From a tour of Central Park to trek through the rainforest to a voyage to outer space, the power of art to transport its audience to a location is well-documented. Equally important, however, is the role a particular place plays in shaping music itself. Could the rhythmic ingenuity of jazz come about in any way other than through the drum circles of Congo Square? Could the legacy of the Downtown scene emanate from anywhere besides 1980s New York? In reality, however, a separation between inspiration and the inspired is more a figment of one’s imagination than a substantive divide. Instead, the depicted imagery of a locale and the power such place has in shaping expression both mutually reinforce one another. This can be seen well on Jeff Parker and the ETA IV-tet’s  The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem, 2024). 

The Way Out finds guitarist Parker with his long-standing West Coast quartet featuring alto saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose. Based on the lineup alone, it is easy to label this outing as a continuation of their much-acclaimed Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (Eremite, 2019). And, to some extent, that association is apt. Both records were born from the group’s weekly congregation at the Enfield Tennis Academy in Los Angeles. And, in both cases, the music is built in similar ways – out of free-flowing communications between bandmates guided less by preconceived notions and more by their momentary experience with each other’s statements. But, in a more real sense, Mondays and The Way Out are markedly different.

For starters, both albums do not really feature the same band. Oh, the membership remains the same, but an ensemble is more than its parts. The elder recording was captured at the Academy across several dates in 2019, three years after the group started its weekly residence. The younger jumped ahead to a singular performance four years later. The passage of time, including a year lost to a pandemic, is palpable between the two recordings. Where Mondays gave glimmers – however bright- of potential, The Way Out found the communications between bandmates further developed and enriched. The passage of time has brought a deeper understanding of one other and their ideas, even as the artists themselves have evolved. The result is a recording of telepathic communication that stretches beyond a few fleeting moments of magic.  

Perhaps most importantly is how the artists’ relationships with the Enfield Tennis Academy have morphed over the years. More than a backdrop to their continually budding friendship and collaborative nature, the venue itself can be subtly heard in their sound. It is effectively an additional voice in their dialogues. Until it wasn’t. The Academy closed not long after the quartet recorded The Way Out, changing the group’s dynamic, to some extent. And yet, the essence of the ETA is indelibly etched into their sound.  It sonically leaves an image of the space and time no longer there, of not only the walls and floor of the space but also the spirits of those who have passed through it. In this sense, one can see The Way Out as a stepping stone from the quartet’s comforts of their weekly residency at the space that nurtured the group’s growth in its most nascent stages and into the broader world. This is true whether their free improvisations form hypnotically subdued grooves or push them into – as on  “Chrome Dome” – reggae dub. In so doing, the ETA IVtet not only plays homage to the place they once called home but exposes it to the rest of the world. 

This conversation with Jeff Parker from November 19, 2024 digs into the ETA IVtet, his membership in the American Association of Creative Musicians (AACM), his longstanding rock band Tortoise, and more.

PostGenre: What do you think most sets The Way Out of Easy apart from Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy?

Jeff Parker: For one, the new record comes entirely from a single night, whereas Mondays was taken from several different nights over a few years. The new record is also much more assertive, and the fidelity is better than in terms of the way it’s been captured by the recording engineer, Bryce Gonzalez. 

PG: Mondays was released on Eremite Records, and Way Out is on International Anthem. Is the change in labels connected to the different way in which the albums were recorded? 

JP: Yeah, a lot of the decisions about when to release this album were tied to the SML album coming out. Have you heard that? 

PG: Yes, Small Medium Large (International Anthem, 2024) with Josh, Anna, Jeremiah [Chiu], Booker [Stardrum], and Gregory [Uhlmann].

JP: Yeah. That’s another band that grew out of the space at ETA. That record is also another live recording from that space. Scotty McNice, one of the proprietors of the International Anthem label, came up with the idea of putting out another record of the ETA IVtet, but to differentiate from the Eremite release by having it all organically come from one night instead of a highly curated offering like the last one. 

PG: Do you feel that because it is from a singular performance, Way Out has more of a spontaneous feeling than Mondays? 

JP: Not necessarily. Both recordings are based on improvisation. Both albums have three improvisations and one composition on them. But, in general, as a group, we are working in the space of long-form improvisations, and that comes through on both records. 

PG: What do you enjoy most about the long form? 

JP: I find that when you’re in the realm of freely improvised music where there is no real structure, it takes a while for things to develop until, as an improviser, you feel you’re outside of yourself and fully embracing the moment. In making music in the space of this group, we have a pretty deliberate way that we improvise together. The approach we take ties into my interest in things like hip-hop production and making beats from samples. Dealing with repetition and drones kind of bleed their way over into the way this group improvises. Those elements also invite the listener into that world we are making with our music. 

PG: So, since that project is built around samples, do you see the ETA IVtet as connected to your New Breed band in some way, even though the two sound very different from each other?

