Ferocious, Gripping Trumpet Player Jaimie Branch's Fly Or Die Comes to the Wexner Center

I’ve been reaching my arms out for any hope the last couple of years. Lately some things that give me the most of that kind of energy is that shows I was excited for in 2020 – sometimes rescheduled multiple times – are finally coming to Columbus. Seeing one of those examples, singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt at Rumba Café a few weeks ago, felt like a weight lifted off my chest for a few hours. And now, another show I was ready for in 2020 and the single Columbus cultural event I’m most looking forward to this spring, Brooklyn-via-Chicago trumpet player and bandleader Jaimie Branch and her band Fly or Die graces the Wexner Center performance stage on Tuesday, March 22, at 8:00 pm, with tickets here.  

When I first heard Jaimie Branch, it was immediately obvious this was a voice like no trumpet player I’d heard before, but awash in multiple traditions I loved. Within a few notes of her debut album Fly or Die, I was hooked. And I wasn’t alone. The New York Times’ Giovanni Russonello named the debut one of his records of the year and called it “a work of hardscrabble imagination.” Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli called the follow-up one of his favorite albums. 

You're not likely to see a better live band of any genre. On their own, they’re astonishing, and have supplied some of my favorite live moments. Chad Taylor on drums enraptured me the minute I saw him play at a Firexit art happening with longtime foil Rob Mazurek as Chicago Underground Duo when I was 20, and he’s been blowing me away ever since with a huge list of top-notch collaborators. Bassist Jason Ajemian did the almost impossible: in 2014 I (along with one of my best friends and former JazzColumbus head honcho Andrew Patton) watched him bring intricate, jazz-based, no-pandering music to a little rock club (Double Happiness, maybe the venue I’ve seen that kind of thing happen in the most over the last ten years) on a Saturday night and made a crowd get down. For cellist Lester St. Louis, I don’t have the personal stories of seeing live yet, but he took over for one of my favorite cello players of all time, Tomeka Reid, who appeared on the first Fly or Die and does such an astonishing job I can’t imagine anyone else in that role.  

Together? I scarcely have words. I saw them in tiny Manhattan club Nublu during Winter JazzFest, some months after the first record came out, and expectations were high. Packed in with a crowd that can be a little jaded, a little looking-at-our-watches for the next thing because that festival holds a plethora of riches, and they knocked us all into next week. It was a visceral, sweaty, party of the likes that doesn’t usually happen at WJF and definitely doesn’t happen at an early set on the first night. In a weekend I saw Marc Ribot’s Songs for Resistance, Nicole Mitchell, Jason Moran, Mara Rosenbloom – hell, I saw Marah for the first time in years that weekend at a different venue – this was the set I walked away raving about like a street preacher. 

I was honored to talk with Jaimie Branch via Zoom in advance of the upcoming Wex show. Interview below is edited for clarity. 

Jaimie Branch’s Fly Or Die, image by Peter Gannushkin

Richard Sanford: I was originally trying to schedule this when you were first supposed to come back in 2020, and I'm glad we're finally getting to talk to you. 

Jaimie Branch: I know, geez. 2022 – behave. 

RS: It seemed like Fly or Die II was getting all this terrific buzz and. It felt like you were breaking through to a wider audience, at least from the outside. And then everything kind of shut down.  
 
JB: Yeah. We had just started our American tour - it was supposed to be like three weeks in the States, which we're not doing this time. I've never done three solid weeks with this band in the States. We did our gig in DC at the Kennedy Center. And then we played in New York in Brooklyn the next night, and I remember we had six cancellations during soundcheck. The institutional shows [including the Wexner Center] had already called it the day before. We had two already, we had six more and I was like, okay, this tour is not happening. Something is happening right now.  

And in that moment, there's a lot of logistics to figure out: Let's get the rental car back. Jason lives in Alaska [and] he's got to get back. So, once I had my guys settled, then I think I was like a lot of people were just like, "Okay, so now we're inside. Now what? And how long are we going to be here?" And I don't think anybody thought we were still going to be here at this point. 

