It’s Wednesday evening at Barking Legs Theater, which means someone is playing jazz. On this drizzly Feb. 12, it’s the Alex Keiss Quartet with guitarist Keiss, bassist Tony Tortora, drummer Spencer West and saxophonist Austin Petitt.
There’s room for more bodies in the small lobby that’s pulling double duty as the stage and listening space, but wet and chilly weather kept attendance down to a couple dozen. To fill the gaps in the seating and warm up listeners, Keiss and his bandmates are packing the venue with quick flurries of notes and the friction heat of rapid guitar play.
The foursome is attempting to push the walls back, if not raise the roof, with a Wes Montgomery tune called “Missile Blues” (1960). Montgomery was a revolutionary jazz guitarist who recorded and performed in the 1950s and 1960s; Keiss is playing the standard with the reverence of a disciple of hard bop while adding the oomph of a modern ensemble.
As Keiss launches into a blistering solo, he breaks down the melody to its primordial elements and begins to explore the spaces between the written notes and rhythms. A few minutes later, Keiss glances at Petitt, indicating it’s time for the sax player to add his own ideas to the developing tune. Before the band is done with “Missile Blues,” Tortora and West each have a moment in the spotlight as well.
This is no cocktail hour jazz that’s sitting politely in a corner to avoid drowning out the conversation in the room; it’s the only conversation in the room – and everyone is listening.
Jazz is on the playbill again two Wednesdays later in a laidback St. Elmo venue called The Woodshop Listening Room. For the last two years, the Original Wednesday Trio has been serving up mostly straight-ahead jazz to larger and larger gatherings, although the character of the music can differ depending on who’s playing.
Tonight, guitarist Mark Jones, bassist Given Graber and drummer John Hooker are performing a marriage ceremony of sorts as they wed standards like Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower” (1979) with Jones’ grunge aesthetic.
The trio transforms the music as it drifts from jazz to distorted rock and back again like it’s shifting modes of consciousness. As such, the original melodies are barely perceptible beneath the layers of experimentation, but the textures are a perfect match for The Woodshop’s psychedelic vibe.
Meanwhile, the audience sits a few feet away on a patchwork of love seats, church pews and tables built for two, awash in modulating colored light and disco ball glitter.
On any given Wednesday night, music fans can also hear live jazz at Home on Market Street. If Barking Legs and The Woodshop function primarily as listening rooms, Home is one of several local food and drink establishments that have added a regular jazz gig to their menu.
Even so, drummer Mike Salter and his band seem reluctant to play with the hushed tones of a lullaby. Rather, their hard bop takes on standards are meant to be consumed together with Home’s parmesan fries, salmon BLT sliders and half-price wine.
Similar to the Original Wednesday Trio and the artists who perform at Barking Legs, Salter plays music that has its roots in the performances of 20th century masters like Thelonius Monk and Dave Brubeck but that also hasn’t existed before. Such is the nature of jazz; the musicians continually reshape the classics like clay that exists for a moment and then vanishes forever. If someone isn’t there to hear it, they miss it.
Fortunately, live jazz is becoming easier to hear as more and more venues accommodate what many say is one of America’s original forms of art.
Barking Legs
There was a time when jazz was part of the lexicon of popular music in the U.S. – when hits like “Take Five” by Brubeck, “So What” by Miles Davis and “The Girl from Ipanema” by Stan Getz cozied up to tunes by The Beatles, The 5th Dimension and The Velvet Underground on the charts. A version of “Peanuts” composer Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” even reached the top spot on the Billboard Pop Standards Singles chart in 1965.
The emergence of rock music and other seismic changes in the musical culture of the U.S. eventually pushed jazz off the mainstage and consigned it to night clubs, festivals and universities, notes Keiss, 32.
“Our musical culture has changed a lot in the last 50 years. Everyone in my family took piano lessons. The centerpiece of our living room was the piano. It was our entertainment system. But you don’t see a piano in living rooms anymore; you see a large screen TV.”
