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the two—to play with a serious clarity of toneand still have the guts and power of the trueacoustic bass. When I walked or accompaniedsomebody, I wanted that soloist to feel they hadthe best tonal, rhythmic and harmonic supportpossible, but I also didn’t want to bore the hellout of people when I soloed.”The notion of balance—triangulating a spacebetween deference and self-interest, betweenpragmatic and creative imperatives, betweenacoustic and electric self-expression—is perhapsMcBride’s defining characteristic. “I’ve alwaystried to live in the middle,” McBride said. “I’dbe a good U.N. diplomat!”During his teenage years in Philadelphia, atthe urging of mentor Wynton Marsalis, McBridefocused on the unamplified, raise-the-stringsapproach to bass expression, which “seemed tobe the new religious experience for young bassplayers coming to New York,” he said. As hisreputation grew, he staunchly adhered to thisesthetic even through several bouts of tendinitis—althoughonce, upon bandleader BobbyWatson’s insistence, he did relent and purchasedan amp for a Village Vanguard engagement.Not too long afterwards, Brown heardMcBride for the first time. “Ray said, ‘Why areyou young cats playing so hard? You don’t needyour strings up that high.’ I thought, ‘Shut up,and listen to Ray Brown.’ I saw him a fewnights later, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.Ray seemed to be playing the bass like it was atoy. He was having fun. Playing jazz, he had thatlocomotion I heard in the great soul bass players,like James Jamerson, Bootsy Collins and LarryGraham. He wasn’t yanking the strings thathard. He had the biggest, fattest, woodiest soundI’d ever heard, and most of it was coming fromthe bass, not the amp. At that point, I slowlystarted coming around. I was able to find a middleground where, yes, it’s perfectly fine to usean amplifier. It’s not the ’40s any more.”McBride has always prided himself onbeing able to take on multiple projectsat the same time. But in 2008, hebit off more than he could chew. “By October, Iwas ready to collapse,” McBride said. “Then Ithought, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go to Europe for fiveweeks; I can’t collapse.’ Everybody was like,‘You’re in town for three weeks? Let’s booksome record dates.’ My brain was saying yes.But my body was like, ‘If you don’t go somewhereright now and sit in the dark for aboutthree weeks, I’m unplugging on you.’ I’m tryingto edit ’09 a little bit.“I’m ready to sink my teeth into my ownmusic and see what I can finally develop on myown. Maybe one day I can be the guy leadingan all-star tour or calling some other cats tocome on the road with me.”Towards that end, McBride was ready totour with a new unit called Inside Straight, withsaxophonist Steve Wilson, pianist Peter Martin,vibraphonist Warren Wolf and drummerUlysses Owens, whom he had assembled for aone-week gig at the Village Vanguard duringsummer of 2007 and reconvened to playDetroit. “I hadn’t played at the Vanguard since1997, and thought it was time to go back,”McBride related. “Lorraine Gordon said, ‘Ofcourse you’re always welcome at theVanguard. But don’t bring that rock band youusually play with!’”Said “rock band” was a plugged-in quartetwith Geoff Keezer, Ron Blake and TerreonGully, which McBride first brought on the roadin 2000 to support Science Fiction, the last of hisfour dates for Verve, to bring forth McBride’sall-encompassing view of jazz.Indeed, the group’s extreme talent farexceeded its recorded documentation or gigopportunities. “We got defaulted as a fusionband, which was inaccurate,” McBride said. “Itseemed our gigs always got stuck in when I hadtwo nights off with Pat or Five Peace Band, andit was hard to change hats quickly and thinkthings all the way through. But we all like musicthat has a lot of energy. It could be funky or free,it could be bebop or dixieland swing, or it couldrock. As long as that jazz feel is underneath,what’s on top doesn’t really matter.”Funk, freedom and rock are absent fromKind Of Brown (Mack Avenue), McBride’srecent debut date with Inside Straight and hisfirst all-acoustic presentation since Gettin’ To It,his 1995 opening salvo on Verve. “I call it oneof those ‘just in case you forgot’ recordings,”said McBride, who will celebrate his 20thanniversary as a New Yorker this summer makingweekly hits with a big band and recordingConversations With Christian, a still-in-processproject comprising 20 duo performances andinterviews with select friends and mentors.“I came to New York to play with all thegreat modern jazz musicians I could, and Ibecame known doing that in the PaulChambers–Ray Brown spirit,” said McBride,noting that he has recently felt the itch to returnto “some good foot-stomping straightahead.”McBride has traversed a conceptual arc notdissimilar to the path of such contemporaries asRoy Hargrove and Redman, who embraced contemporarydance and popular music during their20s but recently have returned to more acoustic,swing-based investigations. “We were the generationthat was able to assimilate all that hadhappened before us, and at some point decidedto use hip-hop or certain types of indie rock,great music that not too many jazz people werekeeping their ear on,” McBride observed. “It’sno different than what any other generation ofjazz musicians did.”Amember of the last generation toreceive a full dose of the heroes ofjazz’s golden age, McBride is nowwell-positioned, through his educational activitiesand increasing visibility as a publicspokesman, to facilitate the torch-passingprocess. His present views, informed by deeproots in black urban working-class culture andthe attitude towards musical production that heabsorbed during his formative years, are not sovery far removed from those of his mentors.“Everybody’s nice now, but a lot of hardlove came from those legends,” he said. “AtBradley’s, if you played a wrong change, you’dhear some musician at the bar going, ‘Unh-unh,nope, that’s not it.’ They’d ream you on thebreak. After they finished, they’d buy you adrink. All of us wear those moments as badgesof honor. When you see young cats doing thewrong thing, it’s not a matter of actually beingmean or being nice when you pull them asideand tell them what’s happening.” McBrideoften advises younger musicians not to bridle atthe notion of marinating in situations they’re notused to or that make them uncomfortable.“The people behind the scenes play on thisidea of faction-race-gender-class, groove-versusno-groove,intellectual-versus-street,” he said.“We’re in a period where the less groove orAfrican-American influence, the more laudedthe music is for being intellectual, whereas theguys who are grooving—that’s [regarded as]old, we’ve been hearing that for over half a century,we need to come further from that. Themore European influence you put in your music,the more you can be considered a genius.“At first, I thought it was racial. Maybe it isto a certain extent. But the white musicians Iknow who like to sink their teeth into thegroove can’t get any dap, either. Part of it mightbe backlash from when the record labels weredishing out the cash to advertise and marketsome straightahead young lions who franklydidn’t deserve it. The recording industry didreal damage to the credibility of young jazzmusicians who were really serious about buildingon the tradition. It almost took an‘American Idol’ twist—some new hot personevery six months. When it happened to me inNew York, I remember thinking, ‘That couldchange tomorrow.’”McBride learned early that music is as mucha business as an art form, and that to sustain acareer requires labor as well as talent. “Myfocus was always on being good,” he said. “IfI’m the best musician I can be, I won’t have toworry whether someone thinks I’m hot or not;I’ll just be working with all the musicians that Ican. That’s where I got my outlook to alwaystry to find the middle ground.”He intends to retain this attitude. “You seemusicians reach a point where they no longerhave to take certain gigs—and they don’t,” hesaid. “Some of us think, ‘They’ve lost thatedge; they don’t have that passion like theyused to.’ I never wanted to become one ofthose guys. My chops start getting weird. Thepockets start getting funny. There’s a reasonRon Carter is still as active as he is. He’s playingall the time. Ray Brown was like that. Theykeep that thing going.”DBAugust 2009 DOWNBEAT 29