Long interview with the late Mars Williams
The under-rated, perhaps misunderstood Chicago-based saxophonist, dead at 68, lays it all out
For my article on Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Chicago’s long-running free improvising ensemble, in the January 9, 2019 Reader in 2019, I spent an afternoon interviewing reedsman Mars Williams, who died of a rare cancer at age 68 a week ago (Nov. 20, 2023). His long, candid conversation with me covered a lot of ground, as Mars was a man of many parts integrated into a unique whole throughout an extraordinarily wide-ranging career.
Here’s the entirety of the discussion, virtually a monolog touching on his childhood musical training via parental modeling and through strict military academies; hands-on education at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY; glory days in Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble and with Ken Vandermark; Lowest Manhattan jams and rock tours with New Wave bands out of ‘70s-’80s NYC; pickup gigs in Harlem’ drug addiction and sobriety; the ironies of racial chasms between Chicago’s North and South side scenes; expansive influences and vocabulary, Williams’ annual Ayler/Christmas project. He trieds throughout to articulate the essence of improvisation, a quasi-mystical emergence, through music, of an independent, shimmering immanence, in which it was his joy to play a part.
MARS WILLIAMS: My basic pro bio information you can get off my website. . . I think Wikipedia has some stuff too. Go to both and get a mixture. I don't know if it says I started playing clarinet, and my dad was a trumpet player. I heard him play a tiny bit, but he'd basically retired.
He'd played in pickup bands, and Gene Krupa, Tommy Dorsey – they'd pick up college kids, like Buddy Rich always did, traveling with a core of musicians, going to different cities, and they’d do the midwest – so he did a lot of that kind of stuff, in the 1940s and '50s. He'd stopped when he had a family. He had kids before with another wife, who died, and then he got married to my mom, and had me.
But yeah, he got me started on clarinet. He was a big Dixieland and big band guy.
I don't really play that stuff now. I love listening to it, I do some traditional stuff, but there are people who do it a lot better than me. I love listening to the innovators who came up with those styles, but in my opinion recreating that music happens way too often these days, for me. Re-creation takes away from the creative element. Ok, I'm going to play this Charlie Parker thing like Charlie Parker. But it's already been done! There are influences, definitely, and learning tools, but I don't do that as often any more. I did, in the past . . .
HM: What’s the center of what you're interested in?
MW: I don't think there is one. We're a product of our environment, right? When I grew up there were six kids in our family. I had three sisters who were older plus my brother who was older and my dad playing big band music all the time around the house, and my sisters listening to the Beatles and Stones, pop music, and my brother was into more like Cream and Zeppelin, Santana, Woodstock era kind of stuff, so I would hear that stuff. Plus I was playing classical clarinet.
I was trained as a classical musician. I went to Holy Cross High School, but I started playing in grade school, like when I was nine. They teach you concert band, that whole thing, and I practiced a lot. I'll give you the whole history – I was sort of a bad kid, even though looking at what kids are doing these days, compared to that I wasn't a bad kid at all. But I was doing stupid stuff in school, and basically got the option to either get expelled or be transferred to another school. And I got put in a military academy. And I think this is probably between you and me, I guess, but the way I developed as a musician, I got put in this place that was really not a good place.
Bishop Quarter in Oak Park. It was run by Dominican nuns. Very, very strict. They treated you like you were in the Marines. I was 10 years old. They had you spit shining your shoes. If your hair was too long, if they could pull it. They'd do these punishments where you'd squat with a rifle. Or you take your hat and if you slip and fall they kick you. You're a kid! It was kind of like almost like Oliver Twist, how I remember this, constant beatings and abuse. You lived there. You went home one night a week, then you came back. So I was away from my family, and I think I maybe escaped in my music. I would practice constantly, and really work on that. And I became a really good, disciplined kind of person.
Then I became a leader, because my rank went up. It was weird. Then the school closed. I don't know why, I've tried to find out. I don't know if there were reports, or whatever . . I would tell my parents, ‘We're getting hit, beaten,’ and they'd say, ‘If you got hit, it was because you deserved it.’ Nowadays that place would be shut down immediately. But then it shut down, and they sent me to another military school that was like Club Med. This place in La Grange, St. Joseph's Military Academy. and I practiced a lot there.
When there was free time, I'd go to the practice room, and I' d be the only guy in the whole music department, shedding. When I got out of there, I went to Holy Cross. From the end of fifth grade ‘til the end of 7th grade. 8th grade I was in the other place. Two and a half years.
I was very focused on my music. I knew I was going to be a musician. But again, we're products of our environment, and depending on who your instructors are, that's where you're going, because you look up to these people for guidance. I had a band director. I guess I learned something, I didn't really study privately. I'd take a couple lessons with the band director, but learned a lot of classical stuff, excelled, won state competitions on my clarinet.
Then I went to DePaul University for a semester. Took all the entrance exams and they put me in third year music theory, which was way too much for a kid just out of high school. Plus I had to work. Right out of high school I decided to switch to the saxophone. And I'm a senior, 17, come out of school, it's summertime, I have friends listening to Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. I'm listening to all this with my brother and sisters, funk music, the '70s, and I wanted to play that. I couldn't relate to the clarinet in terms of improvisation. To me the clarinet was about classical, and I could relate to it maybe as a Dixieland thing. Right after high school I started listening to more jazz.