As decades passed and recording technologies became cheaper, better and more abundant, the proliferation of recorded music all but buried jazz and other genres like relics of the past, Keiss continues.
“It was basic economics. There was more music out there, so jazz was less valued and less in demand.”
That wasn’t a deterrent at Barking Legs, which had been catering to underserved genres since the venue added music to its programming in 1997. If bands were playing something in Nashville, local audiences were unlikely to hear it at the theater. But if something had made its home off the beaten path, Barking Legs would welcome it with open arms.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 2015, Barking Legs music director Bruce Kaplan was taking jazz guitar lessons from Lee University School of Music faculty member Shawn Perkinson when he had an idea for an addition to the venue’s programming.
“I said, ‘Sean, what would you think about us having a weekly jazz event at Barking Legs?’” Kaplan recalls. “And he said, ‘That’d be great.’ I don’t think he believed it would happen, but we did get it going.”
Early jazz night regulars at Barking Legs included saxophonist Alan Wyatt, who also hails from Lee University, and Dexter Bell, an instructor in the Hamilton County Public School system and a bassist with the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera. These and other musicians brought varied styles of jazz to the venue and helped to cultivate an audience of loyal listeners, Kaplan says.
“We’ve managed to keep it going. Alan (Wyatt) calls it a quality-of-life gig. Musicians can play what they want to play for people who want to listen without the compromises that come from performing at a restaurant or a commercial event. I feel like we have more of a New York jazz club vibe than anyone else has.”
Guitarist Adam Stone, a genre agnostic musician whose repertoire includes funk, blues, progressive metal and jazz says what Kaplan is too humble to proclaim: Kaplan and Barking Legs are local legends who all but exhumed jazz from its grave in Chattanooga and allowed a community of musicians to begin to breathe new life into the genre.
“Bruce is one of the most open-minded facilitators for jazz in Chattanooga and one of the most professional, all-around solid individuals I know,” Stone adds. “He’s also eccentric. He’s always thinking of ways to innovate and engage different audiences. No one in this town that has given local jazz musicians a platform like he has.”
In time, local jazz connected with broader changes taking place in the musical landscape in the U.S. and made its way out of Barking Legs and into other venues, where people of all ages and walks of life discovered it and formed some of the most diverse audiences in the city.
Resurgence
Today, music lovers seeking live jazz in Chattanooga have several options outside of both Barking Legs and Wednesday nights. In addition to Home and The Woodshop, jazz can be heard throughout the week at The Greenhouse at Oddstory Brewing, Forge Restaurant, Songbirds and Broads Lounge.
In addition, jazz pop-ups, such as the Jay Stanfil Trio’s standing Saturday night gig through Nov. 28 at Nightcap (next to Old Gilman’s Grill on 8th Street) are also becoming fashionable.
Like Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams,” who builds a baseball field in the middle of rural Iowa because be believes people will come to see the magic that materializes out of his corn fields, these spots wouldn’t be slotting jazz events into their programming if no one was going to come. On the contrary, audiences have been growing in ways even Keiss didn’t anticipate.
“The degree to which people resonated to The Woodshop shocked me,” Keiss says. “When I started playing there, I noticed they’d have a packed house, with 21-year-olds all the way up to people in their 70s tuned in to the music. I thought, ‘What are all these young people doing here?’ They were listening and applauding and throwing money in the tip jar and coming up afterward and saying, ‘That was fun. I enjoyed it.’ And then they’d come back.”
Ever the theorist, Keiss says he believes people are seeking to escape duplicity and find substance.
“Social media caters to what we think, which is inauthentic. Jazz is the opposite of that. It has to be authentic for it to be good. And I think young people are connecting with that. They might not understand jazz on a technical level, but they know we’re together in a room experiencing a moment that wasn’t recorded or planned and will never happen again. I think they’re sick of the BS and longing for something real.”
