Matthew Shipp
"I never envisioned myself becoming part of a big [dance] club scene, because I was a 'serious jazz musician,' and that was my life. But it happened instantly."
I wrote a book about 60 years of New York City rock music scenes called This Must Be the Place: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City (you can purchase it here). Naturally, in the course of writing a book about New York City music scenes, I interviewed a lot of New York City musicians, deejays, club workers and owners, and scenesters —140, specifically, which, in retrospect, was probably too many interviews (whoops).
A lot of these interviews were deeply fascinating, went on for hours, and dove deeply into what it’s actually been like to live and create art in New York through the decades. But only a fraction of each interview ended up in the book. So, I’ve decided to share some of my favorite full-length interviews here. I’ll post a new one every week or so, for as long as they last.’
When I was a kid, I hated jazz. Granted, I was mostly familiar with the gutless, elevator-friendly variety that was all the rage among a certain subset of Baby Boomers in the ‘90s. But when I started taking guitar lessons in the hopes of learning to play like Keith Richards or Angus Young, I was instead saddled with “Blue Monk” and “Autumn Leaves.” Bullshit, I thought. Give me “Hell’s Bells” or give me death.
But somehow, I was blessed with a series of guitar teachers who had relocated to my hometown of Annapolis, Maryland from Downtown Manhattan, and they would regale me with stories about the city they’d left behind. A couple names would pop up again and again: John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Elliott Sharp, DJ Spooky, and Matthew Shipp. They made me some mixtapes, but I still didn’t get it.
Around the time I turned 14, it finally clicked. I was especially drawn to Shipp’s piano playing and composition, which seemed to pull from an entire record store’s worth of influences: jazz, classical, dance music, ambient, post-punk, hip-hop. It was only after I grokked what Shipp and his contemporaries were doing that predecessors like Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, and Sun Ra started making sense to me.
So, as I started plotting out a chapter for my book about the Downtown avant-garde in the ‘90s and ‘00s, Shipp was among the artists I was most eager to interview. When we spoke in December 2020, I was amazed to learn that, before his jazz career took off, Shipp spent much of the ‘80s frequenting Downtown dance clubs like Pyramid Club and Danceteria, and taking in the full range of sounds the city had to offer - everything from punk to blues to freestyle. He is every bit as musically omnivorous as his output would suggest.
You moved here in the early ‘80s, right?
I moved here in September of ‘83. I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, then I went to [school in] Boston for a year, and then I moved to New York.
Had you had much experience of the city before you moved here?
I've been coming to New York a couple of times a year since I was born, [because] I had an aunt that lived on 34th Street and an uncle that lived around Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. I always had a sense that I was going to move to New York. When I was a little kid, I used to walk around the parts of Wilmington that had office buildings and stuff and pretend I was walking in New York.
Did you have a preconceived notion of what moving to New York was going to be like?
I would like to say no, but I think I did. When I moved here, I was 22 or 23, and for some reason, the first thing I expected was to get off the train and [have] the whole jazz intelligentsia waiting for me. Nobody knew who I was, but I expected that people would be waiting for me and I’d be on the cover of Downbeat by the next month. I'm a realist, I'm not crazy, but there's one part of you that expected the red carpet would be waiting for me the second I moved here, and there was another part of me that knew that wasn't going to happen.
When I did move to New York, I ended up being part of the Downtown club scene. It kind of had artistic airs to it; the whole lifestyle of going out at night was an artistic statement in and of itself. I never had envisioned myself becoming part of a big club scene, because I was a “serious jazz musician,” and that was my life. But it happened instantly: I came here, I started meeting people, I started hanging out, and all of a sudden, I was at the Pyramid every night, I was at Danceteria, at the Palladium.
But that gets into another thing, because there's a thin line in New York between all the scenes. Even the freestyle New York dance scene in the ‘80s and early hip-hop, the people that you're hanging out with were some of the same people that are in the punk scene and hanging out at CB[GB]’s at the same time. There’s a thin wall of separation between dancing in a club and then walking over to CB’s to hear a punk show, even though they’re different expressions of music. All that stuff just kind of seamlessly intersected without thinking about it. That just is New York in the ‘80s.
