Active sporadically from 1998–2001, STACKPOLE was an incendiary free-jazz quartet featuring guitarist Dennis Rea (LAND, Axolotl), acoustic bassist Geoff Harper, Northwest drum legend Gregg Keplinger, and alto saxophonist Wally Shoup (Project W, Thurston Moore). Stackpole's totally improvised music ranged from eerie, hovering sonorities to hurtling freebop to hurricane-force sonic gales, as heard on the group's remarkable CD on the First World Music label. Stackpole received a 2001 Earshot Jazz Golden Ear Award as "Northwest Outside Jazz Group of the Year."
Critical praise for Stackpole:
“...a completely assured amalgam of idioms in a pulsing nonce-music, a free-improv-supercharged free jazz that roars, keens, and soars, and yet can just as convincingly dissolve into moody quiescence... the selections from real-time Stackpole improvisations heard on this disc descend, then slip or duck away, then reemerge. Whether Stackpole storms or lulls, its music is startling and distinctive.”
—Peter Monaghan, host of KBCS FM's “Outside Jazz”Preview of Stackpole's performance in the Earshot Jazz Festival: “"This is a must-see, not only for the innovative San Franciscan trio, but for local openers Stackpole, who are the nearest thing Seattle has ever had to a free-jazz super group. Drummer Gregg Keplinger, who plays in Elvin Jones' tradition of maintaining the beat while playing around it, steers the improvising ensemble through guitarist Dennis Rea's shimmering and shattering tonescapes. For anyone who has ever been even slightly interested in what this music is all about, Stackpole is a gamble that pays long money on short odds.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer“a truly remarkable document of the fruition of post-free jazz in Seattle... a signal event in Seattle music”
—Earshot Jazz“You can't really get further outside than where Stackpole are planted, on a jazz-ragged landscape strewn with scattered shrapnel, clouds of smoke, eerie shrieks after dark. The first, self-titled disc from this quartet of much-feared Seattle improvisers presents eight fragments from a live performance on KCMU's Sonarchy radio hour (plus another cut recorded at the ArtsEdge Festival) and shows a band in full control of their chaos. With guitarist Dennis Rea and saxophone veteran Wally Shoup forging a two-pronged overtone assault, Stackpole come on with an aggressive energy that keeps its musical direction even as it busts through every reasonable boundary. A kind of exploded swing emerges on tracks like 'The Crocker Land Expedition.' Others, like 'Polynya,' drift through a more lyrical expanse as Rea lays on mysterious harmonics and Shoup makes intimations of flophouse romance. Then 'Impasto' turns underground for a nightmare of burrowing machinery. Bassist Geoffrey Harper, who's better know for more straight-ahead efforts, provides an earthy underpinning to the freak-out sessions, while digging into the madness with his bow. Phenomenal drummer Gregg Keplinger rips through the session like a targeted tornado, powering 'Krummholz' and most other tracks with an amazing rumble that speaks louder, and with a deeper pulse, than any time.”
—Seattle Weekly“Stackpole proves that when the right musicians commune together regularly, utter invention can also be grounded by an overall coherence not defined in any textbook. From the start, there is a sense of noir mystery here, deepened by an eerie nostalgia for the realm of forms left behind. There are spells of absolute caterwaul, yes, though generally that is too easy for this band. At times the instruments converse, in seemingly Martian call and response. But during other stretches they fall into super-advanced swing, with an almost-tune somehow plucked out of the ether. For those jaded souls who have relished a lifetime of music and are now searching for something both different and exciting, this might be the place to land.”
—Andrew Freund, Jazz Steps“[The Earshot Jazz Golden Ear Award for] Outside Jazz Group ... is intended to honor those who have 'advanced the critical vanguard of the art form.' It could not have gone to a more deserving group—Stackpole is living proof of the worlds of sound yet to be discovered. Led by guitarist Dennis Rea, a leading force among Seattle improvisers, the group includes alto saxophonist Wally Shoup, bassist Geoffrey Harper and drummer Gregg Keplinger, whose musical idealism makes him one of the most sought after technicians of the instrument.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer“... The economy and breadth of the telepathic dialogue of the ensemble is the key focus of the group, displayed across seven interconnected tracks. There is plenty of space for sax player Wally Shoup to make uncomfortable statements in those linked 40+ minutes ... [drummer Gregg Keplinger's] capable pulse is an excellent measure of the incendiary nature of the quartet's controlled hellfire and brimstone ... For uneasy listening, the eight tracks make great strides in seemingly unconscious noise deconstruction, at home in New York's Knitting Factory and beyond.”
—Jeff Melton, Exposé
Stackpole founder Dennis Rea is a veteran of Seattle's adventurous music scene, as a guitarist with LAND, Axolotl, and other groups, as co-publisher of Northwest creative music journal The Tentacle, and as co-organizer of the longstanding Seattle Improvised Music Festival. His sonically adventurous guitar playing is informed by modern jazz, free improvisation, experimental composition, out-rock, and the music of East and Southwest Asia. He has given hundreds of performances in the U.S., China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Germany, and has appeared on more than 20 recordings.
Dennis's music career began in the early 1970s when he formed the eccentric progressive rock group Zuir in his hometown of Utica, New York. In the late 1970s he made a series of albums in Germany with proto-electronica group Earthstar, produced by Tangerine Dream co-founder Klaus Schulze. Since then, he has performed or recorded with such innovative musicians as Han Bennink, Hector Zazou, Stuart Dempster, Cui Jian, Jeff Greinke, K. Leimer, Wang Yong, Lesli Dalaba, India Cooke, Wally Shoup, Toshi Makihara, Trey Gunn, Amy Denio, Fred Chalenor, Tucker Martine, Bill Rieflin, Jessica Lurie, Eyvind Kang, Briggan Krauss, Bill Horist, Liu Yuan, and Reuben Radding. He has played with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, King Crimson, Ministry, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, and has composed music for gallery installations and modern dance performance.