I'm remembering, too, I got exposed then to the AACM [Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians]. It might have been through the first band I put together. The summer after senior year, I formed this nine-piece funk band called Paragon. And I had Rahmlee Michael Davis from Earth, Wind & Fire, who had the Phenix Horns, a South Side guy, and he was affiliated a little with the AACM. He and Dean Gant, a keyboard player. I got some of these guys from the South Side to come out to the suburbs and join. Dean was already in EWF, and we were playing EWF cover tunes. They weren't touring all the time.
[Horns arranged by Tom (Tom-Tom 84) Washington featured starting at 1:00]
This was summer of '73. I'd be listening to John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, through people telling me to Eric Dolphy, then Ornette Coleman. I started hearting Anthony Braxton and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and it just opened up my mind, but I felt it in here, in my heart and my soul – this was the music, this was freedom. I started listening to more of that. And through those things, listening to Coltrane, I don't know – that's where all my exposure to that stuff came from, and I listened to a lot of it.
The minute I found out about that stuff, I was over there in Hyde Park listening to all that. [AACM member musicians] Thurman Barker, Henry Threadgill, Douglas Ewart. You remember those times. They'd have these concerts, they'd always be different, with everybody involved, full percussion ensembles, visual art – it was incredible. It was such a good time.
I was playing, I had this funk band, and we were working. There was a scene around Chicago and the suburbs of Top 40 cover bands. There were so many venues, you'd play these disco clubs, four or five sets a night, five nights a week, and go home with $250 a week. That was your salary. At the time it went a lot further than now.
Then I got a summer job at the Sanitary District. I was working shoveling shit, literally, spraying down tanks of sewage and wading through it with these boots – so I'd do that, but I was so focused . . . I'm trying to think when I met Roscoe [Mitchell], too. I would meet these guy and talk to them. I think it must have been ‘74 or ‘75, because I was still around Chicago and doing these same things. I went to Triton College, when I didn't like the music program at DePaul. First of all, I was over my head, because I was working a job to pay for the school and playing gigs and going to school full time with a third year music program, a classical program. They didn't have much of a jazz program at that time.
I would practice, and go to the Sanitary District –- wake up at five in the morning, go there before I had to start at eight, to a pump house, set up, practice long tones, then start my gig. At lunch, I'd practice for another hour. After work I'd go home, take a nap, wake up, play these gigs, and then next day the same.
This was summer. I was living in Franklin Park, my dad was mayor of Franklin Park at the time, and he was a state representative, too. He wasn't around too much. [Jack B. Williams, below, Franklin Park Mayor for 27 years].
There's a lot of personal things with my parents that came up that I don't want to get into, separation and stuff, but basically I had the house to myself. We were getting high — this is the '70s.
I don't know if my drug addiction needs to be in here, I don't know what you know about it, but I was into drugs and all that, which followed thorugh my life. In the '80s I was shooting smack, and I got strung out really bad. I'm sober now. I don't mind talking about it. I don't think it should be a focus of my life, but I do help a lot of musicians now, in recovery. I got jaimie branch into rehab, fully paid. She talks about it publicly in press, that's why I mention it. But yeah, I had a hard time, and it reflected in groups and things like that. I don't know how much you want to get into that.
HM: Not much.
MW: But then, coming out of that time, I'm way into the AACM and free improvisation, and being exposed to the Europeans, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, and then I saw this was '74 probably, I saw this ad in the back of DownBeat for the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, and I'm looking at who the guiding artists are, and Oh my god, these are all the guys I’m listening to. Roscoe, Braxton, Don Cherry, Jimmy Guiffre, Lee Konitz . . . At that time you had to audition to get in, and they took so many sax players, trumpeters and so on, to form an ensemble So I got in.
It wasn't that much money, and you lived there. I think it was two or three months at a time. You go and live at the time it was in this lodge. You share a cabin with another musician. My roommate was Ralph Carney, who just passed away. He played with Hal Wilner projects and was in Tom Waits’ group with [guitarist] Marc Ribot.
Each week a guiding artist would come in — a week with Braxton, you’d learn about his music and then play a concert with him at the end of the week. The next week Don Cherry would come in and give you his whole philosophy. I'd taken private lessons with Braxton on the side, then I became Braxton's music copyist. I was making a living doing music copying for a while because I had a real good hand. I did the B-flat version of The Real Book.
I was hired by the guy who ended up going to prison, because they were illegal [due to copyright violations] at the time. But I did that for Braxton, I was his copyist full time, which was insanity.
These were big scores and I had to do all the parts, so I had to get a crew, lead a crew of music copyists, because the project had to be done yesterday. It was a great way to learn the music. I could see how Braxton thinks. And it was him and me, one on one. Because he would close himself off in his place when he was in a project — when he started doing these big orchestra pieces, he couldn't have people around. I remember being at his house on Sunday – except for football, he'd take time out to watch football, so it would be me and him at his place, and he'd be explaining how these harmonies were going to work, so I'd have a key, this harmony for the woodwinds would go in parallel, so he'd use one line, then I'd have to harmonize for the rest of the woodwinds. And he'd have these parallel harmonies going to each section. And then these slide projectors that I’d have to notate when they'd come in, four slide projectors and moving screens – crazy.
And all of a sudden there's a knock on the door. Who's bothering me? “It''s Jack DeJohnette, Hey Anthony, how you doin'?” Braxton: “Don't ever come in” – and slams the door in his face. And I'm like, Oh my god, it’s Jack Dejohnette! Braxton says to me, “Nobody but you is allowed in here at this time!” But I learned a lot about his thought processes, how how he put things together, and his discipline. And it was great.
