For those unaware, following the release of his latest pop-rock solo album, Easley Rider in 2020, New Orleans pedal steel guitarist, vocalist and composer Dave Easley has been more than busy in the interim.

After Easley Rider was, unfortunately, largely overlooked during the height of the pandemic, an instrumental work, selected as ‘Bandcamp jazz album of the month’ for January 2022, was released on LP and DDL through the auspices of Chris Schlarb’s Big Ego Records label, entitled Byways Of The Moon.

Around the same time another Easley group, jazz-rock quartet, Kolotov Mocktails, released Ivy Hall on Three Coasts Music. 2022 also saw the CD release by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation of the Musaica Chamber Ensemble album, Chamber Music Collaborative, which featured an Octet by Anderson and Easley and a Nonet by Anderson.

Dave Anderson has written classical music premiered by the Philadelphia Philharmonic. Easley was the pedal steel player on Brian Blade’s first two Blue Note albums.

Just prior to the Musaica release, Anderson-Chute-Easley (aka ACE) released Adventures Of The Moss Bear, an avant-garde, instrumental fusion trio album featuring Anderson, Easley and drummer, Tom Chute. It contains only one pre-composed piece. The rest of the songs were composed while playing them.

1. Camellia Dreams (7:47)
2. Five Gallon Hat (4:26)
3. Slender Forest (4:28)
4. Pop Medley From Outer Space (12:15)
5. Ozzy (5:10)
6. Adventures Of The Moss Bear (18:03)

This innovative and masterfully engaging new album opens on the shimmering Camellia Dreams and the diligently artistic hipsway of Five Gallon Hat and then lovingly brings us the layered gossamer harmonies within Slender Forest, the 12 minute, all-encompassing opus Pop Medley From Outer Space, the recording rounding out on the structured, cacophonous-hued euphoria of Ozzy, coming to a close on the rhythmically-buoyant, 18 minute epic Adventures Of The Moss Bear.

Anderson’s perfect-pitch and extensive university training under renowned composer, Frank Proto, Easley’s improvisational experience with Blade, New Orleans based improv group, 3 Now 4, and many other free-form ensembles in the New Orleans collective improv community, combined with Chute’s unfailing sympathetic ear, enable the group to extemporaneously explore richly varied aural landscapes from the pastoral opening number, to the frenetic, Ozzy, from the other-worldly, Pop Melodies From Outer Space, to the earthy, yet psychedelic, title-cut.

Official Website