THE SOUNDTRACK OF COMING AND GOING
It is a steamy August late-morning in 2018. Singer-songwriter Eric Hutchinson is in the studio with five jazz musicians he has essentially just met. He brought them together in what he describes as an
Ocean’s Eleven détente to make new music about the rather pedestrian subjects of life and death. All of this seems kind of important, but when considering his wife Jill is expecting their first child at any moment, there is an added air of excited tension infused into the session. Today the makeshift band is working on two songs, the first one I encounter is called “Life After Life,” featuring darkly humorous lyrics (a Hutchinson specialty) about waking up in a pine box and wishing he had warmer socks. However, the subject matter is secondary to the five musicians that fill up the small studio space to play this delightfully upbeat salsa-rock number. Its rhythmically spatial quality allows them to musically dance and parry throughout – to