Hanging Out With Steve Hass @ Vitello’s

This past Wednesday was the first night of five consecutive nights of jazz for me this weekend — five nights of very different and very diverse musicians from dozens of different backgrounds. My first night led me to the Vitello’s Jazz & Supper Club in Studio City to check out the Bob Sheppard quartet — with Steve Hass on drums, John Beasley on piano, and Darek Oles on bass.

With the exception of Steve Hass, who I’ve had the exciting privilege to see perform on numerous occasions — the Angel City Jazz Festival (along with the Darek Oles) and the West Ranch High School Super Jazz Festival (with Jeff Babko, who you met a few posts ago), to name a few — it was a night filled with firsts for me. It was my first night at Vitello’s, an intimate little venue on the second floor of the restaurant, which has housed some pretty heavy names in the past month — including Billy Childs, Julia Gottlieb, and Poncho Sanchez, along with many others. And it was also my first introduction to the music of Bob Sheppard and John Beasley, both of whom have some history in the past of playing together with Freddie Hubbard. Overall, it was a very eye-opening experience for me sitting behind Beasley on the keys — especially marked by Sheppard’s declaration towards the end of the first set that he never played the same tune twice with the same group of people.

Speaking of which, Sheppard’s group surprised us with a special guest towards the end of the first set: Billy Childs. Considering that I’ve spent many a long drive home listening and re-listening to his NPR Piano Jazz interview with Marian McPartland, it felt like my birthday.

My visit to the Vitello’s venue was sparked by my interaction with drummer Steve Hass about a month earlier to the show, after I met him at my high school’s annual jazz festival in April. Hass is quite the memorable drummer – and after realizing in only a few minutes in the audience of my high school’s packed theater that he was the same drummer I’d seen about six months earlier at the Angel City Jazz Festival with the Ravi Coltrane/Ralph Alessi group, I made my way backstage during the final waves of applause, insisted a former Idyllwild summer classmate that I needed to help him with his bass, and introduced myself to him. Although it’s much less glamorous writing it out now than it was in my head, I’m glad that out of a burst of seize-the-moment excitement I was able to become acquainted with Steve Hass — and I’m looking forward to introducing him to you as well.

Long Island-native Steve Hass somehow manages to be sensitive and aggressive, subtle and assertively polyrhythmic, swinging and funky, back-to-basics and progressive all in the same motion. It was especially evident in the first few minutes of the Bob Sheppard quartet’s first set – where in the midst of snapping off the introductory beats to his tune, “Bait and Switch,” Sheppard whispered to Beasley and Oles, “Just me and the drums.” In the simple saxophone-and-drums intro, it was quickly apparent that Hass has an understanding of the drum set beyond rhythmic games and shifting meters – there’s also a rich tone and a voice that emanates from his playing. For each of the three times that I’ve heard Hass play, it’s clear that he’s just as much of a melodic contributor as he is a rhythmic foundation.

There’s also something about Hass that I realized towards the end of the Vitello’s show and even more so throughout a conversation I had with some UCLA students who were sitting towards the front of the audience. As students of jazz, people like me and the UCLA students that I met like to fancy ourselves with “He sounds like…” and “She sounds like…” based on who and what we’ve been listening to in the past year or so. In my head I imagined a Bill-Evans-Scott-LaFaro-esque interaction between Beasley and Oles — but when it came to Hass, I drew a blank. For split-second moments I thought that I caught Philly Joe Jones or Paul Motian or Max Roach, but he’d quickly evolve to something else. In the end, it drew to this: Steve Hass sounds like Steve Hass, a great, well-mixed melting pot of everything he’s listened and is listening to — drummers and non-drummers, jazz and non-jazz.

Without further ado, here are some words from Steve Hass.

What got you into jazz?

I was into rock music first, but I was always attracted to those who had the most facility and technique on their instrument – you know, being a young musician, that’s what you’re attracted to right away. And in order to figure out what they were playing, I had to listen to who they listened to. For example, Alex Van Halen listened to guys like Billy Cobham. And if you look up Billy Cobham’s history, you’ll see he played with Horace Silver, and he was a jazz drummer first. I just worked backwards.

By the time I went to college, that was all that I was doing – playing jazz. I kind of shut everything else out because I wanted to study the music, the history of the music.

