Josh Duffee squeezes in Bix fest between tours with international jazz groups
Josh Duffee has it all planned.
“I’ve mapped out my route,” the 28-year-old drummer said with a smile.
A carefully marked schedule for this weekend’s Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival ensures that the Quad-City resident will be behind the drum kit for performances by both the New Wolverine Jazz Orchestra, based in Australia, and Spats Langham and His Rhythm Boys, a British Bix band.
He got invitations a few months ago to sit in with both groups. The British band’s drummer has an ailing mother, and the leader/drummer of the Australian band took off time from work to be with a new grandchild and couldn’t take more holiday time for the annual Davenport festival.
Duffee will give 20 performances over five days, from Wednesday night’s warmup concert at the Redstone Room in the River Music Experience, Davenport, through a Monday night date at Jim’s Knoxville Tap in Milan, Ill.
“The nice thing is there’s a lot of volunteers I have who can help out,” he said.
Those volunteers include people helping him assemble identical drum kits at the concert venues and his wife, Crystal, who is driving the car that will take him from one location to another as he keeps a hectic schedule covering at least four venues.
The only kink in Duffee’s plan could be the uniform. Spats performs in all-white while the Wolverines dress in black.
“It would be nice to layer myself in clothing. If (the temperature) was in the 60s, it’d be perfect, but with the humidity, I’d be suffering,” he said.
The Davenport native had to give his eponymous orchestra the week off from performing at the Bix festival so he could play with the other bands.
“With the economy the way it’s going and as travel costs keep going up, they (the foreign-based bands) may not be coming up in future years if travel costs get too extravagant,” he said. “It’s like a pilgrimage and this is their Mecca. They come for Bix.”
For Duffee, the performances come sandwiched between touring performances with each group.
He and his wife just got back from an international jazz festival in England, where he played with Spats Langham as well as an all-star band. Twenty-five bands were featured, and Duffee was the only American on stage — 18 hours a day, five days a week.
“I was more than delighted,” he said. “My wife was excited because she’s always wanted to go to England, so this gave us an opportunity to go and play and still vacation, too.”
After Bix, he will head out on the road with the New Wolverines, first on tour to Muscatine, Iowa, and Madison, Wis., then to the East Coast, including a recording session in New York, before flying to California to perform in the Orange County Classic Jazz Festival through Aug. 10.
Duffee said he found a different attitude toward Bix and old-time jazz in England.
“I think they have more of an appreciation of jazz music and ‘20s and ‘30s jazz music than over here. When a band gets together, they play it just like the recording. They know the arrangements and they listen to it. And it’s a lot more younger musicians who are playing that style,” he said. “They know the artists, they know the history and they know how to play the correct style.”
The breakneck pace of Duffee’s summer schedule makes him ask why he takes on so much.
“I usually say that at the end of the Bix,” he said. “Each year, when it rolls around, I’m so excited about the music and the chance to play that I realize — 20 times (during Bix Weekend) — ‘Oh, my gosh,’ but to me that’s so exciting that I want to be able to play the music as much as possible.”
David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.