The origin story

It was a night that changed their lives.

In the Winter of 1976, at a little piano bar in the Village called The Surf Maid, the bassist David Friesen was eating dinner in the kitchen. 

“And I heard this sound,” he recalls, “but I didn’t know who it was. So I came out front … and it was John.”

Guitarist John Stowell was playing at The Maid that night, one of the spots where a young musician might be heard by the more experienced artists who would stop by after performing across the street at The Village Gate.

“It was the warmth of John’s sound that first attracted me,” Friesen remembers. They played a few tunes together that night, and from that chance encounter a partnership grew that lasted eight years and helped define an important strand in the colorful tapestry of Portland’s jazz in the 1970s and ‘80s. Both went on to become, in different ways, respected and critically acclaimed artists internationally as well as locally. 

Now they’ve renewed that partnership for a series of performances as a duo and occasionally with Friesen’s Circle 3 Trio. Their last date together this Spring is May 21 at Woodstock Wine and Deli, 7-9:00 pm.

In some ways, it’s as if they had never stopped.

“If you have any long-standing relationship, personal or musical, a separation doesn’t remove that chemistry or that history together. We both have a memory of what it felt like to play together, and it felt comfortable from the first tune we played,” says Stowell of their first reunion show this January.

The early years

That’s what happened 50 years ago, too. After a few gigs together, Friesen returned to his home but came back to New York three times that year and invited Stowell to join him in Portland.

“I stayed all summer with his family,” recalls Stowell. The next year they played a couple West Coast tours, and that was Stowell’s introduction to the road. Soon, they made two trips to Europe, where they played the Berlin Jazz Festival, and to Australia. They also made a few recordings at that time, including “Star Dance” with Paul McCandless of the band Oregon.

What kept them together?

“It was nice to find someone dedicated to the music who wasn’t using alcohol or drugs, someone you could depend on and who was willing to play my music,” says Friesen. “There was a strength there that I respected, and John was very calm, very patient — much more than I was on the road.”

There was also mutual musical admiration.

“John has a very interesting harmonic approach, unlike anyone I know,” continues Friesen. “And that’s one of the things that draws me into this relationship — he doesn’t sound like anyone else. And he tells me that I don’t sound like anyone else, either.” Friesen laughs.

“There wasn’t really a plan,” recalls Stowell. “It just sort of morphed in a natural, organic way.”

They also spent time playing Portland venues such as The Hobbit, and their albums from that era, including Through the Listening Glass (named one of the Top Ten Albums of the 1970s by The Los Angeles Examiner) defined a kind of “hippie chamber jazz” of the day, along the lines of the band Oregon at the time — a pastoral, folk-influenced sound. They also recorded the album Gonna Plant Me Some Seeds with the singer and pianist Jeannie Hoffman, who had gained a reputation in San Francisco as a beatnik muse and shared their approach.

What drew artists like Hoffman to Portland in the late 1970s and early ’80s, was its thriving, eclectic jazz scene, with clubs such as Ray’s Helm presenting diverse bands that included the Jeff Lorber Fusion, which featured a young Kenny G, the straightahead band Freebop, as well as Friesen and Stowell. But the duo also played many nights to tiny audiences, and it was primarily on the road where they earned enough to survive.

Then, in another milestone event in the bassist’s career, Friesen met the flute player Paul Horn, of “Inside the Taj Mahal” fame. In 1983, Friesen and Stowell joined Horn and his son Robin, a drummer, for a month in the USSR, where they were the first jazz musicians to give a public performance in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) since 1927. Other American musicians had played in the USSR before, but only in embassies and consulates; Horn’s quartet played a big sports arena where anyone could attend, as well as concerts in Moscow and a few in Lithuania.

And then Friesen and Stowell went their separate ways.

“I felt like we were moving in different directions musically,” recalls Stowell, “so it was an amicable, gradual parting, and we stayed friends and played a few more times after that.”

The long and winding road

“We’re traveling minstrels,” Friesen once said, and both he and Stowell have spent the majority of their careers on the road. It took Stowell some time before he figured out how to do it successfully on his own, while Friesen, on the other hand, began touring with pianist Denny Zeitlin, saxophonists Joe Henderson and Stan Getz, and others.

After their partnership ended, Friesen made a number of albums, including Amber Skies (1983), with Chick Corea, Joe Henderson, Paul Motion, and Airto; and The Name of a Woman, with Portland artists Randy Porter and Alan Jones, to name a couple of which he’s most proud. That list also includes the album Testimony, recorded in 2018 with the Symphonic Band of Ukraine. 

