Charles Lloyd: The Eternal Verities
photo: D. Darr
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“We’ve got to keep reaching,” Charles Lloyd implores while describing the message behind the title track of his new double album, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, his 11th Blue Note release. “What I’m trying to say is, ‘As above, so below, but below it hasn’t worked out.’ So I’m always trying to elevate, and despite man’s mishaps, the absolute remains.”
Although the record was released on Lloyd’s 86th birthday this past Friday, the iconic saxophonist, flute player, composer and band leader always envisioned it as a gift for others. During COVID, Lloyd presented this idea to his manager and wife, Dorothy Darr. Lloyd recalls, “I told Dorothy, ‘I want to make a healing offering to the planet.’ I wanted to share this tenderness with the planet, and I knew the people who could deliver this song with me. They recognize that I’m on a mission. So I go up on the rooftop, call my people and they come.”
If Lloyd’s words evoke images of a superhero in action, then there are plenty of folks who believe that is an apt descriptor for the NEA Jazz Master.
The three musicians who answered the call are all celebrated artists in their own right—pianist Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade.
Moran has been playing with Lloyd for a couple decades, initially coming onboard when Geri Allen was unable to make a few dates. Lloyd remembers, “She’d had her bookings messed up, and she could only do half of a long European tour. But what we do is highwire stuff—we build on what we’re doing and when you go exploring, you don’t come back the same. So I didn’t want to put somebody else in the middle of these flights. Then I played a concert at Carnegie Hall with Zakir Hussain and Eric Harlan in my group Sangam. I hadn’t previously met Jason, but he came backstage and said, ‘Your music touches me to my backbone’—that’s a Southern thing. A little later, Eric called and said, ‘Jason wants to play with you.’ I didn’t know Jason’s playing but Eric told me: ‘He understands.’ That was all I needed to hear.”
Lloyd adds, “I have this history with all these great pianists like Keith Jarrett. Herbie Hancock used to play with me in New York when we were all kids. This indigenous art form is such a rich situation that I don’t get involved in the planetary insanity. What I can do is break out into song because I know there must be seekers, sages and seers all around who are open to that and who are looking for it.”
As for Grenadier, Lloyd recollects, “I made a record called The Water Is Wide back in 2000 with Brad Mehldau, John Abercrombie, Larry Grenadier and Billy Higgins. That’s when Larry and I fell in love. He’s got this big, strong sound that reminds me of Wilbur Ware. He plays so free, so beautiful and so supportive. We also have a beautiful simpatico off the bandstand. We can go have a meal together. The camaraderie is deep.”
This is the first time that Lloyd has performed with Blade. They nearly did so at Town Hall in 1997, but Higgins, who had been recovering from a liver transplant, expressed an interest in returning to the stage with Lloyd, so Blade stepped aside.
When it finally happened in 2023, Lloyd says, “We knew it was going to be magical and it truly was and is, because he’s someone who’s mastered walking on water. That’s not easy to do.”
He cites the drummer’s many years with Wayne Shorter, then notes, “I always loved Wayne. He was with Blakey and Miles when I was with Cannonball. We would hook up in little towns and we would play. Blade knows my history. He knows I’d played with Elvin, Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette and all these people. Sacreds find each other. It’s a lineage and it’s a process, and it’s walking on water. The eternal verities have been around for a long time and they’re in all cultures. They’re everywhere.”
This has been a vibrant era for Lloyd, who released Trio of Trios in 2022, three albums that presented him in distinctive three-piece settings—Trios: Chapel, with guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan, Trios: Ocean, with guitarist Anthony Wilson and pianist Gerald Clayton, and Trios: Sacred Thread, with guitarist Julian Lage and percussionist Zakir Hussain.
Lloyd makes a point of singling out Blue Note label head Don Was for his role in facilitating and supporting these projects for nearly a decade, starting with the 2015 live album, Wild Man Dance, followed by the 2016 studio record, I Long To See You, which Was co-produced with Lloyd and Darr.
“Don told me that he’s been a fan since he was a little kid,” Lloyd recounts. “Then when he got this position, he announced that the first guy he was going to sign was me. He was bringing me flowers and pastries for three years because it took me a long time to extricate myself from ECM. I’m still drunk with the music. That’s the overriding factor. And Don is open to that and to me.”
The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow affirms Lloyd’s vitality and curiosity. It’s full of tender and often profound expressions from a true adept. The title of the opening track, “Defiant, Tender Warrior” encapsulates the spirit of the release, which presents six new compositions, some reimagined originals and a few classic spirituals.
As he considers the state of mind that spurred the album, Lloyd reflects on his Memphis youth and the unrealized promise of social change in America. “I thought, by the time I got to be a man, things would be figured out—man’s inhumanity to man would be overcome and people would be wakeful,” he acknowledges. “But it’s only gotten more polarized. I have to realize it’s a dog’s curly tail, and no matter how you straighten it out, it just keeps curling back up. So what I do is keep going forward in spite of the condition of the condition.”
Lloyd intends to remain in motion via the concert setting, although it has become increasingly challenging as of late. He explains, “I don’t like to fly and traveling gets rougher and rougher. So we pick and choose. But I still have the beginner’s mind. I also have a song that is endowed with some blessings from the infinite. I bow down to that because how could you be pompous or puffed up when you realize that it’s coming through you? So even though I’m thinking of pulling up the bridge, the moat is still talking to me.”