Beginning in 1989, Dennis spent four years living and performing in China and Taiwan, where he gave numerous concerts at cultural centers, universities, and music conservatories, on radio and television, and in sports arenas with a Chinese rock band. His solo recording for the China Record Company, Shadow in Dreams, sold 40,000 copies and was cited among the year's best releases by China Youth Daily. In the 1990s he organized three of the earliest unofficial concert tours of China for his bands Identity Crisis, The Vagaries, and LAND, involving 30 concerts in Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau, and including a performance at the prestigious Beijing International Jazz Festival and an appearance at the 1991 Sichuan China International TV Festival that was viewed by television audiences numbering in the hundreds of millions.
"A guitarist who seems to have leapt lately from impressive to astonishing."
— Earshot Jazz
Wally Shoup is a compelling and passionate saxophonist and veteran free improviser who has been involved in playing and organizing since 1974. He is among a handful of Americans who have devoted themselves exclusively to the practice of free improvisation. He has played with a wide range of American improvisers, including Davey Williams, La Donna Smith, Jack Wright, Toshi Makihara, Thurston Moore, John Oswald, Lesli Dalaba, Amy Denio, Jeffrey Morgan, and Paul Hoskin, and with European improvisers John Russell, Alan Wilkinson, John Jasnoch, Paul Hession, and Mick Beck. He is leader of the explosive Seattle-based improvising trio Project W, with whom he has made two recordings and appeared as opening act for Sonic Youth on their Thousand Leaves Tour in Seattle; Project W's debut recording was named one of the top 10 releases of 1996 by Cadence magazine.
Shoup toured Europe with dancer Mary Horn in 1985, made a solo tour of England in 1993, and in 1999 toured the Northeastern U.S. with Thurston Moore and Toshi Makihara, as documented on the CD Hurricane Floyd (Sublingual 007). He has performed in many festivals, including the du Maurier International Jazz Festival Vancouver, the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle, and the Atlanta Jazz Festival. He has also organized numerous improvised music events, including the Seattle Improvised Music Festival and the Other Sounds new-music concert series. In addition to his playing and organizing, Wally has written numerous articles on the art of improvising, serving as a reviewer for The Improvisor, Seattle's Arts Focus and The Stranger, as well as having provocative essays published in Perspectives of New Music and Atlanta's Art Papers.
Shoup hones his craft as a creator "in the moment," steadfastly believing that spontaneity and creative alertness are avenues to spiritual freedom. His voice is raw but elegant, direct but challenging, and given to lyrical earthiness. His work operates outside the commercial paradigm and thus reflects a commitment to aesthetic integrity over popular acceptance.
"Agile, machine-gun/serpentine phrasing, split-tones like a rubber band cutting metal, Shoup's playing spits out in a torrent of non-repetitive articulation"
— The Improvisor
Drummer Gregg Keplinger enjoys legendary status among aficionados of Northwest music for his powerful, individualistic percussion style. Gregg began his musical career with various rock and jazz projects in the 1960s and was a key member of the free-thinking musical community that formed around late 60s coffeehouse The Llanghaelhyn, the crucible of Seattle's modern-jazz movement. In addition to Stackpole, Gregg's musical resumé includes work in such disparate contexts as Soundgarden, his ongoing duo with jazz saxophonist Rick Mandyck, and the Ringling Brothers Circus band. He is known internationally for his unique, handmade Keplinger snare drums, used by his major inspiration, Elvin Jones, among other luminaries. He has also toured extensively as a drum technician with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Our Lady Peace, and others. For a talent of such stature, Keplinger is woefully underrecorded; thankfully for fans and new listeners alike, he is captured in full creative flight on Stackpole.
On the Rick Mandyck/Gregg Keplinger CD Tribute (Origin Arts 82369):
"Keplinger, power personified, is captured here as never before. Better known as a guru, collector, designer, and purveyor of drums and cymbals than for his rare public performances, his fearless playing perfectly offsets Mandyck. He can be torrential, densely polyrhythmic, or the most challenging of accompanists. What he can't do is be the self-effacing routinier. Together, these two iconoclastic virtuosi open new territory, revealing a stormy, eerily beautiful musical world where they and their listeners seem remarkably at home."
Geoff Harper is a first-call acoustic bassist on the Seattle modern jazz scene. A graduate of the prestigious Cornish Institute of the Arts, Harper has provided the bottom end for such accomplished instrumentalists as Briggan Krauss, Eyvind Kang, Timothy Young, Andrew Drury, Jessica Lurie, and countless others. He works nonstop as a member of some of Seattle's most accomplished jazz ensembles, including Bebop & Destruction and the award-winning Marriott Jazz Quintet. His robust, authoritative tone, encyclopedic mastery of jazz idioms, propulsive rhythmic force, and wicked sense of humor elevate every group he performs with.
From the Marriott Jazz Quintet Web site:
"Geoff Harper's influences are as far-reaching as the planet Mars. His ability to play in any context or situation allows [his bands] to proceed to new levels of swing, improvisation, and inspiration."
Purchase Stackpole online from First World Music.
Dennis Rea | Axolotl | LAND | Writing | Live at the Forbidden City
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