2024 · Album
The Old Country: More From the Deer Head Inn
Recorded September 16, 1992 at Deer Head Inn · ECM · Released: November 2024
Paul Motian's Light Touch in a Small Room
Motian brings a lighter, more flowing pulse to the music than expected, letting Jarrett and Peacock breathe.
What makes The Old Country distinct is Paul Motian's drumming. By the time of the September 1992 session at the Deer Head Inn, Motian had spent decades perfecting the art of playing less—of listening as much as timekeeping. His approach here is almost conversational. Instead of anchoring the trio with steady pulse, he floats around Jarrett's piano and Gary Peacock's bass, creating space where a typical drummer would fill it. The Penguin Guide to Jazz noted that Motian brings "a lighter and more flowing pulse to the music than DeJohnette," a telling comparison that suggests how different this trio sounds from Jarrett's other configurations.
Motian's restraint allows the music to breathe in ways that feel genuinely spontaneous. On a ten-minute version of "Bye Bye Blackbird," the trio moves without obvious scaffolding—there's no metronome, no safety net. Peacock anchors things with his forceful low end, Jarrett spins out ideas, and Motian responds with brushes, light touches, occasional silence. It's the sound of three musicians listening to each other in real time, which is what a small club gig should be.
This album captures something that doesn't happen often on record: a working band in its element, playing for maybe fifty people in a New Jersey jazz room. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow gave it four stars, praising the "inventive interpretations" that offer "plenty of surprises." The Penguin Guide writers seemed almost surprised that Jarrett could still command attention in such an intimate setting, writing that "it seems unlikely that Jarrett will ever need to go back to bar-room gigs, but here he's demonstrated his ability to work a small audience with powerful, unpretentious jazz." Motian's drumming is what makes that unpretentiousness possible.
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