JP: Not in terms of how the music is constructed. But, conceptually, the two are connected in terms of the way that the end result I’m trying to convey to the listener is dealing with a static sonic landscape as opposed to something that has a lot of peaks and falls in an arc.

PG: When you were releasing the first New Breed album [The New Breed (International Anthem, 2016)], you mentioned that you like to do things musically to prove to yourself that you can do them. What do you feel you are trying to prove with Way Out?

JP: I’m not really trying to prove anything with this recording. I think you have to look at that quote in context. I said that when I was making the first New Breed record. After being in these collaborative musical spaces for thirty years, at that time, I was questioning if I relied on the collaborative process too much and if I was capable of even making my own music. And that is where the statement came from. 

Honestly, I’m not trying to prove anything with Way Out. But I will say that I’m very proud of the musical space that our quartet created for ourselves throughout our residency at the ETA on Monday nights for seven years. We created a new band in this community space. It was a very special time for me as an artist to be able to have that space. And what I greatly enjoy about this recording is that it shares with the world a bit of what we were able to do in that space.

PG: Do you feel that the closing of the Enfield Tennis Academy has changed the group in some way?

JP: That’s a good question. It remains an open question. The last time this group played at ETA was on a Saturday night in December 2023. There was a lot of energy and emotion around it being our last time there. We recorded it, but when we listened to the recording, we found that it wasn’t that good. The recording didn’t have the patience and introspection that we had when we used to play on Monday nights. Maybe it was because of the emotions we were feeling knowing it would be our last time. But the last two times the group played in LA were both on Monday nights, and they were both really good. Maybe we were meant to always play on a Monday. 

PG: To ask you about connections to your other work, do you feel you approach music similarly with Tortoise as with the ETA IVtet or other groups under your name? 

JP: Certainly. I can probably speak for everybody in Tortoise when I say that none of us would be the same musician musically or artistically without the unique vision that the band helped everybody realize. Also, being in the band makes you feel more comfortable with how people approach your music. For thirty years, we have been dealing with people trying to label our unlabelable music. They call it post-rock or whatever, but we don’t sound like Mogwai. We don’t sound like Explosions in the Sky. Each of the bands sounds different, and each is just trying to do their thing.

PG: Do you think that propensity to label music is primarily a marketing tool, or is it from listeners trying to make sense of what they hear?

JP: It’s kind of both. I think certain styles of music adopt characteristics, and some musicians want those characteristics to be their thing. They may want to see themselves carrying on a specific musical tradition and exploring the kind of sound that people expect to hear from that tradition. But Tortoise has never really been about that. I’ve never really been about that.

PG: You are, however, connected to a rich tradition of avant-garde experimentalism through your membership in the AACM. While you are using free improvisation with the ETA IVtet, the results tend to be much calmer than is stereotypically found with free improvisation. Do you feel the ability to tap into that aesthetic while continuing to play freely is something you picked up from the AACM? 

JP: I’m proud to be an associate member of the AACM. I was mentored by many musicians from the AACM:  Fred Anderson and Ernest Dawkins, Douglas Ewart…. 

PG: George Lewis 

JP: Yeah, George Lewis. I have also learned from my peers there, people like Nicole Mitchell. Being in the AACM was mostly about giving you the support and confidence to trust your musical instinct. If you had unique ideas, it serves as a support system to present them. The music that the musicians of the AACM make is vast and broad. I think the ETA group does follow a different take on free improvisation, one that is very deliberate. As a group, we are thinking more compositionally than reactively about what we’re building as a unit.

PG: Do you feel that the ability to think compositionally instead of reactively has improved over the last seven years as the group has continued to play together?

JP: For sure. Definitely. When we get together and play, even if we haven’t played together in months, between the four of us, things are very relaxed and patient. And that’s beautiful. I greatly love playing with this group. 

PG: Considering both you and Jay are generation older than Josh and Anna, do age dynamics enter into the group at all?

JP: Not really. We’re all just very close friends. But I have also recently owned the responsibility to mentor younger musicians, just as older cats mentored me. Often, it is just giving younger musicians the confidence to pursue their ideas. To fully get your ideas out there, you need to have a strong will behind them. You need to trust your musical instincts. And that can be difficult because once your work is out into the world, Listeners can hear all the idiosyncracies and uniqueness of it.

For an artist, It takes a certain amount of courage to be able to put your thing out there because you don’t know if people are gonna like what you made or hate it. Some artists don’t care about those things, but I care a lot. And, sometimes, it takes support from your community to even be able to take the necessary steps to put your work out there. 

‘The Way Out of Easy’ is available now on International Anthem. You can order the album from the label’s Bandcamp. More information about Jeff Parker is available on his website. The ETA IVtet will perform at the Big Ears Festival on March 28, 2025. Tortoise will perform on March 27th and SML on March 29th.