Wayne Peet, pfMENTUM, February 2000

By Jeff Kaiser

[After a Vinny Golia Large Ensemble rehearsal at Cal Arts, I was lucky to catch Wayne Peet for a quick interview at a local chicken dinner joint. In the midst of a Brad Dutz and Kim Richmond food fight next to a vocally jovial Michael Vlatkovich, I was able to interview Wayne about his background and music.]

Ok, you have to give me the basic birth info, where you were born et cetera...

December 6, 1954, in Dallas, Texas - the son of a preacher man...

Did you start playing music in the church? Is that what got you rolling, gospel, all that cool music?

Nah, nah, it was white people, you know, hymn book and the whole deal. I do remember being fascinated by watching a lady play the piano at church when I was real young, so that might be one of my early influences, who knows. Visually it was just cool, you could see like, I remember like the division of the edge of the keyboard where you could see the keys are square, until you press them down, then you press them down, and they go down like missing teeth. Looked kind of cool at that angle, you know, from a toddler's viewpoint. Then I took piano lessons and whatnot when I was a kid.

What was your first venture into the more adventurous realms of music?

It was in college, Westmont College, a friend of mine, guitarist Sam Goldstein; he was really kind of expanding his horizons at that point and getting into, like, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, and stuff like that. Up to that point, I came from a high school, small town in the California desert; jazz was Maynard Ferguson and the stage band kind of stuff. And so, I kind of started from the more outside jazz of Braxton and the AEC, and then kind of added standard jazz as I went along.

And was it at that time that you hooked up with John Rapson?

Yeah, Rapson, I saw him play in a pep band thing that he had, kind of like an ad hoc jazz band thing he had at Westmont, when I went up there for college day. I thought that was really hip, because they were playing Chicago and not that marching band stuff, more of a combo with drums and bass. Seemed pretty hip. And so when I went there, he was away for a year, but then came back my sophomore year. At that time we were both playing piano and trombone.

[Brad Dutz jumps in: "You played trombone!? I never knew that!"]

We kind of started a band. He played trombone and I played piano.

That's interesting, because, my first exposure to the outer realms of music was also at Westmont College. It is not what you think of when you think of that place, and the scene is not there anymore, since Rapson left.

Well, it wasn't really there when I was there either. It was more just like some people that were there got into the stuff. Nothing to do with the institute, other than the art teacher that was there at the time, Tom Soule, was a pretty interesting guy. We used to hang out.

[Mike Vlatkovich is getting raucous in the booth next to us.]

Mike, man, you screwed up my interview, Mike!

So it wasn't the institution...

No, man, we used to hang out with all these artists, writers, musicians, people from different realms of art would hang out and discuss things. So it was pretty much extra-curricular. I kind of had to force my own music program through at the time. And we ended up spending a lot of time with this Rapson group doing straight-ahead tunes, Miles Davis kind of stuff, to the more free improvisation stuff. We kind of created a name for ourselves around campus and just played a lot. And people used to come out and watch it, which was really weird, but there was nothing else happening, there were no rock bands. Nothing. And so we would play, and like there were drums, so people would come and hang out. There was a little scene there.

So, I know you from the early 80s. Then I knew you more exclusively as a piano player. But in the group we will be seeing here in Ventura, you will be playing organ. Will you be bringing a B3?

Well, I will be bringing a newer Hammond called an XB2. Hammond and Suzuki went together and made kind of like a new fangled version that is easier to transport, but they got the sound. And I have a Leslie speaker, which is nice, and ninety percent of the sound anyway.

No bass, right? Guitar, drums. Will you be playing bass pedals?

The bass will be my left hand. I don't really kick pedals because I'm a piano player.

When I would go see you play before, one of the standouts of the gigs would be your left hand. Very powerful and rhythmic. I remember you in some gigs with Roberto Miranda playing bass; it was like two bass players...

Well, I got in trouble with a lot of bass players for that. Bass players can be very territorial about anything below the G below middle C; it's like, "Hey, get out of there, that's mine!" I'm serious! You have to be careful. I mean, it all depends on the music, too. Some of that stuff with Roberto there was a lot of rampaging, modal tunes, you can be slamming octaves down there because it's just a big tonality, but if there are a lot of chord changes, you might not want to be down there that much.

Tell me about the percussionist Russell Bizzett?

I've worked with him in a lot of different situations. All the way from piano trios to rock bands. A very interesting wide-ranging player.

Do you have a certain aesthetic that informs your compositions?

I'm not so intellectual. I'm more into sound. That's one of the reasons I got into organ. The piano is a percussion instrument, very mechanical. I've always been envious of like horn players and other kinds of instruments that develop a real sound. There are a few piano players in history that you can tell exactly who it is. But it is harder to play, like one note and go, "Oh yeah, that's so-and-so!" Organ is fun because of the sustain and the fact that you can craft the timbres with the drawbars and stuff. And it is also enjoyable to play in a loud situation, where piano would just get killed. And this band has a lot of dynamics. It gets pretty loud at times. Organ is cool cause you can hang there without overplaying. You end up overplaying on piano cause you end up just banging. Compositionally, I just write what I hear; I usually make it a little quirky. This particular trio is not really heavy on the compositional angle. We have compositions that we do, but it is more about the group interplay. The whole thing kind of developed as a tribute to Larry Young where we played tunes and improvised. It was a live thing we did on the New Music Mondays at the Alligator. We originally billed it as the Larry Young Memorial Trio, and then it just became the Wayne Peet Trio. We did some Larry Young tunes and some improv stuff. It was based off the instrumentation of one of Tony Williams' groups with organ, guitar, and drums - no bass.

And then, G.E. Stinson on guitar. If you are into sound, you have to like him because of all the sound sculpting he does.

The thing about him that is totally great is, with all the guitar effects that are available now, there are a lot of guitarists that get lost behind the effects and/or they can't play without the effects. They get tied to them. G.E. is old school enough to where he knows how to play the guitar and can really get a great sound with just a guitar plugged into an amp. And when he does the effects, it's like a whole other aspect. But I never lose the feeling of that guitar there. The sound of the guy playing the guitar. It has a real visceral quality. It's not washed out even when he is doing these gigantic clouds of sound.

What else would you like people to know about your music?

Initially, we did a lot of stuff that was just improvised. When you are playing with really great improvisers like these guys, it can sound like it was written out, when there is that kind of communication. That's the part I am really into.

Many times in free improv kind of music there is the whole bell curve form where it kind of starts soft, builds up, and then fades out. Some of the compositional stuff I do will have to do with directing the improv to kind of get away from that form. You know, surprises.