By ERIC SCHELKOPF
Innovative Chicago area saxophonist Chris Greene continues to make his mark on the scene.
The Chris Greene Quartet on Oct. 18 will release "Conversance," on Pravda Records, Chicago's longest-running indie rock label. It is the first time the label has released a jazz recording.
To celebrate the release of the album, the Chris Greene Quartet will perform at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 20 at Epiphany Center For The Arts: The Sanctuary, 201 S Ashland Ave, Chicago.
Admission is free, but reservations are recommended. More information is available at epiphanychi.com.
I had the chance to talk to Greene about the new album.
Q – Great talking to you again. I guess I last talked to you in 2017 about the band’s album “Boundary Issues.”
Of course, you are about to release a new album, "Conversance," and it’s your first album on a label. Was it just the right time to get signed to a label?
I was never adverse to signing to a label or working with a label. I had been approached by a couple of local labels, and it was never the right situation.
It was, "We'd love to sign you, but we need you to play more traditional straight-ahead jazz."
In the last couple of years, I've been doing a number of gigs with musicians who are on the Pravda label, like Nora O'Connor and Steve Dawson. They were telling Kenn Goodman, the head of Pravda, that he needed to work with me.
Last summer, he introduced himself to me. He didn't tell me that he wanted me to play in a certain manner.
Kenn said that he wanted me to make him a good record and that he would figure out how to market it. And I said, "OK, we're cool."
Q – So it sounds like he pretty much gave you free rein.
That's pretty much his attitude with all his artists. His attitude is, "just bring me a good and honest record."
He doesn't sign people he doesn't believe in. It's really an esteemed company.
Q – The release of the album will mark the first time Pravda Records has ever released a jazz album. That must make you feel pretty good, to be making history that way.
Yeah, it does make me feel pretty good. This is a company that has been in business for 40 years and has built up a great track record.
This is a chance to stay true to myself. Basically, they will amplify my signal and get me to people who are music fans.
Q – There are so many great musicians on that label representing so many different genres. You were just talking about Steve Dawson and coincidentally enough, I interviewed him in June about his latest solo album, “Ghosts." And I know you were one of the special guests that played at the album release party.
It seems like one of the things that maybe sets the Chicago music scene apart from other music scenes is that everybody knows everybody and that for the most part, everybody wants to collaborate with each other.
Would you agree with that?
In many ways, yeah.
Q – Is there a meaning behind the name of the album?
The word conversance means to be intimately familiar or knowledgeable about something. With us, it's two things.
We are intimately knowledgeable with each other as musicians, as a band. I'm proud to say this band has been in existence since 2005.
And we've only made one personnel change and that was to get our current drummer, Steve Corley, to join in 2011. He's pretty much been in the band over half the life of the band.
We're interacting with each other and we're interacting with the audience.
Q – Did turning 50 impact the way you approached the album?
A little bit. It's one of those things where I was kind of taking stock of where I am now.
I'm in this weird position where I'm still trying to figure this out, but at 50 years old, I've figured out a fair amount of stuff. We had a collection of songs ready to go and it just happened to be around that same time where Kenn Goodman walks in my life and says, "Hey, I want to do something with you."
It was a pretty easy process because we already had most of the songs ready to go. Maybe being 50 years old has made me more efficient with my time.
Q – The publication “All About Jazz” referred to you as being a a post-bop maverick intent on shaking things up for the mainstream. Is that what you are trying to do with your music?
Maybe unconsciously. The people whose music that I love pushed buttons.
They were unapologetically themselves and they kind of forced you to accept their artistic growth. Musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Joni Mitchell and James Brown.
That's the kind of example that I'm trying to follow.
Q – Do you have any dream projects that you would like to start sooner rather than later?
The band has flirted with the idea of doing a Christmas album, but not in the traditional sense.
We would take some familiar songs and as a quartet put our own spin on them.
I'm also a huge Prince fan. In 1985, he released an album called "The Family," which was kind of his replacement side project for The Time, which had broken up.
They only released one album. It is the first time that he utilized saxophone in any kind of important way.
It is also the album where "Nothing Compares 2 U" originates from. We're coming up on 2025, so it will be the 20th anniversary of that album.
I'm strongly thinking about putting together a couple tribute nights to that album.
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