Chicago singer/songwriter Al rose sits in Kopi Cafe on a Sunday afternoon, sipping something small, black and highly caffeinated. Perhaps that fuels the unflagging pace of his innovative (mostly) acoustic music, which you can hear this Friday at Uncommon Ground.
"It's frustrating sometimes when bookers say 'we only book alternative stuff' when in fact they're just booking stuff that sounds like the Byrds, something jangly," Rose goes on. "My music doesn't fit under that alternative label."
Yet the 13 original songs (and two covers) from Rose's debut Information Overload are freshly stimulating in a way pre- packaged nostalgia can never be.
Rose and his six-piece band The Transcendos use guitars, bass and drums (with flute, alto sax, and harmonica by Rose) to set on fire a volatile mix of jazz, R&B and folk. The motion is constant as Rose's words become percussive and the music shouts its own messages.
A folkie at heart, Rose admits that he "wanted to be Bob Dylan... and Joni Mitchell" at a younger stage of life. But he's also inspired by the "timeless hipness" of Duke Ellington's tunes and the "wild sheets of music" poured out in Coltrane's A Love Supreme.
And why limit your musical mentors to musicians? Rose looks to the painters Chagall and Soutine, to writers as diverse as Wendell Barry and Henry Miller.
"I want my music to sound like their books, that warmth, that explosiveness," says Rose, adding sheepishly that he was a big Cat Stevens fan as a teen.
Rose performs solo and with assorted sized ensembles made up from the six Transcendos members. When playing with the group, "we're most improvisational," he explains. With growing enthusiasm, he describes the moment-to-moment discovery that the group enjoys in concert.
"We're the most under-rehearsed band ever. We hardly ever rehearse. We know all the songs really well, but we're doing them by the skin of our teeth in concert, hanging on for dear life. I'll call out songs we haven't played for two years."
That's not to say it's total mayhem. Playing together for five years, the group has developed a fine tuned sense of "instinct, intuition and inspiration" says Rose, in a flight of spontaneous alliteration. "It's in the name of the band: The Transcendos - the performance goes above and beyond something rehearsed."
Rose, who is (remarkably) self-taught, has been playing guitar and singing since he was 17. He decided to pursue music professionally when he graduated from college in 1980, and after 10 years of waiting for a producer to recognize his alternative to alternative music, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
"A couple years ago I decided I wasn't going to record any more demos, I was going to record albums. So that's what I did. We recorded this album, I produced it and the idea was I'd just find a label to release it."
As it happened, it took less than a year to sign a deal with the newly established Whitehouse Records in Chicago, and national distributor MS Distributing.
"The timing was perfect," Rose reflects, "but this record was coming out even if Jay Whitehouse didn't want it, even if I got a rejection slip from everybody in the world."
But Rose takes no special credit for the commitment that brought his debut to fruition. "Look around," he says, surveying the buzzing cafe. "Half of these people have their own record label and the rest are publishing their own books of poetry."