The Bill Frisell Trio visits my new hometown and I almost missed it! A trip to Wolfe Island with the Leica Lux iPhone App.
Some Background #
I started following guitarist Bill Frisell back in the early eighties.
I was already a fan of Pat Metheny and I was just starting to really
explore jazz. At the time the ECM record label, based in Germany,
was really quite different from everything I had heard in the
past…or at least it seemed that way to me at the time. ECM is a
great label to listen to if you are learning how to explore music.
Many of the musicians would play on each other’s albums so there was
always a new path to explore. For example, I would listen to Pat Metheny
who played with Lyle Mays who played with Eberhard Weber who played with
Jan Garbarek who played with Bill Frisell, etc. A lot of my money as a kid
went towards buying albums from all of these different ECM artists, many of
whom I still listen to forty plus years later.
I’ve seen Frisell play many times. The first time was in Toronto in the early nineties at the Toronto Jazz festival right after his album “Have a Little Faith’ came out. I then saw him in Victoriaville QC where he played along with Buster Keaton silent films. He played in Seattle a number of times when I was living there, including a set at the OK Hotel, which was a weird venue basically tucked under the Alaskan Freeway, on the side of town on the other side of the tracks…(both the OK Hotel and the Freeway are long gone now) and a suitably weird show which was inspired by Gary Larson’s ‘The Far Side’ cartoons. I also was able to see him a number of times at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle, which was a tiny place, where the shows were often announced somewhat last minute. After moving from Seattle, I have only seen him twice. Once in Cincinnati with Petra Haden and at the ECM 50th anniversary show at the Lincoln Center in New York City. Every show was different, had different band members, had a different feel which also matches up with his albums as a band leader. You never really know what you are going to get and while yes, he does have a number of songs that he comes back around to, they are often very different explorations that take those tracks in new directions.
Moving to Kingston #
One of the nice things about moving to Kingston is that I’m now pretty close to Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal, which get all the big acts (like I got to see Nick Cave in Toronto). But having just moved and still settling in, I was completely caught off guard by Bill Frisell coming though for a show at Hotel Wolfe Island, which is a short ferry ride from downtown Kingston.
The Leica LUX App #
Knowing that you can’t really bring a camera with a detachable lens to a concert, I set off with
my iPhone and the Leica LUX App and left my Leica M11 behind. There is a saying that the best camera is
the one you have with you, and while I tend to keep my trusty Leica with me
whenever possible, I thought I would give the app a try. At $70 a year, the
app is not exactly cheap but, compared to their actual cameras, it’s really
not that bad. In fact, the app has had an interesting and subtle effect on
the way I approach all my photography. I set up the app to shoot black and
white on the phone by default. It then allows me to choose from a wide
range of classic Leica lenses and profiles.
The kind of fun/neat part is that you can change it all
after the fact as the app is emulating the lens, basically overlaying the
effects on a raw image. So you can change the lens, focal point, colour
profile, etc. The images are decent too. I mean, it’s not nearly as good
as the camera, but again, if it’s all you have…
One major drawback is that it does not use the iPhone’s raw mode unless you
switch it over to “Photo” mode in which case you lose the ability to select
different lenses. I did not realize this when I was taking these pictures,
which resulted in lower quality images than I would have liked to have had.
Ah well, live and learn…
Hotel Wolfe Island #
Ok, back to the concert. I swear that they plan the start (and end times) for the concert to maximize your time on Wolfe Island. I could grab the ferry that shows up 15 minutes before the show starts -OR- I could take the early ferry that gets there an hour and a half before the show starts. The opportunity to hang out at the waterfront bar before the show made this an obviously simple choice.
One thing I really love about Bill Frisell is all the tech he has. When I have seen him in the past he would mess around with effects and loops, turning dials, tapping pedals, etc. to get a particular sound going to start or segue between songs. It’s fun to watch, kind of like a kid pushing a bunch of buttons to see what comes out. This time, he still had all the gear but seemed, in my opinion, to just stand back and let that stuff figure itself out, just watching in amusement as the transitions happen. The timing of all of this is magic. I mean, it’s very impressive if he knows where these effects are going. Even more impressive if he just listens and adapts. My guess is the latter, incredible to watch.
My other absolute favorite thing is how, even though he is the band leader, he maintains a position of being part of the band, part of the team. He’s not a solo show, not that he can’t take a solo and absolutely kill it, but it’s never about him, and you can see it in the way he interacts with the rest of the band. Unfortunately, I did not have a very good view of the drummer, Kenny Wollesen, but a number of people raved about him after the show, again, not the Bill show but the Bill Frisell Trio show. Everyone has a role. They enjoy playing together, exploring, challenging each other and having fun.
The ferry back is at 10:20pm and the show ends at 10:30pm (or so). Next ferry
out is at 11:40pm, so I’ll be hanging out for a bit after the show too. Of
course, given the size of the venue, I wound up talking to a lot of people
after the show including the band and the owner of the venue, Chris Brown.
This continued all the way back to Kingston on the ferry as most
of the crowd came back on the 11:40pm ferry with me.
