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This is a really unique one. Big Foot is a beautiful line drawn by Dancer Melinda Sullivan and pianist Larry Goldings from the histoy of jazz to the future, from the longstanding connection beteween tap and jazz all the way up to the contemporary LA jazz scene in which genre lines are vaporized and improvisation often incorporates live electronics.
The obvious hook on the record is that almost no percussive sound you hear on the record is made by a drum kit (Melinda does play a little bit of traditional percussion) - it's made by Melinda Sullivan's feet as she dances, along with creative micing techniques by Pete Min. Even Steve Gadd, on his visit to the studio, makes his sounds with his own feet and an empty cardboard box. Beyond the uniqueness of the concept, though, is an extremely high level musical collaboration between Goldings and Sullivan that has been deepening over the last five years since their meeting in 2019. The resulting music is joyful, spontanneous, free, and often groovy as hell.
Larry Goldings - “Drummer Steve Gadd was a tap dancer as a kid, and when I showed him a video of Melinda dancing, he wanted in. During a brief visit to Los Angeles, we coaxed him into the studio and he and Melinda improvised duets, with Melinda in socks, and Steve playing brushes on a cardboard box. Steve and Melinda have much in common: they play ideas, and no notes are wasted; their time and feel are exquisite; and they’re extremely sensitive listeners. Many weeks after this session, we revisited this duet, and I created a harmonic structure around it, adding piano, synthesizers, and the beautiful singing of Anna Goldings, my daughter.”
Melinda Sullivan - “While spending the afternoon in the studio with Dr. Steve Gadd, we truly found a rhythmic synergy. Steve and I met that same day, thanks to Larry, and introduced ourselves through playing together. It was magical. What you hear on Do You Like, as well as two other tracks on the album Twins and Dyad, are single-takes. There was very little talking, just us listening and responding. Steve saw the drummer in me and I saw the tap dancer in him. 10/10 joy for me that day.”
ABOUT THE LP
Grammy-nominated pianist and composer Larry Goldings and tap dancer extraordinaire Melinda Sullivan are proud to release Big Foot, an innovative, one of a kind album on Colorfield Records.
When Goldings and Sullivan met shortly before the COVID pandemic, they had no way of knowing just how impactful it would become for both of them. By 2021, they had begun meeting in Goldings’ backyard to play together and posting videos of their jam sessions to social media. The project was immediately recognized by musicians and journalists who saw in the connection of tap dance and jazz, a deep legacy stretching back over 100 years.
It was inevitable that the duo would eventually take the project off the socials and into the studio. From the beginning, they knew that they would need to develop a specific sonic language for the recording. This led them to engineer-producer Pete Min, a man committed to making artful records that explore the space between improvisation and composition, chaos and control, intention and discovery.
One of the challenges of recording with a tap dancer, Goldings and Sullivan found, was that the music had to remain listenable - as music - without dwelling on the process of how it was made. Big Foot finds the balance between making the recording musically compelling without over-manipulating the sonic landscape, truly featuring Sullivan as a percussive dancer. “My main thing,” says Goldings, “was that I wanted people to hear what Melinda does.”
During the recording sessions, Goldings immersed himself in analog synthesis and employed a catalog of keyboards that would make any electronic enthusiast envious. Sullivan dances in socks, sand and sneakers for the majority of the album, allowing her rhythmic nuance to come forward. The toe, heel, slide, and taps that she coaxes are complex, sometimes evoking brushes on a snare drum, other times tablas or frame drums, and still other times the sound of an analog drum machine or beat box.
Other contributors to the record include Sam Gendel on saxophone and effects, CJ Camerieri on trumpet and flugelhorn, Daphne Chen on violin and viola, and bassist Karl McComas-Reichl. Each of them brings their personal sound to an already unusual party. And Goldings’ daughter Anna sings a particularly haunting melody on “Do You Like,'' a song that opens with the voice of another luminary, drummer Steve Gadd. It is Gadd’s voice asking the question “Do you like…?” before he begins to tap out a gently grooving pattern with his hands on a box.
