Nik Turner, original saxophonist and vocalist of British space-rock gods Hawkwind, has enlisted an all Seattle-based crew to back him for his appearance at Seaprog 2015 festival August 9. Performing under the name Flame Tree, the band consists of drummer Jack Gold-Molina (Spectral Waves), guitarist Dennis Rea (Moraine), Mellotron player/Stranger Genius contender Steve Fisk, guitarist Jack Endino (Earthworm), violinist Alicia DeJoie (Moraine), synthesist Ffej (Tempered Steel), and bassist Paul Kemmish.
Also, Midday Veil vocalist Emily Pothast will join the ensemble for a tribute to the late Gong frontman Daevid Allen. Local audio savant Vance Galloway will provide live sound manipulation. Turner and Flame Tree will be playing a few Hawkwind classics as well as tracks from other Turner projects like Inner City Unit, Sphynx, Space Ritual, and Space Fusion Odyssey. From all accounts of Turner’s last two recent Seattle appearances, the man still brings it with intensity, despite being 74 years old.
I talked to Gold-Molina, Rea, and Fisk to see how this exciting turn of events materialized.
“I interviewed Nik in 2009 for All About Jazz, and during the course of the interview he asked me if I would be interested in working with him," Gold-Molina said. "I think his exact words were, ‘If people have got the balls to come onstage with me, then they are very welcome to. Would you like to play with me some time?’ So I said ‘Sure!’ After the interview we did some free-form demo work in the studio, then starting putting the band together that became Flame Tree, with Dennis Rea on guitar and Paul "PK" Kemmish on bass. The idea was always to do an album, which we have finished recording. This opportunity came up to play at Seaprog, and Nik suggested the idea of Flame Tree backing him."
Gold-Molina says that rehearsals have been going very well. Hawkwind fans will be pleased to hear that Flame Tree will perform "Brainstorm," "Sonic Attack," "D-Rider," and possibly "Master of the Universe." "We want to focus on Nik's musical career, which has been vast," he said. "The material we are working on includes high-energy punk, heavy space rock, material from Xitinday, the Egyptian-influenced album he did in the late 1970s with Sphynx—that project with Steve Hillage—and he has a new album coming out called Space Fusion Odyssey that we are also doing material from. We are on quite a journey with this music, to say the least!"
Rea, who's been a Hawkwind fan since the early '70s and is the organizer of Seaprog, notes that Turner and members of Flame Tree recorded together in October 2013 at Greg "Greedy" Williamson's studio in Georgetown. Rea describes it as "essentially a free-jazz blowing session, plus one liberally deconstructed Hawkwind tune. Shortly thereafter I discovered by chance that Jack Endino is perhaps the biggest Hawkwind fan in Seattle, so it was a natural choice to enlist him in mixing the album. The results, Nik Turner & Flame Tree, will be released by Cleopatra Records this fall. We clearly established a healthy musical rapport on the session, which opened up the possibility of further collaborations." As for the upcoming set, Rea said, "We've been rehearsing the set heavily ahead of Nik's arrival and it's shaping up very nicely indeed. Expect pulsating rhythms, heavy rock, kaleidoscopic sounds, and deep-space explorations in the time-honored Hawkwind family tradition."
Steve Fisk became involved because he'd been producing and mixing some of Rea's music over the last three or four years. "When I heard that they were doing this, I might’ve even asked if they needed a Mellotron player," Fisk said over the phone from Kansas City, Missouri, where he is producing an album with the Sexy Accident. Fisk didn't have any concerns about getting involved in this project, because, even though he's skeptical about much prog rock, he likes Hawkwind. "A lot of Hawkwind’s thing was groove based. That’s the stuff I got into—Can and all the alleged kraut rock. Hawkwind and the solo music that Nik’s done since then all kind of fits into more of an atmospheric, groove-based thing as opposed to Chinese acrobats flying all around and landing in the same place at the same time. I experienced progressive rock as kind of like Leni Riefenstahl or something. It’s about super-human feats and making people look dumb who couldn’t play fast."
Fisk says that Flame Tree have mostly been rehearsing without him, as he's been out of town; he's been practicing to MP3s so far. "I know that sounds kind of weak, but Mellotrons are hard to play," he said, "So no one’s ever written anything complicated for them. If I can keep it in tune and come in and out at the right spots, I’ll be doing my gig. Everyone else in the band will be doing the heavy lifting."
While Fisk won't be onstage for every song, his contributions on this most fragile and difficult to keep in tune instruments should be crucial. "The Mellotron probably figures in a third or a fourth of the material. I imagine I’ll be sitting to the side of the stage for most of the evening and then coming out and doing what Mellotrons do: You turn on the string sounds and hit parallel fourths and you go up and you go down and you go up and you go down, you put echo all over it, and life’s beautiful," he said.
For tickets and info on Seaprog, go here.
