Yamagata Got Ta Jam Local band finds its bliss in improvisational wilderness. by Mark Jordan efore forming Yamagata in late 1997, bassist Andy Neely and drummer Jim Britt played together in a cover band. The gigs were plentiful and the money good. But when that band's rhythm section formed Yamagata with guitarist Joe Austin, they made a conscious choice to use the new band as an outlet for their creativity. "We knew it'd be tough," says Britt. "People would rather pay the cover charge to hear something they know and that is familiar rather than hear three guys create something that is unique." PHOTO BY MARK JORDAN Yamagata: (from l to r) Joe Austin, Andy Neely, and Jim Britt. But the gamble is starting to pay off. This Thursday the jazzy jam band unleashes its debut CD, Eveland, with a release party at Newby's, a club that has nurtured the group over its year together by giving it a weekly gig. As with its regular Newby's shows -- and to a lesser extent the CD -- Yamagata's release party will feature lots of guest appearances. "When we're doing our weekly slot up at Newby's, we get a lot of older musicians who come up to jam," says Neely. "One night we had five saxophone players, including four on stage at once." Though the stage may not be that crowded Thursday, a number of guest artists from Eveland -- including FreeWorld horn players Steve Dolan and Prentis Wulff-Woesten -- are expected to be on hand to recreate the parts they played on the CD. The band's fourth original member, saxophonist Jeff Griffith, won't be there, but its new guitarist, Perry Osborn, will. The band is currently looking for a permanent saxophone player. Produced by FreeWorld bassist Richard Cushing, Eveland is being released on Christian Magee's Mempho Records label, which also has releases in the works for the jam band Jones, as well as Willie Foster and Fred Sanders. The disc was recorded just months after Neely, Britt, and Austin came together on Christmas Eve 1997. "The three of us played an employee Christmas party for Flying Saucer," says Neely, referring to the downtown beer hall where the group still frequently performs. "We just got up without any real songs rehearsed and jammed." A few months later the trio was in the studio with a collection of 10 original compositions. The result is Eveland, an album of surprisingly sophisticated instrumentals, considering that all the members of Yamagata are still in their mid-20s. Yamagata doesn't shy away from the jam-band appellation, but they don't rely on it either. All former university music students, the group's members bring different influences to the table -- Austin, jazz and bluegrass; Neely, funk and hip-hop; and Jim, progressive rock. "It helps having other people in the band who don't listen to the same stuff you do," says Austin. "It keeps me from straying back to the familiar and safe." Adds Britt: "The thing that sets us apart is the jazz. We have a lot more of that element in our music than other bands [such as Phish or Widespread Panic]. We jam, and they jam, so I guess we have that in common." Though they write strong tunes, at heart Yamagata (the name derives from the legend of a Japanese general who set down his arms to found a city of peace, the city of Yamagata) is an improvisational group. The band thinks nothing of completely changing a song's groove or structure on a moment's thought. The growth that the band has experienced as individual players and as an ensemble can make listening to Eveland, recorded almost a year ago, a difficult proposition. "A lot of the songs have come a long way since [we recorded the album]," Austin says. "To the point where it kind of hurts to listen to it because we know we can do so much more now. But it's a fair presentation of where we were at that time and where we're going."

