Guitarist Mike Stern picks his way through challenges
Jazz-rock legend touring again after 2016 accident nearly ended his career
The title of Mike Stern’s new album, “Trip,” offers a revealing clue about the guitarist’s resilience in the face of extreme adversity.
In early July last year, while running errands the day before jetting off to Europe for a tour, Stern was crossing a Manhattan street trying to hail a cab when he tripped over construction debris, sending him sprawling to the pavement.
With the humerus bones in both arms broken he was clearly out of commission, but when his hands suffered nerve damage from the accident Stern’s reign as one of the most prodigious jazz-rock guitarists on the scene seemed to be coming to an end.
But he wasn’t ready to put down his ax. Some 10 weeks after the accident Stern was back at his regular local gig at 55 Bar, and by the end of October he felt confident enough to join Chick Corea at the Blue Note in New York for an all-star tribute to their former employer, Miles Davis.
The crazy thing is, judging by “Trip,” his fifth release on the all-tooaptly named label Heads Up, Stern sounds as electrifying as ever, with his trademark sweet-and-searing tone and bebop-inflected syntax. This despite the fact he’s had to undergo several tendon transfers just to enable him to bring his fingers together, while his right hand is frozen in an ulnar claw from the nerve damage.
“I’m still a kind of work in progress,” says Stern, 64, who brings an all-star quartet to Kuumbwa in Santa Cruz and Yoshi’s in Oakland next week. “The main thing is you’ve got to keep going. You can’t let depression get you if you can. Sometimes it’s not possible to avoid it, but I’ve got to keep rocking. Thank God it sounds better than it feels.”
Stern might have bad days, but
just like he dubbed his first post-accident album with a triple-entendre he’s clearly relying on his wry sense of humor, which comes through clearly via “Trip” tune titles like “Screws” and “Scotch Tape and Glue.”
The latter adhesive is actually a key ingredient in his return to the bandstand. When news of the accident quickly spread on the musicians’ grapevine, Stern heard from numerous players who also had suffered various health setbacks. Ray LeVier, a drummer who found a way to continue performing after suffering devastating injuries in a fire, gave him some hard-earned advice.
“He said try wig glue, and it worked,” Stern says. “That’s what I use to hold a pick.”
Whatever challenges Stern faces, his bandmates certainly aren’t cutting him any slack. For this West Coast tour, he’s traveling with an incomparable quartet drawn from the expansive cast of 17 musicians who join him in various combinations throughout “Trip’s” 11 tracks (all written by Stern, an underrated composer).
The rhythm section tandem features bassist Tom Kennedy and drummer Dave Weckl, players who grew up together in St. Louis and went on to
work with everyone from Corea and Stern to Dave Grusin and Lee Ritenour (while also recording various albums of their own). The senior member of the band is trumpet great Randy Brecker, a jazz-rock fusion pioneer who helped create the sound that caught Stern’s ear in the mid-1970s.
“Mike is amazing,” says Brecker, 72. “He’s the bravest guy I know, coming back from this crazy accident that could happen to anybody. He must have been going through every emotion possible. Now, if you didn’t know he had the injury you would never know it from his playing.”
Stern started working with Brecker in the early 1990s when the trumpeter relaunched the influential Brecker Brothers band co-led by his younger sibling, the late revered tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker (with whom Stern was already touring and recording). Much like Stern, Brecker is equally at home tearing through highvelocity chops-busting fusion or caressing diaphanous ballads.
The trumpeter relishes both aspects of Stern’s music. “When I first started doing the gig that’s what made the whole thing enjoyable,” he says. “For a trumpeter especially it’s a real challenge going from a million notes a minute, loud and fast as possible, to as soft as you can with a Harmon mute.”
A master at designing a set for maximum impact, Stern knows that every tune, indeed every note, shapes the experience of the sounds surrounding it. While he may be held together by pins and glue, his music reflects an indomitable spirit.
“I ain’t going to stop until my freakin’ arm falls off,” he says. “And then I’ll try to glue it back on.”