertile creative ground to express the varied, but complex experiences unique to her posit as
the cutting-edge artist in Neo-Humanistic Expressionist Jazz
(Les Landes; Tango for Patti).
But Gypsies can swing too
(Gypsy), because
Django, "The King" taught them how. They listened, and never forgot. Now sadness, anger, and disappointment are anathema to them: Davies' vivid drumming, Coffeng's uplifting guitar, and Levy's unassailable bass notes, all say so in their precise rhythmic footprints that revisit musical paths Davies traveled while living, and loving the gypsy life all over the South of Europe; footprints now leading toward exciting, unexplored, far-reaching musical frontier space for her muse to continue that restless, relentless quest to create and give musical ears and voice to what is not there...
yet!
Track Listing: Collioure; Meeting Manitas; 12 Volt; Les Landes; Tango for Patti; Grapes, Plums and Tomatoes; Gypsy; La Sieste.
Recorded at
The Bedrock Room at Bedrock L. A. in Echo Park
Recording Engineer:
Eric Rennaker
Recording & Sound Technology/Engineering Management:
Mike Davies
Mixing:
Mike Davies,
Billie Davies, Daniel Coffeng
Mastering:
John Vestman at
Vestman Mastering in HD format
All Photos by
Inez Lewis
CJ Bond, JAZZ MUSIC
Belgium native and Los Angeles based drummer Billie Davies continues to forge her own path in the improvised music world. Endowed with an explorative temperament and unique, yet definite swing sense, Davies pays homage to Gypsy musicians on her fourth release as a leader, 12 Volt. 
