We Three Kings: The Power Trio Paradox
On the trail of rock and roll’s most elusive format
If I would have thought about it more thoroughly, I’d never have done it.
Starting a power trio is a lunatic idea.
Band of Gypsys, is, of course, the gold standard. Incontrovertible evidence of all that a power trio can be.
And so one tries. One starts a power trio. Somehow conveniently forgetting that Hendrix was — and forever will be — the undisputed master of making the impossible possible.
There is simply no recorded evidence anywhere of a more comprehensive exploration of what the electric guitar can do and be than “Machine Gun.” It is the alpha and the omega.
To say my aspirations began more humbly with Johnny Winter’s Progressive Blues Experiment is laughable. It’s one of the greatest blues-rock records ever recorded — power trio or otherwise. Yet by contrast to Band of Gypsys, it felt somehow more attainable. So that became my north star.
Point of note: A power trio is not the same as a three-piece band.
Nirvana was a three-piece band. One of the greatest. But at the end of the day, save for a few exceptions, this was three people playing one person’s songs as they’d been written to be played.
In saying that, I’m not disparaging the fact that, for example, Dave Grohl’s drum sound is one of the most recognizable in rock, or that the drum intro to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is arguably rock’s most important drum fill in the past 30 years. These things are true. But there’s a difference between a three-piece and a power trio.
A power trio is something zen-like. Jazz-like. Something magical, elusive, rarefied. It is the expanded embodiment of the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” ethos.
There are certainly those bands that expanded the range of what a three-piece can be. Rush, most famously, perhaps. Morphine, perhaps most interestingly. And the Holmes Brothers, most soulfully.
Having mentioned both Nirvana and Morphine, it’s worth noting that “alternative rock” (whatever that may or may not mean) has produced a great many genuinely innovative three-piece bands. The Violent Femmes. Primus. Sleater-Kinney. Husker Du. The Jam. And so many more.
But there’s a kind of musical primitivism among these acts that scoffs at virtuosity and sees improvisation and extended musical interplay as mere self-indulgence.
Point of note: In their days, they were largely right to think so.
From the Grateful Dead to Phish and beyond, the whole “jam band” thing is indeed a flabby cortège of stony basement dwellers. And as to the megalomaniacal NPD displays of arena rock lion kings like Led Zeppelin, the less said the better.
It’s not really about virtuosity anyhow. Not exactly. (Well, with Rush it was. But they rarely if ever improvised live.)
It’s about concept.
Jazz people talk about your “concept.” Concept takes in everything. Rhythm, melody, harmony. The notes you play, and those you don’t. The listening, and the playing. The interplay. The idea. The vision. The approach.
I think there is a power trio concept.
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Eric Dolphy once described what he was up to as “trying to play the new concept with an outward-bound feeling.” I think that’s what you’re trying to do in a power trio. You’re trying to play the power trio concept with an outward-bound feeling.
This power trio concept is the countervailing one to the internalism that mars most “jamming.”
Jamming so often becomes an exercise in synergistically parasitic leveraging. I use what you’re playing to create what I’m playing, you use what I’m playing to create what you’re playing. Each using the other to achieve something for themselves. It’s insular, indulgent, and rapacious.
It’s no wonder it takes drugs to dig the Dead. Drugs trick you into thinking the individual is the communal.
And then there’s Cream.
Cream is the Icarus of power trio mythology. A fable of hubris and hedonism. When they were on, they were transcendent. In flight. But the closer they got to the sun, the more they deliquesced — defined lines blurring into a soggy mess.
Oh, but what they achieved when it was working!
Success as a power trio has more than a little to do with ambition. Motorhead achieved rock immortality through humble aspirations. Born to lose. Live to win. Play loud.
The same might be said for ZZ Top. In their halcyon days, they knew exactly what they were going for, and how to get there. That little ol’ band from Texas.
But was there risk?
I think there is something to the power trio concept that necessitates risk. Requires that you walk the tightrope with no net.
Jazz knows this.
Bill Evans knew this. Listen to the Bill Evans Trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. This was a power trio! Every player the equal of the other. Everyone listening, striving, reaching. Holding one another aloft, pressing, pushing, supporting, challenging.
Don’t let the quietude of the concept fool you. This was every bit the rocket ship that The Band of Gypsys was.
As to The Progressive Blues Experiment, the risk was in the rawness. The gritty crossroads where craft and spontaneity meet. The constraint that produces emancipation. From form emerges freedom. A blues by any other name would smell like a haiku.
And so these are the giants upon whose shoulders one must stand if one wishes to start a power trio. Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, and Paul Motian. Johnny Winter, Tommy Shannon, and Uncle John Turner. Jimi Hendrix, Billy Cox, and Buddy Miles.
BIll Evans may have explained it best in his liner notes to Kind of Blue. If you’ve not read the whole thing, please do. I won’t reprint it all here, but this is a just a sample of his beautiful and clear-eyed prose:
“Group improvisation is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result.”
So I have started a power trio. The experience has been incredible. A sweat lodge-level revelation. An exploration of collaboration, communication, and improvisation.
I’m absurdly fortunate. I play with two other artists who are godhead-level brilliant. Zack Kirk Olsen and Etienne David Franc, on drums and bass respectively. They are sympathetic, telepathic, and otherworldly. They have huge ears. They are elegantly funky, and molto modal. They are ideas in motion. Songs in action. Grooves in iteration.
I feel like I’m on the trail of rock and roll’s most elusive format. I have no idea what transcendence, if any, may await us. But as is testified to by The Band of Gypsys:
“With the power of soul, anything is possible.”