The first big project of his I did was “Composition 96,” which was recorded. I don't know how these guys could play this stuff. I played it on clarinet. Technically, it's mind-blowing. It was all in parallel motion and he'd have 17-notes-to-two-beat ratios – and these guys would play this stuff. After that year, I went to Colorado. Did some stuff -- met [trumpeter] Hugh Ragin. We put together this group because there wasn't that many people in the '70s that played that kind of music in Colorado. I met this other guy, Spider Middleman, a sax player, and put together this group called Corner Culture. I was living in the mountains, and went to Boulder. I had a drummer who went to CMS who moved out there with me – his name was Bob Johnson. . .never really moved on to do much professionally, but played with Hal Russell for a while. I could go on for a long time here, but I want to get to how I got to Roscoe.
I'd met Roscoe at CMS, I'm playing with Hugh, we're doing this group. I had some bad luck, I drove off a cliff with my car, and ended up in rushing rap[ids. It was a big thing. I almost died/ I bit through my lip and had to get 13 stitches in it. I couldn't play for six months. Had to relearn how to play, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because my tone was more of a classical tone, more like a Braxton tone in a way. And I was more of an alto player, but I played tenor, all the instruments, flute, clarinet – so embouchure-wise, I had to really practice, really work.
Then I asked Roscoe to study with him privately. I moved back to Chicago, applied for an NEA grant, got some money from them, said to Roscoe I want to study privately, using that money. He said, “Yeah, come on up to my farm.”
Basically the lessons were waking up, being in his literal woodshed, and practicing long tones on each instrument starting at 6 a.m That would go on for two or three hours. Then we're go on started doing other repertoire and exercises. We'd practice eight to ten hours a day. He was getting ready for an Art Ensemble of Chicago tour, I was rebuilding my embouchure, that got me to build up my tone to the bigger tone I have now. And I learned from his discipline of this practice routine. And I say his thought process.
He said “I'm going to CMS and doing a month or two month residency. Why don't you take the money, don't pay me, do some music copying for me. So I did a string quartet and the Art Ensemble songbook. These things are all learning processes, too, when you're writing out AEC songs. . .So I went to CMS with him, did the two month thing with him, took the rest of the money which wasn't a lot — $3500 or whatever — in the '70s, lived in Woodstock then, hung around CMS. You have Julius Hemphill, Carla Bley, DeJohnette, Karl Berger — all these artists in residence. And contemporary classical people – Fredrick Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, all these guys were up there. Brotzman would come in and play. Peter Kowald. My class was Marilyn Crispell, Peter apfelbaum, Donny davis who I just did the Ayler Christmas with. It was incredible time for me.
Then I moved to New York City and was a bike messenger, I met [alto saxophonist, composer, musical games deviser, record producer] John Zorn. He was bike messenger, too and working at Downtown Music Gallery. Zorn was doing all this incredible stuff, Mark Kramer who did Shimmy Disc records. We formed the Swollen Monkeys, I'll send you some of that stuff — CMS guys doing this fusion of Tex-Mex and Prime Time harmolodic weird music. We were all influenced by the AACM and Ornette, doing very innovative stuff but poppy in a certain way. So I lived in New York, and way playing. . .
You're trying to figure out where I center musically. It's hard to say, because I'm centered in music. CMS would do this kind of jazz curriculum, then there’d be the same type of program but with an artist-in-residence from Nigeria or South Africa or India and you'd learn about Indian music, or a Japanese or Chinese guy. You'd learn all these different musics. I love all that stuff. All those things are me.
You could see where my, how my career goes. I like playing all these kinds of music. So I started playing. I'd audition for any job because I was trying to make money. I'd do Broadway and off-Broadway shows, play in rock bands. There was a day that was a turning point in my career. I was in New York and got a call from Michael Mantler. He said, “Mars, we're looking for a sax player for Carla's band, we know you from Woodstock and CMS, we like your playing, would you be interested in joining Carla's band?” I said, “Yeah!” He said, “OK, we're still deciding but wanted to know if you're available, we'll get back to you.” I said, “Great.”
Right after that I got a call from Chris Butler, who's putting this Waitresses project together. He's moving to NY and he's got Patti Donahue moving to NY, singer in the Waitresses and he's saying I'm getting a deal with Polygram Records, and putting this band together in New York, and we're going to record this album. I said I'd like to do it but just got a call from Michael Mantler, and I'm waiting to hear from him. If that doesn't happen, yes. Let's give it a day or two.
So Mantler calls back, says We're going to use the guy we used before, who lives in New Orleans, Tony Malaby. I'm not sure who it was, but I remember he was playing with them off and on. So they went with him, and I went with the Waitresses. Kind of a turning point. Which was a great band – I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of freedom. I had a percussion rack, due to AACM influences, I had this thing of pots and pans, whistles, bells onstage, clarinet, baritone, Tibetan monk horns — I'm up blowing Tibetan monk horn solos over their rhythms, I'm able to do all these different styles within this pop band.