Do you remember your very first clubbing experience?
The first day I was in New York, I remember walking down St. Mark's Place, and there were a lot of punks around with the spiked hair and stuff. Seeing that on St. Mark's was kind of like a revelation to me, because before I moved to New York, I was into some punk, there was this little scene in Delaware of people trying to be punk, but it was different than moving to New York and actually seeing people with spiked hair. It was like, wow, you just don't see this in other places in America.
I don't remember the first time I ended up going to Pyramid, I just know that when I moved to New York it was one of the places I ended up going to instantly somehow. They got to know me pretty fast because I started going there every night, so they started letting me in for free. I was going to Dan Lynch’s [221 2nd Avenue] a lot too, which was kind of an anachronism in the neighborhood, because there was a serious blues scene there. My nightly sojourns lot of times would start at Holiday [Cocktail Lounge, 75 St. Mark’s Place], then I would go to 7B [Horseshoe Bar, 108 Avenue B], and then I’d end up at either Pyramid or Dan Lynch’s. I would close one of those bars.
When you started going to these clubs, were you still working on jazz stuff simultaneously?
Yeah, I was completely dedicated. I don't know how I did it, because I burned the candle at both ends. I had a job: I was working as messenger for a couple years, and then I worked at bookstores for a few years, and then I was an art school model. I managed to do that, practice at least two hours every day, and then I did my clubbing. I have no idea how I did it. I couldn't do it now.
How did you first make your way into the jazz scene?
The first day I was in New York, I ran into Billy Bang on the street, so I stopped him and I said “Oh, Mr. Bang, I’m a young pianist, I just moved to town. I'm a really big fan of yours.” And he goes, “Oh, you are? Can I borrow $10?” I was scratching my head like, What the fuck am I getting myself into? Then I met Frank Lowe. These are people that I grew up listening to. I said, “Mr. Lowe, I just moved the town,” and we shook hands, and then he turned around and threw up, because he was really high. All that was my introduction.
I ran into William Parker a couple days later; I stopped him on the street and talked to him for like 20 minutes, and then I gave him a tape. I met all those older musicians on the street the first few days I was here, and they completely embraced me. They just got who I was, I guess. Even before they heard me play, they kind of seemed to know where I was at, and they really looked out for me.
A famous old-school drummer's apartment was a shooting gallery for junkies, and one of the ways he made money was going out and buying [drugs] for Eurotrash that didn't know where to get stuff. A bunch of musicians would come up there and shoot up. I'd be up there, and all these older jazz musicians - I'm not gonna give names, but people whose albums I grew up listening to - they were up there shooting up. Every time I’d walk in, I’d see one with a needle in their arm, and they’d always say, “You see what I'm doing? Don’t you ever do this! You understand me? Don’t you ever do this!” Those guys really looked out for me and embraced me from the get-go.
Were there particular jazz venues that you were seeking out or going to regularly?
Even though I came here with a few dollars, and I got a job within a month that I was here, I didn't really want to be going to the high-tech clubs and spending a lot of money, and I didn’t know all the West Village jazz people [who’d help me] get in free. But I ended up having a patron, Bruce Morris. I would go with him sometimes, and he’d pay the cover charge, pay for drinks. Because those clubs can be expensive – the Blue Note, the Vanguard, Sweet Basil.
But in the early ‘80s, in my scene in the Lower East Side, there were a bunch of, not clubs, but performance spaces that had little concert series and stuff, and I would go to all those. So, despite all my clubbing, I was going out to hear somebody in the jazz world at least once or twice a week somewhere.
Do you remember your first gig in the city?
Yeah, my first gig ever was at the University of the Streets [130 East 7th Street]. It’s really in the bebop [scene], I think [the owner] hates the type of music that I do. But he was cool, he let us use it, I think he even let us use it for free. I ended up doing two concerts there, and then after Bruce Morris became my patron, we started doing concerts at Middle Collegiate Church [112 2nd Avenue]. He knew the people there and introduced me to them, and then I started performing there.
Did the Kitchen factor in for you at that point?
