December 18, 2015
On January 15, 2016, Blue Note will release I Long To See You, the profound new album from Charles Lloyd & The Marvels. The album finds the iconic saxophonist and recent NEA Jazz Master in the company of a new band featuring guitarist Bill Frisell and pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz, along with his longtime quartet members bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland. The album also includes two remarkable guest vocal appearances by Willie Nelson and Norah Jones. All together they have created a sumptuous collection of 10 songs that range from traditional hymns to anti-war folk protests to re-envisioned Lloyd originals from his earlier recordings.
The album’s lead single “Of Course, Of Course,” a fresh reworking of the title track of his 1965 Columbia album, was released today and is available from digital retailers and on streaming services. Fans who pre-order a download of the album will receive the track right away. I Long To See You will also be released on CD and vinyl. Lloyd will also begin a run of winter tour dates with the Marvels on January 24 which will include performances in New York (Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jan. 29-30), Boston (Berklee Performance Center, Jan. 31), and Austin (Paramount Theatre, Feb. 10). Visit charleslloyd.com for more info.
CHARLES LLOYD – TOUR DATES
Jan. 24 – Healdsburg Shed – Healdsburg CA
Jan. 27 – Dartmouth College – Hanover, NH
Jan. 29-30 – Jazz at Lincoln Center – New York, NY
Jan. 31 – Berklee Performance Center – Boston, MA
Feb. 2 – The Dakota – Minneapolis, MN
Feb. 4 – Palais Montcalm – Quebec City, Canada
Feb. 6 – Wexner Center – Columbus, OH
Feb. 8 – Musical Instrument Museum – Scottsdale, AZ
Feb. 10 – Paramount Theatre – Austin, TX
Feb. 12 – Trinity University – San Antonio, TX
Feb. 19 – Portland Jazz Festival – Portland, OR
Feb. 20 – Vogue Theatre – Vancouver, Canada
The track listing for I Long To See You is as follows:
1. Masters Of War (Bob Dylan)
2. Of Course, Of Course (Charles Lloyd)
3. La Llorona (Traditional)
4. Shenandoah (Traditional)
5. Sombrero Sam (Lloyd)
6. All My Trials (Traditional)
7. Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream feat. Willie Nelson (Ed McCurdy)
8. Abide With Me (Traditional)
9. You Are So Beautiful feat. Norah Jones (Billy Preston & Bruce Fisher)
10. Barche Lamsel (Lloyd)
* * *
The seed for I Long To See You was planted in 2013 when Charles Lloyd invited Bill Frisell to perform with him at UCLA’s Royce Hall. They had met earlier that year when they shared a stage, and Lloyd says, “We made a connection. I knew that we were moving toward the sound. Bill is a great sensitive and very intuitive. When he was a kid in Denver, he told me he was influenced by my first band with Jack DeJohnette and Keith Jarrett. He said that music opened his imagination to a wide spectrum of new possibilities. We don’t need to say much when we get together—it’s all expressed in the music, in the sound, the feeling.”
While Lloyd pondered releasing the live show as his next Blue Note album, his wife, Dorothy Darr, insisted that he head to the studio instead (she serves as a co-producer of the new album with Lloyd and Blue Note president Don Was). As for the inclusion of the singers, Lloyd simply says, “I love the voice.”
I Long to See You opens with an impassioned reading of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” about the military-industrial complex arms buildup, and also includes the anti-war song “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” which is sung here by Willie Nelson with graceful tenor support. “When I was living in Big Sur, a friend gave me a copy of Stardust,” Lloyd says of Nelson’s 1978 album of jazz standards. “I recognized a synchronicity between us in his choice of songs. Willie is a very soulful, independent outsider who loves the Zone. He has been paving the Freedom Trail for many years now, and we follow in his wake. I was incredibly honored that he accepted the invitation to sing on ‘Strangest Dream.’”
The well-worn song “You Are So Beautiful” (originally written by Billy Preston and made into a hit in 1974 by Joe Cocker) gets a spacious reading here with Norah Jones lending her indelible voice. “During my concerts, I sometimes play it as an encore,” he says. “For a long time in my mind’s ear I could hear Norah’s warmth caressing the lyrics. She became an extraordinary, beautiful sixth instrument in the rendition of the song.”
In addition to the new original “Barche Lamsel,” a 16-minute sonic exploration that closes the album, Lloyd and co. also cover some of the leader’s earlier songs, including “Of Course, Of Course,” as well as the indelibly melodic “Sombrero Sam” which was first recorded on his 1966 Atlantic album Dream Weaver.
For the traditional vein in the album, Lloyd gives a duende read of the lyrical “La Llorona,” which he previously recorded on his 2009 ECM album Mirror. The sobering beauty of “All My Trials,” which is based on a Bahamian lullaby but is also associated with the 1960s protest movement, brings a spiritual quality to the album, while the hymn “Abide With Me” features Lloyd’s melancholic tenor lead with Frisell shadowing his notes. And Lloyd brilliantly takes on one of the greatest tunes in the traditional American songbook, “Shenandoah,” drawing the album’s title from the song’s yearning lyrics.
I Long To See You is the follow-up to Lloyd’s remarkable 2015 live album Wild Man Dance, which marked his triumphant return to Blue Note Records. While talking about his “call of the wild” at the time, Lloyd said, “I am still searching to find the sound. It is my path. I call myself a ‘sound seeker.’ The deeper I dive into the ocean of sound, I find there is still deeper and further to go.”
