Off the beat path

GOOD VIBES 482 Music releases Adasiewicz’s jazz coming-out party this week.

By the time Jason Adasiewicz dropped out of DePaul University’s School of Music in the late ’90s, jazz was the furthest thing from his mind. It took detours through alt-country and rock & roll and two years working on an organic farm to rekindle his passion. This week, the city’s only working vibraphonist marks his public re-upping with jazz with the release of his ensemble’s eponymous debut, Rolldown (482 Music).

The 30-year-old native of suburban Crystal Lake was raised by a computer programmer and a school teacher. His father and brother were passionate fans of classic rock and new-wave who embraced the youngest son’s fascination with the drums. After playing in what he calls his high school’s “joke” jazz band, Adasiewicz got serious by enrolling at DePaul. “I really wanted to become a ‘jazz drummer in the city,’ and all that it entails. I wanted to gig at Pete Miller’s and Andy’s and the [Green] Mill,” Adasiewicz says. But by his junior year, he began to suffer from an affliction all too common among jazz students—an acute lack of inspiration. “I left why everybody leaves,” Adasiewicz says. “I was frustrated, confused and not sure anymore what I wanted to do.”

But his training had made him a desirable percussionist in the city. Right after Adasiewicz left school, the alt-country band Pinetop Seven, featuring fellow Blue Demon Ryan Hembrey, asked the drop-out to flesh out the band’s onstage lineup. “I loved [the band],” Adasiewicz gushes. “It was just these simple, gorgeous tunes.” A studio project that had quickly become one of the most critically acclaimed representatives of the booming alt-country movement, Pinetop gave Adasiewicz the space and encouragement to experiment with new instruments, including the vibraphone. “It was part of the percussion family where you could beat the shit out of it,” he says with a laugh. “But I was also fascinated with [its] melody.”

Through Pinetop, Adasiewicz would meet—and tour with—several other rock bands, including Edith Frost, Calexico and Manishevitz. On the side, he started working at the city’s unofficial breeding ground for jazz iconoclasts, the Jazz Record Mart. “I learned so much from that store,” he says. “I became a Lester Young freak and got into Ellington, Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra. That’s more education than college.”

After catching local jazz pioneers Vandermark 5 at the Empty Bottle—where he regularly played in rock bands—Adasiewicz realized that working in jazz didn’t have to mean sacrificing inspiration. Vandermark 5’s reconciliation of jazz improv with a punk ethos showed him a new path. “This isn’t the jazz I was getting upset about at DePaul. This is what I want to do.”

His comeback would clear one more hurdle: After he returned from a European tour with Manishevitz, his girlfriend (now wife) moved to Madison to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, and Adasiewicz decided to follow. Once there, he took a job that required no prior experience: working in the fields of Tomato Mountain Farm. “There were days swinging a big scythe, with the sun pounding down on you,” he says. But his absence from the scene only made him more determined in his pursuit, and he began trekking to Chicago multiple times a week to perform.

Since then, Adasiewicz formed Rolldown, moved with his wife back to Chicago and became a key player in dozens of other groups, including Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra and Ken Vandermark’s Double Quartet. Now his inspiration is right in front of him on stage: “I freak out every day about playing with my peers.”

The new album is both Adasiewicz’s promising first step as a leader and a powerful statement. His kaleidoscopic compositions, chock-full of references to thorny post-bop, swing easily and joyfully with the assistance of saxophonist Aram Shelton, drummer Frank Rosaly, cornetist Josh Berman and bassist Jason Roebke. Although Adasiewicz plays as a sideman more often than not, his presence is always unmistakable: Coursing with energy, he doesn’t merely tap his vibes—he attacks them, like a scythe to the vine. In hindsight, those detours look more like destiny.

Jason Adasiewicz’s Rolldown comes out on CD and vinyl Tuesday 27.