Today, Friesen has 80 albums as a leader or co-leader, some of which have made a number of “Best Of …” lists, and he reports that more than 700 of his compositions have been recorded. He’s a member of the Oregon Music Hall of Fame, and he was named one of ten “New Superstars of the ’80s” by Japan’s Swing Journal.

In fact, the bassist — who just turned 83  — had partnered with other young professionals for a decade before he met Stowell. 

In the 1960s, Friesen began playing with fellow bassist and erstwhile pianist Jerry Heldman, who operated a coffeehouse called Llahngaelhyn in Seattle. Open 24 hours a day, it drew young musicians like Larry Coryell and Michael Brecker, who played free jazz with Friesen and Heldman, as well as famous artists who came to socialize and play after their shows, including Bill Evans and Wes Montgomery.

He also began his touring career at that time with pianist and vibes player Elmer Gill, a Black man who’d been a member of the Lionel Hampton Band and later moved to Canada to escape the racism he encountered in the U.S. So in 1972, Friesen moved to Portland, where he opened a coffeehouse at the corner of NE Alberta and Williams Avenue; jam sessions there often lasted until daylight. 

But he hadn’t yet found the partner who would help shape the approach for which he’d become known. At that time, the younger Stowell, now 74, was still studying with the teachers who would not only show him how to find his own sound and technique but how to demonstrate those concepts for others as a teacher himself — a role he has expanded over the years. His workshops and master classes have become an integral part of his revenue stream. He has also expanded into online courses and instruction books and CDs.

Stowell’s musical appeal is primarily based on a unique approach to harmony and improvisation. In 1978 and ’79, he was named Talent Deserving Wider recognition in Downbeat magazine’s critics poll. In addition to his music, it was sheer perseverance and hard work that made possible his travels, which, since the early 1990s, have included ten trips to Argentina, to Indonesia, four returns to Russia, and Europe, where his first trip to Germany set the stage for many more.

“I met a guy in 1993 who was teaching at a small private music school in Freiberg. He was doing some residencies and asked me to come. It was a gamble,” Stowell continues, “because they weren’t able to give me a guarantee or pay for my flight. But I was there for six months, and it worked out fine. I’ve been going back on a regular basis ever since.”

He’s managed to get those opportunities because the friends he’s made have set up performances and workshops for him. “I play with guys all over Europe,” he says, “and they’re very kind to me. Typically, in a year I might travel 230 to 270 days [before the pandemic], and only about five or ten nights are in hotels; for all the rest, someone’s accommodating me. It wouldn’t happen otherwise.”

It’s a series of small gigs, with a lot of travel in between, often for small audiences and low pay. 

“Most people would not want this life. I could make a living in Portland playing a variety of styles,” he says, “but I don’t want to be versatile … I just want to do what I do.” What he does has attracted a number of high-level collaborators over the years, including the saxophonist Dave Liebman (their duo albums include Blue Angel) and Seattle bassist and vocalist Dan Dean (with whom he created the album, Rain Painting). He’s been a leader or co-leader on more than 50 albums. 

The springboard for those recordings and the tours that have sustained him for 40 years began with his partnership with Friesen.

Reunion

After careers that took them in different directions, their recent reunion concerts are — like their first encounter — the result of chance.

Both musicians had played solo at the Salem restaurant Cristo’s, and the club’s booking agent suggested they do a show together. So Stowell joined Friesen and his Circle 3 drummer Charlie Doggett on January 30 for a sold out show. 

“We had a good time,” says Stowell, “and it felt comfortable, so we started doing a few little gigs.” They also traveled to Phoenix (with Friesen’s Trio, which includes saxophonist Joe Manis) for a performance and recording. Stowell has begun coming to Friesen’s house to rehearse every Monday, too.

It feels the same yet different.

“When we were playing in the 1970s and ’80s,” Stowell says, “David was playing creative music, and it was jazz-oriented in the sense that we were improvising, but some of the harmony that I like just wasn’t present because it wasn’t part of his vocabulary.”

That’s changed, notes Stowell, probably due to Friesen’s partnerships with pianists such as Denny Zeitlin, “which have really expanded his palette,” he says. 

Stowell has changed over the years, too. “He’s more abstract,” observes Friesen.

“And I’ve become a better accompanist, too,” Stowell adds, “and we’ve both improved. So the conversation is a little more evolved.”

Their evolution might reflect some of the changes in Portland’s jazz over the last 50 years. Or it may just reflect the evolution of their generation’s approach to making music.

“As you get older, a lot of it is knowing what not to play,” says Stowell, “and that opens up more possibilities for conversation.”

It’s a conversation that both artists expect to continue into the future.

“I think my best playing may still be ahead of me,” says Stowell.