The Luke DeRoy Trio: Lyrical Redemption In The Vernacular of Life (VIDEO)
by Jody Jenkins
That sense of inherent wisdom in music and lyrics is always a mystical thing, those moments when you know almost from the first note or phrase that you’re in for a journey. You sense the surety so you don’t really care where it’s going. You just trust and you’re all in for the ride.
The Luke DeRoy Trio calls what they do ethereal pop, but when I clicked on their bandcamp page, I immediately found myself out on The Road floating through an intricate jazz tapestry, not simply an outer long and winding voyage, but one layered with deeply textured interior landscapes … a small town street wet with fine mist, a reflective, early fall mood, a scattering of leaves on the passing lawns. A gentle guitar hook and Luke DeRoy’s soulful voice that slowly intertwines with Mtali Bandi’s saxaphone in an almost dream-like sprial …
from The Road
I’m looking at my life and how I got to where I am
I’ve got nothing in my pocket but a smoke and my left hand
I’ve got nowhere I need to be
But I’ve got something I must do
I’ll take the road that leads me back to you
It’s hard to believe this song is three minutes and forteen seconds long. It somehow seems infinite. The soft murmurs of the sax and the almost frictionless touches everywhere. Ian Haas’ drums and cymbals barely resemble a contact instrument until they turn the corner towards the final stretch and cut loose and Ryan Fess’ bass a subtle heartbeat through it all (but in the Live At The Grid Performance, he’s all over it). Everything’s understated and effortless like a breeze through the curtains. After all, that’s what jazz is at it’s best, restraint and release, anticipation and the unwinding, that slow, delicious approach like a romance becoming.
In The Road, DeRoy travels neighborhoods of loss and lonliness and knowing self recrimination … and the determination to ressurect the deep truth that real love allows us.
I hold tightly to my dogma
Blow smoke into the air
I’m a tangled in this trampled mess
And making my way there
I’m drowning here in diamonds
But I’m just passing thru
I’ll take the road that leads me back to you
I’ll take the road that leads me back to you
DeRoy’s uncynical lyrics are refreshing in these times when it would be easy to give in to something darker. I’m drowning here in diamonds … Who wouldn’t want to endure whatever it was that wrote that line? And there’s a generosity of spirit sprinkled everywhere throughout the music that’s striking. In Something Wonderful, the lead in verse is followed by … Nobody’s perfect love … it’s okay, nobody’s asking you to be … I know you’re onto something wonderful …. And later the refrain comes a creepin …. give your-self some cred-it, give your-self some grace. I know things get rough sometimes but it’s okay not to be okay.
Luke uses the music and lyrics to explore those feelings and interiors that might not be so pleasant or easy to look at. The words evoke real people struggling with real issues but have a very humanizing gift for forgiveness and acceptance. That gentle touch allows for a deeply personal kind of lyrical catharsis.
The words evoke real people struggling with real issues but have a very humanizing gift for forgiveness and acceptance.
“For me, the point of my music is … compassion,” Luke said. “Willingness to understand a perspective different than yours. Forgiveness.” The two most influential men in his life — his father and John Lennon — said love was the answer, so that’s the well he draws water from. “I felt like it was fool proof,” he said. “Like it might just be that one thing that wouldn’t be fleeting.”
While it may not be immediately obvious, the music and lyrics are infused with the rhythm and meter of hip hop. When Luke and Ian met at the Black Sheep years ago, they hit it off when they realized they shared a common love of hip hop poetics and beats. Luke said his parents played Neil Young, Bob Marley and the Beatles when he was young, but hip hop was the first music he found on his own and it became the cornerstone of his musical and cultural upbringing. Poetry with a tempo. And the lyrical intricacy of rap informs everything he writes. Occasionally you can hear it in the stutter beats in songs like Something Wonderful:
There’s no one else that could knock
You givin all you got
Just think of one day what they’ll say …
Reed Sutherland engineered, produced and mastered the solo recording of The Road and he has a light touch. The bassist for Mammal Dap, a band with a sprawling ambient presence in its sound, is putting something of a mark on the local musical landscape and he is certainly at home here.
Despite their jazz leanings, the band brings some serious funk as well. Luke wields a Stevie Ray Vaughanesque guitar on songs like Dangerous, and his woodwind vocals are reminiscent of John Mayer, but with more of an out-of-the-box edge in the vein of Dave Matthews. His presence is all his own with a hip hop slant of his hat, long hair and brow stud. He addresses the mic like someone come with something to stay, then steps away from the words and crouches by Ian’s drums into another space where there’s just the three of them and the music on long riffs and interludes. That’s where the jazz shows through.
Ryan, Ian and Luke are friends and housemates as well as bandmates, so there’s a familiar ease to their stage presence. The Road is their only published song and they have few videos, but they came to the studio packing, with a varied set of jazz, funk and Texas blues arrangements, each evocative and deeply explored. There’s something about a three-piece band that lends itself to an ultra clean sound and no matter where these guys wade, you come away with an appreciation of pure aural simplicity. This isn’t about feedback or taking the ground by sheer force. It’s about seduction and skill.
After their show for Live At The Grid, when the gear was packed and the guys in the car ready to head to their Friday evening gig at The Abandoned Building Brewery in Easthampton, Luke lingered in the halls of the studio, shaking hands and thanking everyone for their help and talking. He’s a genuine, gentle guy with a touch for people. He notices and reaches out the extra bit, which is something that comes from the heart and a place where people matter first and last.
Their bandcamp description says community is a big part of what they do. And that’s the takeaway. The sound is genuine and gives you the sense that you’re among friends, talking and living and thinking on a deeper level which, after all, is what everyone is looking for in the end.
Jody Jenkins is the writer and filmmaker from Northampton. He is Director of Field Production for Amherst Media and Editor of The Collective.
