Rob Endicott Comes to Jazz at the Bistro This Weekend With an All-Star Crew

Corporate lawyer by day, jazz musician by night? No, it’s not the plot of a new Netflix series. It’s the real life of horn player Rob Endicott, and he’s playing a set this weekend at Jazz at the Bistro. The Carmi, Illinois native received his masters in music from Juilliard, and was a working musician in New York for many years before earning his law degree from NYU in 1994. He returned to his native St. Louis, and just celebrated his 20th anniversary with Bryan Cave. Though law, naturally, took up a lot of his focus, Endicott never allowed his instrument to collect dust. He has performed with many local groups, including the Soulard Blues Band, the Jim Stevens Group, and the VooDoo Blues Band, of which he is a “member emeritus.”

As he prepares to take the stage with the assembled group of Adam Maness on keyboard, Jahmal Nichols on bass, Montez Coleman on drums, and Jim Stevens on saxophone (“It’s going to be a great group. It’s sort of the cream of the crop, really, of the St. Louis jazz scene,” he says), Endicott, who is also Chairman of the Board of the National Blues Museum, shared anecdotes about his time onstage and off, the difference between forging a music career in New York versus St. Louis, and shared advice on blending your passion with your day job.

You are a classically trained Juilliard-degreed musician. How did your background in classical music pave the way to jazz?

I was a classical musician for the most part, although I sort of dabbled in jazz. When I moved back to St. Louis, I caught up with a couple of old friends who were playing music around, and asked me to do a couple of gigs, and sort of got interested in playing again. 10 or 11 years ago now I got the chance to play in the VooDoo Blues Band, which is the house band at Hammerstone’s in Soulard. I started playing there every week and got into the blues scene and the jazz scene. I got to know a lot of people and got a lot of opportunities just from being out in the scene.

Within those opportunities, you’ve also had the chance to dabble into other genres, including the blues. How did you get the chance to play for Bobby “Blue” Bland?

That was directly the result of Hammerstone’s. I played the trumpet, and in the Voodoo Blues Band there’s a saxophone player. There’s not too many real working bands that have a horn section like that. One of the singers who came in, Skeet Rogers, said, “I’m opening for Bobby Blue Bland, and I know Bobby’s going to have a horn section, so I gotta have a horn section just like Bobby.” So the sax player and I appended ourselves onto Steve’s band and then we started doing a lot of gigs with Steve, so we opened for [him], and Jerry “The Iceman” Butler… it was just a lot of fun.

Having observed both, what, in your opinion, are the differences between the New York CIty jazz scene and the St. Louis jazz scene?

New York City is probably the world capital of jazz, and there are a lot of different clubs, a lot of great clubs, but because it’s such a huge market, there’s also a lot of musicians, and a lot of great musicians. If you are serious about jazz, a lot of people move to New York to make their  fame and fortune. While there’s a lot of gigs, there’s also a lot of competition.

The St. Louis jazz scene—there’s a fantastic blues scene; the jazz scene is not quite as robust as the blues scene is, but there’s a lot of great players around. But it’s just not as cutthroat. So, if you know the players, it’s a much friendlier environment for someone who is not doing it for a living, like me. And I’ve found that [in New York] there’s just so many fantastic players, that to break in that and to do it as an avocation instead of a vocation is not really possible.

You’ve been back in St. Louis for two decades. Have you thought about taking the experience that you’ve gained in St. Louis and going back to New York City to attempt a jazz career?

That’s an interesting question I have thought about—maybe not necessarily going back to New York, but what is the next step [in my music]? That was one of the goals of putting together the band for this show: try to do something that’s special with some really good players, and then see what could happen in terms of taking it on the road. Maybe it’s not going to New York first of all, but going to some other cities and seeing what happens with it.

I’m trying to focus on doing fewer but higher-profile gigs. It’s been easier as a “side man,” being in someone else’s group, but this is group is mine. I would like to have a group that is mine, that I’m calling the tunes and I’m doing the arrangements. I would love to, for example, play on or more of the outdoor festivals sometime this year, and I would love to get on the Bistro schedule again…and longer-term, take those things and be able to take a group like this and do some touring.  I love living in St. Louis, so I really can’t imagine going to New York. To me, if I got invited to play at a jazz club in NY it’d be like “OK, I’ve made it fully back!”

Your are a corporate lawyer by day at St. Louis firm Bryan Cave. Do clients ever recognize you?

It has happened before, where people have sort of said “Hey…” and it’s oftentimes where they’re not sure because it’s such a different environment. It’s like when you see somebody that you always see at work, and then you see them in the grocery store…but to see somebody in a different context it takes you a moment to place them, because it’s such an unusual thing. In fact when people [said] ‘I’m gonna come down to hear you!’ I say—even if I know them really well—”Come up and introduce yourself to me, and I apologize, because when I see you out of context, sometimes it’s hard to put together.”

What is your advice for those who want to spend more time developing their talents and want to put them into the public atmosphere?

I think that “it” has to select you rather than you selecting “it.” For people who have that sort of a thing, where they’ve got some sort of talent or interest, it has to be something where you just find that every sort of spare moment that you have that you’re not doing your day job…I love my day job, but when I’m not doing that, this is what I’m thinking about. And it’s not because I have to say ‘Now I gotta practice’ – No, I want to practice. It has to be something you’re just passionate about. And then the second thing – step back and [ask] ‘What is attainable, and then how am I gonna get there?’ What are the steps, and just take those steps.

Rob Endicott & Friends perform January 16 at 7:30pm & 9:30pm at the Ferring Jazz Bistro,

3536 Washington. Tickets are $15, $10 for students. For more information, go to jazzstl.org.