The Tugboat Brewery is a small venue in Portland which has for years been one of the primary places hosting consistently adventuresome music locally. The reason for this is strictly financial- basically, they didn’t want to pay their ASCAP fees, so they require all performers to play original material- or at least non-ASCAP material. The room can be alternately empty or noisy, there’s no pay other than food and beer, and musicians mostly love to hate it, but keep playing there. Performances there can be a little rough, either from indifference or hostility towards the room and the audience. I’ve played there many times over the years, and found a few fun things while rooting through my mini-disc and digital recording archives.
First, with the Dan Duval Sextet, from 2010. Here’s the free blowing portion and ending of Dan’s tune The Texas of Canada:
The other is my group Lower Monumental, in this case performing as a duo with myself and Seattle saxophonist Saul Cline, in 2003. Normally this group played completely free, with no rehearsals and no prepared material; in this case Saul started playing the old Paul Whiteman hit Whispering, in open defiance of the ASCAP policy, if anyone gave a crap enough to notice:
More Lower Monumental and Dan Duval Sextet after the break:
From earlier in the evening, this is closer to the sort of thing that group usually does:
And here’s another Dan Duval piece from the same night as before, an old favorite of mine, The Black Monk. It’s rough, but entertaining: