Steve Okonski
Photo by Don Panicko.
The studio at 122 West Loveland Avenue is not an unfamiliar space for Steve Okonski, the leader of his eponymous trio Okonski. Ever since the Colemine label set up shop in Loveland, Ohio it has been a host to a number of groups passing through town, including Durand Jones and the Indications who all of this trio’s members have connections to. After setting aside some time in winter of 2020, Okonski, trained initially as a classical pianist, invited Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery and Aaron Frazer to work on an album that was initially planned to be beat driven and fully composed trio instrumentals.
After finishing this first session with some improvisations, a second week was booked in the summer of 2021 to try and capture some more of that spontaneous energy. During this session, the tracks were all improvised and recorded live to a Tascam 388 during several late nights at the Colemine HQ. They were structured to allow the group’s collective intuition to fully shape the melodies and arcs of the music.
The resulting album, Magnolia, is an earnestly felt and moving work of jazz. Prior to its release, Steve sat down with The Eisenberg Review to discuss the new album, its recording and more.
Steve, welcome to The Eisenberg Review. Magnolia is an absolutely beautiful record, and it captures a lot of the qualities that I love about jazz music. It's conversational, it allows for kind of both the spiritual awe and melancholy meditation that jazz allows for so well. I know you're a member of Durand Jones & The Indications. I know you were also trained as a classical pianist, so what led to the decision to record a jazz record?
First, thanks for having me on, man, to be a part of it and I appreciate the kind words. This album kind of came from a couple of different places. One, playing with Aaron from The Indications, Aaron Frazer, we've been playing together for years. And then Mike, the bass player, obviously, have been playing with him with The Indications for a bit. So we had played together a lot and there's a lot of downtime, sound checks or rehearsals, that we would end up playing together. And so we had a ton of music that we vibed really well together. And then, I've always been a huge jazz fan. The record came about just getting to know Terry Cole of Colemine. He was interested in doing something a little more jazz-centric on Colemine, and he knew how much I was into that kind of music and he asked if I'd be interested in trying to put something together.
Of course, I said yeah, and kind of pulling on the experience that Aaron and Mike and I had together. We did one session that was much less jazz-oriented. It was a lot more deep bassed, fully thought out, composed music that was really cool. But we ended up the last day of that session kind of going on this more improvised atmospheric kind of route and loved that and ended up coming back for another session with no preconceptions and just ended up recording the bulk of Magnolia. So I think it was, we definitely had the idea to set out to do a quote-unquote "jazz record", but what came of it I think was so organic and it just kind of happened to fall within what I think maybe those guidelines are for jazz. But I'm sure some people would say, "Oh, that's not jazz," but that's another discussion.
That's another conversation. I'm down for it, because I know there are a lot of jazz musicians now, particularly in the British scene that I follow that don't refer to what they're doing as jazz at all. They don't like that term. Genre is less relevant than it's ever been. But again, yeah, separate conversation. Let's continue to focus on Magnolia, because you brought up a number of great points that I want to hit on. And of course, as with so many things, Terry Cole is the genesis of just brilliant work. It's part of the reason Colemine has such longevity and has such a host of great projects under their belt.
There was an excellent primer that posted to YouTube a little while ago about the recording of the record, and you hit on I think one of the main creative decisions that struck me: space was really prioritized as a part of the recording process, not just in terms of the minimal gear, lack of overdubs, emphasis on capturing the sound of the three of you playing in a room, but also space to explore and play with one another. What were the creative priorities for you getting into record for those sessions that would become Magnolia?
I think a lot of it came down to a lot of that space, allowing there to be space came down to trust really, and that's all three of us and Terry trusting that if we leave a space here, someone is going to fill that, someone is going to add something that builds, that is tasteful and nice, and I think being able to trust that lets you take a breath a lot more often. And so creatively going into it, I mean for almost everything on this track it was, it's one tape, and there really wasn't even playing in E major and then go from there and see what happens. And so yeah, creatively, I think that idea of space was really important and that came off of a trust that we're kind of all locked into the same sonic, psychic space for these next four minutes.
And certainly you three have tremendous chemistry having played together for years.
