By conventional music biz standards, it's a bit of an ask to get an audience to venture out to a gig by two musicians playing unreleased and largely unheard material — even if they are two well-known practitioners of their sonic craft.
However, Thursday (Sept. 19) sees two very well-known — albeit in very different musical circles — guitar-slingers bringing a still relatively new and fresh creative partnership to Judson's Live. Mike Baggetta (MSSV, Tin/Bag and a current Floridian) and Peter DiStefano (of adventurous '90s Perry Farrell-led alt-rockers Porno for Pyros) are poised to kick off the second leg of their Punk Jazz Tour in Florida. And it's a can't-miss proposition for fans of improv and left-field rock.
"We don't have an album out or anything. People have really no idea what to expect. ... But I think it speaks to the type of audience that we're getting — they're adventurous enough to want to see what's going to happen without knowing what we're going to do together," says Baggetta.
There's an element of mystery to this enterprise — both artists have been anything-goes in their creative careers — and there is no album nor recordings to refer to. But Baggetta assures Orlando Weekly there is method to their madness. For Baggetta, it makes sense to flip the usual methodology of recording first, then touring. He reasons that a stint of intense roadwork allows you to hone new songs to fine sonic diamonds. By the time you get done with the tour and book the studio, both you and the material are road-tested and perfected. (Plans to record are absolutely in the works.)
Baggetta and DiStefano's friendship — creative and otherwise — is a relatively recent development. Once a teenage Porno for Pyros fan back in the 1990s, Baggetta recalls being lowkey starstruck when DiStefano showed up to a gig by Baggetta's band MSSV (one that also features mutual pal Mike Watt). A friendship was struck, and inevitably, the guitars came out.
"I've been aware of Peter since I was in high school. When I was in high school, his band Porno for Pyros was a big influence on me. I don't know if he's really aware how big of an influence his songs and his approach to guitar playing in that band had on a wide swath of my generation of guitar players," says Baggetta. "Peter came to an MSSV show in LA. I remember looking out into the audience and realizing he was standing right in front of me in the first row, staring at me while I was playing. No pressure, right? And so we kept in touch a little bit after that. When I would go out to LA, if he was around and we had time, we'd get together and just jam like two guitars."
Things got serious beyond mere jamming as the two realized they could learn a lot from one another — especially in the crucible of a run of live shows.
"Peter's been trying to find a way into learning more about music and trying to find a way to perform more freely in improvised music. And I've been trying to learn more about writing songs, and singing while I play, and playing songs — which is something he's done for most of his career," explains Baggetta. "We realized we could learn a lot from each other. And then he suggested this past spring, maybe we should try to do some gigs."
The first leg of shows was duly booked by Baggetta, taking in the Midwest and West Coast The tour was given the moniker "Punk Jazz" by DiStefano; Baggetta sees it as more of a statement of artistic intent rather than sonic descriptor. And he's right — it's an open-ended sonic manifesto.
"I don't really believe in the genre-labeling system, the grift of the genre. But it's a funny thing to think about. Everybody knows the phrase 'punk rock,' so what is 'punk jazz,' right? I think, for Peter, it means a combination of life skills and music skills, and how one thing doesn't have to mean what you think it does."
For these Punk Jazz shows, it's just the two of them on stage, armed solely with guitars, pedals and Baggetta's sampler rig. It's a case of expect-the-unexpected for all involved, both audience and performers — "To some extent, we don't really know what's going to happen, but we know that we don't know what's going to happen" — and leave things up to the benevolent hand of chance.
"We've got a good thing going with the way we're improvising our songs," says Baggetta. "There are a lot of times where we finish something together, and the impression we want the audience to have is that they can't tell if it was an improvisation or if it was a composition. We want to see how far we can take that idea."
The freewheeling stripped-down nature of the tour is bringing out the best in both of them. Pressure is low, the two get on well — and their music is so mutable they can play it in any type of room.
"At the Seattle show, we were both having so much fun together on stage playing," says Baggetta. "Afterwards, I told Peter, 'I don't remember ever doing a gig where I was smiling at the person I was playing with the whole time.' You know, looking like a total weirdo. But I think that was a good sign."
As a Floridian, Baggetta felt a sense of mission to make sure Punk Jazz included some Florida dates, a small but important gesture to raise awareness of the oft-hidden creative vibrancy in the Sunshine State's underground.
"I think it's important not to propagate the myth of a place not being open to creative ideas. We live here and we know that there's amazing stuff going on," says Baggetta. "I think trying to break creative people out of that myopia of thinking that good things can only happen in a few different places is important."
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