Saratoga TODAY spoke to bassist/guitarist Reed Mathis from the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. The JFJO will be playing the 30th Annual Freihofer’s Jazz Festival at SPAC, Saturday, June 23. The band will take the Main Stage at noon and will play the Gazebo Stage at 4:10 p.m.

Saratoga TODAY: Let’s start off with the most pressing of all questions, who is Jacob Fred?

Reed Mathis: Jacob Fred isn’t actually a person, the name comes from Brian (Haas), our pianist’s childhood – he wanted his younger brother to be named Jacob Fred when he was born. It was a name he carried around and then ended up sticking it on the band when we started as a group. It doesn’t actually have a lot of meaning and it’s kind of ironic that the band has ended up playing together for 14 years now. We probably would have thought a little harder about what to call it. But it works, it’s a name.

ST: How did Jacob Fred, in its current incarnation come to be?

RM: Gradually. We toured as an ensemble for years and made some great music but it takes a special person to thrive on the road and so that was a factor. It was hard for everybody to tour for a living and the music that the rhythm section was making was markedly different than the larger ensemble was making. For a while we actually did both, we did gigs as a trio and gigs as the ensemble. The gigs as the trio were just more fun. We really were able to improvise more freely, more coherently – there was more of a sense of unity. It was a lot more fun. It happened organically which was nice.

ST: How did you three get together?

RM: Tulsa, Okla., is not a huge town and we found each other rather easily. When we were first playing together there weren’t a lot of people that were fired up about jazz and self directed, and we just couldn’t get enough about it. So we just sort of naturally gravitated toward each other. Like I said earlier, it was actually several musicians when we started playing together and recording – and the three of us are just sort of the ones that were the most passionate and committed to the cause – the ones that have just never given up. It’s been 13.5 years and it just keeps getting better and the music keeps getting better, the experiences higher, it’s just an amazing thing. I don’t know if you believe in fate or destiny or anything like that, but definitely it was sort of like that. I’ve met a lot of musicians all around the world but I haven’t met any musicians like my brothers in the band. It just seemed as though it was meant to be.

ST: You recently had a change within your ranks (new drummer, Josh Raymer), has this changed you sound, or affected your playing as a group?

RM: We have. Though he’s been around us for years and years and was definitely part of our posse. It doesn’t really feel like a new drummer but we definitely did have a change. He has lived all over the country and has toured the world as a member of the Salvation Army Band, which he’s been playing in since he was a tiny little child. But he came back to Tulsa after traveling for a long time and living several different places and we just started playing together a lot and it was just an amazing rapport. Our drummer of the last five years was ready for a change so it worked out perfectly. We are very, very excited about the music we are making and we’re really excited to come to Saratoga.

ST: In 2002 Less Claypool (of Primus) mentioned you in Bass Player magazine, that must have been quite an honor…. "You'll be hearing a lot about Reed Mathis from the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, because he's doing innovative stuff." Had you met him before that?

RM: I hadn’t met him before that but I’d shaken his hand. He came to watch us play and I saw him as I was on the way to the stage. They’d announced us and everyone was clapping and there was Les Claypool. I didn’t quite know what to say! After that article came out, we became friends and have hung out quite a bit, but at the time the article came out it definitely came out of left field for me. That issue actually came out on my birthday, I was browsing at a bookstore and opened it up and it was amazing. That was a big deal for me because he was a hero of mine from when I was first playing when I was 13, 14 and Primus records were first coming out. That stuff was inspiring because he was breaking all the rules and had his own sound.

ST: You play cello, base, guitar, sitar, a little bit of everything…

RM: They’re all stringed instruments so it’s not quite everything, I’m useless with a saxophone. I’ve been playing the bass for 19 years, so that is definitely my home turf but I like mixing it up and keeping it fresh, keeping the music fresh, keeping myself challenged. The last year we’ve been bringing the guitar on tour, it changes the sound of the group a little bit – it can definitely do things the bass can’t, we can play different kinds of compositions that feature the guitar. I’ve been enjoying playing the guitar – its kind of new for me – but very nice.