Some of these moments are truly unique and paint Chattanooga as a slice of jazz heaven. For example, during the Alan Wyatt Quartet’s performance of “Recorda-Me,” a 1963 standard by the saxophonist Joe Henderson, at Barking Legs in November, a tall and thin Black man rose from his seat in the audience, strolled up to Wyatt and whispered in the band leader’s ear. After Wyatt nodded yes, Eric Vaughn began to scat as the other musicians continued to play.
Vaughn later told Wyatt he once did a stretch as Henderson’s pianist and still remembers how to play “Recorda-Me.” (Vaughn has also performed with Dizzy Gillespie and Santana, among other notables. YouTube videos of his trio reveal him to be firmly rooted in hard bop.)
Keiss says he believes the elements of jazz that helped to birth hip-hop are also luring young listeners to the genre.
“Jazz’s rhythmic and cultural influences on hip-hop are bringing people back. Groups like BADBADNOTGOOD, which understands the standards but also incorporates electronic elements and backbeats and other outside-the-box stuff, seem a little cooler and appeal to younger people. Jazz comes in through the back door, and then they go back and listen to the old stuff.”
This is happening despite the complex and sometimes esoteric nature of jazz, which can turn off casual listeners, Keiss says.
“I had placed a personal recorder near a table of college age kids at The Woodshop to record the music we were playing, and in the middle of a song, one of them said, ‘I have no idea what’s going on but I’m loving it.’ Even though they weren’t trained musicians, they were picking up that something authentic was happening.”
Chattanooga’s Gen Z-ers aren’t the only one who are encountering jazz for the first time and developing an appreciation for the music. Older listeners, including at least one pair of local Boomers, are also embracing jazz in a way they never have before after venturing into the city to sample its pleasures.
Lifelong Chattanoogans Greg and Sheila Haynes attended their first Wednesday jazz show at Barking Legs in January 2024 as they celebrated her birthday. Greg says they loved both the venue and the music and have been returning every Wednesday since then.
“It’s a casual, unassuming and friendly venue, and the musicians are very talented and always give 100%,” Greg says.
Greg and his wife were jazz novices when they sat down to listen to their first show. Since then, they have actively learned about the different styles of music the trios and quartets play and immersed themselves in the music of the jazz legends.
“We believe in being lifelong learners and always staying curious,” Greg explains. “So, we make a mental note when the musicians mention John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Sonny Rollins, or Wes Montgomery, and then we go home and look them up to hear more. Barking Legs is a great way to break up the week and hear a relaxing night of live music, but it’s also a bit like a jazz class for us.”
In making Barking Legs’ jazz nights a part of their routine, the Haynes and others have uncovered another reason for the surging popularity of live jazz in Chattanooga: the world-class level of talent in the city.
City of virtuosos
Stone is a veritable databank of jazz. Ask him to explain what made Montgomery a great player and he can deliver an exhaustive discourse on the late guitarist’s technique and style.
But there is one request that can stump him: asking him to pick a favorite jazz musician from among Chattanooga’s bounty.
“We have a phenomenal community that continues to amaze me,” he says. “You can go to Barking Legs on Wednesday and hear people who could be performing at Blue Note or Village Vanguard in New York City.”
These musicians range in age from “older cats,” as Stone calls them, to young players who are beginning to make their presence known.
“It’s hard to choose a favorite because everyone brings something unique to the table,” Stone continues. “Drummer Jim Crumble is a nationally touring artist and a wildly brilliant man. Also, I will go on record as saying Steven Powers is probably the best guitarist in Chattanooga. He has such an adept understanding of the language. And the first time I heard Austin (Petitt) play, I said, ‘He’s next.’ He cares about his professional development.”
Stone describes the local stable of jazz talent as tight-knit and supportive. As such, Chattanoogans who make the rounds will see familiar faces in venues throughout the city. Often, one artist is billed as the featured performer, while the rest of the outfit consists of a familiar cast of friends and frequent collaborators.
This intimacy breeds performances that seem rehearsed but are actually built onstage one tune at a time.
“I never know what I’m going to play,” Keiss says. “I just start calling song titles. I’ve played enough with everyone enough that it’s second nature. That gives me the confidence to call them up and say, “I have a Barking Legs date. Are you available?”
