Mann Underground: Geoff Mann Pays Brilliant Tribute to His Father (Part 3 of 3)

Continued from Part Two…

(NOTE: A portion of this feature appeared previously on The Tonearm.)

What were some of the guiding aesthetics that you brought to the project?

I’ve been playing in afrobeat bands for 20-something years now, so that’s become a part of my drumming sensibility. But also I come from a rock background, and there’s my soundtrack work. I really love textures and big dynamics shifts; I want to feel like the songs are telling a story. So if you took all those things and put them together, those were in my head when I was putting these tunes together.

The album was cut in just two days. Was that a function of financial constraints, a desire to capture spontaneity, or both?

A combination of both. It was financial and also logistic, because I flew Domenica [Fossati], who played flute and Victor [Axelrod, keyboards] out to L.A. from New York. And we had time then with me and JP [Maramba, bass] and Marcos [Garcia, guitar]. When the studio was available, I fronted the money for the studio time, and I was paying all of them per day. And that was about how much time we had. I could have used another day or two, because at the time I felt frantic about it. We were just trying to get the takes in: “Does it sound like it’s enough? Okay, well, let’s move on to the next one.” But I’ve cut records in a day before, plenty of times, so it’s not unreasonable.

I did want the spontaneity. Except for the instruments that I overdubbed later, we did everything live. It was the only way that I was gonna make it; I didn’t even consider doing layers. I’ve done so many records where you lay the drums down, lay down the bass. But then that interaction isn’t happening. And with this band specifically, everybody is so in tune with the music – and with each other – that to not have every opportunity for us to play off each other would have been a real tragedy.

The other thing I noticed when reading the fine print is that it was recorded six and a half years ago…!

The truth is that I was having a hard time getting people interested. I think I shot pretty big at first: I was trying to get it to Atlantic Records. I thought, “Maybe they would be interested. They’ve got my dad’s catalog.” There was a lot of talk, but nothing really congealed. And then the pandemic hit, and I kind of lost momentum.

I started talking to Color Red a couple years ago; we had initially talked, and then the scheduling didn’t work out. And then I thought, “I’m gonna release it myself. I’m just going to do it online; maybe I’ll press 100 vinyl or something, and it’ll just be what it’s going to be.” And then they came back to me; things opened up for their schedule. And I was excited, because I really like the label. I really like Leah [Concialdi, Director of Communications at Color Red]. She’s got a great sense of what’s going on in the world and how to present things.

And then it just came together that way. Outside of Atlantic, which was a reach, I had been looking at more traditional jazz labels. In retrospect, that wouldn’t have been the right fit. So it took a while, but it worked out in the best way that it could have.

I think of your dad as a pioneer of what we used to call world music. Detractors might call him a dilettante, which is unfair. To me, Herbie Mann was a restless explorer. Is that your impression of him as an artist?

Definitely. He loved tasting new flavors. He would go to a country and find whatever food that they had, and want to taste it. And I think he felt that way about music.

He didn’t really try to direct most of the bands. He would find a band or a group of people who were doing something and who were really good at it. And he was like, “Okay, I just want to be a part of this.” He didn’t really try to change a group when he found them. He was like, “Do your thing; I just want to play with you.” And through that, he got to explore a lot.

Whether or not people take his playing seriously, he introduced a lot of people to a lot of different music that they wouldn’t [otherwise] have been aware of. And he found people who became very big on their own; he was their first big gig. A lot of people went through his band. I think he saw it kind of like The Jazz Messengers, where [Art] Blakey was like, “I’m gonna get these people. They’re gonna play; I’m just supporting them.”

What was it like working with Herbie in the studio?

It was pretty nice. We only did a couple of records, and only one that came out . The first one I was pretty nervous on. But again, he had a pretty hands-off attitude. He let things happen naturally, let the band dictate what their best vibe was. We had these tunes, and I think we practiced some of them and maybe played some of them live. But going in, he gave us time to find what our groove was like: “What beats am I going to bring that are comfortable to me?” and not just trying to do someone else’s thing. The band locked together pretty naturally, and it all worked out well.

I was very inspired by his quiet direction; he directed through osmosis, through letting people find their own best version of themselves in the studio. And I found it very refreshing.

Beyond Underground, what are you up to now musically?

My other band, Here Lies Mann has been playing shows. We’re recording new music, and that takes a good amount of time. We have five records out, and we’re constantly evolving that sound.

And I’m working on some new music on the flute. The past five years or so, since the beginning of the pandemic, I started playing the flute. I’d always been like, “That’s the very last instrument I would ever try to play!” But it happened out of curiosity. One day I was listening to [Herbie Mann’s 1961 track] “Comin’ Home, Baby,” and I was like, “I really like the first couple choruses of this; I wonder if I could learn it.” I could make a sound on the flute, but I didn’t really know what the fingerings were. So I downloaded a fingering chart and I learned to do that.

I just kept on fooling around with it for about a year. And then I started to feel – again – an emotional connection to my dad that I didn’t realize I had been missing. Because it does make me feel close to him to play the flute, and it’s been very exciting for me.

I’m trying to get to a place where I feel confident enough to play flute in front of people. I’ve been recording a bunch, but in the studio, I have control: If I do a terrible take, I can fix it. I don’t need to be the most virtuosic flute player in the world, but there’s a certain level of not embarrassing myself that I do need, especially with the name that I’m bringing in.

I’m trying to get there, but I’m making music in the process of learning. My brain at 50 is not as flexible; the neurons aren’t all firing like they were when I was 10 or 14. So learning new things is a challenge. But I love the idea of never, ever stopping learning new things.