By Andra Jackson.
Drum supremo Steve Smith is bringing the latest version of his fusion band Vital Information NYC to Australia this month.
Smith last toured here with an earlier version of the band in 1999, which he formed the band back in the early eighties with guitarists Mike Stern and Dean Brown, bassist Tim Landers, and tenor saxophonist David Wilczewski. He knew Landers and Wilczewski from high school and Stern and Brown from the Berklee College on music in the seventies.
Smith was drawn to fusion after touring with Jean-Luc Ponty from 1976 to 1977. The band recorded its first album in January 1983 and later that year toured for the first time in between Smith still playing with another of his bands, the rock band Journey.
Smith has toured Vital Information every year since 1983. Over the years its line-up has changed with Australian guitarist Frank Gambale a member of the band in the late nineties. But while the line-up
might have changed, the philosophy behind the band’s formation remains the same.
Smith describes it as “for me to have a band to play with that performs challenging and creative music with musicians that I enjoy playing with, and spending time with. As a composer my strength
is as a collaborator so I look for players who enjoy that type of compositional concept.”
He would bring in tunes and other members would contribute songs that had written and they would worked them up for an album or tour. He told Rhythms that he learnt that approach from his years with Journey, a rock band that wrote collaboratively with everyone bringing ideas to the rehearsal room with finished songs emerging from that process. So, in the mid-‘90s, he tried that approach with Vital Information and found it worked well.
Now the band writes about half its music that way with the rest of the material contributed by current guitarist Vinny Valentino and keyboardist Mark
Soskin. Smith points out that Soskin writes imaginative arrangements of jazz standards while Valentino comes up with original tunes.
Smith is no stranger to drum fans: he has carried off number one spot in numerous Modern Drummer polls, been voted into the Modern Drummer
Hall of Fame, been voted number one all-round drummer five years in a row as well as having been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame.
Neither is Smith a stranger to Australian audiences and musicians having toured here in 1999 with a version of Vital Information that aside from Gambale, included keyboardist Tom Coster and bassist Baron Browne. He had also been to Australia in 1992 to conduct a series of drum clinics when Frank Corniola opened his Drumtek store. Smith says almost every drummer he has ever heard has influenced him in some way starting with Buddy Rich in 1967.
Other favourites included Gene Krupa, Sonny Payne, Louis Bellson and Joe Morello. Later in the sixties and seventies, he listened to jazz-oriented rock drummers such as Mitch Mitchell, Ginger Baker and John Bonham. While at Berklee he immersed himself in jazz culture and was drawn to the great jazz drummers such Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Roy Haynes,‘Philly’ Joe Jones and Jack DeJohnette. Hearing Billy Cobham “blew my
Mind.”
As his own concept was coming together the main influences on him became Cobham, Lenny White, Tony Williams and Narada Michael Walden and the music they played in the ‘70s.
Smith considers his technique continues to evolve as his ideas change and works on his technique to reflect those ideas. “For example, I play more matched grip and open-handed technique these days as they facilitate differentideas and feels.”
Smith still plays with Journey, having left the band and re-joined three times. When he joined Journey in 1978 he studied the playing of the Stones’ Charlie Watts, and the Beatles’ Ringo Starr to fill in gaps in his approach to rock drumming. Watts has since come to two of his gigs, one with another band he plays with, Jazz Legacy and one
with Vital Information.
“We have spent some time hanging out. Charlie is an inspiration and a true gentleman,” he says.
Journey attracts large audiences and he enjoys playing with the huge drums set he gets to play on. But it only satisfies part of his music appetite. Playing with Vital Information and its improvisatory
scope and how it pushed musical boundaries fulfils the other part, Smith says.
Vital Information NYC plays Birds Basement jazz club from Thursday March 12 to Sunday March 15 and Smith says the band will play music from its albums Heart of the City and Viewpoint and new tunes it has been working on.