Name: Neil Cowley Trio
Members: Neil Cowley (piano, composer), Rex Horan (bass), Evan Jenkins (drums)
Nationality: British
Current release: The Neil Cowley Trio's ENTITY is our via Hide Inside.
Recommendations:
NC: One film… ’Hard to be a God’ by Aleksei German. A Russian film that is both hard to watch and impossible not to be affected by. It contains a level of detail which I can barely comprehend. And a book, or a series of books which Rex actually turned me on to. The Shardlake series by CJ Sansom. Centred around the hunchback detective and lawyer Shardlake, set in Tudor England.
RH: At the moment I’m loving the compositions of Jessie Montgomerie and the poetry of Seamus Heaney.
EJ: Anything that involves the drummer Jim White.

If you enjoyed this Neil Cowley Trio interview and would like to know more about the band, visit their official website. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and bandcamp.

For a deeper dive, read our earlier Neil Cowley interview.



For a while, it seemed as though the model of the bed room producer would replace bands altogether. Why do you like playing in a band rather than making music on your own?

NC: One of the main reasons I’ve put the trio back together is because of the bleak mindset I began to associate with being a solo music maker. Long hours in the studio alone didn’t serve me well.

We live in a world of devices designed to serve the solitary individual. It feels to me like music has somewhat followed suit in recent times, rather than promoting any collectiveness. Melancholy loneliness seems to have pervaded the very sound of the music we listen to.

What you hear when the trio play is the joy of playing together. The shared experience and the shared dynamic. The joy of collaboration.

RH: I’m not sure that the model of the bedroom producer was ever going to replace bands, people will always want to see other people creating together, and that people will always want to create together - people will always want to collaborate.

I love the surprises that come out of collaboration, but I also spend some solitary time as a composer or improviser and this has its merits. There are some things you do as a musician that you have to do alone. Having said that, there is nothing akin to the alchemy of making music with others.

EJ: I don’t really make music on my own, but the thought of making music alone gives me the shivers. I like people.

What, to you, are some of the greatest bands, and what makes them great?

NC: Depends what day you ask me. Today, the great noise makers spring to mind such as ‘The Velvet Underground’ or ‘God Speed! Black Emperor’. Though there are many great bands with perhaps greater individual musicians, I love their drone energy; when the rules of music are put aside in favour of under thinking! Pure energy stuff.

[Read our Efrim Manuel Menuck of Godspeed You Black Emperor! feature]

RH: I’m not sure I can name “greatest bands” as such, but I will say that there are bands that make great music. I imagine this comes from a clarity of shared vision as well as serendipitous interpersonal chemistry. That’s the good stuff.

EJ: Originality.

Before you started making music together, did you in any form exchange concrete ideas, goals, or strategies? Generally speaking, what are your preferences when it comes to planning vs spontaneity in a collaboration?

NC: We change the rules from album to album. On ‘Touch and Flee’ we rehearsed the tunes to the ‘enth degree. Its DNA was it’s complicated metering and counting and so it needed to be second nature.



Whereas on ‘Spacebound Apes’ I presented the music to the guys on the morning of recording. They dealt with both scenarios with their usual unparalleled commitment. This is why they’re so important to me and the process!



RH: When I came into this band, the band was three albums old so I had a pretty good idea of what the mission was. I was flattered to be invited to work with Neil and Evan and I just wanted to bring my A game to the trio. I figured I ought to just bring an honest representation of myself and my musicality.

In everything we do, there are planned aspects and spontaneous aspects. While we’re often working to a recipe of sorts, the rock ‘n’ roll kitchen can get quite hot and surprising stuff can happen.

There are many potential models for creativity, from live performances and jamming/producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?  

NC: I’m a compositional control freak, so I drum up the ideas on the piano first and then ultimately present them in some kind of manuscript or audio form to the guys. The sound of the trio requires this kind of pre-work under the bonnet in order to create the beauty later.

The hours the guys put in learning the stuff is a massive part of the whole process and leads to our greater understanding of the music as a whole.

RH: In the trio Neil composes the music and presents it to Evan and I in various forms (recordings, charts etc) and Evan and I bring our interpretation and insight to the parts. This model works really well in this setting.

EJ: Jammin’ in the same room is the ticket for me. Watching things grow via peoples input is special I feel.

How do your different characters add up to the band's sound and in which way is the end result – including live performances – different from the sum of its pieces?

NC: In Evan (on drums) you have a bouncy character who always exudes positivity towards the trio. He’s been likened to ‘Tigger’ from ‘Winnie the Pooh’! Rex (on bass) wears the nickname of ‘The Professor’ very well. He has an equal amount of enthusiasm for the trio, but he also holds a kind of encyclopaedic knowledge of the material and keeps us honest.

Like my bio description on my social media says ... ‘I’m a piano; I’m highly strung’ and I rely very much on the combined affirmation from the other two guys to let me know I’m doing a good job!