Gary Window was play the Psychedelic Furs at that time. They were touring. And the Furs came to NY, I went to go see Gary, I met the Furs, next day I got a call from the Furs, Gary can't go to Australia due to some legal visa kind of thing from some old drug bust – he wouldn't be able to get back in the country – so can you go to New Zealand and Australia with us? I'm, “Yeah, the Waitresses are done for a while,” so I went there and did the Furs, and that was a blast, I really enjoyed it. Gary and I did it together for a while, in the States. Then they wanted to me to stay. They wanted to get rid of Gary and I said I can't do that. I was still doing the Waitresses. I'd do the Furs with Gary when I was free. And at the end of the Waitresses broke up, the Furs tour was over, they said they don't want Gary, we want you.
The first gig I did with the Furs was '83, then I joined them full time in '84. But at the same time I was still playing free jazz. I'm trying to figure out where this Hal Russell thing came in, because that was the '70s, after CMS.
Hal Russell was a big influence on me. I had already been playing free improvised jazz and doing these different groups, with Hugh and all that, and I came back from Colorado and brought Spider back with me. We had this place here in town, a real ghetto place, with rats. We went to hear the NRG Ensemble – well, it wasn't NRG, it was just Hal Russell, he was playing Jazz Vespers, in the Church.
I walk into this place, the concert has already started, he's on stage with his dog Monique. He's growling, the dog stares up at him, Hal's growling, the dog just sits there, Hal turns around the dog goes "OOOO"! I thought I’ve got to meet this guy.
I went up to him after the show, I'd like to play with you. He says, I only need one sax. I say, “No, Spider and I are a team.” And he's, “No.” I say, “Let's go and play.” So we went to his loft, I brought Spider, and he was, “Ok.” So two saxes and Hal would play sax and trumpet and vibes and drums. That went on, and we started doing these concerts at different galleries around Chicago.
Each time we did it we changed the name — Hal Russell’s Chemical Feast or Hal Russell's Urban Picnic, and then one time it was Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble and we ended up keeping that name. at the time it was Russ Tatusa on bass, George Southgate drummer/vibes player, Chuck Burdelik was in and out. I think that was it. Another bass player. And then Hal and I became real close, then I moved back to New York. Left NRG but would come back into town.
That's when he got Steve Hunt and those guys. I'd play with them, just jam. When I was in the Waitresses, the Waitresses came to town, then I did that duo record on Nessa. I think we recorded in '80, released in '81. Which is still one of my favorite records – my first free jazz record, actually. I love that record.
Hal and I became really close. We thought alike. I liked having this little twist and humor, not be so serious with the music. Because I come from music, I don't like to come at it from an academic perspective. I come at it from music. This is what I feel, this is what I play. I don't like to analyze it too much, what I play or how I got here. I got here because this is how I grew up, and what I did to get here, but I don't like to take a chord change and learn this lick over it, and – yeah, I've got all this technique from practicing and other things, but I don't like to think of it academically.
[Mars breaks out at 3:20 below . . .]
So I did this whole rock thing but I'm also still involved in free improvisation. The downtown music scene in New York was incredible at that time. I wasn't the only one thinking this way of crossing genres with this music. You could hear music develop in the late '70s in NYC. We would all hang out, so at night it wouldn't be rare to see guys in a club, having Don Cherry and Joey Ramone and Bill Laswell and me, different punk guys, hanging out. Then all of a sudden you're in a loft playing with each other. The drummer from Devo, you know.
They all liked that kind of free music. And you could start hearing that music in these different genres. Jazz started getting more of this rock kind of edge to it, having screaming solos over weird rock music. Screaming sax stuff. It was really a good period, a lot of open mindedness going on. Zorn doing these game pieces, and the loft scene — it was so vibrant.
So I'm out, doing this thing. I was always doing drugs, and then it started being a big part of my life. It got to the point where it was controlling me. That's another whole story. That's what happens. You never think it's going to happen to you. I controlled it, my life was manageable for a long time, it was the '80s rock scene, all of a sudden I became a rock star. I never thought of it like that, but I was caught up in it. It was great! I was able to blow and have fun, travel, see the world, but it was a crazy time, man. [Below, Mars blows at 1:52]
So let's move forward to I came back. I got so wrapped up and strung out, I left New York. I had to change my environment. I had a falling out with the Furs at that time, that's another story, but it had to do with my drugs, and how I was thinking. And I came here, got right in with NRG ensemble, Steve [Hunt], Brian [Sandstrom, bassist/multi-instrumentalist], Kent [Kessler, bassist], met those guys, met [tenor saxophonist] Ken Vandermark, who was playing with NRG off and on, started really getting more involved in the improvising scene that was happening in the '90s in Chicago. I played a lot with NRG, started doing that full time, got in the Vandermark Five, formed a really close relationship with Vandermark. We were an inseparable team for a while.
I got influenced by different kinds of playing here. It had changed a lot. The Europeans were having more influence then. I met [pianist/synthesist/violist] Jim Baker. What had happened in New York in the '70s started to happen here. Where a lot of cross musicians into these different scenes, a lot of collaborating, open-mindedness, let's jam, let's play, a lot of musician-promoters in these different scenes. So we started playing a lot together, gigs with [multi-instrumentalist-producer] Jim O'Rourke, and Jim Baker. Ken and I had that Cinghiale thing which was our duo, we'd do things with special guests, with friends. Lot of open improvisation things.
