Track Listing:

Side A

Lonely Woman

Fleurette Africaine

Who Does She Hope to Be?

Stardust

Side B

Lush Life

East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)

Nightingales

Musicians Featured:

• Jay Bellerose - drums

• Dave Easley - pedal steel guitar

• Jeff Parker - electric guitar

• David Tranchina - double bass

Cover Artwork:

• 22.04 (2021) Mixed Media on paper by M P Landis

• Cover Photograph by Gary Lowell

• Back Cover Photography by Devin O’Brien

• Layout by David J. Woodruff

• Special thanks to George Madrid

Full Liner Notes by Tyler Wilcox:

In interviews over the years, Ornette Coleman became renowned for his freewheeling, profound (and occasionally incomprehensible) answers. But in a conversation with French theorist Jacques Derrida, the genius saxophonist/composer was surprisingly straightforward when it came to revealing the inspiration behind one of his most famous songs.

Before becoming known as a musician, when I worked in a big department store, one day, during my lunch break, I came across a gallery where someone had painted a very rich white woman who had absolutely everything that you could desire in life, and she had the most solitary expression in the world. I had never been confronted with such solitude, and when I got back home, I wrote a piece that I called “Lonely Woman.”

More than 60 years after it memorably opened Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz To Come LP, “Lonely Woman” is well-established in the 20th century’s musical canon, its haunting melody interpreted by everyone from the Modern Jazz Quartet to Bill Orcutt. But that phrase of Ornette’s — “such solitude” — has rarely been brought to life more effectively than on Dave Easley’s rendition, which leads off the pedal steel master’s Ballads collection. Easley’s liquid tone drifts wraith-like over the uneasy, ever-shifting textures that his skilled band provides, tunneling deep into the void. It’s a restless, almost desperate, loneliness that’s conjured up; an American loneliness, maybe, with abundance and joy seemingly within reach, but with the black-eyed dog of melancholy always lurking in the shadows.

It brings to mind the closing, oblivion-embracing lines of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” another eternal standard that Easley and co. tackle here: “I’ll live a lush life in some small dive / And there I’ll be while I rot / with the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too.” Or the lyrics of another Ballads number, Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust”: “Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely nights dreaming of a song / The melody haunts my reverie, and I am once again with you.” You won’t hear these words sung on Ballads, but you’ll almost certainly feel them — and you’ll marvel at the uncanny power of music to connect the past with the present, dreams with reality.

Music connects us with each other, as well, whether you’re playing in a garage band, whether you’re in a tiny club with a handful of other souls, whether you’re on a walk accompanied only by your AirPods. Simply, music is one of the most powerful cures for solitude. A sad song is never just a sad song; it’s a message in a bottle that reads: “You’re not in this alone.” To that end, Ballads embodies a sense of true connection in its sensitive instrumental interplay and generosity of spirit. Easley is the primary lead voice here, but this is very much a record made by a band. Guitarist Jeff Parker’s shimmering, inquisitive tone is a perfect match for Easley’s, and the ace rhythm section of bassist David Tranchina and drummer Jay Bellerose flow together intuitively while still honoring the time-honored structures of these sturdy compositions. 

The void, then, is acknowledged but not succumbed to on Ballads. The darkness implicit in the songs uplifts instead of dragging down the listener. What we’re left with isn’t emptiness, but its opposite. Just listen to the gorgeous version of Sonny Sharrock’s “Who Does She Hope To Be?” included here enough times and it may start to feel like a necessary counterargument to the silent despair of Ornette’s nameless lonely woman. Like the wide-open sound of Dave Easley’s pedal steel, the possibilities are endless.