Motion
Introduce yourselves, please...

Ducret
I'm a guitar player, self taught; I don't play any style in particular - I have a tendency to like them all. I play with my own trio, I play solo gigs, I play a lot with Tim Berne's different circuses..

Rainey
I'm Tom. I play the drums. I took drum lessons. I play with Tim Berne. I've played with a lot of other people: Mark Helias, Tony Malaby... and I'm happy to be here!

Berne
I'm Tim Berne; I play mostly with the circus now - my own circus. I've been playing with Tom for 18 years or so. And, despite several attempts, I'm still self-taught. I've played with a million people. Mark Helias comes to mind; Drew Gress... And I'm also happy to be here, drinking coffee. I met Marc in Germany at the Baden-Baden New Music Meeting in 1988; it was a collection of Europeans and Americans brought together to make music. Unbeknownst to him, I hired him for a tour! I've been playing with him ever since. Tom and I met in New York - in an opium den! - in the early 80s and we've been playing together at least since 1982.

Rainey
Now seems to be a more fecund time in New York. At the time there weren't so may venues to play. It was hard for a lot of musicians, especially drummers because a lot of clubs couldn't have drums due to an old law called the Cabaret Law. Now's a richer period because there are more places to play. The Cabaret Law dated back to before the turn of the century. In order to have more than two musicians to play at a time you had to have special licence which was very expensive to have. So in the early 80s there were a lot of places in New York where you could go and hear piano and bass duos - famous clubs like Bradleys - but there were very few places except for the major jazz clubs where you could actually hear drummers play. Now you can have any combination of musicians play at a venue. So it's opened up quite a bit. That law's been gone for quite a while now, but in the early 80-s there really weren't that many places to play.

Motion
How would you describe the music you play as a trio?

Berne
I don't thank I ever think about it, except when I'm asked. We don't sit around and decide whether we're going to play a jazz tune or play some rock or discuss what it is we're going to do at all, because it's difficult for us to classify it as one thing... it's pretty impossible. Titles are very limiting. At the same time they can be very provocative. So just calling it jazz or rock ot thrash or improvisation doesn't really tell you anything. What it boils down to is that in most cases we play a lot of written music that's meant to provoke and stimulate improvisation which is really the heart of what we do. An improvisation means having a conversation in front of people - having a musical conversation. We're sharing ideas, we're relating to each other, we're listening to each other. It's all that stuff at the same time. I don't know what to call it, though...

Rainey
...creative music.

Motion
Is this group substantially different from others in which you all play?

Ducret
Whenever you really get into the music and try to honest with it every group is single. People are really unique; they have their own way to speak to each other which cannot be related or compared to another way. Yes, according to the line-up there are some things you can or can't do. Part of th game is ignoring the rules. Just because there's no instrument playing the bass [in Big Satan] I'm not going tohave to play the bass. or to not play it... but the situation is about questions as much as about answers.

Rainey
Music changes between groups as much as relationships change. When the three of us play together it's a certain relationship we share. Tim can go off and play a duo with somebody else or play with a larger group and those groups will be as different as the relationships. It's about chemistry which gets stimulated by bringing different individuals together. Sometime, like in this case, it's a successful chemistry. Other times, even though you might be able to put four amazing musicians on stage together, it won't necessarily result in any special chemistry that makes everyone want to continue. But in this case, at least for a few years now, we've stayed interested.

Berne
The basic thing we all share... the thing we're all really interested in a certain growth. Over the next three years we don't want it to stay the same. It's not a 'show'; we're as surprised as anyone else when we play. An that element of surprise is what makes it interesting or not. You can't try to remember what you did the night before. Often you have a great night and it's almost depressing because the next night it's so much harder, 'cus you can't duplicate it. There's no road map of how to get to that point again. What I enjoy about these guys is that they never do anything for their own gratification. It's always to make the whole thing sound better. And that could mean stopping. That sounds like it shouldn't be such a big deal but it is; it's rare. Yes, we all have moments where we get off, but 99.9% of the time - even when I'm screwing up - I trust they'll have the goal in mind and will make it work.

Motion
Tim, can you tell us a little about running your own label, Screwgun...

Berne
I've always been a control freak. With all the labels I worked with I don't think there was ever a time when I didn't have some input into the cover design, or some interest in the whole presentation. I'm just one of those people who likes to be involved in all those aspects, and I have strong ideas about them. So it was inevitable. I had a good relationship with one label for quite a long time, in every area up until the records came out. Part of the problem was that there was a big company - I think it was called Poly... - that ultimately owned it and so there was always going to a problem with how to 'market' this kind of music. We all tour all the time. We do all the things you're supposed to do to sell a record. No rock band has anything on us in terms of how we promote ourselves by playing. So I never felt like that was being taken advantage of and I just decided to do it myself. Even if it takes twenty years, at least I know where the records are going. If I do a gig, at least I know the records will be there. I can guarantee that and it makes me feel better. I don't really enjoy doing all the busy work but it just seemed like that was the only way I was going to document what I was doing, keep it preserved.

