'We're jazz whether we like it or not': Neil Cowley Trio Interview

From jazz to playing with dinosaurs on stage, Ahram Online talks to UK's Neil Cowley Trio at the Cairo Jazz Festival

Ahram Online talks to Neil Cowley, of the Neil Cowley Trio, before their performance at the 5th Cairo Jazz Festival. The British band is fronted by the talented pianist Neil Cowley who composes the music for the Trio and has played with Adele. Rex Horan, on double bass, provides thumping rhythms and Evan Jenkins, on drums, is the back-bone of the group.
Described by MoJo in 2008 as "jazz for Radiohead fans" the group play a mixture of humorous and thoughtful music.
Ahram Online (AO): You make a big deal about not being a real jazz band; so, what are you?
Neil Cowley (NC): We ask ourselves the question about whether we're really jazz. We look like a jazz band, we've got double bass, piano and drums, but we don't necessarily look like one. We use the instruments to voice the various genres of music that we play. We've all got different, yet cross-pollinated experiences in music, history in all sorts of genres: rock, blues, funk, dance, trance, jazz house; the aim is for it all to come out through this three-piece band.
Jazz tends to be about improvisation. We do improvise but not in a sense whereby everyone gets a solo and we go in rotation because that bores the living daylights out of us. Things happen and we improvise as a unit, the whole thing just goes off in one direction; you'll hear about two solos throughout the entire gig. So if that makes us non-jazz, then we're non-jazz.
The irony is we've just won Jazz FM's "UK Jazz Artist of the Year" award, so someone else has decided that we're jazz. We're jazz whether we like it or not.
AO: How different do you think The Face of Mount Molehill is to your last album?
NC: It's my favourite record, and I think we play best as a unit within it. The obvious difference is that it has an eight-piece string section. It's produced by the same guy who did the last one. There are similarities but Rex, on the bass, is the new recruit; he made his debut on that record with us. It's more shamelessly, though unconsciously, non-jazz than the others.
AO: To what extent has Rex Horan's [new double bass player] arrival changed the sound?
NC: We're big fans of the bottom end, the big low-end stuff. I would love my head to be somewhere between the bass drum and the double bass. I think that Rex is a ‘phat' bass player and that for us makes a world of difference, as that whole frequency is taken care of. It ventures in to the rock or funk side of life when you've got that kind of ‘phatness' on the bass. The general kind of positivity and momentum that he provides is also great.
AO: Why did your former bass player, Richard Sadler, leave?
NC: Richard didn't like the way the band was going. He was more of a ‘jazzer' than Evan Jenkins, our drummer, and I. When we started gigging with the string section he didn't like that too much. There was a feeling that he wasn't entirely happy with the direction of the band. So, it felt better for all of us if we went our separate ways. With his own project, his own quartet, he seems to be really in his element. I think he was looking for the band that he's now in.
AO: Often when you play, you have a dinosaur on your piano. Why?
NC: It won't be making an appearance today as it couldn't fit in my bag, nor could I get it through customs. It's a mild reference to a jazz journalist who came to one of our early gigs and said he couldn't think what all the fuss was about, to him it sounded like loud and louder and stop. We thought that was genius and called our album, Loud, Louder, Stop. He's our jazz dinosaur.
He's [the dinosaur] also my son's toy. It's a little reference to my son. So, I can think of him and he can see it if I'm on TV and go, 'Oh look, it's my dinosaur, daddy's got my dinosaur.'
AO: You've played on records with Adele but apart from on "Mini Ha Ha" there's noticeably no vocals in your music. Why?
NC: We're all passionate instrumentalists. We want to make music that's a kind of Esperanto. If you can convey something without the use of vocals then you've created something magic. We're striving for self-expression without the use of vocals. People often say, "Why don't you put some vocals on it? You'd sell way more records." But that makes me even more loathe to do it.
AO: Some of your music - "Hug the Greyhound," "The Face of Mount Molehill" - is very droll. How does this manifest itself?
NC: When we play as a unit we try to make each other laugh. We use wit to keep ourselves sane and that's bound to come out in the music. We get very hysterical before we go out on stage; it's a mixture of adrenaline, nerves and self-deprecation.
Most of our tracks are about people we know or something that happened. "Forest the Officer" is named after a planning officer at the local council who was rude to my wife. It's a mixture between making the tracks specific and ambiguous enough so that people can put their own tag on it. "Hug the Greyhound" is about a man who looks like a greyhound, "Gerald" is a worker at British telecoms and "His Nibs" is about a Scottish pub-owner in southwest London.
AO: How did you feel about coming to Cairo?
NC: It very nearly didn't happen, but we're very excited about being here.
Rex Horan: The dude that met us at the airport was the end-level of dudes at airports. He was incredible. Unfortunately, we're not going to see very much of the city, though we're seeing more of it as the sandstorm lifts...
AO: Were you put off at all about the security situation here?
NC: As soon as you arrive you're swept up in the humour of the place, there's a lot of happy, positive people here who just want to listen to some music. There's a lot more to it than just the newspaper headlines. It doesn't really bother us. We've been to Khartoum during their civil war; we've been to Algeria, being driven from one compound to the next under armed guard. The British Council tend to do this to us; they throw us in to the deep end...I suppose they're trying to get rid of us: "blooming jazz players; they're not even jazz."
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