Baker was. . . Baker. Extraordinary Popular Delusions, I remember playing some gigs with those guys, it was probably 2005, 2004 maybe. We had played together as a group. I think they [Baker, Hunt, Sandstrom] were doing some trio gigs, and I would be in and out. I started playing with them full-time in 2005. This sticks in my mind: The first sober record I did was the first EPD record, and that was really soon after I came out of rehab, that was 2005. We were playing at Hottie Biscotti, I came out of rehab, I continued playing with them. So I'd taken a little leave of absence.
The thing about it is, because of how much we used to play with NRG we knew each other's thinking process – or feeling process, and we all had this Hal Russell influence in a way, of freedom.
Hal Russell had this “Fuck it!” kind of mentality. As I said before, I don't come at it from an academic point of view – I play music, this is what I do, this is how I feel. I remember reading interviews with different people how they approach their improvisation, these guys are giving their whole academic thing, then I think it was Pharaoh Sanders says, “Man, I just play how I feel.” And that's how I feel. It's like I play what I hear.
HM: EPD is all about that.
MW: Yeah! We've never played anything pre-conceived, unless we did a Monday where we said can we do a Hal-the Weenie show?
Because it's three of the five guys from NRG. But Jim Baker has this whole other thing he brings. He's in his own world of Jim Baker. He's like a wild card in a way, because you never know where it's going to go. What's cool about EPD, and I noticed this from the Hotti Biscotti days – we'd be playing and there never was a soloist. Someone might rise above what's happening, but we were creating this thing of sound of us four musicians and maybe somebody would rise above and be taking this little lead, but it wasn't like this guy's taking a solo. It was that we're all just playing this music.
We started realizing this, only from talking about it – “Man, what's happening?” We'd be playing and there'd be something happening that we weren't even aware of, but we started to become aware of. “Did you hear what just happened. Did you hear that other thing? Who’s doing that?” And nobody was doing it, but this fifth thing was happening, in the music.
It's hard to describe, but it was there. This music that we were creating that was independent of what we were doing, but it was there. It came from the sounds, and everything that we were doing was creating this other thing on top of it. It was, "What is going on?" We'd try to — when it was going on and we'd become aware of it — we'd try to pull it in and expand on it, and sometimes we could. Sometimes it would still just go its own way. But sometimes we could pull it in and create this other whole thing. It's magical.
There’s times we'll be doing this and this other fifth thing happens, we'll be in this thing, and I'll be playing, and I'll go “Whoa, is that me? Is that Jim?" Sometimes I think it's me and I'll stop, and it's still there. I'll think it's Jim, and Jim will stop and it's me! If one of us stops, this other thing goes away. This thing the two of us create would be this other whole thing that couldn't exist without us all doing it. If one would drop, this other thing would disappear. Which is cool, too. If we hear it happening, we try to bring it out even more, and sometimes we're able to, and it draws us into that, and we go into this other whole world.
It's because we were doing the weekly residency, which continues, but playing with each other all the time, we're able to subliminally go to this place and listen. By listening to each other, not thinking of it as a jazz, this is the rhythm section, this is the soloist – This is the Sound! And we're creating this sound! Sound manipulation. Sometimes a jazz element will come into there. Jim will be playing this stuff, and some time will come into there. Because all of us have been trained, as musicians and have played jazz and jazz standards and traditional, and world musics and all these things – sublimally or not, it just happens, and I don't know, I don't want to think about it too much. But we have, doing interviews sometimes, we say, “Yeah, it's this Thing. This Thing!”
The residency helps us to play together and keep playing. I don't know of any other group I've been in where we've been able to really develop something like this on a daily basis. The Vandermark 5, we rehearsed a lot and did a residency, and the music developed when I was in it. You need that constant playing together and rehearsing. Not rehearsing — a residency. This band – you can't rehearse this band. You just play. It's always a free improvisation thing. Knowing there's no leader per se.
Jim started this group. He's the guy who put the thing s together, the musicians together. I guess he's the leader, it's his band in a way, but it's not, because it's just a collective of four musicians and nobody is directing the music in any one way. The music can go anywhere, at any time. And when it does, we try to go with it. Sometimes we can disrupt it and go somewhere else. But I don't want to think about it.
HM: I never notice when anybody, Brian especially, changes instruments.
MW: Yeah, this sound – I don't know. It’s such a great band. And unfortunately, I go and do these other projects, which I need, because without – talking about where my center is in music – I need these other things. That's me. That's where my center is. If you can imagine I'm in the center of a circle, and there are all these different styles or genres or influences . . . the influences can just be traffic that's here and there, and CMS, and the AACM, the Furs, whatever – all kinds of Ethiopian music, Nigerian music, Japanese, all these things draw a line and they all come to me, and I'm sucking it in. And I need that stuff. I need to play that to expand my vocabulary.
I don't know how other guys do it, but in my thinking if I just was a jazz musician and practiced jazz all the time, and then went and played free, all I could bring to that is what I know and am exposed to, and that would be jazz. If I was a rock musician and somebody said, “I want to play some free improvisation,” so you go and do it and you're coming from just a rock thing and somebody brings in more of a jazz thing or an African thing, you're not going to know where to go with it. Or not know how to relate to it.
In a conversation between two people talking, you can only talk about what you know, or comment on it. You can listen, but you can't have a comment unless you understand it. So it's your vocabulary. You can only talk as much as the words you know. Same with the music, for me. So my vocabulary, I want to expand it as far as possible. And I enjoy it.
I've heard comments from people who say Mars has to decide what he wants to do. Is he going to do this, or do that? Why, why do I have to decide? This is me!
