I chose to interview Jon Ramm because he’s a local Tacoma
person who moved to New Orleans, having graduated from Stadium High School and
performed in the well-known jazz band there.
Back then he went by the name of Jon Ramm-Gramenz. I had the pleasure of watching him play
trombone with a crack band in a packed house on Frenchman Street in the heart
of the French Quarter in New Orleans. He’s making his way along with others in this
elite clique of traditional New Orleans jazz players who are good enough to
earn a living from tips in the bars in the city. It should be noted that the songs these
players know have been around a hundred years or more and are not in the
popular lexicon of reference for people of their generation. By today’s standards they’re obscure. I found the complexity and sophistication of
the arrangements interesting as they relate to the dedication and time needed
to learn them given their obvious unfamiliarity to most people. I got curious because for a long time traditional
New Orleans Jazz was “OG” music, for and by old guys. And by now most of the old guys have died
off. I know of some people from Tacoma who
came to New Orleans to experience traditional jazz and never heard it. This was about thirteen years ago. So
I wanted to hear the perspective from a newer generation of players reviving
its popularity in this city of its source.
They’re the newest “comeback kids” for this music.
Question: How did you decide to become a musician?
I had a small music scholarship to go to Lewis and Clark
College in Portland but I only intended on minoring in music. I wanted to keep playing but certainly didn’t
think that I’d begin playing professionally.
I started studying with this drummer by the name of Alan Jones. I was having weekly lessons with him. Then one day I said, “I think I’m ready. I want to play professionally. I want to be a professional musician.” And he said, “You’re dumb. No, you don’t want to do that. I’m going to ask you next week and we’ll see
what you say.” And he kept asking me
week after week and I kept saying, “Yes”, and he kept telling me I was stupid,
that’s ridiculous, why would anyone do that?
And then after a month I kept saying “Yes”, and he said, “Okay, I
believe you. Now we can work on that. Let’s do it.”
And so he started helping me learn how to be a professional musician.
What instrument was he teaching?
Well, he was just teaching me music in general. He had a very sort of wholistic approach to
play. I wasn’t taking trombone
lessons. But we were studying
transcribing Miles Davis solos, playing in a combo with other of his students. We learned how to analyze a solo or a song,
transcriptions, playing in a band, how to lead a band, all the nuts and bolts
of how to be a professional musician.
I’d already learned how to play the trombone.
Was this through Lewis and Clark College?
I met him through Lewis and Clark College. He subbed for Dan Balmer, who was the combo
instructor at Lewis and Clark. I called
him up after I graduated and started studying with him because he has the Alan
Jones Academy of Music and he teaches – like there’s a trumpet player in New
Orleans who studied with him, a sax player who lives in New York who’s killing
it right now who studied with him, so he teaches everybody.
What instruments do you play and what’s your favorite and
what was your first?
I started playing the piano when I was six and then
stopped. I started trombone at ten and
never really picked the piano back up again.
I have a drum set that I like to bang around with but I’m not very good
and I’m very loud. So I really just play
the trombone. I always tell people that
the trombone is such a bitch of an instrument that it’s plenty of work just as
a singular focus. I don’t have any time
to learn any other instruments.
How was the band teacher at Stadium High School
instrumental in your interest in music?
He was great. He was young he was energetic, he was a really
great band director. Band was really
fun. All my friends were in band and it
was an awesome time to hang out with my buddies and play music.
So he was somewhat pivotal in moving you toward music as
a career?
YEAH, but I didn’t really start obsessively practicing
seriously until later in college. I’ve
always had sort of a natural talent and I’ve been able to kind of ride that a
little bit so I didn’t have to work as hard as maybe other people may have had
to. But when I really decided to start
to work hard that’s when it all started to change.
Did the experience of playing in the Stadium jazz band
have an impact on your interest in traditional jazz?
No, though it got me down the path of listening to and
playing jazz, and because I was in the jazz band my parents enrolled me at the Stanford jazz
camp which I think is a pretty big deal.
{note: for more information on the Stanford Jazz Workshop: https://stanfordjazz.org/} A lot of times I look back and I wonder how I
really learned to play jazz. It must
have been there, and in middle school and high school.
Have you had to learn a specific repertoire to do what
you do?
Yeah, for sure.
Do you think musical literacy is essential to learning
it?
No, I don’t. I think
it helps. Because I studied music theory
at college level, and harmony, I have these tools I’m very lucky to have, it
puts me at an advantage. I can do a lot
of things that people who are learning songs by ear, can’t. I can transcribe solos quickly and make
charts for my band-mates; I can write out a song, with the chord changes. But you don’t necessarily need to do that to
learn a song. You can listen to a
recording until you have the melody and I think that’s what a lot of people do. But in today’s day and age you can find the
sheet music for almost any song, on line.
I like to have the sheet music so if I can’t find it I’ll transcribe it
from the earliest recording I can find.
And then I’ll play along with the recording. So I still like to know the source of the
material. But some songs I just learn on
the bandstand.
The songs I heard you playing last night are traditional
New Orleans jazz-based. They have stops
that are so many bars in, slides that are so many bars in, and solos that are
seemingly pretty improvised so I have to wonder if everybody is always on the
same page counting bars to know when to hit that stop or that slide and that
signature hook?
YYYes and no. I
wouldn’t say people are counting bars.
You get to the point where you just sort of know instinctively,
intuitively, in the form of the song where something happens. So, like in middle school I was counting
bars. I used to count bars. But at some point you’re freed from it and
you just sort of know where in the form of the song that bar happens.
Do you ever get frustrated with band members who are
illiterate when you’re counting on everyone to be totally in the pocket?
