Courtesy of Dan Rubright
Dan Rubright
This weekend, the Dan Rubright Group will be a releasing an album of original jazz compositions, created by the band’s namesake and featuring the drums of Steve Davis, the keys of Nick Schlueter, and the bass of Chris Turnbaugh. The concert—at 8 p.m. Saturday at the .ZACK Theatre—will feature a goodly dose of the tracks featured on the release, as well as new material. These days, Rubright’s got more ideas, material, and collaborators than ever and the time to begin sharing it all is actively underway.
“I think there is something to collaboration,” he figures. “I love playing with my group, and I love playing with other people as well. I like to collaborate and co-create with other artists. It becomes a community when you play with other people, and it expands my base, and I want to keep expanding that base. That’s the fun of it. You ask them, ‘How do you hear this?’
“Music’s a long journey and, like in any art form, when you begin you have a really big ego,” he adds. “And as you learn and grow, the ego goes down and your mind broadens. I’m at the point now where I can work with this person, that person and it’s not threatening to anyone anymore. The idea is ‘Let’s just see where it goes.’”
Rubright will continue to work with The Wire Pilots (a group that includes Ric Vice on bass; Rubright’s brother, Ted, on percussion; and, most recently, Sandy Weltman on harmonica and ukulele). That band, he expects, will be releasing its own album of material in 2019. Their online bio suggests that the Wire Pilots’ “music demonstrates Rubright’s love of world flavors including Latin, American jazz, Brazilian influences. Sophisticated yet accessible, there is an underlying pop sensibility that blurs traditional genre boundaries and appeals to listeners of all ages.”
His new, self-titled group, Rubright says, will offer “some fresh, hook-filled original jazz inspired by early Pat Metheny, The Bad Plus, Wes Montgomery, and others.” Production for this material was handled in-group, with Steve Davis helming the sessions.
“Steve is our drummer and an extraordinary engineer, one of the best in town,” Rubright offers. “He lives in a loft in the Grand Center area, and we do all the recording there. It’s unlike other recording projects I’ve done, in that it’s recorded in one take, or two takes. No overdubbing. It all just happens right away. You’ve gotta play with people that can play it out and move on. He’s got an extraordinary ear, is really a total audiophile.
“I could spend all night trying to get the right note the right way,” he says. “But energetically-speaking, it’s been OK. I’ve been in other projects with different processes, but this is great. I have so much product to get out there, and it’s important to keep this content going. I’ve gotten to a place where my aesthetic and my craft and production have all come together and getting to that point’s sometimes a challenge in life.”
For 20-odd years, Rubright was among the primary guitar instructors at Webster University’s music department. A decade ago, he moved on from there, taking a role at a founding director of the Grand Center Arts Academy. Of late, he’s had an occasional guitar student, but his primary focus has been on creation, whether that be writing material for his groups, or tackling the commissions, which has been a growing part of his trade.
These days, Rubright’s still fulminating over certain aspects of what he calls “the fault lines” of the music business. How to incorporate more video content. How to figure out the value of different streaming and online sales platforms. How to simply draw an audience for recordings in an age of unprecedented plenty. There’s much to consider. The music, itself? It’s there and in new and interesting guises.
“I’m just scratching the surface of my material and things I want to do,” he says. “The Wire Pilots will be back in February, and we’ll be back doing a recording project with that group, getting back to our roots. The Dan Rubright Group is one project, but I see others coming out from it, maybe in a quieter direction, or another with a couple of horn players. Even a solo album. There’re lots of possible configurations. But they’re all like tributaries coming from the main river.”