I decided to pursue jazz even before college, which is why I picked Berklee. I was studying a little out here [in Los Angeles] at the Percussion Institute of Technology, and my first goal was to be a session drummer, which is kind of what I do now. I used to go hear Jeff Watts play with Kenny Kirkland for the Tonight Show around ’92, and I was inspired and I kept going to see them, checking them out on records, trying to get into who they were into. I just got into jazz that way, you know? I really studied in steps. I didn’t want to hear about Jack DeJohnette or Keith Jarrett or Miles in the ‘70’s at first, I was bebop – I was transcribing Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones. I wanted to know how the greats developed and who they checked out.

I like knowing what inspires people and where they get their influences from – a lot of times I’ll work backwards to move forwards, because you eventually have to stop emulating and start innovating. You emulate your idols until you can create your own sound.

What inspires you and who influences you?

It started out with Philly Joe, Max Roach – and at the same time I was into more contemporary players like Jeff Watts – but initially guys that played more straight ahead, not a lot of liquid time, which was very understandable. And then eventually I got into the really loose players like Paul Motian. I don’t just have two or three guys that are strict influences – and now that I’m playing all different styles of music, it’s really everybody. (What about rock drummers?) John Bonham. He was soulful, and he came from jazz – you could hear it. Still one of my favorites. And another successful guy, Abe Laboriel, Jr.

Outside of drummers, I love Jon Brion – he works with Fiona Apple. Prince is also someone who inspires me as well. And I love singer-songwriters too – Shawn Colvin, Sarah McLachlan.

What kind of differences do you see in the jazz scene of New York City and the jazz scene of Los Angeles?

There’s a different creative energy in New York City. I think that’s because of the concrete jungle and the weather. It’s a little bit of a rougher day-to-day over there, and that inspires you to write differently – that causes people to create differently.

I tend to think that it’s a little mellower in Los Angeles. It’s more of a groove-oriented approach to playing jazz. But I have heard some real creative stuff – Kneebody, but I feel that they’re still drawing from all the guys in New York.

The other thing is that Manhattan is a concentrated scene. There are clubs everywhere – it causes an unexplainable energy. In LA, you’ve really got to be committed to the jazz scene – you’ve got to get into your car, you’ve got to drive, you can’t really relax because you’ve got to get back in your car to get home. In New York it’s a whole other thing – you can club hop, you can see amazing musicians nightly there.

What about jazz audiences?

A big difference? I haven’t seen a big difference. Do you think that might have to do with the college scene? Young artists going out, not having to worry about getting to a car – for example, you’ve never been here [Vitello’s] before. If you lived in Manhattan and this was down the street, you would have been here a dozen times already.

In New York City – first of all, the apartments are tiny, and you want to go out. It seems like Los Angeles is the kind of place a musician would come to after experiencing that, to settle.

Who are some of your biggest mentors?

At Berklee it was Ron Savage, and then my second drum teacher, Jamey Haddad. Both of them were in the scene – they both really inspired me to practice.

Tell us a bit about working in Ravi Coltrane’s group.

There were very minimal boundaries in that band, and he dug that. But it was very creative and there were a lot of odd meters. It was very open – it was cue-based music. We’d be in the middle of one song and he’d have a musical cue – not a head nod – and he would play different lines that meant different things to us. He’d play one line and that’d mean that we were going into a five-eight riff – just in the middle of a standard. And people would watch us and they’d be like – “how do you guys know how to do that?” Ravi got that from being in Steve Coleman’s bands.

What’s your advice for the young and aspiring jazz musician?

Really follow what your heart tells you to do. Just go with that notion and that feeling, because that usually will lead you in the right direction, even though the road is kind of rocky at first. I think if you commit to something, it’ll happen. One of the worst things you can do is bounce around a lot – not having a clear vision, not trusting yourself. I think if you pick a certain path, you have to follow through.

If you really believe in yourself and you love the music, things start to happen.

Steve Hass’s listening recommendations:

MILES DAVIS/FOUR & MORE

JOHN COLTRANE/A LOVE SUPREME

CHICK COREA/NOW HE SINGS, NOW HE SOBS

WYNTON MARSALIS/STANDARD TIME VOL. 1

A special thanks to Steve Hass for the music and the words. You can learn more about Steve at www.stevehass.net.

(from left to right: Rachel & Steve Hass; John Beasley, Rachel, & Billy Childs; Philip Maniez, Rachel, Brandon Bridges, and Tim Lin — UCLA jazz students)

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: J Ben Jazz/Steve Hass/Traveler