Bertland
The musical universe of Bert Jackson

This past summer I had the opportunity to work with the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival and volunteered at many of the concerts, including the premier of “The Cape Cod Files” composed by Cuban jazz and classical master Paquito D’Rivera. After the concert the staff and musicians went out for a late dinner, including Paquito himself, who was on hand. It was one of those truly special evenings, with musicians sharing stories (including Paquito telling off-color jokes). I was buzzing when I finally got home and immediately picked up the guitar. An hour or so later most of this was done. It was refined over the next week or so, but 90% came that evening. So, thanks, Paquito, this one’s for you.

Title: Paquito
Composer: Bert Jackson
Guitar (Martin acoustic): Bert Jackson

All one track, no overdubs

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My latest tune is a fast jazz in 3/4 called “Warm Luke”, named after a friend’s dad who left this life this past week. This is a short draft, the guitar parts are just two takes each. Hope to have a more evolved version soon.

Title: Warm Luke
Composer: Bert Jackson
Guitars (Ibanez GB-10 hollowbody): Bert Jackson
Bass, Drums: BIAB
Recorded: Nov 7, 2009

Two guitar tracks plus BIAB

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This tune was written back in the early 80s and evolved through several iterations. This is the last recorded version, done around 1987/88. It’s all me, Roland drum machine, synth drone track, bass, acoustic and electric guitars and guitar synth for the flute sound.

I was working with sarod player Peter Boardman last night and we used the second part of the Anurhada theme as a basis for our sarod/guitar conversation. Thought it may be good to have this hanging around.

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This is a little droney tune I wrote in 1984, on the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated (I didn’t know it at the time and named the piece when I found out). This is a “scratch” version I recorded last week in Garage Band to test how it would work with two guitars. The timing is off in places, but some people asked to hear it so here it is.

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Another tune that grew out of Jean Coyne’s Roland D-50 keyboard’s extended visit to my house. Started playing around with some stuff and this quasi-classical thing came out. Remember, this was 1987-88 and we had never heard sampled audio patches before. The horn sounds just blew me away. This is all me, all synth recorded on a few tracks.

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This is one of the last iterations of Razor’s Edge in the 80s, with Mike Lurie on bass and Patrick Whatule on drums (Patrick was later replaced by the late great Charles Lynch). This was from a gig we did at the Stouffer Grand Resort in Smith Bay on St. Thomas. The room acoustics were great, as I am pretty sure it was recorded with the internal mic of my cheesy little Hitachi boom box.

Minor Mystery is a Ray Brown tune that I have only heard on Poll Winners Three with Barney Kessel, Brown and Shelley Mann.

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I always loved the sound of this. It was recorded with my cheapo Conrad acoustic guitar with both a mic and a soundhole pickup. The flute sound is from my Roland guitar synth with MKS-50 module, pretty basic. And lots of reverb and delay everywhere. Wall of sound. Phil Spector, eat your heart out. I am eager to record this again with my new Martin.

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This song started out as an acoustic shuffle in 1980, then one day I was inspired to rock it up a bit. This is the result. It predates my Roland drum machine so I think the drums came from one of those cheesy little keyboards. The bass line was probably played on that keyboard as well. It’s all me.

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This is a little rocker I wrote in 1987. Not my usual style but it was fun. I think I’d been listening to some punkish stuff with some of my music pals. Something stuck. Note the odd meter in the bridge! I play everything and programmed the Roland drum machine.

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This is a piece recorded back in the late 80s. My pal, Jean Coyne, had just acquired a new Roland D-50 keyboard synth. It was the first digital synth any of us had tried. And for a while, it stayed with me at my house. So one day I started messing around and pretty soon I was laying down some tracks. My buddy Jake came by and liked what I was doing so he went off in the other room, wrote out lyrics and came back and recorded them. I added a flanged/distorted guitar solo and voila! we were done.

What you hear is a Roland drum machine, me on the D-50 multitracked a few times, including the bass line, Jako on vocals and me on guitar. Very different from most of the stuff we were doing at that time…

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