Many of the compositions on Big Foot evoke film cues, in part because of their unraveling structure. They begin, they develop, they end somewhere unexpected. Larry admits that, “Film scores are an influence on this music. So is Björk, and Joe Zawinul.”
But whatever the journey and the influences may have been, simply put Big Foot is great music that is extremely difficult to execute but very easy to listen to.
ALBUM CREDITS
Larry Goldings - Steinway Grand piano, Tom Thumb piano, pocket
piano, Hammond organ, Rhodes, Hohner clavinet, celeste, percussion, vocals, Arp 2600, 1972 Moog Moduler Model 12, MiniMoog, Putney VCS 3, Roland Jupiter 8, Roland Jupiter 4, PPG Wave 2.3, Yamaha CS60, Prophet 600, Buchla Music Easel, Mos-Lab 2500, Prophet 5, Yamaha DX7, Roland Juno 60, Oberheim 4
Voice, Ensoniq ESQ 1, Soma Pulsar 22, EMS Putney, Memory Moog
Melinda Sullivan - taps, socks, sneakers, boots, sand, water, percussion, vocals
Sam Gendel - alto sax, effects on “Clear Day”, “Loose Caboose” and “Quantize Me”
Steve Gadd - hand and foot percussion on “Do You Like”, “Twins” and “Dyad”
CJ Camerieri - trumpet, flugelhorn on “Sin Zapatos”, “Twins” and “Quantize Me”
Daphne Chen - violin, viola on “Sin Zapatos” and “Big Foot”
Karl McComas-Reichl - upright bass on “Twins”, “Mother Time” and “Loose Caboose”
Anna Goldings - vocals on “Do You Like”
Recorded and mixed by Pete Min at Lucy’s Meat Market, Los Angeles, CA
Produced by Pete Min, Larry Goldings, and Melinda Sullivan
All compositions by Larry Goldings and Melinda Sullivan, except:
“Sin Zapatos,” written by Larry Goldings, Melinda Sullivan and CJ Camerieri
“Do You Like” “Twins” and “Dyad,” written by Larry Goldings, Melinda Sullivan and Steve Gadd
“Loose Caboose,” written by Larry Goldings, Melinda Sullivan, Karl McComas-Reichl and Sam Gendel
Mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio
Manufactured at RTI
Photos and costume design by Mimi Haddon
Cover art by Amy Armani
Additional layout by Miles Wintner
Melinda Sullivan is a Southern CA native who trained under Jazz Tap Ensemble and the Debbie Allen Dance Academy. Film credits include: Being the Ricardos, La La Land. TV credits include: Crazy-Ex Girlfriend, Glee, the Late Late Show with James Cordon, the Emmys, the Oscars, the Golden Globes, So You Think You Can Dance (Top 10 and All-Star). Broadway: James Lapine’s Flying Over Sunset (associate choreographer). Concert choreography: Artistic Associate with Dorrance Dance, Trinity Irish Dance Company. Founding member of the tap dance company Syncopated Ladies. Melinda is currently on faculty at the Colburn School. She has received the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award for Non-Classical Dance, the Capezio A.C.E. Award, and Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch.
Larry Goldings is a Grammy-nominated pianist and composer. His organ trio with Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart has been recognized as "among our presiding paragons of the modern Hammond B-3 organ trio tradition” (Nate Chinen, New York Times). Goldings’ musical inspirations draw from a lifetime of absorbing jazz, pop, funk, R&B, electronic and classical music. As a performer and recording artist, he is known for long-term collaborations that straddle the realms of jazz and pop with such artists as Jim Hall, Maceo Parker, John Scofield, Steve Gadd, Jack DeJohnette, Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker, Sia Furler, John Mayer, and others.
Clandestine was founded in 2010 by the owners of Northern Spy Records to help like-minded labels and artists release and promote their music. Today, we’ve expanded to include a team of project managers, sales experts, manufacturing specialists, and publicists who bring decades of music and label experience to bear for our clients. We specialize in the marketing and distribution of experimental and adventurous music and, in the last fourteen years, have helped release over one thousand albums.
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