Motion
Are you as hard on yourself as you would be on a large label?

Berne
It's a different thing. I don't have the kind of money those guys have, so I don't get hard on myself, but I do get frustrated. I'm a perfectionist, but there are things I just can't do. Sometimes it's about money, a lot of the time it's just about time. So I've accepted the limitations of doing it myself. But I really like doing it. I really like recording other people as much as I like doing my own records. It's very gratifying to make a good record that someone else might not have made. That's the best feeling - putting out Marc's record or Michael Formanek's, Django [Bates'] - even though I didn't produce them. Just being able to present those records in a way they're happy with and not getting in the way...

Motion
Could you talk a little about your influences.

Rainey
As much as anything it's about my friends, and not just the work they do, but maybe the things that they turn me on to musically. When I was learning to play the drums I was ravenous for everything. So I could list a hundred drummers' names that were an influence. But really, over the last ten years, it's been the things my friends are doing. We all go out and hear music together... so, yes, I'm really influenced by my community. Outside of music, I like to watch sports on television!

Ducret
I was a professional musician by the age of 17, playing in dance bands, singers and stuff ;like that. I was very greedy; I really wanted to play everything I could and with everyone I could. And still I'm interested in all kinds of musics. This most;y made me aware that I was not interested in doing certain things. Of course, you're influenced by all these incredible creative people who have achieved so much beautiful music. But I was much more influenced by what I didn't want to hear from myself. And I still am - as much as a composer as a musician or guitar player. There are certain things I don't want to hear from myself, so I try to stay away from them. that's all, basically.

Berne
Mine would be similar to Tom's. There was a certain period in my life when I was a fanatical record collector. I was always looking for new things. I was particularly stimulated at one point by these guys from Chicago: Roscoe Mitchell, Braxton, Julius Hemphill, Lester Bowie... this whole school of musicians. At the same time I was into Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Sam rivers, but not as a musician, as a fan. Then I got to a point where I like it so much I had to play, I had to participate. So I got into playing. Almost synonymous with that I stopped listening to records. After that, every experience I had playing with someone, working with someone, reading an interview with them or listening to them play... this was the education. I was always picking up information. I have a real hard time learning these things on my own, in isolation. there has to be a context. Like, for me to sit at home and learn to read music I had to know how it felt not to be able to read and get clubbed over the head... and I was like 'Oh, I gotta do this'. But if someone tells me 'You've gotta do this', it doesn't register. So everything I've learned I've learned through some massive failure or humiliation. I always tell people, you have to fail, it has to be a regular thing. You have to have a bad gig once in while to get better. It's not interesting to me to work out what works and stick to that formula. That's a show. I've had to face that this wasn't always going to be fun or successful. That's OK. Sometimes people will hate it; sometimes you're going to play bad. The trauma of that is intense. Especially on tour; every day, two hours before you go on stage you worry about how you'll play. At the same time, we're our own worst enemies because we're not going to do the same thing twice. That fear and anxiety feeds what we do.

Motion
What's coming up on Screwgun?

Berne
I don't really know; I was very disappointed not to get the Julius Hemphill record Dogone AD. I'm reeling from that, and also trying to sort out distribution. There's a general fear that the internet is going to take over; record companies and record stores and some distributors are backing off from anything they deem risky. This label requires fanatics, people who really love music and believe things can better, that music can transcend its business side. I'm just waiting to see who's real and who's not, because some of the distributors I have were into it for a while, and now they've burned out on doing anything that's not easy to sell or that they have to talk somebody into. I believe in this; I'm going to do it for the rest of my life, somehow, some way... Maybe it won't be as frequent as I'd like, but I do believe that at some point it will get easy. Or easier. So... what I want to do and what I'm gonna do are two different things. I'd like to record Marc forever, I'd like to get Tom to record for me, |Herb Roberts... these are all people I'd record like that [clicks fingers] if time and money weren't a problem, if I didn't have to worry about selling a certain amount.

We're doing great compared to most people, but it would be nice if people who control the business, which is like two companies now, learned how to do their jobs as well as we do. Then things would probably work better.
 

motion's reviewed Marc Ducret's "l'ombra di verdi" and Michael Formanek's "Am I Bothering You", both out on Screwgun.

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