This is Ozarks at Large. Don't let them tell you summer is over. The Newport Jazz Festival, a standard of summers for nearly three quarters of a century, is beginning on Friday. And once again, Rob Wells, host of Jazz Scoop heard on KUAF, will be there. Rob Wells is back to give us a preview and to tell us what he's looking forward to. Rob, welcome back to Ozarks at Large.
Wells: Thank you very much, Kyle. Great to hear from you.
Kellams: So last year you went to the Newport Jazz Festival. You were KUAF representative, if I recall correctly. You had an okay time.
Wells: Yeah, I just had an okay time. It was completely wonderful. What was really neat was, here I'm a representative of a small station in Northwest Arkansas and everybody was pretty happy to have me there like, wow, this is great that you could show up. And you know what, I was in there with the photographers. It was easy to set up interviews. I just felt like I was accepted. And they really admired the fact that KUAF would have someone at a major festival.
Kellams: Well, it is indeed a major festival. This is the 72nd edition. So what makes up this year's festival?
Wells: Well, it's interesting, a lot of the major jazz artists that you and I grew up with have passed on. There are a couple that are still around. So Herbie Hancock and Charles Lloyd will be playing. And then you have new headliners this year: Thundercat, Vulfpeck, Robert Glasper, Jon Batiste, Snarky Puppy, even Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers is going to be playing there. He's got a jazz album. He's playing. It's not bad.
But I had a chance to speak to one of the major artists who's going to be playing at the festival. And her name is Terri Lyne Carrington, incredible drummer, composer and activist. Terri Lyne Carrington's toured with Herbie Hancock, with Wayne Shorter, many others. She's won four Grammy Awards, and she teaches at the Berklee College of Music, where she founded the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.
So she's working in this pretty deep tradition of jazz as protest music. And we can think of like Charles Mingus, who did this ode to our former governor, Orval Faubus, right?
Kellams: Yes.
Wells: Fables of Faubus. Or Gil Evans, Gil Scott-Heron and "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." There's Nina Simone, "Mississippi Goddam," or Billie Holiday and "Strange Fruit." And Carrington did a remake of a famous protest album by Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln called "We Insist." When I was talking to her, she was wondering why other jazz artists haven't joined in on the protests as much.
"I am a little surprised that right now there doesn't seem to be as much protest music as I would expect, given the times that we're in. And I'm just hoping that people are home working on it and it'll start to turn out kind of soon, because I feel like we really need that kind of rallying at this moment in time. There was a lot more of it in 2020. So I'm wondering like where that energy is right now."
Wells: And so she has the song from a Grammy-nominated album called "The Waiting Game." It was released in 2019. It's called "Bells."
[Music: "Bells," Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science]
Wells: So that's a 2019 album called "The Waiting Game," which really kind of anticipated the horrible episode with George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Debo Ray are on vocals there. So that album was nominated best instrumental jazz album in the Grammy Awards that year and was ranked as one of the top jazz albums of that year by Rolling Stone, DownBeat and others. And it's been compared to Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly," which is like one of the all-time classics in the hip-hop genre.
She has a new album out called "Trip the Night Fantastic," and I'm going to feature some of those songs in future episodes of the Jazz Scoop.
Kellams: On Saturday nights at KUAF. And of course, she's going to be at the Newport Jazz Festival.
Wells: Yeah, absolutely. So she's this veteran, really well-known jazz star. But I spoke with someone who's new on the scene, Kyle, and his name is Brandon Woody. He's on a tear right now. His first album was on the Blue Note label, so not bad. He's starting at the top with Blue Note. He's been touring the world. He just returned from the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, and his album is called "For the Love of It All." And here's a little snippet from my talk with Brandon Woody about the overarching theme of this remarkable first album.
"What I was trying to say is that like, man, there is a lot of beauty in a struggle. And I haven't had a particularly very easy life, as has no one in this world, you know what I'm saying? So it's really not that special. But just to know that like, man, some of my scars or some of my biggest losses have informed me and impacted me in a way to have given me this perspective to say what I'm saying or to tell the stories that I tell.
"And I think also my album being called 'For the Love of It All' was kind of like a meaning of like, I'm not only thankful for my wins and my successes and I'm not only thankful for the people that have been nice and so pretty to me my whole life. I'm also thankful for everyone else too, and how they've affected me and how they've impacted me. I mean, it's all a part of who I am. I don't just take the bright side."
Kellams: Brandon Woody, who will be at the Newport Jazz Festival. Also being at the Newport Jazz Festival, our guest right now, Rob Wells, host of the Jazz Scoop.
Wells: Yeah. So it's pretty interesting talking to Brandon Woody. One of the themes that kind of came out of this interview: in high school, Brandon didn't get accepted to the jazz combo at the Baltimore School for the Arts. And that's sort of a similar story with Michael League of Snarky Puppy. He didn't get accepted to any of the combos at the University of North Texas. But these guys kept at it, and they formed bands outside of these officially sanctioned groups. And so Brandon Woody wrote a song called "Perseverance," and we had to check this out.
Kellams: Trumpeter Brandon Woody, his band's name.
Wells: It's called Upendo.
Kellams: I love that.
Wells: I love that. Yeah, it's Swahili for love, with Quincy Phillips on drums, Michael Saunders on bass and his childhood music partner Troy Long on piano.
I haven't seen Brandon Woody, nor have I seen this other band that's playing early Sunday at the jazz festival. It's drummer Corey Fonville and organist Sam Fribush. And Fonville is the drummer with Butcher Brown, pretty major soul-funk band. And that band's playing at Newport. And Fribush, he plays a vintage 1957 Hammond B3 organ. So just a shout-out to a jazz superfan, Jody Andrews, who's wild about the jazz organ trio format. This is your band, Jody. You got to check these guys out.
So they call their act blue collar jazz. And I'm going to talk to them next week about what that's supposed to mean. But they can call it anything they want. Here's the R&B organ trio with Corey Fonville and Sam Fribush and guitarist Morgan Burrs. The song is called "Intra."
[Music: "Intra," Corey Fonville, Sam Fribush and Morgan Burrs]
Wells: And that's Corey Fonville and Sam Fribush and Morgan Burrs on guitar. I think Morgan Burrs plays in Butcher Brown as well. So in terms of the concept of what they're trying to do, Fribush said that our intention is to take this music into the future. We're trying to expand the rules about what organ trios can do.
This time I'm really looking at the upstarts. I'm really looking at the younger acts, people I don't know that well. And because my generation is moving on, I need to figure out what's happening with the younger set. Which sort of leads to me, obviously, the big lesson I got last year. I had one of my younger friends tell me what should I go see at Newport. And Chapin Graham told me to go see Willow. And it was a great set. It was really great.
And so this year I asked Chapin, I asked a few of my students, Asia Saunders and Maura Maribel, who I should see. And the answer was Leon Thomas. So there's a little story about Leon Thomas. I thought, great, Leon Thomas. I remember him from the '70s. He was this avant-garde jazz vocalist. And you remember he did this, they called it bellowing glottal style of free jazz singing, and to me, it sounds like yodeling, right? But he was great. But that's not the Leon Thomas he's performing this year. The older Leon Thomas, he passed in 1999. He did this amazing song called "Creator Has a Master Plan," which actually is now being covered by some younger singers like Tyreek McDole.
But I digress. The younger Leon Thomas, he's his own thing. He's very accomplished actor. He's kind of best known for his role in this Nickelodeon teen sitcom series called "Victorious." He acted on Broadway, and he's a major producer. He co-wrote and co-produced for Ariana Grande and Babyface and Drake.
Kellams: Ariana Grande and he were on that show together.
Wells: They were.
Kellams: Wow. Okay. I did not know that. Wow. I guess I'm going to have to watch "Victorious." I have to go back and do the archives.
Wells: Let me know. So anyway, he can sing. He's significant. So here is the living Leon Thomas with "Treasure in the Hills."
[Music: "Treasure in the Hills," Leon Thomas]
Wells: Leon Thomas won Grammys this year for best R&B album for an album called "Mutt," and best traditional R&B performance, "Vibes Don't Lie."
So one of the bands I love to see is Snarky Puppy. And this is this big musical collective that's centered around bassist Michael League, and they all kind of got their start at the University of North Texas, which has an incredible school and a great reputation. So they've won five Grammy Awards and been out there since 2004. Here's a really wonderful recording from 2014 called "Lingus."
Kellams: Snarky Puppy. That's from a while ago.
Wells: That's right. Yeah, it's a 2014 recording. I just like, man, I think it's hard.
Kellams: It does. All right. So it starts Friday. I may have asked you this last year. What do you take? You got to have your sunscreen. What else you got?
Wells: You got to have sunscreen. You got to have extra batteries for all the interviews I'm doing. I have to have a big stack of SD cards for the photos I'll be taking. Bring your credit card for the lobster roll. It's not cheap, but it's worth it. And also it's a bit of an endurance thing. Three days, 51 performances.
There's a new artistic director this year. It was Christian McBride for 10 years, and now it's Nate Smith. A drummer who is fantastic. I'm looking forward to talking to him. The entire festival sold out back in April. And looking forward to doing these interviews.
And I guess one thing I just wanted to leave with, just a couple thoughts about Herbie Hancock. He's going to be 86 years old now and still performing quite a bit. I looked at some of the previous set lists from his performances, and it looks like he's going to play "Watermelon Man." Which was his first hit. And "Maiden Voyage" and "Footprints" and "Chameleon." And so I've been just practicing "Chameleon" at home, the bassline.
Kellams: So in case Herbie Hancock's bass player gets stuck in traffic, you're ready.
Wells: I will raise my hand. I do have "Watermelon Man" down cold. But I'll just raise my hand and tell Herbie Hancock I'm available if needed.
Kellams: The Newport Jazz Festival begins Friday. Rob Wells, host of Jazz Scoop on KUAF Saturday nights, will be there representing KUAF. And then at some point later this summer, we're going to hear who you talked to and what floored you at this year's festival.
Wells: Yeah, there's a lot of new stuff that's going to be really cool.
Kellams: All right, Rob, as always, thank you for your time.
Wells: Thank you, Kyle. Really appreciate it.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
