At the summit meeting of Cleveland saxophonists convened this past summer at the Tri-C JazzFest, Ernie Krivda, Ken LeeGrand and Howie Smith were to take center stage in a round robin. But host Dominick Farinacci announced that LeeGrand would play his featured material first. “He has to get to a gig in Fairlawn at 3,” Farinacci explained. It was shortly after 2 p.m.
I was there and reviewed the concert for All About Jazz (you can read it here), so when I spoke with LeeGrand earlier this month, I had to ask him if he made it. “Yes I did. I got there–it was probably, like, 3:07, and the guys that I had assembled to do that [gig] knew what was going on, so they had already started. I didn’t even take the reeds off the horns. I left my reeds on. So when I got there, all I had to do was put the necks on the saxophones and put my stand together and roll.”
When it comes to music, “roll” is what Ken LeeGrand does—as an educator, instrumentalist, bandleader, griot and inspiration. Now 73, LeeGrand has been on the scene for so long, he essentially is the scene. So it makes perfect sense that during this weekend of homecomings and family reunions, his most enduring band, Horns And Things, will be featured at Ohio City’s Irishtown Bend Taproom.
Still rolling with classic plates
The band has been around a long time—so long that LeeGrand needed to use an unusual mnemonic to remember when it came together. “I have to I think in terms of my cars. I bought a new Volkswagen Jetta GLI which was in 1984. So, we’ve been together for 42, 43 years. Maybe 44. Yeah, something like that.”
Though the band qualifies for classic plates, it still sports original equipment, namely the Horns of Horns and Things, LeeGrand and J.T. Lynch. Yet the two saxophonists’ musical partnership predates Horns And Things by a considerable interval that began before LeeGrand could even drive.
“JT and I had been playing together since, oh geez, we’ve been playing together since 1967,” LeeGrand told me by phone. “His brother had a band and I met him. I was the little kid who went up to the stand and says, ‘Hey, I play clarinet.’ JT kind of gave me the ‘Beat it kid! You bother me,’ but his brother Billy was really cool. I played ‘Summertime’ with him and the people went crazy.”
Blowing under the Northern Lights
Lynch apparently came around to the young man because the two formed a band called ToJam (use this blurry YouTube video as a pronunciation guide) that toured widely, indeed to places that you wouldn’t expect to find music. “We traveled as far south as Daytona Beach, as far north as Greenland inside the Arctic Circle.”
Greenland, the 51st state?
We were at Sondrestrom and Thule Air Bases,” LeeGrand said. “That was November 1978. When we got off the plane, I had on a fur jacket and in my mind, I’m prepared, but these guys laughed. They said, ‘You gotta take that off. It ain’t gonna do nothing up here!’ And they gave us all Arctic-issue stuff. We played every day.”
“My grandfather told me about you”
Almost 50 years later, LeeGrand, Lynch and the current edition of Horns And Things–Sakait Baksar on keyboards, bassist Derrick James and Bill Ransom, who replaces retired drummer Ray Harvin–still play jazz-based, groove-oriented music not too dissimilar from the ToJam band book. “We’ve got a pretty good-sized catalog of originals,” LeeGrand said. “We might do a cover here or there, but I don’t even know if I want to call them covers. Fortunately, people have accepted our music; they like our music.”
And those people come in all ages. “It’s funny. Sometimes you’ll be on a gig and a young person will come up and say, ‘Yeah, my grandfather told me about you guys,'” LeeGrand said. “We had a couple that came up and let the audience know, ‘These guys played our wedding reception 38 years ago.”
LeeGrand takes that as a compliment. “It’s all good because I’m still here to hear their story and they’re still together.”
Just like Horns And Things.
Horns And Things, Sat., Nov. 29, 7:30 p.m. Irishtown Bend Taproom, 1849 W. 24th St., Cleveland, Tickets $20-30, available here.
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