RS: What were the emotions like when you looked at that Zurich set to put out [2021’s] Fly or Die Live? What was it like revisiting that? That was only a month or so before things shut down, right? That was January or February? 

JB: It was January 23rd, 2020. Yeah. Man, that live record would not have come out if we were not in shutdown because I don't know, Fly or Die 3 would probably have already been out at this point. I got the [recording of the] concert the club [Moods] in Zurich two or three months into lockdown. I opened it quickly - it was a video - and I saw something in it that I just didn't particularly like. I closed it right away. I was just like, I can't watch this right now. And I actually didn't listen to it for almost another six months, until November 2020. And then when I actually listened to it in full, with kind of a more open heart and less clouded mind, I was like, "Oh wow, we sound great. I got to get this to the label real quick." 

And then Scottie [McNiece, of record label International Anthem] kind of did the same thing. He didn't listen to it right away. He didn't really believe me. And then he finally listened to it, and he called me back right away. He was like, "Oh yeah, we got an album." I was like, "I know, man." He's like, "It's going to be a double album." Like, I know. 

RS: The structure of that live album, the combining of the music from the first two records, were they written to be that kind of an intertwining suite? Or did that just kind of come to you after you've been playing the material for a while? 
 
JB: When you're touring, sometimes you're asked to play two sets. And we found that we preferred to play one long set, like 90 minutes, instead of doing two sets with a break. And so, it came from that, I think; kind of stretching our set longer and longer and seeing how these two records kind of danced around each other, because obviously they're related. I can't fake that there's a relationship there, but they weren't written to go together like Legos or something like that.  

RS: The first time I saw your group play was during a Winter Jazzfest at Nublu, and it took the roof off. It was one of the four or five best sets I've ever seen at that thing. And I was thinking about how much it felt like a dance party at certain times, even though you're playing some really heavy abstracted music. Is that important to you? Is that visceral? How do you balance that visceral sense with your clear love of abstraction and your crazy extended technique? 
 
JB: I've spent a long time sitting in extended techniques. I've spent a long time sitting in total abstraction and kind of denying my melodic sense that has always been inside of me. And not denying it because I... Well, denying it in some weird way where I thought it was corny or something. And then I had a revelation, I don't know how old I was. And [that sense has] grown from playing with Chad Taylor: that all music is dance music. All music is dance music. All music needs to be in the body first. Once it's in the body, then we can fully extrapolate the total meaning. But if it's not in the body first, it's just not fully inside of us.  

So yeah, it's really nice that you picked up on that. Yeah. It felt like a dance party because my music is dance music. When people ask me now, what type of music I play, I tell them dance music, and then they check it out. And they're like, "This is jazz." I'm like, "Yeah. It's dance music too." 
 
RS: Absolutely. And I mean, having such a great rhythm section and having them be together with you for so long has to be helpful. Talk a little bit about how that started and how that's evolved. 
 
JS: Jason Ajemian and I have been playing together for almost 20 years now. I think like 18 years. 
 
RS: Wow. 
 
JS: He was one of the first acts I met in Chicago. And I have been a fan of Chad Taylor since I've been like a teenager from the Chicago Underground Duo records, from Thrill Jockey, his band Sticks and Stones with Matana Roberts and Joshua Abrams. I've just been a huge fan of Chad since forever. And then Tomeka Reid, who is the original cellist, she and I were also very good friends in Chicago. I originally put together a band of Chicago expats. 
 
And it was the first time I called Chad. I was kind of nervous about it, it's kind of cute thinking back. And the first gig we played, it was, I wrote like a sketch of a set, but it was very improvisatory overall. And I recorded it. And I actually got a couple tunes for the first Fly or Die off of the improvisation of that first set we played. But Scottie McNiece from International Anthem had asked me to set up a show for one of his artists, the Nick Mazzarella Trio with Anton Hatwich on bass and Frank Rosaly on drums. And so that's why I put together a Chicago band. Scottie called me a couple months later and was like, "Hey, let's make a record."  