When I put Liquid Soul together, it was that I like playing funk music. I like playing rock music. I started hearing these djs doing this stuff with beats, and I knew that some guys were starting to play in New York with djs – Yeah, let's see what I can do with this. So I started, then wanted to layer hip-hop and blow solos over this hip-hop beat. So I was like, What else can we layer on top of this? I started layering African beats, or rock edges or jazz or swing elements, or Latin, and I thought, “This is a cool thing, where I can just layer different styles but keep a common thread of a groove.” That's the only direction it needs.
The common thread is that it's got a groove. Anything you do over the top of that groove — and it can be any kind of groove — anything atop of that groove is open. So it start being labeled “acid jazz”. It had a label, which ruins things all the time.
So we were invited to the Newport Jazz Festival in Japan, and there are all these straight-ahead bands playing, and they would snub us – “Man, you're not playing jazz.” I never said we were! But we're improvising. We're improvising over these beats. And audiences were feeling the energy of the band. And we're playing. We're blowing solos, we're having fun. Yeah you can dance to it, but isn't that how jazz got started? Jazz was dance music. So we got snubbed.
Except by Roy Haynes. Here we playing this jazz fest, he's setting up his drums on the side of the stage, he's listening to us, saying [approvingly], “Get the fuck out of here!” He's dancing around. He became our friend and after he latched onto us everybody at the jazz festival was – “Oh, oh, oh, oh!” And we'd get the crowd going. It was a blast.
Liquid Soul is a fun band, man, and we're blowing, we're playing. It's not the point of the music to play traditional jazz, but we're playing music. And to bring it to a broader audience . . .We were playing a festival in Poland, and Roscoe was on the bill with [drummer] Mike Reed, and Liquid Soul was one of the headliners, and I'm thinking in my mind, “Roscoe hasn't heard me in a long time, here is Liquid Soul, what's he going to think? “So we're playing the gig, crowd's loving it, we're having a blast, I'm playing, putting an Ornette Coleman tune over a hip-hop-funk groove and at the end Roscoe comes up and goes, “Mars, that's the most amazing thing, what you're doing!” I thought, “Aw, he's just being nice, but then he told me everything I did in that set, and that what we’re doing is bringing that music to a broader audience, playing Ornette stuff and free stuff, with these grooves, it's amazing! And people said he was dancing out in the crowd.
HM: Do you think there's limitations to EPD in terms of marketing appeal?
MW: How do you market it? I'm not that great at it, either. I try, and I do ok, I'm actually succeeding in what I do, but the one drawback about me doing these different things — which I explained why I do this stuff and that I enjoy it – some people think, “Oh, he's just going out to make some money,” and that's not true! Luckily, I'm able to play with the Furs and do a tour and get paid, and when Liquid Soul does these gigs, which enables me to do this other stuff. I'm going out to do this Ayler/Christmas project that's getting legs, but I'm not making any money on this. I'll be lucky if maybe I break even.
But the music is great. I'm playing with different musicians around the world. It's another way to bring the music there, form relationships with other musicians. Because I’ve played with people I've played with, and some I’ve never played with before, in each one of these cities. So I’m building relationships. But going back to what I was saying, the drawback of doing these different projects, so that I can walk away from one and spend time in this other world, so when I come back, I'm like I'm not the full-time thing, so I lose, I don't build the relationships or nurture the relationships maybe as much as I could. Because my time is also spent in different places.
HM: But 13 years with these guys!
[Photo, from left: Jim Baker, Brian Sandstrom, Steve Hunt, Edward Wilkerson Jr., Mars Williams, by Marc PoKempner]
MW: That relationship, that will always be there. I could walk away and come back and we'll be back in it instantly. I've never heard the band without me – sometimes Ed [Wilkerson, tenor saxophone/bass clarinet/oud] and me both play – so I don't know where it goes. I love playing with Ed, we did a lot of playing together with Harrison [Bankhead, a bassist], in his group, and other situations. Maybe if I'm in it with Ed maybe it's different than just when Ed's there, because when I'm there it becomes more of the full EPD, so Ed might have to fit in a little bit more there – but I don't think so. I think we all know and listen, and to him it's, “Welcome, welcome to our sound, our world of EPD!”
HM: It seems you've been able to transcend this, the segregation of scenes. You’re among the musicians who have been able to cross under, reach over. Some scenes, however, like that of the AACM, are not exactly welcoming.
MW: Oh yeah, because I wanted to be right in there, and here's this little white guy, being this is me, this is me – but I'm not accepted it it, totally. But on the other hand: I was accepted in their minds, but could never be in the club.
George Lewis [scholar, trombonist, composer-improviser, AACM chronicler] said to me once, we were doing something in Moers festival [in Germany], I think Vandermark got one of his projects there, so we just improvised and he had all these Chicago guys there, and each day for three days we did this session. So after the session George Lewis comes up and said, “Mars!” Because he was teaching at Creative Music Studio also – he was like, “Man, we thought we lost you! We saw you, what happened to Mars, you were wearing platform shoes on MTV.”
Hey, you never lost me, man!
He went on, “We used to say, amongst Roscoe and Braxton – there were all these guys at CMS, but then there was Mars.”
