Steve Swallow on “Winter Songs,” Creative Renewal, and the Art of Note Length

For more than six decades, Steve Swallow has been an artistic force of nature. Whether it’s as an improviser, a composer, a bandleader, or a sideman, his unmistakable melodic voice on the bass has been distinct in tone and approach.

That didn’t change on his brand-new album, Winter Songs, but his process did.

It’s the first music he’s released since the passing of his partner, Carla Bley. Where Swallow previously chased the muse to write his songs, this time it found him.

“I was there when this music was written. In fact my hand held the pencil,” he wrote in the ECM Records press release. “I began with the need to do something to fill each long day, and music rushed forward to sustain me. Before Winter Songs I had given music whatever I could, but as I made this album the tables turned: it gave me what I needed. Music is elemental, like the air we breathe.”

He assembled a roster of cherished collaborators to create the sonic poetry of Winter Songs, including saxophonist Chris Cheek, trumpeter Mike Rodriguez, drummer Adam Nussbaum, guitarist Steve Cardenas, and pianist Gil Goldstein. As always, Swallow’s unique tonal character is present, as he plays his signature Citron bass with a pick. However, he’s constantly evolving, striving to improve – even at 85 years old.

In this first of a three-part interview, we talk with Swallow about Winter Songs, diving into his compositional approach, why he didn’t name the tracks, and how your note length defines the groove.

Winter Songs is out now on CD and as a digital download (Apple Music, and Amazon Music).

Winter Songs is just gorgeous. All the music feels cohesive, so I wanted to ask you about the writing process. In the press release, you mentioned that this album came about a little differently. Could you delve into that?

Unlike my previous albums, this one was written within a short, defined period of time. That’s the first time this has happened for me, and I’m exceedingly grateful for it as well.

It’s called Winter Songs simply because the album was written over a single winter, the winter of ’23 going into ’24. I began in mid-October and finished up by April. I think the cohesion, what cohesion there is in the album, stems in large measure from having written it in a single, very intense period of time.

In the past, my albums have been a collection of songs that have been written over a much longer period. I’m a very slow writer. It often takes me a month to finish up a short song. I wish that were not the case, but it always has been. I’m just slow and resigned to it.

But this album was the product of daily application. I don’t think I missed a day during that entire winter. I was working really intensely on this album.

The songs did not come quickly… They came with seeming reluctance over the period of several months, but the songs did seem to be talking to each other. There are motifs that reappear. There are themes that extend through the album. I think that’s because it was written at a single go. I’m very, very grateful that it came as it did. I’ve always wanted to make an album that tied together so well.

When you’re talking about taking longer to write songs, is it a perfectionism thing, or are you waiting for inspiration to strike?

There’s a bit of both. The process for me is usually that I have to wait longer than I’d like to for inspiration to strike, but there’s nothing to be done about that. I just sit at the piano and at the desk and wait for a good idea.

But then once I’ve got that good idea, that initial germ, it’s just plain hard work. At that point, it’s as if I put on my white lab coat and get to work. The process of exploring the idea that I’ve received and discovering the ramifications and the implications of that idea is a process that takes weeks and sometimes months. It’s hard work, and it requires persistence.

On the other hand, it’s a process that I enjoy. It’s remarkable to see an idea bloom, to see it grow.

I notice as I’m telling you all of this stuff that I’m not speaking so much about what I did as what happened to me. I think a critical aspect of my composition process, as much as I need to sit at the desk and focus hard, is that it’s also a process that seems to me to require openness, to welcome ideas as they come and to feel gratitude for them.

It’s a process that I think has helped me to grow over the years. It’s one of those ways in which music has enriched my life and made it better.

I felt that more strongly than ever during the writing of this album. I really felt extraordinarily grateful to music for visiting me every day. It was just what I needed, and it was there when I needed it. I suspect that I took it for granted a bit in the past, and I’m chastised. I’m awakened to what a remarkable gift music is.

I was wondering if maybe this album was a sort of therapeutic process for you.

You could call it that, yes, but I’m a little reluctant to see it in those terms. I think more to the point, it was a force that was available to me when I needed it. It was a powerful and elemental thing in my life.

I’d been kind of away from music for a few years, although never too far away. Music has been a daily presence in my life since I was a kid. But I hadn’t been out touring, and I hadn’t been writing songs for a few years.