It was really a very organic growth from what could have just been a one-off. Like, oh, that was a great gig, but Jason moved to Alaska not long after that. And I would probably not have tried to start a band with someone who wasn't going to be living near me, but we’re used to it now. 

RS: [About] the instrumentation of your band, I know there's a long history of cello in relation to jazz, but what is it about the cello as your main melodic foil? Or do you even think of it in those terms? 

JB: The cello is one of the most versatile instruments I can think of. The cello can be part of the rhythm section. The cello can be part of the string section. The cello can be a soloist. Also, the timbre of the cello is so different from the trumpet, that we're never really stepping on each other, even when we're playing in the same range. And then on the converse of that, the timbre of the cello can be so similar to the bass that they can really get inside of each other. And at times they can seem like an extension of the same instrument, which is very interesting to me. 

RS: With the vocals you added on those couple songs on two, particularly I was listening to “Prayer for Amerikkka” a lot lately, and I was struck by how much the first section of it is almost a classic blues. And then it switches into kind of a Latin thing as it goes from the general to specific, as it goes from you making kind of sweeping warnings into that individual story you tell. Do you see yourself as being part of the blues idiom? And was that an intentional progression or were you piecing two things together? 
 
JB: Well, let's talk about the first thing. Yes, I think that I've spent a lot of time listening to blues and I think the jazz idiom is a growth of blues. I see that very clearly. I think it always goes back to the blues.  

[Those elements] always existed in these two parts to this one song, but I didn't have the words until much later. I was piecing two ideas together and trying to figure out what I was trying to say. We recorded the music, and I recorded some scratch vocals when we recorded the record. And then three months later, four months later I recorded the vocals, the final vocals. That was the last thing that I had to figure out for Fly or Die II. 
 
RS: It feels like such a piece. That's really interesting that the lyrics came later. 
 
JB: Yeah. I always sing something. I was always singing something on it. But I had a long talk with my friend Roberto Lange, who's Helado Negro. And he was talking about the economy of words, and I think he's a real genius around that. And so, I wrote a lot of things down and took only very little from what I wrote down, because I was just trying to say as much as I could with as little as I could say. 
 
[The other song with vocals,] “Lovesong for Assholes and Clowns,” I mean... that's it. That's the whole thing. There's no verse. But “Prayer for Amerikkka” was a very different approach than I've ever taken to something. I felt a lot of weight in that. I was writing a protest song basically, and I felt a lot of weight [on] being economical with the words. I call it part one and part two on purpose so that doesn't get lost on anybody. 
 
It's basically, the first half is domestic issues at home. And as you said, it's kind of like a sweeping generalization warning. And the second half is a specific story. And it has a lot more to do with our relations to our neighbors in the South. To the south of us, rather. And Central and South America. 
 
RS: It's beautiful. I mean, it's probably the song I went back to the most from 2019. Every time I've gone back to it, I'm really struck by it. And this is more trivia than anything else, but am I right that there's a Leonard Cohen riff? Are you actively inverting the lines from “Famous Blue Raincoat” or is that coincidence? 

JB: I am!  Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I love Famous Blue Raincoat, man. That's one of my favorite songs. I play it all the time on the piano. I sing that song all the time. I love that song. Yeah. One of my favorite songs. One of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs, for sure.  

I think the original line is "What can I tell you, my brother, my killer? What can I possibly say? I guess that I miss you. I guess I'll forgive you. I'm glad that you stood in my way." Woo. Gives me shivers just saying those words. Ooh, it's so good. I want to write like that someday.  

RS: You and me both. How much of [your music] is scored out?  

JB: The way I generally work is that I bring pieces of music out to the bands, not fully formed ideas, just kind of scraps. And then we rehearse them in a lot of different ways. And then when we play them live, we play with them live. We really play with them. And then as it becomes clearer in my brain banana, I start to kind of sharpen the edges around it.  

