Playing the Distance Between: Jeremy Dutton Speaks

Photo courtesy of the artist.

by Stephanie Jones

Wearing an expression of perennial neutrality, Jeremy Dutton might appear disengaged. He’s not. The deceptively stoic drummer and composer out of Houston is acutely sensitive to shifting personalities. “I tend to try to embrace the way the music is going to be different depending on who’s playing it,” he says.

For the past decade, Dutton has been living in New York, working regularly with James Francies, Joel Ross, Maria Grand and Vijay Iyer, among others. This week, days ahead of his tours with Ross and Iyer—and months ahead of his debut release as a leader—Dutton brings his own band to The Jazz Gallery, featuring Casey Benjamin, Mike Moreno, Harish Raghavan and Micah Thomas.

“It’s nice to be playing with people who I’m really close friends with. Every time we play, I feel like I always learn something new, which is nice, to feel like you’re in that state of discovery. And obviously I’m looking forward to being back at The Jazz Gallery. My first leader was at the Gallery and I’d like to thank Rio for that. It’s just a great space to be in.”

In between rehearsals and his new gig teaching music business at The New School, Dutton held a moment to discuss the practice of letting go, how he feels about his forthcoming release and similarities between life on the bandstand and life away from it.

The Jazz Gallery: Speaking of those states of discovery. I’d like to talk to you a little bit about your most recent tour with Good Vibes. There was a point during that tour when you really felt you had entered a new realm on the bandstand and, presumably, with your fellow artists. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

Jeremy Dutton: I started that tour in a strange place because of the stuff that was happening in my personal life. All the shows we did, when I look back on them, were actually really great shows. But I think with some of them, I didn’t feel as great about them from a mental perspective or from a physical perspective just because of other things clouding my mind. But I remember in one instance—the instance that you’re talking about—there came a point when I was finally able to think clearly and see things clearly. And that sort of came out in a major way.

TJG: When you’re operating from a place where you don’t have that immediate clarity, do you have a method for navigating that scenario on the bandstand?

JD: I’m still listening and responding. I’ve been playing for so long now, it’s kind of [like having] a performance muscle. My body always knows what to do and how to do things, and my mind as well. It’s just that, when I’m not feeling as great, the process is clouded, and then there’s a part that’s also criticizing a little bit.

In terms of ways to navigate, the most concrete thing I can say is just don’t panic. You have to let it go. You feel how you feel. You come to music how you are. You have to just sort of accept that. The only way through it is just to let go and embrace what’s happening. If you feel really bad, you have to let that become part of the process as well.

TJG: As long as we’re talking concrete strategies for abstract concepts, I'm curious to know what you currently look for in a bass player when you're putting together a new project, and how the attributes you seek may have evolved over the past decade.

JD: It’s nothing too crazy. In bass players, you want somebody who’s clear and who gets a really good sound out of the instrument. Definitely someone who has an understanding of the history of the instrument, but who is also a good listener and very conversational. But that’s kind of always what I’ve been looking for. I may not have always been able to articulate that, but that’s what I’ve always liked in a bass player. Someone dependable, someone who has great time, of course, and has got a feel.

TJG: So what you’re seeking there hasn’t really changed in the past decade. What are some other perspectives you had when you were younger that maybe have intensified or expanded, or have been experientially validated, particularly in terms of trust on the bandstand, conversational improvising—these elements listeners have come to know and love in your playing?

JD: I’ll try to answer. It’s just a lot of information and I don’t know that I have the perspective to [discuss] everything I’ve learned, or had to unlearn, in a sense. That conversation thing that everyone always talks about is more relevant than ever. And I guess the biggest thing I’ve learned, as I’ve gotten older, is the similarity between the things that happen to me away from music and the things that happen to me while I’m playing music and while I’m putting out music. I see a lot of similarities between how I choose to live my life and how I play.

TJG: Any specific examples of these parallels that come to mind?

JD: There’s a whole thing about odd time signatures and things like that, different ways to approach playing time, even in 4. It could be very technical, but what it really is is kind of about perspective—shifting your perspective on something that’s constant to see it in a different way. That’s another way of describing polyrhythms or odd times or any kind of time, really. I like shifting those perspectives to explore the drums, but I also live my life that way. I like trying to see—it’s not that I like it, I do see things from different perspectives, and I feel like that comes out in what I do. That’s one example but there are a few.