Definitely. I think, yeah, no, it's a huge help and again, that's where a lot of the trust comes from, but for the three of us, I think it's not like a psychic thing where we know it's going to happen, but we are really attuned into each other's musical predilections and things and can kind of follow and lead and know that everyone's going to kind of be on the same page there.
Beautiful. Where were you born and what was your first musical memory?
I was born in Summerville, New Jersey, but was only there, in the Northeast, for about a year and a half until I moved to Michigan and that's where I grew up. That's where I went to school and college. A southeast Michigan little town called Milan.
My first musical memory, I have to say is when we got this piano on the street on the curb that was getting thrown out. My dad got a couple of buddies and rented a truck and brought the piano into our house. I remember so clearly being so excited about that, seeing the piano come in. It's an old turn of the century Grinnell Brothers Detroit brand upright, but I remember I was probably five years old and I got up the next morning just so excited to go play it and there was a little post-it note on the piano that said, "Please don't play until mom and dad wake up," which I think I probably listened to. So that was really early on, but musically, my parents were always playing a bunch of music and I do remember there a time when I'm like the stereo system, I'm playing a lot of Beatles, a lot of Miles Davis, that sort of thing, and just kind of running around the house listening to that.
The education that our parents give us musically is so instructive and it's a really cool first memory that I think speaks directly to the record we're talking about now.
What’s next? Certainly Magnolia is being released on February 24th. Are there plans to tour behind the material? Are there plans to follow this up at some point eventually? What's next for Okonski?
There's definitely plans to follow this up. I'm going to hopefully get the guys together and get back to Loveland, Ohio and start working on a second LP, keeping the same energy and vibe going as we head on Magnolia. That's still in the works, but still in the planning phase. Really excited to do something like that again.
I would love to play some shows on this album. It's a matter of logistics now to see how that would work, where we would go, how long that would be out for as much as I've played and toured with The Indications, I have never booked shows or tours on my own, and it's, I don't know, a little bit intimidating to try to figure out what that would be like. Also, because it's a jazz album. It's a quiet meditative album. I don't know. We got together a couple weeks ago and figured out what a live set would be like in case anything were to come up, so hopefully we will play some shows on this, but as for where and when and what that would look like, that's still kind of up in the air and hopefully I can start working on how to figure that out and get a helping hand here and there.
Let me know about Cleveland. We can definitely make that happen.
Right on, man. Thank you. I love that.
I'd love to see it. I would be remiss, before I let you go, if I didn't ask about that terrific Pale Jay remix of On the Lake. I believe that's the name of the tune if I'm not butchering it, I listen to it-
By the Lake.
By the Lake. Was that recorded during the same set of sessions?
So that song, I got to give it all up to Pale Jay for that. Terry knew that we were both kind of signed around the same time and he thought it would be a cool look if we were kind of both announced as New Colemine/Karma Chief artists together, and so we sent Pale Jay Magnolia and he took the first track on that, “Runner Up,” and took that piano intro, which kind of goes throughout the entire song. He took that and then sampled that essentially, and then wrote everything around that, including the loop. It was really cool to be able to, collaborate is a generous word for that, but to have him take that track off the album and kind of build his own soundscape around it, and I love it. I mean, it's fantastic. I love listening to it and he's so talented.
I hope more people do that with this album on their own. Take it, sample it, put words to it, add to it. It feels like I'm really happy with it as a foundation and I think it stands on its own really well, but I love hearing what people can do with it. Kind of like a lot of those old Bob James records, they were just so easily sampled and so listenable on their own. I love “By the Lake” and I hope more of that sort of thing can come out of it. I don't know necessarily what I could hear it being, but that is why I'm excited for other people to take it and run with it and everyone's going to hear something different on that. I heard of this as it was, I love just that, again, collaboration is generous of a word, but just kind of letting people do what they want with it, having to be a nugget of inspiration to go somewhere else.
Steve, thank you so much for the time. Magnolia out on Colemine records February 24th. I cannot wait for my audience to hear the rest of it. Since I got the advanced copy it's been pretty steadily, almost everything I've been listening to.
Man, I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.