I don’t play with a lot of people who are musically
illiterate. I’m lucky that I get to play
with super-high quality musicians almost all the time. So there aren’t that many times where I’m on
the stage and thinking, “Man, we are all in different universes right now”. It does happen.
I’m asking because I read the autobiography of Jellyroll
Morton and that’s where he had a division with some of the top players in
town. He left town.
Yeah.
He wrote down his licks.
In the traditional repertoire there is a way that people in
New Orleans play them. There are little trombone
parts that you kinda have to play or know where they are so you can at least
sort of hint at it. And that comes from
the source recordings but also just playing enough gigs in town to know that. You know some songs you play not at all like
the source recordings and some songs you play just like the source recordings.
The source recordings are almost a hundred years old!
Well I know and you hear a black vein and we’re not; we’re
playing a modern jazz vein, but with these songs that are a hundred years old. The band you saw last night is a really
unique example in New Orleans. Like if
you saw any other traditional jazz band it would be way more traditional. And they’d probably play all the parts. Certain people don’t hire me because I
sometimes get bored playing tired old parts.
Do you feel acquainted with all the New Orleans jazz
players? And is there a sense of
community there?
Yeah, there definitely is.
There are cliques. We’re the only
band I know of that are taking the music to that sort of universe.
In that vein, it seems to me there’s a kind of
renaissance of traditional New Orleans jazz.
Do you think that’s part of it, to play the music like the original
source?
Yeah. I don’t really
know exactly how it happened. I think it
was around thirteen years ago there was a traditional jazz revival and that’s
when all the younger people started playing the music here. But there’s a lot of young cats you can find
in New York playing traditional jazz and probably in every city now. And a lot of them are dressing the part and
even playing period instruments. Like,
instead of playing trumpet they’ll play cornet like Louis Armstrong did.
How do you think that renaissance happened?
I feel like I knew at one point. Somebody definitely told me their theory of
it. But I’m not really sure how it
happened. I just know that when I got
here in 2012, everyone was playing trad.
And I had begun listening to it before I moved to New Orleans because I
was obsessed with New Orleans and I liked its brass band music, soul and
funk. So when I got here I knew a couple
of songs and I could just jump in and sit in with bands full of people who were
my age.
Did you find there was any snobbery?
Not at that time. It
felt so welcoming. A friend of mine,
Byron Asher, was playing clarinet in a band and I went and I sat in. I’ve always had a really good ear so even if
I don’t know the song I can pretend I do.
I sound like I know the song. And
I remember after the gig talking to Byron and asking, “Do you think I could…do
you guys do this full-time?” And he
said, “You’re gonna be fine. You’re
gonna be able to do this full-time with no problem. Don’t even worry about it.” And he was right. Because there were a lot of young people
playing trad and I formed a band pretty quickly after I arrived with some
friends of mine that I no longer play with because we went our separate ways. We were playing traditional jazz all over the
world for a little while.
Tell me the name of the band you played in last night and
who is the bandleader.
Aurora Nealand is the leader and “Aurora Nealand and the
Royal Roses” is the band name.
Tell me about the award you won!
The Best Traditional Jazz Band is an award we won twice over
the years; first in 2015 right after I joined the band. [Then later in 2017}. I was at the Big Easy Awards Ceremony with the drummer Paul who had been in
the band since they started in 2008.
We both thought the drummer has a lot of little
lickety-split little licks that are very genre-specific and tight as can be. What’s his name?
His name is Paul
Thibodeaux. He’s the only one in the
band who’s actually from New Orleans.
What’s the name the CD you recorded with them?
It’s called “Comeback Children”. I’m so lucky that I get to play every week
with Aurora. I love the band so much. [To buy: https://www.amazon.com/Comeback-Children-Aurora-Nealand-Royal/dp/B01E4HZC5C]
What would be a typical routine day for you? Just pick one as an example.
Yesterday I woke up at eight and did a little work-out at my
house. I also like to go on a bike
ride. Then usually by ten-ish I start
practicing a little routine, sometimes scales, but I start with a warm-up and
then I just play free for fifteen minutes straight with no interruptions,
whatever I want; picking a key or no key, all the keys or some of the keys, and
I just play whatever comes into my head at whatever tempo at whatever volume. And I just try to let it come out, ‘cause
I’ve always felt like part of me was blocked from my internal musical self. I always know that I have all this stuff here
but it’s hard to get it out on the instrument sometimes. So I want to “grease the skids” as much as I
can. Sometimes it’s just being able to
put something somewhere even if it’s not the right thing, just to sort of
continue the train of thought.
Do you find you have to learn new songs from sheet music
now and then?
Yeah, I try and learn a couple of new songs a week. And in doing that I try to learn to play it
convincingly by myself. Like, is this
something that someone would possibly pay to see. It’s good to know songs that other people
know that I don’t know, so I like to brush up on my repertoire. And I never really play straight up jazz
gigs but I like to remind myself of all of those tunes because I learned them
all once. I still love them even though
I don’t really play them. I still love
listening to straight-ahead jazz and I probably listen to more of that than
anything else.
And then I’ll practice rhythmic stuff, technique stuff,
scale stuff, pattern stuff, I’ll play transcriptions, the solos that I’ve
jotted down. I really like Jack
Teagarden who’s the great traditional jazz trombone player from New Orleans so
I’ll play his solos and try to get into his head and learn to play sort of the
way he did.
Do you chase down old recordings on YouTube?
Yeah, I’ll find old stuff on YouTube or Spotify. Here’s what I wish. I wish that nobody could use Spotify except
for musicians, because it’s such a great school to learn somebody’s music or to
do research on songs but musicians don’t always have unlimited funds to go buy
artists records. Spotify’s such a
troubled thing. But it’s so great to
have all those things at my fingertips.
More on Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses:
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