It was a grey fall day in 2020, mid-pandemic. I’m driving along Sherbrooke Street in Montreal, talking on the phone, handsfree, of course, to our woodwind department, Colleen Allen:
“I feel like the next record should be a project, something with an idea behind it. We’ve been making records since 1979; if we just do another eight songs, what’s the story? Who’s going to care about that?”
“You mean like a concept album?”
I could hear a slight giggle in her voice.
“A concept album. Really?”
Now, by way of backstory, this “concept album” concept has been trending in our community. Usually, it’s the jazz rereading of a pop, rock or classical recording. But for us, composing is half the fun, so why would we subcontract the writing out to a dead white guy?
“Why don’t we do something with some of the young players who are coming up?” Colleen suggests.
“I just curated a festival show and there was this young clarinet player, one of the only women leaders on the bill, twenty-four years old and she soloed over a blisteringly fast swing tune and was, by far, the stand-out of the whole show. I actually jumped up and whooped after her solo—believe me, I play the clarinet—but to hear such a lyrical and interesting solo over a tempo that fast? Wow, only an elite clarinettist that could do that.”
Now I bet you don’t use the phrase “elite clarinettist” very often in your day-to-day. And neither does Colleen.
“Who was she?”
“Virginia MacDonald, Kirk MacDonald’s daughter.”
“Kirk was our first sax player!”
Colleen, the doyenne of Manteca saxophone trivia, said, “Um, yeah, I know, and he’s not a sax player, he’s a saxophone titan.”
Right. Got it. And so, with the musical lineage of Kirk and Virginia MacDonald paving the way, we did a quick inventory of the Manteca musical spawn: Lucas Zimbel, guitar, vocals, accordion, clarinet, composer (son of Matt Zimbel percussion, composer); Maddy & Suzy Wilde, guitar, keyboards, vocals, composers, (daughters of Doug Wilde, keyboards, composer); Edwin Sheard, piano, saxophone, composer (son of Gordon Sheard, former keyboardist, composer); Jake Koffman, saxophone (son of Herb Koffman, former trumpet player); Alex Tait, vocals, composer, keyboards (daughter of the late Rick Tait, trumpet, keys, composer); Virginia MacDonald, clarinet, (daughter of Kirk MacDonald, former sax player); Ben Dwyer, bass, saxophone (son of Phil Dwyer, former sax player); Christopher Avalos, drums, composer (son of Art Avalos, percussion).
Nine of them. Some had grown up in our musical family… backstage, proudly wearing their “All Access” passes, raiding candy at the craft table or sound asleep on the studio couch while a mix played back at ear-blistering levels, or starry-eyed when the tour bus came to collect or deposit Mom or Dad. In some cases, some of their parents had left the band long before they were born and they had only heard tales of Manteca exploits on the road, and likely not as bedtime stories.
Our former bassist, co-founder and music director, Henry Heillig, got wind of this idea and reminded us that Gabriel, the son of our original keyboardist and composer Aaron Davis, was himself a very accomplished composer. So now we had ten. And not just ten “professional” musicians, but ten young musician/composers with substantial career achievements and very innovative and evolved repertoires.
I had not seen some of these people since they were in kindergarten, 30 years ago, while others I had never even met. We reached out with ten invitations to join us on record No.14, now branded “The Offspring Project.” Everyone said yes. Actually, they said, “Sounds cool.”
We prepared a briefing for our guest composers, being particularly careful not to sound too “Clean your room or no Nintendo.”
Manteca – what dat?
We love the power of impact. We love to hear the air in between the notes. We love to surprise an audience—almost like a quarterback fakes a play—you think we’re going “here,” but, no, we go “there.”
We serve the composition; we’re not interested in hearing one player after another solo over the same changes. There are often five or six sections in a tune; we try to “meander” from one section to the next, to mask the transition instead of proclaiming it. We like to have things “emerge” from the arrangement instead of “present.” At the same time, we can be rather “stunty” and dramatic in our desire to land a physical shock to audiences, often with a breathtaking slam to pianissimo.