You can kind of bifurcate everything that happened in Downtown Manhattan between Black scenes and white scenes. The scene at the Kitchen originally centered around the Philip Glass sensibility, and then it got to be kind of a white Downtown scene when you get people like [John] Zorn and Elliott Sharp. They’d always [present] other [kinds of music] and reach out, but it was the artsy scene that maybe had more in line with post-minimalism, no-wave-type people that have more 20th Century classical sensibilities.
The Downtown scene has always been bifurcated into a white scene and a Black scene, even if, among the musicians, that's not going on. That's just how it always seems to fall. I've performed at the Kitchen a lot over the years, they've always been very generous and helpful to me, but it’s a different scene. I didn't go to the Kitchen a lot back then to see stuff.
Was there any overlap socially for you between the jazz world and the club scene?
Whenever I told anybody from that [club] scene what I did, they all thought it was cool. Not only that, but a lot of them actually came [to shows of mine]. They just kind of got me and got it, even if they're not intrinsically fans of this type of music. If they were into any type of modern painting or something, it wasn't a big leap of imagination for them to understand the impulse behind what I'm trying to do. It was all just a continuum.
Just doing it in this neighborhood, even if somebody doesn't understand the [jazz] music per se, they might feel it and get something out of it, because there seems to be an intrinsic understanding to people that modern jazz is a part of this neighborhood. Charlie Parker lived between 9th and 10th on [Avenue] B, Mingus lived in the neighborhood. They understood that somebody like me was a part of the rhythm of this neighborhood and part of the history and tradition of this neighborhood, even though at that time, I [had only been] a New Yorker for a few years. Even before you move here, there's a part of the essence of you that's a part of the essence of this, and I think it rubs off and people just get that. I just instantly fit in.
Another great thing about the club scene: freestyle was called “Latin hip-hop” at the time, and it could be looked at as kind of a mixture between early hip-hop, Latin music, and European synth [music]. So, I’d go to the clubs and dance with Puerto Rican girls. When I was a teenager in the ‘70s, in Delaware, there was a real disconnect between the Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods. If I would ask a Puerto Rican girl at a club to dance, my mindset was that I was scared I could have been knifed, such was my perception of the racism between Blacks and Puerto Ricans in the ‘70s in Wilmington. But [once] I moved here, I was going out to clubs, and there were Hispanic girls dancing, whites and Blacks in the same dance floor. I could actually ask a Puerto Rican girl to dance, and it was not a big deal.
What was the first venue that really felt like a home base for you?
The first venue where I regularly did stuff might have been the Knitting Factory [47 East Houston Street]. I met Michael [Dorf, the Knitting Factory’s owner] when the place opened, and he right away was really cool with me.
I stopped clubbing around ’89. But in the ‘90s and 2000s, if I wasn't on tour, I was still going out to jazz clubs and trying to make business contacts and meet critics. If I was in town, I’d usually stop into the Knitting Factory every night, even if I was only there for ten or fifteen minutes, because it was really close to where I live. I maybe heard a set, but mostly it was just to be around and make business contacts and stuff. I knew all the door people, all the bartenders.
Were there other venues that felt like they were within that same circle or orbit as the Knitting Factory in the late ‘80s?
No. The Knitting Factory was the commercial venue. There were other places, but they were all kind of little galleries and stuff that would have a [concert] series. There was a guy named Ray Taylor, who used to do concerts in his living room. The gossip and perception of some people was that it was a crack house, not sure if it was but that was rumored. He called it Ray Taylor’s Living Room, and Charles [Gale] and William [Parker] were doing regular gigs there. It turned into a thing.
There were all kinds of little [venues] that popped up here and there. I'm probably forgetting half of them. I remember doing two gigs with Jemeel Moondoc at Nuyorican Poets Café. They don’t really do jazz there, but stuff would just happen.
And then in the ‘90s, Tonic [107 Norfolk Street] enters the picture.