ST: How would you describe the band?

RM: An improvising ensemble that is based in the tradition of jazz going all the way back to New Orleans in the teens and 20s. But, very much in the tradition of jazz, in that we speak using modern vernacular even when we play old songs. Even if we play songs by Earl Hines or Duke Ellington, we’re going to speak in a modern vernacular which, the way I understand it, is the jazz tradition. A real modern take on classic jazz improvisation.

ST: What part of your set is classics/covers vs. original composition?

RM: It varies from night to night – we love composing and we love each other’s compositions so we always do a lot of that. But, we love playing the music of our heroes too. It varies from night to night – one night we might do more standards one night we might do more of our own tunes. In Saratoga, I’m sure we’ll be throwing in some classics for sure.

ST: You mentioned some of your heroes, who are your heroes?

RM: Oh goodness – I already mentioned Ellington, we play a lot of his music. Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk are all people whose music we play. We are also influenced by a lot of stuff outside the jazz world as well. Brian and I both grew up playing classical music so that definitely left a large imprint on our musical universe. We listen to a lot of rock and hip hop and electronic music. We love ambient music, that whole sort of harmonic narrative genre, almost soundtrack style music. That’s a big part of our sound. The Beatles are just about my favorite band ever. I don’t ever tire of listening to them for sure, one of the greatest ever.

We select music to cover based on what we’re into and what we think will translate to the audience. You play a Beatles’ song and everybody’s on the page with you immediately. So we’ve covered a lot of stuff, some of which is more obscure and it doesn’t always work out the same. There’s an art to connecting with the audience through the compositions. But I also believe if we are just very open and really direct the audience will connect with whatever we play even if it is something they have never heard or thought of before.

ST: How would you rank/compare playing a small club to a larger venue like Saratoga? Which do you prefer?

RM: They’re so different – I love the intimacy of a small club like the Blue Note in Manhattan where everybody’s just sort of in each other’s face and you don’t really need a PA – that is a wonderful feeling. But, there’s nothing like playing to a large audience either and reaching a lot of people at once. And I know from being an audience member, that being part of a large crowd can be a thrilling experience when you feel like everybody is in the moment and experiencing it together, even though you don’t know each other. I don’t really prefer one or the other I really relish them both.

ST: Know anything about the Jazz Festival in Saratoga?

RM: I know Roy Haynes is going to be there!

ST: How is that for you? Obviously, when you do these big festivals there’s probably people you’ve appreciated or been influenced by throughout your musical journey?

RM: It is thrilling –I love getting to watch and be around my heroes. We feel very privileged and inspired, I mean Roy has been making music for more than 50 years now. I have a recording of him playing with Charlie Parker in 1949, so that is just amazing. We’ve gotten to share the bill with a lot of our heroes in the last couple years – Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Garrett. It’s amazing. We just give thanks that we’re lucky enough to do this for a living and to have each other. It’s an amazing, amazing feeling. We’re really looking forward to Saturday.

ST: You’re working on your fourth album for Hyena records/14th studio album? How is that going?

RM: We’re working on it and it’s a lot of fun. We’re taking a direction we’ve never taken before, which is sort of in the style of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, we’re spending a really long time sculpting the songs, really making them into tapestries of sound, rather than what we normally do, which is play like we do live but with really good microphones. This time we’re really using the studio, we’re collaborating with a producer that we’ve admired for a very long time, Brian Pryor. He’s just a genius in the studio, sort of one of these modern computer composers, the computer is his instrument, so we’re just sort of marrying our concepts with his concept and spending a lot of this year working on it. It’s been really fun and it’s definitely going to be different from anything we’ve put out before. I’m not sure what it will be like, we’re definitely in the process of discovery, but I know it will be great.

Our last few records we made really quick and they were on the shelves just a few months after we recorded them. We wanted to do the opposite with this one. We just want to leave it in the oven until it’s done. If it’s not out by Christmas it will be out by early next spring.

ST: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us! Do you have any parting thoughts for our readers?

RM: Just that we are very excited to be coming to Saratoga and we are honored to be included.