Chattanooga’s jazz musicians might be closely connected but they’re not closed off to newcomers. Rather, they invite them into the inner circle and nurture them.
This made all the difference for at least one out-of-towner turned local jazz artist. When Graber moved from his hometown of Baltimore to Chattanooga in 2014, he was hauling more than his personal possessions; he was also carrying the inferiority he’d felt since he began to learn jazz bass as a timid middle schooler at the Baltimore School of the Arts.
“My mentors were amazing but jazz was hard for me, and I always felt like I was clinging to the people above me,” Graber remembers.
Graber was such a believer in his alleged lack of talent that he didn’t play a note of jazz during his days as a student at the Eastman School of Music, a university he places on par with The Juilliard School in New York and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Instead, he became a classically trained bass player.
Even in that world, Graber felt “lesser than,” he says.
“Other people pulled me along for years and years. If they hadn’t, I would’ve forgotten about playing bass at some point.”
But Graber didn’t put down his bass. And after arriving in Chattanooga, he found himself at Barking Legs during one of Kaplan’s informal jazz jams, which he hosts one Sunday afternoon a month. There, Graber met Stone, Keiss and others who not only encouraged him to break out of his shell but also became a second family to him.
“I was accustomed to the cutthroat music scene, where the best players cut you out of gigs or tell you you’re not good enough. But when I came to Chattanooga, the competition vibes were nil. Everyone said, ‘If you want to play, do it, and we’re going to cheer you on.’ I needed that; it allowed me to become confident as a musician.”
Now that Chattanooga is home to a respectable jazz scene, Stone and his friends are asking another question that might not be easy to answer: Where do they go from here?
The future
As Graber worked his bass alongside Jones and Hooker during the band’s magical mystery tour at The Woodshop, his wife and children occupied at a nearby table. What she knew – but the audience didn’t – is that he was playing with a strained left wrist after injuring it on his day job as a construction worker.
Graber began to work full time in construction when his wife became pregnant with their first of two children soon after the worst of COVID released its grip on the city. While he’d love to perform full time, he says it’s not financially possible.
“Local venues are paying jazz musicians rather modestly,” Graber says. “We strive to earn $100 per musician for a gig, which was the standard in the 1970s, but it really needs to be $200 bucks a gig – and we shouldn’t need to fight for it.”
A few local “cats” are turning their talents into a living through a combination of performing and teaching. But Graber still says it should still be possible for a Scenic City jazz musician to earn a living playing full time. For this to happen, he says, Chattanooga needs infrastructure and leadership.
“It might not be easy to develop a large audience and a strong jazz culture, but it’s possible. It would take time, at least for it to happen organically, which is the way I would like it to happen.”
Graber says Chattanooga is home to jazz artists who could excel in a leadership role but are keeping those talents to themselves to avoid making waves.
“They know how to run a gig, how much everyone should be paid, and the best spot in the room for the band, but they’re not voicing those opinions because they want to make their paycheck and go home.”
A good first step would be for venue owners to ask the musicians for their thoughts when preparing for a performance.
“Some venues will place a band in the worst spot in the room to avoid removing tables and then refuse when the band says, ‘You should remove that one because that’s where we should go.’ If you’re going to hire a band, you need to commit.”
Musicians would do well to listen, too, Graber says.
“If an owner agrees to place us in the middle of their restaurant, then we need to be responsible and remember that people are trying to eat and converse.”
As Graber looks ahead, a legion of his fellow jazz artists are peering in the same direction. The one gazing the farthest into the future could be Stone, who’s cooking up something Chattanooga hasn’t experienced in well over a decade: a jazz festival.
Stone says the event will feature local musicians and take place at the Hotel Chalet at The Choo Choo midday Oct. 26. Firmer details will come.
Until then, Chattanoogans can spend their evenings at Barking Legs, The Woodshop, Home and more. Chances are, if it’s Wednesday, or any other day, someone will be playing jazz.