We shop for “instrument ensembles” inside the band that are unique. We ask ourselves: What would bass and bass clarinet sound like doing an ensemble figure? (Fucking awesome!) What about piccolo and vibes, accordion and muted trombone, alto flute and finger cymbals? (Medium awesome!)
The timbre and sonics of the music are important to us. Carve the acoustic space for an instrument to speak. Create arrangements that “deliver themselves to the mix,” with distinct and separate voicings that allow the instruments to be heard thanks to the nature of the arrangement, not the volume it must be cranked to.
Most importantly, we love grooves that kick and memorable melodies that don’t suck. And with that, children, go forth and write. Feel free to be obedient to this briefing or show us your utter insubordination… After all, it is the Offspring Project.
And write they did. Suzy and Maddy Wilde were the first courageous ones to deposit a demo. I saw the email arrive with an attachment called “A Dress You Can Dance In.” In forty-three years of recording and performing, this would be our first tune with a dress in its title. Come to think of it, and in all fairness to the patriarchy, I don’t believe we have written much about pants either. Nonetheless, I looked at the email and a surge of fear went through me.
“Yikes, what if we hate it?” This could be a little awkward!
Over the years, many composers have sent us material that we have liked or even loved, but it didn’t sound like us. Sometimes we would work with them to try to land it in our zone, but that took a patient composer willing to arrive in a place that was not, perhaps, their original destination.
I clicked “play.”
“A Dress You Can Dance In” was a dinky little synth demo, with a lyrical arc that was basically a social study on vacuous club culture… We loved it. Doug and Charlie and I heard it first and it recalled Level 42 and Jamiroquai. The girls had never heard of our artist references; they in turn, referenced a few acts we had never heard of… Ah, the pleasures of intergenerational arranging! We dove in and the King of Pop came posthumously to the party.
In the end, six of the “children” chose to write, the remaining four chose to play. Two of the writers worked long distance with us, one from Victoria and one from Los Angeles, and we were never together in the same room. You know how they say that teenagers are “remote”; on this project, so were some of our composers.
And then Hunter got a steady gig. Oh, right, we haven’t told you yet who Hunter is. Our trumpet player, Jason Logue, told us his son Hunter plays some pretty mean trumpet. But because he was still in school and not playing professionally, he didn’t meet our “qualifying” bar and it broke my heart to tell Jason that we couldn’t include his son. You see, because nepotism is regarded with deep suspicion in Canada* we felt that the criteria to contribute to The Offspring Project was not so much “player” as “professional musician.”
And so, with Hunter’s new steady gig, he qualified, we were now eleven offspring, nine Mantecians, three engineers and a film crew of six.
We’re proud of all of our records. We learn from each project, and while there are always things we wish we had done differently, we’re pleased with the work or we wouldn’t put it out. The Offspring Project has an opinion, and on this record, well, there’s a special kind of pride. I can hear whispers of the elders in the exceptionally original work of the next gen.
This record sounds like us.
This record is us.
There is a moment on this project, half a second maybe, that sums it all up. It’s not a note, it’s not a word, it’s not even a production effect. At the end of a scorching take of the Christopher Avalos/Roman Slifkas piece, “Pioneers,” Christopher does a burning drum solo. After the slam of the closing ensemble figure, you can hear Chris’s father, percussionist Art Avalos, laugh. It’s a laugh of pride and perhaps even wonderment that says, “Holy fuck, I made that?!”
Matt Zimbel
Montreal, May 2023
*We still have a king who lives far away and a prime minister who grew up sleeping in a bedroom in the Prime Minister’s residence.
The remarkable singer-songwriter Nancy White used to tell the story of a fan who approached her after a gig; “oh, my, God, like, it is sooooo great to meet you! I cannot tell you how much I like your music! I borrowed all your records from my friend and made tapes of them!