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Jeff Turmes |
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He played sax with Tom Waits on the Tonight Show, recorded with R.L. Burnside and Gatemouth Brown. Now he tours and records with Mavis Staples.
On a rare occasion JEFF TURMES, the musician’s musician, steps out front.
Solely in terms of quantity -- number of instruments played, miles logged, artists backed up, shows and sessions performed, and songs composed -- Jeff Turmes is remarkable. Five Horses, Four Riders (Spring ’10, Fat Head Records) documents a singular artistic voice from within a sea of top shelf musical partnerships.
Though his resume is densely packed with notable names (and the wide variety of instruments he's played), the album has tremendous open space, clarity, and range. On this rare musical occasion, this songwriter's songwriter, the go-to sideman, in-demand session player and multi-instrumentalist... stops. He stops to express his own voice, literally and figuratively, creating songs that inhabit a world of dream images, of dread, weariness and desire. Songs that originate from hotel rooms halfway around the world, from a flash of inspiration during a break in a drawn-out recording session, from lyrics found scribbled on old envelopes and scraps of paper.
The songs originate from such moments as late night clarity in hotel rooms halfway around the world, time zone affected dreamscapes and sacred inner respite during cramped marathon recording sessions.
Jeff Turmes grew up in Southern California, taught himself bass and took off from there. Curiosity and an ever restless mind compelled him to take up saxophone in his early twenties. When picked up hitchhiking by a Volkswagen blasting Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, his life changed. From there he progressed from jazz into writing songs, playing bass and guitar and touring with blues bands. In his early days he hit the road with James Harman and Gary Primich, the first of many who have covered and interpreted his songs.
Since early 2007 Turmes has been touring as bassist and slide guitarist with the incomparable Mavis Staples. In 2008 Mavis released a live CD, Hope At The Hideout, recorded in a small club in Chicago, backed by Turmes, his longtime associates Rick Holmstrom and Stephen Hodges, and three background vocalists. The record was nominated for a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album and they are currently working on Mavis' next studio release when not touring the world.
Sample names you’ll see at www.jeffturmes.com/discography are Norah Jones, Eleni Mandell and Jake La Botz. Turmes has recorded on such labels as Capitol, Tone-Cool, Vanguard, Epic, Fat Possum and Epitaph.
An impressive collaborative list indeed, yet Five Horses, Four Riders is not Turmes’ first solo success. In 2006 he won the International Songwriting Competition’s Blues category for the song "Eat The Lunch You Brought."
Five Horses, Four Riders, his latest collection of stories, is less ironic, more contemplative, but no less intense. The music he's made on his own, together with the body of work he's created with others, calls up one adjective to describe the musicianship of Jeff Turmes: Inspired. # # # |
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Michael McClune’s |
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Music : Media : Marketing : Management |
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“Turmes writes intelligent, catchy songs that reveal a rare lyrical-melodic prosody…. a vast repertoire of blues experience… a great underrated songwriter.” – JF& BL, Los Angeles Times
One of the best players I've ever known. Jeff knows what makes music tick..." - Jake La Botz
“…heart filled, soulful, blues, folk, country implosion with a rich palette of sounds, words, and vocals…a versatile, inspirational record in which you can hear a variety of musical influences combined into amazing songs.” MM, Los Angeles Examiner |