RH: There’s no question that my playing is influenced by the people I’m playing with. I feel quite confident in saying that that is the case for all of us. Everything we have recorded has been done live in the studio - our parts have been put down simultaneously and not multitracked. This means that dynamically we are all responding to one-another's impulses in the moment.

EJ: Naturally who you are as a person is going to affect the band’s sound. We support each other as much as possible while playing.

Is there a group consciousness, do you feel? How does it express itself?

NC: If I had to sum it up I’d say we are founded on commitment. Commitment to the music, commitment to the band and commitment to the ‘gag’. That last one is more of an off-stage thing, but we push each other to see everything through to its fullest conclusion. This can be both dangerous and life enhancing but always bears interesting fruit.

RH: Perhaps there’s a group consciousness, I don’t know. There certainly is a group totality of experience, and this is not restricted to the band in the moment of creation. The listener is invited into this experience to be present.

EJ: I feel there is a group consciousness. We’ve played together for so many years it’s inevitable really. How it expresses itself … I don’t really know for sure.

Tell me about a piece or album which shows the different aspects you each contribute to the process particularly clearly, please.

NC: ‘Marble’ from the new album ‘Entity’ is a prescient example of the different elements that we bring to the band.

I bring the composition from my somewhat confused inner world that combines the likes of Shostakovich with The Meters. Rex brings his beautiful lyricism to the opening double bass part and Evan brings a musicality rare among drummers to cradle us both.

RH: None of us is ever phoning it in when it comes to the music we make together. There is complete commitment to the music and to the moment. I’m not sure that I can pinpoint particular moments in our catalogue where an individual is doing more or less than they always do. We are all always doing our best to bring out the best in the music.

EJ: That would have to be the album ‘Spacebound Apes’. Simply because Neil didn’t want us to hear the tunes he’d written until the recording started. That meant Rex and I were reacting to the music in a different way, having not spent time sitting with it.

What tend to be the best songs in your opinion – those where you had a lot in common as a band or those where you had more differences? What happens when another musician takes you outside of your comfort zone?

NC: The best songs are the ones that gain a life of their own in the live environment, because that is where they really live or die as compositions. And once we start playing them live, we realise how much we have in common and always know what to add and what to take away.

As for comfort zones? I don’t think we tend to hang out in comfort zones too often.

RH: It is exciting and compelling to be taken out of my comfort zone as a player and as a musician. It is there that I’ve made the most rewarding discoveries as a player.

EJ: There are no “best songs” for me. I enjoy them all for different reasons. Being taken out of your comfort zone is always exciting.

What are your thoughts on the need for compromise vs standing by one's convictions? How did you resolve potential disagreements?

NC: I can honestly say we barely ever have disagreements. And I I’ve never, ever felt a need for either compromise OR to stand by my convictions; because it always feels like we instinctively know the right path for the band. We share a collective love of what the trio stands for.  

RH: In order to collaborate you need to compromise.

EJ: Get a producer you trust.

Do any of the band's members also have solo projects? If so, how do these feeds into the band's creative process?

NC: I had a solo project which took me away from the band for 7 years. I envisaged this experience feeding into this new album that we made together, but in truth its influence barely featured. Mainly because the band is its own ‘Entity’ (see what I did there?)

‘Father Daughter’ from the new album was an example of this. I bought tons of pre-production stuff to the studio akin to the solo material I’d been making previously and used none of it!



RH: I was doing a solo project for a short while. Lonely times.

EJ: Both Neil and Rex have solo projects … It’s not my thing really.

How has the interaction within the group changed over the years? How do you keep things surprising, playful and inspiring?

NC: It’s barely changed at all. The band makes us into silly children. Which is one of the reasons we are addicted to it? When we come together, we laugh and share ideas relentlessly. I always come away from being together feeling more enchanted with the world around me.

RH: There is a lot of play in this ensemble, there’s a lot of laughter. There is also a real camaraderie which all of us cherish. There is space in the compositions for the music to evolve and stay compelling for all of us. We’ve also all been around for long enough to know how to make it work and to give it legs.

EJ: When you joke around as much as we do, it’s quite easy to keep things fresh and surprising.

Most bands eventually break up. What makes you stay together? What are essentials for a successful band?

NC: Well, we are a band that have taken a 7 year pause, which we are now coming back from, so perhaps we have a unique perspective? So maybe the question should be ‘what made you come back together?’. The answer being brotherhood, the realisation that we have something unique that cannot be replicated elsewhere in our lives and a shared output that we are all attached to in equal measure.

RH: All bands do eventually break up, of course they do. We are reconvening off the back of a seven year break and it’s wonderful to be making music together again.

There was never a question for me as to whether I would jump back in the trio saddle when asked. I love this music and I love these people. We probably keep working together like this because it brings us such joy. It always feels fresh and it always feels real.

EJ: That’s one of life’s mysteries ...