When I first sat down at the piano, the very first day I began writing this music, I wondered if the music would be there. Sure enough, it was. It was there from the very moment I sat down. It seemed like a force of nature to me. I was astonished and grateful from the moment I sat at the piano.

Do you typically write from the piano or from the bass? I know “Seven” is a real bass melody on there.

I don’t write at the bass. I never have. I’ve never had success writing at the bass, and I long ago stopped trying.

Way back when, when I began writing music seriously, I was in my early twenties. I wrote at the piano. I sat at the piano and played until an idea emerged. But at some point, a few years after I started seriously writing, I stopped doing that. I stopped because I found that when I did that – when I played the piano until an idea emerged – I was essentially playing what I knew. I was wandering through the musical terrain I already had under me.

So I consciously took my hands away from the piano keyboard, and I’ve done that ever since. I’ve sat at the piano without playing it until I’ve already got an idea, because I want composition to be a process of discovery. I want to be on new ground rather than familiar ground when I write.

I see each piece I write as a record of what I’d discovered at a given time and in a given period of days. I’m hoping, too, that the music will have that effect on the players I give it to and ultimately on the listeners. I want it to be something new for all of us, and to be invigorating and inspiring in that way.

So what I do is I sit at the piano without playing it until I receive an interesting idea. Then I use the piano as a means of developing the idea. I’m kind of back and forth between the piano and the desk.

I’m a pencil-and-manuscript-paper guy. I don’t use computer software, so part of the process is how quickly can I write stuff down? If I can’t write it down, it passes by without registering. If I write it down, I tend to value it.

I’m happy that the process of writing down musical ideas is slower than that process is sitting at a keyboard connected to computer software. It serves as a kind of editing tool for me, I think.

Since these tracks are just numbered, I was wondering if the compositions came out that way or if you sequenced them and then gave them the numbers. Is there any weight to the numbers?

The numbers almost entirely reflect the sequence in which they were written. But I have to confess that there’s a small change toward the end. They’re almost entirely in sequence.

My initial idea was that there was a logic to the chronology, to the order in which I’d written them, that I wanted to preserve. But then in the process of editing the record, I came up against the fact that there was a flaw in the sequence that I could remedy by shifting a couple of tunes around.

So I would have to confess that it’s almost entirely the order in which the tunes were written, but not exactly.

I always think it’s interesting when people use numerical values, because it takes away any sort of background or story that maybe putting a name on it would create.

Exactly. That was exactly what my intention was. I was kind of addressing a situation that I’ve noticed, which is that people are increasingly listening to single tracks and not to albums as an entire event.

I wanted to speak against that. I want this album to be eaten whole rather than separately. Had I given the tunes their own titles, it would have worked against that perception, the perception that the separate songs are strongly related each to the other.

But they are. I think you heard it, too. There are themes that keep reappearing. I say “kept reappearing” because I’m thinking back about the process. Once again, it’s not that I thought to myself, “Okay, I’m on Number Six. I think Number Six should relate to Number Two.”

It was something that happened to me. The theme from Number Two reappeared in Number Six and reasserted itself, I should say. Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Knowing that you’re writing from the piano, I think it’s interesting how you help shape the music further from the bass. On the first track, you’re cutting the note off right on beat three, and it gives the whole song this kind of loping feel. Is that something you consciously think about, or did it just feel right to you at the moment? I’m curious about your thoughts on note length.

It’s absolutely something that I’ve given a great deal of attention to over the years. It’s essential to generating a groove.

My master has been, for decades, since I was a teenager, Percy Heath as much as anybody else. The bassist with the Modern Jazz Quartet. His control over the envelope of his notes is astonishing to me to this day.

It’s a left-hand issue, of course. The application and the release of pressure on each note is critical not only to making a shapely note, but to generating a solid groove. The two are absolutely linked in my mind.

Do you have a rule of thumb about note lengths, for anyone who hasn’t been thinking about this stuff?

This addresses what you were first saying. I think my attention to note length is both a kind of geeky, academic, deliberate issue that I’ve spent a great deal of time with over the years, but it’s also a response to what’s going on at the moment in the room.

The generation of a groove is a very mysterious and elusive thing. It certainly involves paying attention to issues like the envelope of the note and where it’s placed and all of that. But then, in the end, it’s also very much a response to the moment: what’s going on in the moment, where the drummer is putting it, how the soloist is phrasing, what the other accompanying instruments are contributing.

There’s a point at which you let go of what you know and commit yourself to the moment.

Stay tuned for part two, where we discuss gear and tone.