On Thursdays, The Adam Maness Trio transforms Thurman’s in Shaw into a jazz lab

On Thursday evenings, a bit of a ritual has begun to take shape in a South City bar called Thurman’s in Shaw. With the support of owner Doug Fowler, pianist Adam Maness has been able to assemble and rehearse a self-named jazz trio in the room. It draws a blend of neighborhood types: Some come by for a beer and a bite; others are jazzheads who gather for the tunes. The diversity of the crowd is met by a band that’s unafraid to mix and match influences and eras, bringing life to everything from  jazz standards to more contemporary cuts from acts like Radiohead, Frank Ocean, and OutKast.  

“When you’re calling tunes from the bandstand,” Maness  says, “you try to find the mood of the room, to find the right flow.”  He’s found absolute confidence in his rhythm section of drummer Montez Coleman, a fellow alum of Willie Akins’ band, and bassist Bob DeBoo, with whom he studied and gigged in New York.  

The amiable Maness says that Coleman is “one of the best drummers in the world, and he happens to live in East St. Louis. A big part of this is my wanting to do this with him.” Reconnecting with DeBoo, he says, was a quirk of luck: “I ran into him after his wife had taken a job in St. Louis. And within a couple of years, he’d taken over the scene here, as I knew he would. We’d played and hung out a lot together in New York; we have this great connection.”  

That bond, Maness says, is essential in an improv-heavy  jazz context. “So much about this music is trust,” he says. “You go for something, and they’ll be there to support you when you land.” 

 He adds, “Everything I do starts with the question of ‘Am I doing this because it’s easy and people are paying me to do this, or is this something that I want to do?’ As a professional musician, you could do things people ask you to do all the time. But I’m at the point where I can choose, and part of doing this trio is doing songs that I want to do. Every song is one that means something to me.” 

Maness credits Fowler with giving the group a weekly laboratory to hone their material while developing a comradeship and following. With the most tuned-in folks sitting just a few feet from him, Maness believes that the chill vibe “feels just like we’re talking here. There’s no pressure. It’s just a conversation. As musicians, our job isn’t to impress but to connect. That’s what you want to do, to be honest and express yourself in a way that you hope they get, too. Whether they’re 10 feet away from you or a thousand, everything can be a challenge. This is way better. It’s immediate and you know immediately what’s going on with that audience and how to have that dialogue.”

AND DON’T MISS

St. Louis boasts lots of weekly (and monthly) jazz gigs. Here are just a handful to check out. 

• Bob DeBoo hosts a jazz jam at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 7–9 p.m. every Wednesday. 
• Miss Jubilee plays two standing gigs: Wednesday nights  at Schlafly Bottleworks and Sunday brunch at Evangeline’s Bistro and Music House.
• The Dark Room, in Grand Center, hosts some of St. Louis’ most highly regarded jazz artists and their bands: Kasimu Taylor on Wednesdays, Ptah Williams and Eric Slaughter on Thursdays, and Jesse Gannon on Fridays. 
• Heading up one of the longest-running jam sessions in St. Louis, sax player Dave Stone’s trio has been a fixture at Mangia Italiano for nearly two decades, with a weekly Friday-night session that gets underway close to 11 p.m.