Photo by Bill Douthart

Feeling “A Love Electric”

By Tom Johnson
Contributing Writer

Todd Clouser is a guitar player who has been compared to jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and even rock legend Jimi Hendrix. He walks the line of modern improvisational music that some critics have a hard time classifying as either jazz or rock, but that doesn’t seem to affect him. As a person and artist, he is a amalgamation of where he has lived, the people he has met, and the music he has absorbed. With the many banners he could wave in his life and art, he chooses to celebrate them all as opposed to getting boxed into a genre or subculture. That gives him the freedom to explore new boundaries as a person and musician.

Right now, Clouser is a musician and teacher living in Mexico City. Before that, he grew up in Minneapolis then went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston.  After Boston, he returned to Minneapolis to try to be a full-time gigging musician, but got worn out by his surroundings and needed to find something new. “I was at a point of my life where I needed a big change. I had been playing in Minneapolis for a few years after living out east and I had grown a little cynical and stale towards music and playing in clubs,” he says.

The change came in the form of a job teaching general music classes in Baja, Mexico, where he immersed himself in a completely unfamiliar culture. “I came down and I loved it in Mexico, though I didn’t speak any Spanish, which sounds bold, but I think it was more naive at the time on my part,” he says.  It did not take him very long to find there are, at times, better forms of communication. “For me, there was no better way to absorb the Mexican culture than by playing music with people from that culture. The language of improvisation or jazz transcends all culture because we are all basically studying the same thing.”

In 2009, Clouser caught a break crossing paths with New York City trumpeter, Steven Bernstein, who has played with big names like Levon Helm, Lou Reed, and Sex Mob.  “I first met him at a workshop I took from him and he became such a huge influence on me and marked a very big shift in my career,” Clouser says. “After getting to know him a bit, I asked him to come down to Mexico to play some gigs, not thinking there was a chance that he would do it because I was just some kid teaching a few lessons, but he said ‘yes.’ He had listened to some of my stuff and we got along well so he came down to Mexico for a 10-day tour and that tour is where got my idea for my last album, ‘A Love Electric.’ Afterwords I knew I really needed to write just a bunch of music that would feature me and Steven.”

Clouser’s third album, “A Love Electric,” released last February, is a heavily sonic oriented record that hooks the listener from start to finish. It celebrates diverse forms of American music from the late 60’s to early 70’s jazz, funk, folk, and rock, but with a very modern bent. The music sounds like what the fabled planned recording session between Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis might have produced had Hendrix not died before it. Clouser embraces the complexity of jazz with the raw, sonic power of the electric guitar and the drive of rock and roll.

“A Love Electric” features 11 original tracks alongside instrumental interpretations of Harry Nilsson’s “One” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Clouser brings forth his influences without pigeonholing himself into an exact genre. “This band really is a celebration of all the music that we have been influenced by and allowing that to be celebrated and going with that as opposed to restricting ourselves to be just one thing in particular,” he says. “We get heat when some people say we are a jazz band and straight ahead jazz people say we are not. I realize we are not. We are just expressing who we are and what we have to offer.”

While remaining busy with gigging and teaching, Clouser ambitiously plans to release three albums this year. The first, “20th Century Folk Selection,” comes out next month. “The first one all being arrangements of what I consider to be folk music and some of them are traditional songs like ‘Pay Me My Money Down’ and ‘Little Boxes,’ but experimenting with them,” Clouser says. “Then the second one coming out in June will be all original tunes.” The third one is a work in progress.

Todd Clouser’s A Love Electric will play at the Hodo Lounge on February 9th at 8 p.m. For more info, check out http://tiny.cc/elove1

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IF YOU GO

WHAT: Todd Clouser’s A Love Electric
WHERE: The Hodo Lounge
WHEN: Feb. 9, 2012, 8:30-11:30 p.m.
INFO: 21+ Show