Linda Tillery looks back while pushing forward
When it comes to her own music, Linda Tillery doesn’t have much time to look backwards.
The vocalist has spent much of the past three decades lovingly tending the roots of African-American music, drawing explicit connections between field shouts, spirituals, blues, civil rights anthems, R&B and hip-hop.
Balancing a daunting array of projects leaves Tillery little time to reflect on past musical milestones, so when Los Angeles keyboardist/ composer Colleen Stewart called to ask if she had any plans to mark the 40th anniversary of her self-titled album on Olivia Records, “I told her no, I hadn’t given it any thought,” Tillery recalls.
But Stewart had “already prepared her spiel,” Tillery says. “She said, ‘We need to celebrate this! Let’s put the band together.’ I told her I don’t have the time or energy to pursue all this. But she had the energy, and called everybody.”
Stewart rounded up just about every one of the album’s major contributors for the Womanly Way Reunion Band tour, which hits Mill Valley’s Trockmorton Theatre on June 30, Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage on July Saturday and Kuumbwa in Santa Cruz on Sept. 28. The combo includes award-winning composer Mary Watkins on keyboards, electric bassist Diane Lindsay, and vocalist/percussionist Vicki Randle from the album. They’re joined by guitarist Linda Taylor, drummer Maria Martinez, and vocalist Tammi Brown.
“I was elated when we rehearsed,” Tillery says. “Here we are 40 years later and a lot of the rough edges are gone. We’ve all been on the road, had multiple musical experiences, and it really shows.”
Tillery’s 1977 album came out in the midst of the women’s music movement on Olivia, the collectively run record label that served as the essential vehicle for a generation of artists inspired by feminism and lesbian liberation. Tillery brought a bracing jolt of funk and R&B onto a scene characterized by earnest singer/ songwriters.
“That was a period of heightened social awareness, particularly coming into an understanding of women’s rights,” says Tillery, who first gained attention in the late 1960s with the Berkeley rock ’n’ rhythm combo The Loading Zone, and went on to contribute to dozens of albums as a session vocalist and drummer. “Joining Olivia I remember being very excited to have other women to make music with. I’d never done that before.”
Tillery gravitates toward musical situations that offer a creative challenge or address a larger agenda, like appearing as a special guest at bassist Ruth Davies long-running Blues Night at the Stanford Jazz Festival. The July 19 concert at Dinkelspiel Auditorium ($15$45; stanfordjazz.org) features an all-star cast including guitarist Danny Caron, drummer Ndugu Chancler, and pianist Tammy Hall (who, like Davies, is part of Tillery’s Freedom Band, a recent project devoted to songs of resistance and liberation by era-defining artists such as Bill Withers, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, and Bob Dylan).
For Davies, Tillery’s versatility is a feature, not a bug. “She works in so many different genres, percussion things, blues, jazz, folk,” the bassist says. “She fits anywhere because there’s so much truth in everything she does.”
While she’s always thinking about the future, Tillery has also been contemplating the distant past in recent months as she collaborates with vocalist Molly Holm on creating music for Cal Shakes’ West Coast premiere of “black odyssey,” Oakland-native Marcus Gardley’s adaptation of Homer’s foundational tale set in the East Bay. Directed by the company’s artistic director Eric Ting, the production runs Aug. 9-Sept. 3.
“I want some real roots music in the show,” Tillery says. “I have dumped Eric into roots land. We’ve done two workshops with them, doing some vocal improvising and working on harmonizing and structuring some of these songs. They’re performing the music live, and that’s exciting for me.”
She joins the a cappella quintet SoVoSó as a special guest at Piedmont Piano on July 21 ($20; piedmontpiano.com). No project better captures her wide-open spirit than her guest appearance with the klezmer band Kugelplex on Sept. 2 at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. The concert marks her 69th birthday, and she was thrilled to get the invitation. Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com