New York’s downtown poet Steve Dalachinsky passed away in September 2019, but fortunately, he left recordings of his many inspired collaborations. Dalachinsky is known for his liner notes for albums by Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Joe McPhee, and Thurston Moore, and for his recordings with Shipp, McPhee, and Joëlle Léandre, among many others.
Tonguesnatcher documents Dalachinsky’s third collaboration with guitarist and bassist Alex Lozupone’s jazz-metal power trio Eighty Pound Pug (with guitarist Adam Caine and drummer Reggie Sylvester), augmented by master flutist Robert Dick and tenor sax player Ayumi Ishito, following Leave The Door Open and Justifiable Homicide (DogAndPanda, 2015 and 2018). Lozupone recorded the album in March 2019 and contributed liner notes. The album’s title refers to Roland Kirk’s introduction to his flute-vocal piece, «Baby Let Me Shake Your Tree» (from Rahsaan Rahsaan, Atlantic, 1970), a tale about a character named Ol’ Tonguesnatcher, a character who recurred throughout the album. Elliott Sharp mixed and mastered the recording and released it via his label, zOaR.
Dalachinsky, who often collaborated with free jazz and free improv artists, proved that he can adapt his self-deprecating Brooklyn humor and existentialist Beat musings to Eighty Pound Pug’s dommier sound. Dalachinsky’s always intense and charged performance, and his rhythmic delivery and phrasing, as well as Dick’s flute playing, perfectly corresponded with the skronk, nervous, and thorny dynamics of the jazz-metal power trio. This album captures Dalachinsky at his most politically relevant, musing about Marilyn Monroe and Malcolm X, «side by side, at the gallery window… in the Promised Land», impossible social classes, racism, senseless violence and consumerism, and other evils like thirst for clean water, with references to Robert Johnson. And just like Kirk’s «Tonguesnatcher» intro ends with him saying «Tonguesnatcher was really talkin’ ‘bout the truth, so I hope you can dig it», Dalachinsky was talking about the truth.
Eyal Hareuveni
Steve Dalachinsky (vocal poetics), Ayumi Ishito (tenor saxophone), Robert Dick (flutes), Adam Caine (electric guitar), Reggie Sylvester (drums), Alex Lozupone (guitar, bass)