		Music Notes edited by Mark Jordan Music Festival Musings PHOTO BY LARRY KUZNIEWSKI Penned in: the Beale Street Music Festival Going strictly by the numbers, this year's Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival was an unqualified success. Blessed with three days of perfect weather, the 23rd annual festival drew 138,000 to Tom Lee Park over the weekend of May 7th, smashing the old attendance record by 25,000. Presumably, what drew the throngs was an all-around strong musical lineup that stopped short of true eclecticism but offered more variety than the festival has seen in the past. The conventional wisdom around here has been that you need one "big name" -- usually meaning a white male '60s icon along the order of Bob Dylan or Van Morrison -- to have a successful festival. This year proved that perception wrong. Success came despite the absence of such artists (although why the multiplatinum-selling Sheryl Crow and Hootie & the Blowfish don't qualify as big enough in fans' minds is bewildering). Not that classic rock went unrepresented. Kansas and Peter Frampton were there, if underwhelming. (Who did Kansas think they were fooling by saving their two biggest songs for the encore?) Faring much better were Sammy Hagar, who peppered his energetic set with some Van Halen as well as a Led Zeppelin cover, and Cheap Trick, veterans of the old MusicFest at the Mid-South Fairgrounds. Rick Neilson and company drew one of the festival's biggest crowds for their early Saturday-evening performance, which ended with their hit "Surrender," one of the best rock songs ever written. Alternative rock fans had a lot to enjoy, including Friday night's powerful Big Star show and an inspired Los Lobos set. Better Than Ezra entertained as much with their stage antics -- which included an audience dance contest -- as with their tight, melodic songs. And G. Love & Special Sauce bridged the festival's many genre gaps with their alternative-meets-blues-and-soul sound. Anytime the great R.L. Burnside plays the blues tent it's going to be a party, but this year that stage offered plenty of other gems, too. Red-headed Boston blues beauty Susan Tedeschi was a surprising favorite on Saturday night. And young guns such as Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Bernard Allison showed that the blues' future looks bright, while James Cotton and David "Honeyboy" Edwards demonstrated ably that they can keep up with the kids. The most noticeable thing about this year's lineup was the focus on Memphis music of all kinds. Sweet soul music carried the weekend, however, with Friday's Stax lineup of Eddie Floyd, the Bar-Kays, and Booker T. & the MGs paying fitting tribute to the label. And people exiting the park Saturday night were treated to a late performance by Wilson Pickett, the soul man who cut most of his best-known sides at Stax. It seems Pickett's band missed their flight. Unfortunately, only a smattering of festival-goers showed up for Saturday's Sun Records tribute featuring Billy Lee Riley and the Sun All-Stars. Though admittedly a little off their game, the rock legends just couldn't compete with the star power of Hootie one stage over. But if the crowds were thin for that show and much of Sunday's gospel lineup, MIM shouldn't abandon this track; bookings such as these are part of what distinguishes the BSMF from any other festival in the country. It was, however, far from a perfect festival, and, ironically, the things that marred it were the things that were most in Memphis in May's power to prevent. For instance, it was some bright bulb's idea to fence off the river side of the park. This was purportedly done to make it easier to shuttle artists to and from the various stages, an effort that probably added up to about an hour of travel time. So, for most of the weekend the walkway along the Mississippi went unused. Meanwhile, paying festival-goers pressed their faces to the fence, like dogs in a cage, trying to enjoy the river view. One of the things that makes the BSMF a superior event of its kind is the spectacular setting along the Mississippi. To obstruct that view with a chain-link fence was stupid. If this is Memphis in May's vision for the festival's future, pack the whole thing up and ship it to Shelby Farms. It's not worth tying up downtown traffic. The closing of the river side just exacerbated the problems brought about by an altered park layout that seemed designed to bring the crowd crashing down upon you. Throughout the festival grounds, it seemed, open areas were diminished, making Tom Lee seem less like a park that a corral. The situation was worst in the area right in front of the blues tent, where anyone walking from one end of the park to another found themselves squeezed through a narrow lane between the tent and the food vendors. The vendors themselves became a problem, because the festival has gone back to a coupon system for buying food and beverages. Fair enough. It probably does making the accounting easier on MIM and cuts down on theft. But then organizers had the temerity to require that you buy $10 worth of coupons at a time. If you don't have $10, tough. There seems to be an attitude among the new leadership of MIM, perhaps understandable, that anything associated with last year's disastrous festival should be thrown out. But as undiplomatic as Wes Brustad may have been, he wasn't a complete idiot, and some of the changes he instituted worked. The giant video screens and cash vending policies were improvements, but ultimately luxuries, something MIM can ill-afford at this time. But Brustad's park layout, though radically different, made sense and flowed incredibly smoothly. There were no bottlenecks, no long hikes from one stage to another, and everyone could enjoy the rolling river. At the beginning of his tenure, new MIM executive director Jim Holt called for a return to the "classic" Beale Street Music Festival. But as Kansas made abundantly clear, classic is not synonymous with quality.