Cohesive and fluid are not words most would associate with the wild, spontaneous collective Bright Dog Red. Yet, relative to their eight preceding albums, the upstate New York-based improvisational band seems to have settle into a relentless groove on Luck Would Have It, (Ropeadope, 2026). Even bandleader Joe Pignato described that effort as their most stylistically diverse album yet. Their eleventh album, a vinyl-only release with digital to follow at a later date, captures a forty-two-minute live performance at New York’s Nublu. Part of this is owed to their general creative process. The band enters the studio without charts or set lists, starting only with a concept designed to inspire musicians, poets, and MCs for their improvisations. That lack of more detailed planning proves especially challenging in a live setting.
But that spontaneity proves key to the band’s essence. As drummer-leader Joe Pignato puts it, “What we try to do with Bright Dog Red is get a bunch of different people together, different elements, of course music and poetry, but also different stylistic elements, and on a bandstand and see if an audience is willing to go with us, wherever things go… [W]e don’t actually know what’s going to happen…” The collective’s diverse membership is further designed to provide for such lack of predictability. Newcomers trumpeter-flugelhornist Martin Loyato and celebrated poets Randall Horton and Heroes Are Gang Leaders’ Christian Black join long-term members Pignato, vocalist- poet Matt Coonan, bassist-guitarist Tyreek Jackson, and effects producer Cody Davies. Michael Eaton also appears on tenor saxophone.
But spontaneity itself is a condition for creation, not a description of sound. A much more apt description for Bright Dog Red’s sound was provided by JazzTimes as “part Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest.” Or, as Paul Schulman put it, “Mavhavishnu Orchestra meets Digable Planets.”
Although the instrumentalist on Luck improvised their entire set, the poets took a different approach. Black was more aligned with the instrumentalists, writing poetry expressly for the performance. Horton recited poems that appeared on the group’s Never Would We (Ropeadope, 2025), finding appropriate spaces to enter the fray. Coonan stood between Horton and the rest of the band, both taking his verses from previous Bright Dog Red albums and with improvising new ones.
The first half of the performance fills Side A of the record. It begins with the two horns, Loyato and Eaton, prominent. A little short of the two minute mark, Horton steps in with “Tumblin’ Down” from the poem The Rebirth of Melody. “Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling down/when all the structures/come tumbling down/only then begins the rebirth/of melody, of sound.” Shortly after, Black enters with “Anatomy”: “The known know the core goes/When the limbs limp in cold clothes/that ain’t natural, puff it out like/It’s just an afro.” His last line links to “Tumblin’ Down,” as does Coonan’s “Dagnabbit!” from Bright Dog Red’s third album Somethin’ Comes Along (Ropeadope, 2020). And that is only the record’s first six minutes. A little under two minutes of a swirling mix of horns, electronics, and drumming follows, after which Horton delivers the final verse from the poem “Staring Into a Prism, Look.”
Black follows with “Free Time,” linking to “Tumblin’Down” in his last verses. Four more poetry excerpts follow on Side A: Coonan’s “Somewhere in the Dirt” (from In Vivo (Ropeadope, 2021)), Horton’s “Why Witness,” Black’s “Noah gets a Vineyard,” and Coonan’s “Seems Like” (from Never Would We (Ropeadope, 2020). In between, we hear blistering tenor improvisations from Eaton, Loyato’s soaring trumpet, Jackson’s scrappy guitar and bass, churning rhythms from Pignato, and Davies’ otherworldly sounds.
Side B of Luck begins with Coonan’s improvised lyrics which ultimately implore the crowd to chant. Eaton steps in, with the band joining in, surrendering to Horton’s “Why Witness?” (“witness the rhetorical whitewashing…..in real time–the disrespect/in tremolo time, in no time”). The band holds sway again until Black unleashes “The Collection Epidemic” (“ I got a lighter on my bushwick that could bushwack/Cut me some slack if your field never turned into a track/Tracks on my arm always loud they talk back/they got a fiending to code switch/The tracks on my arm are talking black.”). He keeps continuity by linking his last phrases to “Tumblin’ Down.” Jackson and Pignato then engage in an extended funky dialogue on bass and drums, with the horns punctuating with sharp lines over a backdrop of electronics. It paves the way for Coonan’s “Boxes” – from Somethin’ Comes Along (Ropeadope, 2020) – an unaccompanied recitation that is equal parts prose and poetry. Horton immediately follows with another excerpt from “Why Witness?” before Black segues right away into “Cock Back.” It all ends with a chaotic instrumental backdrop.
Though Luck Would Have It, like all of Bright Dog Red’s output, thrives on the spontaneity of being in the moment, its series of poetic excerpts are cohesive, not random. The vocalists’ deliveries are also undoubtedly animated. Even so, the choice in poetry – as great as it can be in moments – unquestionably limits the album’s accessibility. Earlier more-instrumental focused studio releases are perhaps better first forays for a listener into the world that is Bright Red Dog. Luck Would Have It demands concentration but it has also earned it.
‘Luck Would Have It’ is out now on Ropeadope Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.
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