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"3now4"

Chicago Tribune, Sunday, August 9, 1998
Jazz / Cutting Edges

New Orleans embraces the modern
without losing touch with its roots

By Howard Reich
Tribune Arts Critic

Experimental music also is integral to New Orleans jazz today, as in an exceptional, self-titled recording, "3 Now 4" (SEM). Strange sonic effects, blurred tones, bent pitches, unmetered improvisations - these form the working vocabulary of this band (staffed by pedal steel guitarist Dave Easley, trumpeter/flautist Charlie Miller, bassist James Singleton, and Johnny Vidacovich and Jeff Boudreaux sharing drum duties). Yet because these are New Orleans musicians, they take pains to make even their most audacious passages inviting to the uninitiated. Only in New Orleans could music as unconventional as this sound nearly danceable.

The following is from a Memhpis based literary journal, Beatlicks. The writer is Dennis Formento.

"...Easley is gifted with one of the great inexhaustible musical imaginations in this city. During one 3Now4 set at the Dragon's Den, he took two long solos with a brief excursion by tenor saxist, Tim Green, sandwiched between… what amazed me was not the length of Dave's improvisations, but that he seemed never to repeat a single phrase. The music just kept tumbling out of that pedal steel like snowflakes, no two riffs ever the same, produced as effortlessly as breathing."

1. Lauren Z (Singleton)
2. Mudmen (Seibirth)
3. Cunning, Like Silver in her Bones (Singleton, Easley, Miller, Boudreaux)
4. About Face (Pelera)
5. La Sirene (Singleton)
6. Switchin' Mamas (Singleton)
7. Judista (Pelera)
8. Not But Not For Me (Gerwshwin)
9. La Lingua (Singleton)
10. Bulldog Run (Singleton)
11. Twilight Dance of the Sand Dragon (Singleton, Easley, Miller, Boudreaux)
12. My Back Pages (Dylan)
13. Adventures of the Sand Dragon (Singleton, Easley, Miller, Boudreaux)
14. Bone Slavish Ten Dance Seas (Singleton, Easley, Miller, Boudreaux)
15. Nightmare Thief (Easley)