TJG: Is there something intentional here? Are you actively seeking to adopt new perspectives regarding the music and the drums, as well as within other realms of your life?

JD: It’s not that I’m trying to find new perspectives. I’ve always been that way. Even when I was a kid, I was always curious about other people’s lives, the way that other people see things, what influences the decisions and attitudes of the people around me. It’s not necessarily about acquiring a new perspective, because my perspective is my perspective, but I want to be able to understand. And sometimes it helps me to understand if I can see it from a different perspective. But, [laughs] and I swear it’s the same for me on drums, again, that’s a very natural thing for me. It just happens. And it’s just something that I feel.

Odd time signatures and all that, really all we’re talking about is point A to point B. If I say the distance between point A and point B is four beats, or seven beats, or 13 beats or 11 beats, we’re just defining that distance. But if I know how far A and B are from each other, if I say it’s 13 beats apart and I understand how far that is, then really and truly the distance between point A and point B can be whatever I want it to be. There’s more nuance than that, but it’s kind of hard to explain. It would take me a long time to hammer out the different aspects of that concept. The important thing is that it’s very natural for me to think about it in these ways. I didn’t come up with a way to say these things and then try to do them; I was already doing them and then I was able to articulate it.

TJG: You and actually quite a few of your peers tend toward a kind of orchestral treatment of your respective instruments. In a past interview for JazzSpeaks, you mention the idea of the drums as a choir. And there's the sense that you and your fellow artists are moving away from music as a linear construct. I think you even have used the term “grid” in the past. What are you exploring, conceptually, from that perspective these days?

JD: Grid is not such a unique concept, is what I realized after that interview. For example, there are grooves that happen on a more triplet-based grid or a 16th note-based grid. But right now, I guess visually is the way I’m exploring it. If you had a picture of something and you superimpose graph paper on top of it, that whole picture would become a grid. As I’m playing, as we’re all playing, we build this picture by moving in different sections of the grid.

We start together in one place which is what you might call the melody; sometimes it’s not melody, it’s harmony; sometimes it’s not harmony, it’s time; sometimes it’s all of em. But we all start in the same place, and as we’re moving through the tune, we all take up different positions on the grid, choosing to show different parts of the picture. And so that’s kind of where that concept has taken me in terms of the way that I think: What are the parts of this picture that you want to show? What do you want to emphasize? To stay away from?

A lot of the time, I ask, “What is obvious on the grid already? What does the grid itself imply?” You could go with that and say, “Let’s really bring out this idea, let’s develop it further.” Or you could go the other way and say, “Let’s make that idea more subtle. Let’s pull it back and make that idea a kind of underpinning for the whole grid itself.” But it happens in my head visually more than anything. If you understand the way the grid works enough, you can go in any direction—you can make these artistic choices.

TJG: How does that visualizing of the grid influence you when you’re composing at the piano as opposed to spontaneously on the bandstand, if it does at all?

JD: It does sometimes. There’s a bunch of different ways that I like to try to compose. Starting from nothing, when you’re just at the piano, that’s a cool thing to do, but I don’t know if I think about the grid at all. I just sort of feel. If there’s a chord that I’m playing or a series of notes that I’m playing, then I’m trying to tap into what about that feeling I like. Trying to see where that feeling takes me. Sometimes the grid comes into play with more rhythmic things that I write. When it’s something super rhythmic, the grid definitely comes into play big time.

Honestly, the concept itself—and this goes back to perspectives—it’s only an idea. And the idea is really only limited by how you think about it. That grid that I’m talking about is only limited by my own thoughts about it. So if I say the grid is referring to rhythm, then it refers to rhythm. It’s all in your head—just a way to relate to something. It’s an idea that’s purposefully not vague but perspective-based.

TJG: Speaking of perspective, and yours specifically, you do have this debut record in the works. You’ll be sharing some of that material during this performance. A friend once told me all artists release a record convinced it’s going to be Voodoo. I don’t know how true that statement rings, but I would like to ask you: How are you actively managing the mental highs and lows of releasing a debut record?

