Todd Clouser, a Mexico-based guitarist originally from Minneapolis, released Flowerchild, featuring organist John Medeski and Minneapolis drummer JT Bates on Bandcamp on May 14.
It’s the first studio piece produced by the trio, which has played several gigs at Icehouse on Minneapolis’ Eat Street over the past several years.
Clouser, talking via phone from the small Mexican surf town where he resides, chatted with Jam in the Stream this week about the LP, one track in particular and his touring plans his summer, including a few trips to Minnesota.
I asked what he was most excited about at the moment, considering he’ll be on the U.S. West Coast and Europe with his band A Love Electric — and learned he is working on a new material for that outfit as well as with the band Klezmerson.
“I feel like I have so much going on that I don’t even have a chance to get excited,” he said with a laugh. “But to be able to put that out with JT and John and just kind of document that experience that I am lucky to have every couple of years or once every year is pretty sweet. So that is exciting but I am kind of always thinking about the next thing.”
He mentioned recently having Philadelphia bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma down to Mexico to do some recording.
“We did a bunch of shows together,” he said. “He’s a legendary groove jazz bass player.”
But as for Flowerchild, it was a long time coming.
The trio released You The Brave: Live at Icehouse back in 2018. It was from their 2017 show.
“I wanted to do something in the studio,” he said. “We have that live record. It’s just hard for everybody to get time. It was a couple of years ago when John came to town. We had one day free. … We had one free day so we booked a day at Terrarium (Recording Studios in Minneapolis) and just kind of played newer tunes. I just kind of picked my favorite tunes that I was working on at the time — just put them in front of the group and let them interpret it however they wanted to go.”
There were hardly any overdubs, Clouser said, but he sat on the work until late last year.
“It was a slow burn, a slow-cooking record,” he said.
The trio has played several gigs at Icehouse in Minneapolis. As for now, Clouser and Medeski have one gig booked in Mankato Sept. 16. But Clouser said he was figuring out a date with Medeski in Minneapolis, too. PHOTO COURTESY OF TODD CLOUSER
Clouser announced a date with Medeski in Mankato a day after this conversation. They’ll be at Mankato State on Sept. 16. He also listed a TBD date in Minneapolis for Sept. 14.
Asides from his September dates — he also has a Sept. 13 date at North Street Caberet in Madison, Wis. — he’ll be back in Minnesota for the Lakeside Guitar Festival on Aug. 8 and 9. He won’t be playing this year’s annual festival, which has not yet announced its lineup, but he, along with Molly Maher, organize it.
With the next A Love Electric record currently in production, he said he’d wait until at least next year before bringing that Mexico City-based group back to Minnesota.
And aligning the three extremely busy schedules of Medeski, Bates and himself was no easy task.
“Everybody is very much in different places in the world,” Clouser said. “We’re all in the Americas, at least.”
Bates’ will be on tour with Bonny Light Horseman in September.
“It’s just hard to get the timing to match up for everybody,” Clouser said. “At least John and I are going to do some stuff in September. Any time that John has a little window of time and willing to come to Minnesota, I just kind of grab it and piece together whatever we can.”
As for that Sept. 14 date, it was unclear what it would include, but it sounded likely to involve Medeski.
Back in 2018, the trio played at Revival in Harmony Park. PHOTO BY JAVIER SERNA/@jaminthestream
“Definitely if JT was around, we would do the Icehouse thing, of course,” he said. “But I think with him not being around, do we try to collaborate with other people? Because that trio is that trio and it sounds that way. We could add so many incredible drummers — (Greg) Schutte (who did fill in at Icehouse one time), all of these guys that I have played with forever. But then it’s a different thing, so just trying to navigate what might be the coolest way to utilize John being up there and trying to play some of this record that we put out but also create something new. So then when we do get the chance to play the trio with JT it’s honoring that thing.”
I asked him about the song that has resonated with me the most on the new album — and I’ll add that I love all of it — “Blues and Peyote,” which I had noticed had the same melody as an earlier Clouser recording called “Real de 14,” which was recorded with Los Pingos Orquestra.
“I wrote that maybe a number of years ago in this little town called Real de Catorce, which is this old mining town,” he said. “Not quite a ghost town now, but it was a big mining town. A tiny little desert town where there used to be this jazz festival. We went and played with A Love Electric. It’s a really unique, singular kind of vibe. To get to this city you have to go through this old mining tunnel. Only one car can fit in it, so you have to wait for people to come out. And then you get in there and there’s this little hill in the desert. It’s so surreal and one of these things that seems like it can only happen in Mexico maybe, that they would have a jazz festival there.”
He wrote the melody while hanging out in that town the night before they played. It’s a beautiful piece, it’s energy also illuminated by the chops that both Bates and Medeski. But Los Pingos Orquestra, which featured a violin, trumpet and clarinet, also did something special with it.
That connection he had was instrumental in him bringing it to the table with Medeski and Bates.
“The best tunes, at least for me, seem to come from some kind of unique experience like that,” Clouser said of that remote jazz fest. “You connect with whatever the source was that inspired you to write this thing. It’s a tune that I have always felt close to and it seems to kind of have some sort of weight to it when I play it.”