Is All that Jazz?

Bassist Todd Sickafoose walks the line between Pitchfork and Down Beat.

by Shaun Brady

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL: Despite his years leading jazz units, Todd Sickafoose is best known as Ani DiFranco's regular bassist. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

It seems telling that Todd Sickafoose describes his new CD, Tiny Resistors (Cryptogramophone), as "instrumental music." Despite his years leading jazz units, first in his native California and more recently in his adopted home of Brooklyn, Sickafoose is best known as Ani DiFranco's regular bassist, and also tours with folk-jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman. Those generic strands weave together in his own music, resulting in a decidedly modern sound that would fit in amid the reviews at Pitchfork as well as it does in the pages of Down Beat.

But despite the seeming stylistic schizophrenia, Sickafoose has no qualms about using that tired old "jazz" tag. "Of course it's a jazz band," he says. "I'm trying to write music that has a lot of improvisation that we play in clubs for people listening and drinking. I guess that's jazz music."

Still, it's a modern concept of jazz, one with the narrative structure of pop songwriting. The word-painting titles of Sickafoose's tunes — "Invisible Ink, Revealed" or "Pianos of the 9th Ward," for instance — are reflected in the vivid imagery suggested by the music, an emergent quality that wrings new colors out of a combination of traditional jazz instrumentation, resonant indie-rock guitars and electronic effects.

"There's a lot of recycled imagery in jazz," Sickafoose says. "I like for it to be evocative and not so specific. I like that you can't really describe it exactly. I get disappointed by a lot of instrumental music that doesn't exploit that potential, so I guess I'm trying to make up for that myself. "

Growing up in the Bay Area, Sickafoose was attracted to music less as a listener than as a player, drawn to the various instruments his parents owned. "I could go to a piano and make things up," he recalls, "so I think it started with the creative impulse. I always liked the sounds of putting things together."

Sickafoose moved to L.A. to study composition at UCLA and CalArts, meanwhile performing everything from rock to Cuban to Klezmer. "The string bass is your ticket into every single style of music that has ever been invented," he explains. "It was the instrument that got me behind the most curtains."

While at CalArts, he came under the tutelage of noted 20th-century classical composer Mel Powell, who had begun as a jazz pianist, playing with Benny Goodman. "He was a genius whose equal I probably won't be around for a while," Sickafoose says. "He'd distilled everything that he'd learned over 75 years of making music into these Yoda-like statements that were so simple and potent. I think about them all the time."

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His other CalArts mentor was jazz legend Charlie Haden. "The thing that was great was just being reminded every time I was around him of the particular energy that he has about music, which is creative at its most basic. But I also think I learned how to be around famous people. And that particular skill has come in handy ever since."

One famous person Sicakfoose has gotten quite used to is DiFranco, with whom he's toured for more than four years, at first in duo settings, gradually building into the current quartet with vibist Mike Dillon and drummer Allison Miller (who will be part of Sickafoose's quintet in Philly). "I don't feel like I put on a different hat when I go to play with her," he says of DiFranco. "She's so spontaneous that maybe there's an element of what she does that I relate to and makes me feel like there's more overlap. She's not an improviser per se, but what she's such a present performer; she's always making everything from scratch. That's good energy to be around."

Sickafoose has himself built an original sound from the ground up, even employing musicians from outside the jazz community: DiFranco appears, vocally and on uke, as does the distinctive violin and whistle of Andrew Bird. In Philly he'll be accompanied by Miller, saxophonist John Ellis, trombonist Alan Ferber and guitarist Mike Gamble. It's definitely a jazz band, but hardly one contained by the term.

"The thing about genre titles is they all start to sound funny after a while," Sickafoose muses. "In fact, they all sort of seem pejorative. None of them sound like anything you want to listen to, except they all are."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Todd Sickafoose's Blood Orange plays Thu., Sept. 4, 8 p.m., $12, Philadelphia Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th St., arsnovaworkshop.com.