When it comes time to record, I'll have some sort of score for everybody. It's a pretty open score. I like to think of it as a flow chart, a skeleton system. Sometimes I use very specific traditional notation. Sometimes I use graphic notations. Sometimes I use directions. Sometimes there'll just be a bassline. Sometimes there'll be chord changes. It could really be anything. I'm just trying to impart... Sometimes I'm trying to impart music specifically and sometimes I'm trying to impart of vibe. 
 
And it's kind of like juggling those things and throwing them up in the air a bunch of times until we have the music. It's interesting. Both the times that we've recorded, it hasn't been too hard to find the music. It's been like, "Oh, that's obviously. It that's obviously it." I hope that happens again. 
 
RS: That’s fantastic. You used some guests on Fly or Die II. How do you choose those other musicians, like Ben LaMar Gay? How do you choose collaborators outside of the core unit? 

JB: All these people are my friends. That's first. Second, they're all master musicians and I have implicit trust. Ben is actually on both records. On “The Storm” on Fly or Die OG, Ben is the one playing the cornet solo, [recorded at] a live concert. I just asked if he wanted to sit in on that part because I knew I was going to be doing the heavy duty extended techniques on the mic, with the [out-there] type trumpet sounds, you know? And I wanted to hear a trumpet solo, but I was otherwise disposed. And Ben was there, so I asked Ben to play.  

Also, on “Leaves of Glass” on the first record. I originally recorded that live with Josh Berman and Ben LaMar Gay, but the recording just wasn't good enough to use for the record. So, I overdubbed myself on top of myself on top of myself and then I mixed in the live recording as it kind of spaces out more. So, you hear Ben and Josh come in. And then I also down pitch them down to sound like trombones. And then Matt Schneider did the epilogue [for that record]. I had a really clear feeling I wanted Matt on the record.  

I also have Matt on “Prayer for Amerikkka,” He comes in on the second half and I just... He plays this mean 12 string guitar, and I knew that he could just riff it and just add an extra flavor. 
 
On the second record, I knew that I wanted male voices and now actually the band covers those parts. We don't really do the whole smoking word section in the middle, which was an improvisation between Ben and Marvin Tate, another master who's also a poet. He's written many books of poetry, published many books of poetry. 
 
I was talking about class and race and I'm not talking about white people in this. Well, I am talking about white people. I'm talking about all of us, but I wanted to have a conversation that wasn't going to sound right in my voice. I wanted to have my friends having this kind of like conversation about gentrification, I think gentrifications, all these cations, something that Marvin says. And I wanted to hear my friends' voices echoed in this music. It's more of a feeling I had with sensitivity of how this music had to come across. I don't know. It's hard to talk about race eloquently. I'll say that. And I've fucked up many times. 

RS: Same. 

JB: I don't think I'm answering your question exactly. But how I choose my collaborators is kind of like whose energy do I want to have on this record, and do I want them in my space? Do I want to be hanging out with them?  

I've been really blessed in a way. I don't like to say that, but all the musicians I work with right now are my friends. They're all my friends. I'm not working with any assholes at the moment. And it's been a minute. It's been a minute because I used to kind of split things into three. Like I play with my friends, I play with people that I respect, and I play when they pay me. And for a while I would get one of the three things. Then for a while I would get two of the three things, and now I'm getting three out of three. And so that's pretty good, I think. 

RS: Is there new material in the works or are you looking forward more to getting out and playing these songs live again? 
 
JB: Well, both. I'm writing new music right now as we speak, and that's why we're rehearsing. And I am working on a new record that we'll start working on after we're done touring, but we're going to definitely be touching on some new material in the States. We haven't toured the States since like 2018. I don't think we've ever come to Columbus. I don't think. I'm very excited to be playing these songs in the States, because a lot of people haven't seen us do them. And we have a lot of material.