[John] Zorn hooked me up with Melissa [Caruso-Scott, Tonic’s co-owner] early on, and Melissa and I got to be friendly. I used to perform there regularly. I could always call Alan [Licht, Tonic’s booker] up and get a gig there. If I needed a gig, say, a few weeks from now, I could call and get a gig anytime. That ended up being a real home for me; I ended up performing there probably more than the Knitting Factory. [They didn’t have] a great piano, but as far as overall vibe, of all the places I played, that’s probably where I was most comfortable. I was really depressed when that place closed.
Tonic seemed especially notable as a venue where people were delving into the intersection of jazz and rock music.
It wasn't a rock club, it was an “experimental music” club, but you had people like Thurston [Moore] doing their non-Sonic Youth type of shows there, or Chan Marshall [Cat Power] doing shows with Loren Mazzacane Connors there. There were people from the punk world that entered into the noise improv world, but they're not jazz per se. [The audience at Tonic] weren't the kind of people that hang out in the West Village jazz clubs. They were smart people that got the music, but I would guess that most of them come from a post-no-wave kind of thing, or a post-Sonic-Youth improv thing.
I don't consider myself an improv musician, I consider myself a straight-up jazz musician. I mean, I'm against labels, and don't consider myself any label. But if I'm forced to say a label, I consider myself just as much of a jazz musician as Wynton Marsalis. When people use the term “improv,” they start thinking of Elliott Sharp and people like that. I don't consider myself involved with that at all, even though in a social world, I'm around that much more than I am around Wynton and his people.
Now, parallel to all that is the coalescing of the Vision Festival scene. That scene goes back to the ‘70s, when William Parker moved to Manhattan from the Bronx. He started playing with Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, and Jemeel Moondoc, who all live in the neighborhood. That scene was completely ghettoized and looked down upon for years, but they just kept at it. And then at one point, William’s wife Patricia Parker starts organizing [as Arts for Art]. William did the Sound Unity Festival back in the late ‘80s. They were always organizing little mini-festivals that happened around here. And then at one point, it became the Vision Festival in the late ‘90s.
That's the scene here. When you think of Black jazz in the Lower East Side, Arts for Art is the scene. They don't have a venue per se, even though she does a lot of performances in their office space, but that is the scene. They have their whole history in this neighborhood; they pursued the music for years and years, despite being completely shat upon, looked down upon, not paid attention to, but they just kept at it. That's an instrumental part of looking at this neighborhood from the ‘70s to now and what exists for “the Black music scene,” looked upon as separate from the white, white improv scene. It grew into a scene that’s internationally recognized, and a lot of that is because of Patricia Parker.
It seems like every venue that's come up in our conversation that was really meaningful to you as a performer was within walking distance of your apartment in the East Village.
Any part of any aspect of when I lived in New York, I could walk there in minutes. When the Knitting Factory moved to Tribeca, that took me a little longer to get down there – but it was maybe 12 minutes, 15 minutes?
In the time since the Knitting Factory moved to Brooklyn and Tonic closed, has there been anything that filled that void?
I don't hang out anymore, I stay in my apartment. My world is very small, and purposely so. I just turned 60, I’m not trying to be out with a hip crowd or anything. My life is walking to my practice room, practicing, and coming back home.
Do you think New York is still a place where new interesting underground music can thrive?
I don't know. It's always going to be New York, so it's always going to be the place that has the allure and the energy of being able to start something. But I don't know if it's nostalgia, because I was in my early twenties [then], but nothing's ever going to have the feel and the energy that the ‘80s had. It just doesn't exist anymore.
I can't think of any scenes now. Like, you think of the late ‘70s as kind of centered around CB’s and that scene. In the ‘80s to get the dance clubs, freestyle and early hip-hop. And then the ‘90s the energy seems to be in alternative rock. I used to hang out at Max Fish, and all the Matador bands would be there, and the energy around that was really palpable. And then in the 2000s, the energy was in electronica. There was a lot of good stuff going on in New York [in the 2000s]: El-P was here, Antipop Consortium. The energy was there on a street level. So even though I have nostalgia for the ‘80s, all those [eras] were really strong. But I can't even figure out where the energy would be now. I don't see anything. I look at a lot of music press, but I don't even see what the energy would be around.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.
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You can buy my book This Must Be the Place here