And I said, “Why didn't you ever say anything, man? Because that might have been an important thing for a young guy to hear, coming up.” Maybe that wouldn't be cool, encourage him too much? This was years later that I heard this, but I could never be included in the club in that way. There was that divide there. On the side they'd welcome me, one-on-one. With Roscoe I did this studying, we'd get along, with Braxton I'd go with him to some of these AACM gigs in New York, we'd ride together but as soon as we got there it was the club, and I was the guy on the side.
It's too bad. Because you wonder where the music could have also gone. You know how EPD has this fifth element? There could be a fifth element besides the music happening on the [predominantly white] North side, on the [predominantly Black] South side? What if Hal Russell [who was white] had gotten involved with the AACM?
I understand they didn't want that, they developed their music and their sound, which is an important part of history. And it influenced me. In a way it didn't matter if there was a club or not, because we were still influenced and they were still influenced. There's no way you can escape influences. You can say I'll never be influenced by this, but if its there, you're going to be influenced by it. I think the separation is somewhat more broken down now. I don't know what's happening with the young guys in the AACM now. I don't know what their thought processes are. I see a lot of young guys but I don't even know everybody who's in there right now. I should probably talk to somebody down there and find out.
I’ve played with Ed [a one-time AACM Chicago chapter president]. Harrison Bankhead and [drummer] Avreayal Ra. I had this Mars Williams Trio, when I started bringing a lot of these guys to the North side. Avreeayl wasn't playing with a lot of these guys here until I started having him on the scene. I think maybe -- well, who knows why it's opened up? “Wow, he's here, let's use him!” And Avreayal, his attitude is “Yeah, I love you man, let's play music, music is beautiful.” And Harrison has always been that way. When Harrison got me in his group. I was the only white guy – Avreeayl, Harrison, Ed, James Sanders on violin – he's half and half, I think, I don't even know what he is, Latino-black? He seems to have a bit of that in him. And [drummer] Ernie Adams was in the band, too. – he has a Muslim name now – he came in. Yeah, I guess it wasn't an all black band if you think of that, but it kind of felt like it. I never really looked at it like that. I just come in and play with these guys. I don't look at black and white, you know.
I didn't really do the jam sessions [at the Velvet Lounge, run by AACM tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson]. I had moved to New York. But I used to go down and play Maxwell Street blues, by that bus. There was this parking lot, in the back off the street, and this old bus, that's what I remember, this thing that was broken down, sitting there, and in this lot, the guys would just set up – I don't know where the power came from, all these old blues dudes, playing – and I was the only white guy playing, but they welcomed me, once I started playing.
When I lived in New York, I was in this band in Harlem where they had like the Supremes, three Black girls, four guys like the Four Tops – then this backup band. And I was in the band, only white guy. In Harlem. We had a steady gig in a strip bar at 125 and Madison Avenue. This was the ‘70s, when it was bad there. I'd go there in yellow suits, pimped out, carrying all these horns, and people would look at me like “This dude is crazy! W are you doing here?”
I'd get to the club, there’s a sign: “Check your weapons.” I'm thinking, that means you have weapons. So we'd play and in between the sets the strippers would be on, sex-show strippers, girl-on-girl, then we'd play. And the thing that I remember was playing for black audiences, once I started blowing and they knew I could play, they just opened up to me and would be cheering me on. That never happens on the North side, I don't care where you're at. They're encouraging you through your solo – it was amazing. And they loved me because I could play, and I wanted to be there. They loved that. I didn't feel any race tension with them.
I'd go to some of these gigs, they'd be like, “Yeah, we're playing in this wedding thing,” of their friend, so we'd go down into the projects, and man, I'd go there and get shit thrown at me. It was a heavy fuckin' scene. I remember being in this beater car I had at one point, and I drove into the projects in Harlem. These kids were throwing water, but buckets of water – the whole bucket — at my car, shouting, "Hey white boy!" but I'd go into the thing and be welcome. Experiencing this whole other culture. It was great. So, for me, I never looked at that like that. I never thought twice about that. Yes, I couldn't be welcome into the AACM club, but I was very influenced by it.
HM: Again, to the limitations EPD has of getting known, being recognized. There's a culture unto itself of improvising music – openminded, that's part of it – at the Beat Kitchen, with musicians saying “Anything can happen.” This is one place. . .Why, you might even might fall into a song sometime!
MW: It does happen. I think it's because we let the music dictate what's happening. The music is the important thing. It goes beyond thinking – the music is the end result. If everybody's thinking that way, it's like playing with somebody who comes from a whole different background. It's why I like going overseas and collaborate with people in different areas of Europe. Before YouTube we weren’t as much; now we're exposed to this without having to go there, more or less. But going over there and doing it one-on-one is better.
For instance the Bridge [a bi-annual exchange/collaboration of improvisers from Chicago and France]. What I find most rewarding is I go over there, play with these French musicians who were schooled in a whole different way, have this whole different approach to their instruments and to improvisation than I, a whole different technique, and this adds this other fifth element to the music than we were talking about before. It could be a third element, with a duo or whatever – but it's this other thing that is created. If the music is the end result, and that's what everybody's thinking, then it doesn't matter what your race is or what nationality you are or what kind of music you've played – if you're all coming together – if you're looking at a triangle here's two people here, then you draw that line to a point, that's the result, that's the music. If that guy over there is playing those weird multi-phonics, this whole different approach than the European way of improvising — the Evan Parker approach, or whatever — that's going to spread the influence of what I play to another place. And I’m also learning, expanding my vocabulary by what's there. What he's throwing at me is making me react — because improvisation is improvisation, it's reacting to what's happening around you. So how you're going to react in this instant, the end result is how we react together. It's all about being open to that, and being able to listen and react to what's there. It's hard talking about music, but . . .
