IA11 Liner Notes by Dave Vettraino
Bonus photos by Marcus Mader

In early 2013, Scottie McNiece called me and asked if I wanted to record a weekly improvised music series with drummer Makaya McCraven at a restaurant called The Bedford. The idea was to just use a simple stereo pair of microphones. The setup would allow us to pipe the music into the restaurant’s ambient sound system, and also create recordings to share to promote the following week’s gig.

I was a young engineer in Chicago still getting my feet wet, and at first was a bit hesitant about committing to a weekly gig. I still had a day job, and the idea of hauling gear every week sounded tedious. Also at the time I didn’t even know who Makaya McCraven was. But there was an auspicious tone to Scottie’s request, so I said yes. 

The Bedford was housed in the basement of a 1920s converted bank. The lounge where the session took place was inside the old vault, lined with copper safety deposit boxes and complete with a massive four foot wide circular vault door. A metal box might not seem conducive for good live acoustics, and especially not a good space to record. However, because the band was unamplified it forced them to play at a quieter volume and maintain an appropriate balance amongst themselves, which excited the reverberation of the room just enough to create sustain but not enough to be too boomy or blurry. For recording, this actually turned out to be quite beneficial – controlled, dynamic playing and subtle ambience allowed for a natural yet unique sounding capture.

Makaya always framed the night as “Spontaneous Composition” not necessarily as an improvised music night or jam session. Spontaneous Composition was about blurring the lines between freedom and form. I had a musical background but was fairly ignorant when it came to a true understanding of what improvised music could be. I thought it was either jammy or absolutely free and noisy with an absence of groove or beat. Makaya’s style was different. One of the first nights I heard them, I thought they were playing tunes. The sudden rhythmic changes, the way vibraphonist Justefan would start a melody and bassist Junius Paul would join in unison on the second repetition without missing a beat, the hard stop endings, the inflections and repetitive grooves all seem pre-planned. But as Makaya put it, they were “just making shit up.”  And his “composing” didn’t stop there.

After the first couple weeks, realizing the music was so impressive and the sound of the vault so special, I decided to incorporate more microphones to get a fuller and more intimate sound. But I still relied on the stereo pair – the “ears of the listener” – to shape the overall picture. Each week I would quickly mix the 2+ hour session and send a stereo bounce to Makaya. They were initially only intended for review, promotion and posterity. But Makaya began to parse through, cut and loop these stereo mixdowns to create new composition – sometimes utilizing transparent editing to make an improvisation more seamless, sometimes creating a more choppy sounding beat, sometimes a combination of both with added overdubs at his home studio.

Sitting there each week listening to his rotating band, occasionally it was clear what might end up as a cut on the record. There were some truly undeniable moments where the energy was palpable in the room.  But often, what Makaya chose was inconspicuous – quiet moments, rhythms looped in odd phrasing, or selections inspired by the way the sound resonated in the room. Even though I was present for all the live performances, when I first listened to the final cuts for the album, it felt like something new. The spirit of the sessions was there but in a more immediate and concise presentation.

Makaya would perfect the recording method developed here on subsequent records. Highly Rare (2017), Where We Come From (2018), and Universal Beings (2018) all employed a similar technique: record live in unique circumstances and interesting sounding spaces, then post-produce the results. This manner of production also became a large part of the International Anthem sound as similar techniques were used on albums with Junius Paul, jaimie branch, Daniel Villarreal, Bex Burch, SML, and others.  

The title In The Moment is clearly a nod to the act of improvising. Not only the mindfulness needed to stay present but also the fluidity to go with the flow, to let the moment happen organically. A delicate balance of freedom and focus, for a moment that will never quite happen again. At the time of the Bedford sessions, Makaya was a revered drummer and an accomplished sideman, but as a Northern Massachusetts transplant, he was still establishing himself as a leader on the Chicago scene. International Anthem did not exist yet and was only a dream Scottie and co-founder David Allen shared after years of playing in their own bands and touring together. And like most historically renowned and celebrated scenes, in the moment, no one knew how special it was or what it would become. The romanticized version of it now did not exist yet. It was just a bank vault in a slightly ordinary restaurant where Makaya and company played every week. And a lot of those weeks, there was almost nobody there to listen.

Serendipity as a game plan doesn’t always guarantee success but by accepting the gig, doing the work, and approaching art with an honest and thoughtful intention, the possibility opened up. In The Moment was that possibility for Makaya, International Anthem, and myself, and 10 years later it's something to be proud of.