JD: I remember that. Making an album, for me it’s been a real labor-intensive process. I guess that’s true for everyone, but the labor has been a lot more emotional than I maybe had thought [it would be]. I guess I didn’t realize how much of myself I was putting in to this record. I don’t know that I would say I have ever thought about making the next Voodoo, but what I would say is [this record is] a lot like me in that it has a lot of good qualities, and the things that some people might think are not so good about it, those are the things about me that I think people would think are not so good about me. Whether those things are true or not, that’s a different conversation. But I think I can live with that. I’m prepared for that. It sounds strange to say, but I just don’t really feel the need to be well liked, necessarily, because I think that I just have to be me. That’s the most important part of this record.

From what I’ve seen in my life—and again, we’re talking about away from music as well as music itself—when you go running around trying to chase people’s expectations, trying to chase people’s tastes, most of the time you don’t succeed, and the times that you do succeed, you end up feeling miserable in the moment, or sometimes it takes years. We have things that we don’t like about ourselves and we work hard to get rid of them, but I think the things we don’t like about ourselves are sometimes the things that we just don’t understand. And it’s a shame that sometimes we only understand those things about ourselves when we lose them. So we move on. We have this vision of what a better person looks like or better music sounds like or better art is. And we move on to that point only to find out, “Oh man, we really lost something that was precious.” A lot of times, there’s no going back.

TJG: When we realize we have lost something meaningful, sometimes we choose to adopt the perspective that what we’ve lost ultimately wasn’t that important — almost as a defense mechanism. And that adoption can change our emotional trajectory. It can change how people mature and develop as artists.

JD: Mmhm.

TJG: You just started teaching a music business course at The New School, and something you’re sharing with your students from a marketing perspective is the potential consequence of seeking that validation.

JD: Marketing these days boils down to data. It’s about getting data on the people who are interested in what you do, and trying to reach those people in whatever way they best receive information. There’s a lot of nuance to it, like the emotional side of branding and that sort of thing. But, when you’re getting all this data, part of finding out about all the people who like you is finding out about all the people who don’t like you. There’s a tendency to ignore the people who are liking our posts and focus on all the people who are not engaging. And we say, “We need to market to those people! We need to engage these people who don’t care about what I’m doing.” That’s a huge mistake. Marketing-wise, that’s a waste of your money and your time because those people are not interested in what you’re doing.

But, you could take it a step further and say, “Okay, they’re not interested in what I’m doing because it’s this, this and this. So if I change what I’m doing, or I change my music, or I change how I look, or I change how I think, or I change what I say, then those people will start to like me and engage what I’m doing.” Maybe you’ll be right. Sometimes you can get that right if you try hard enough. And more people will like you. But you have to wonder, are you actually going to be happy when that happens, or are you going to figure out that everything that you just gave up was worth more than what you gained by doing this, and now you can’t go back.

Being grateful for the things that you have and the people who are in your life and interested in your music and your art, we forget to think of that process as actual work that you have to do. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone else; we tend to take people for granted and it’s interesting that we also take ourselves for granted. We take our art for granted. And we think that if we could just get those people who are not interested in you to be interested in you, then things would change. Things would be better. You’d feel better. Something would be different. And a lot of the time, that’s not the case.

To bring it back to marketing, don’t be so quick to jump on what other people think is good just because you think it might get you more attention. To bring that back to myself, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve changed, but I think a lot of who I am is the same person I’ve always been. And it’s not always fun. But it’s worth it for me to accept myself on some level and allow myself to grow and to change and to learn while being okay with who I am. What that means for me is that not everyone is going to understand you. Not everyone is going to like you. Not everyone is going to like your music or understand your music. I’m okay with that.

Jeremy Dutton plays The Jazz Gallery on Thursday, February 10, 2022. The group features Mr. Dutton on drums, Casey Benjamin on saxophone, Mike Moreno on guitar, Micah Thomas on piano and Harish Raghavan on bass. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. EDT, $15 general admission (FREE for members), $25 limited cabaret seating ($10 for members). Purchase tickets here.