HM: Do you think about what the audience is getting out of it, or not? Do musicians think, “We hope that the people walk out with --” ?
MW: I kinda don't want to get caught up in that. I might see somebody who I know what they like, and I wonder, “Oh, what they think of this?” But I try to get out of that. It's more like, “Yeah, we would love to have them feel that.” But if you see them there, they're there because they’re listening to the music. You hope they're feeling what you're creating and being part of it, in a way –- they're part of the environment we're talking about. Because the music's going to be influenced by the environment of that moment, by what's there in that room. You know, sometimes you're at the Beat Kitchen and you hear that rock band playing downstairs. Even if we're not thinking of it, or aware, it's there. That's going to be influencing us in some way. Maybe subliminally. It's in the environment, so the people who are in the room, their energy is going to be influencing us. So you're a part of what's happening. Does that make sense?
HM: Your little instrument table –- which I suppose comes to some extent out of your exposure to AACM musicians using toys and stuff —
MW: Yeah—
HM: — does that have influence even if you're not touching them? Is it as powerful a tool while improvising as the horns?
MW: Yes. Definitely. It broadens my vocabulary, because play with those things is sound manipulation, too. What I could do this with these horns and this sound . . .
I was talking about this to Mike Reed [drummer, composer, bandleader, founding partner of Pitchfork festival, operator of Chicago venues Constellation and the Hungry Brain] last night. Doing the Ayler/Christmas project, I travel with just my tenor sax. And I miss my other horns sometimes, because I can say different things with these different instruments. I hear different things with these different instruments. I can bring a different vocabulary of sound.
Mike said, “That could be a challenge.”
Well it is a challenge. I'm sort of restricted in a way, but it's also an [tenor saxophonist] Albert Ayler project, so it makes sense. But when we go into these more weird improvisations within the Ayler thing I would love to have my other horns.
I don't bring them because I really can't. I thought about it, but – I take the tenor and it's my vocabulary. That's what I do with this project. But I do have my toys with it. And I write them into my map of how I do the Ayler thing, because it’s structured in a way, but leaves room for the music to go wherever it goes. I could bring it back if I want to bring it back, or I don't have to. I want these EPD elements to happen within this Ayler thing.
Getting to the toys – it's things that I could hear. When I hear Jim Baker doing his thing – it's another instrument. The toys are another instrument to me, so I can use them to add to the sound that's going, to contribute to this other thing that contributes to this other thing.
Maybe it's a way of saying, “Music is not about being serious.” Yeah, we're serious musicians, this is what we do, we're creating music, but let's not take ourselves so seriously here. We're having fun, we're playing music, we're creating music, this is fun, too, I'm enjoying this. But I can make a sound with a weird crunchy squeaky toy I couldn't really do with my other things – it's also expressing who I am. This little playful thing, the child inside me maybe, who wants to come out and play. I don't know!
HM: I knew Baker in high school, and he plays much the same now as he did then. His unique personality, with his synth stuff or playing viola, rather than piano – are those his little toys?
MW: Kinda. His personality is Jim Baker. He's this weird mad scientist thing. It's playful in a way. He's serious, we're all serious, but it's also this playing with our sounds, creating. Yeah we're sound scientists. Maybe that’s the name of my next band. Sound Science, I like it, actually. We're creating this thing. When I hear Baker’s synthesizer, I'm all of a sudden right on my toys, creating together with what he's creating and what I think is going to make sense with that. And Steve [Hunt] is playing with a lot of different percussion sounds and toys. If I could have a big AACM-like rack [akin to Roscoe Mitchell’s percussion and gongs set-up, as exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, below]
I would, but this is my travel unit. I've gone down in its size. It's become my thing now because my collection is getting bigger and bigger — I cut it down for tours but I also try to pick up new stuff while I'm traveling, because it’s hard finding good sound toys these days, they’re mostly digital. There's a few places. There's a German company that made these great toys, Bruder, but now they just make kids’ trucks. Yeah, I find things now and then.
HM: Do you have a practice routine with them?
MW: The toys? No, I don't. Sometimes I get the sound so I know what they're going to do. But sometimes I like the idea of just picking something up and you get this sound and you're – “Whoa!” It's the reaction thing that creates this other sound. Sometimes you're doing something you never knew you could do because you're reacting to this thing subliminally and pulling out this sound out of your own which is new to you because of the way you're reacting, it's reacting.
There's a thing with your horn, long tones, doing the stuff on your horn, listening, this whole thing about harmonics – it's like what you hear you can do. So you can pull out these chords and notes within a tone. All the harmonics are in there. If you hear them, you can pull them out, and your notes start growing. These chords start happening on that one tone, one note you're holding -– it becomes this big thing. Same with the toy. If you're hearing something else, it happens. You start hearing it and all of a sudden you’re playing it. And you're, “Whoa! Where did this come from?” This little mad scientist playful thing that's doing this, then I pick up my toy and I'm doing this, and I’m “Whoa! I never did that on that toy before! I can do this with this sound!
Man, I've gotta go. Good talking to you about all this . . .
Not my scene but I enjoy reading about it!
This is wonderful. Thanks, Howard!