Alex Bugnon – Going Home
Alex Bugnon turns his head to jazz. His long-awaited, funky new release this time in a traditional Jazz Sextet format of piano, bass, drums and three horns, featuring Poogie Bell, Victor Bailey, Vincent Henry, Greg Boyer and Barry Danielian is entitled Going Home.
Alex Bugnon comments his new album: “I really liked that idea of doing a a ‘60s inspired record, with a Les McCann/Eddie Harris or Jazz Crusaders vibe , but I wanted to include a little more jazz than that, more towards a Herbie Hancock/Blue Note era Quintet or Sextet kind of vibe. You know, with two horns or three horns. That’s what I was going for.
At first, I really wasn’t sure what to write. The first three months of 2009 found me home practicing every day, anywhere from 4 to 6 hours a day, which is something that I haven’t done since I was at Berklee. The rest of the time I was listening to Ahmad Jamal, especially the album The Awakening, one of my favorites. I was listening to Herbie’s whole Blue Note catalog, Les McCann, Miles piano players like Horace Silver, Wynton Kelly, Bill Evans and Miles Davis himself, Dave Brubeck – I realized that in the sixties, this music was the popular, commercial music of the time.
Back then, this sound was really hip and underground…and very commercial, especially the music of Miles and certain tunes of Herbie. You don’t need synthesizers, drum machines and nursery rhymes. You don’t need all that to be marketable. Watermelon Man and Cantaloupe Island were huge hits. Guys were really playing on those records. So, you can see the concept for Going Home came from a lot of listening and practicing.
At a certain time in April, I started to come up with new material. Something unlocked in me, because of all that listening and practicing that I did. the writing for the new record came from that. It was totally natural. I didn’t have to sit down and scratch my head for hours. The tunes just came in minutes. That’s how this record came about.”
Going Home is released at CDBaby.
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