The Musical Box

the benevento-russo duo: drummer joe russo (left) and keyboardist marco benevento. photo by michael didonna.

By his own admission, Marco Benevento doesn’t travel light. When the keyboardist plays one of his jazz-savvy, improvisation-heavy and groove-friendly performances with drummer Joe Russo, he hits the stage with “enough gear for a five piece band.”

As jam band fans will quickly point out, Benevento and Russo usually tackle a performance on their own. Occasionally, a pal, like former Phish bassist Mike Gordon, might sit in. But Benevento and Russo play, in the truest sense of the term, as a duo with a jury-rigged bank of keyboards and a drum kit facing each other onstage. And from there, the fireworks fly.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on during a show,” said Benevento, who along with Russo, will be among the featured performers at this weekend’s Terrapin Hill Harvest Festival in Harrodsburg. “For the past three years, especially, I’ve been getting into playing bass lines (on pedals) with my feet. That frees up the hands to do a lot of other things.

“At first, making that change from playing bass with the left hand on the keyboard to playing foot bass was tough. There was a lot of looking down instead of looking at the audience. We’re at a pretty comfortable place right now. The music has been really, really fun. But a 90 minute set is still pretty exhausting.”

The music the duo creates, especially the modestly abstract orchestration that dominates its most recent studio album, 2006’s Play Pause Stop, sports a highly organic sound that seems quite appropriate when you consider the two started playing together essentially on a whim.

The duo, you see, was initially a solo project for Russo. But when the drummer secured a regular gig at New York’s Knitting Factory in 2001, he called upon Benevento, a friend since junior high school, to flesh out the largely improvisatory nature of the performances.

“At every gig, we were in awe at how cool it was to play off of each other and how easy it was to kind of play the mind-reading game,” Benevento said.

Some of the keyboard sounds lurk and swell like a far off fog, others invade with a one-man-band might that is full of melody, bass and solo space. Similarly, Russo, especially on Play Pause Stop, can provide a steady, syncopated beat or intrude with earth-rattling aggression.

A conventional jam band, though, this isn’t. Benevento became fascinated with the New Orleans-bred, organ fueled funk music Art Neville created with The Meters at an early age. Then he gravitated to the muscular, melodic jazz of such piano giants as Bill Evans. Benevento also recalls a five-and-a-half hour lesson with new generation piano jazz great Brad Mehldau - at his home, no less - as being especially inspiring.

But at the top of Benevento’s list of keyboard influences is Joanne Brackeen, a pianist who has recorded with a who’s who of jazz immortals (Stan Getz, Art Blakey and Joe Henderson are but a few). She was one of Benevento’s piano instructors when he attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

“She was the big one. That’s was the moment where I went, ‘OK, I can see myself doing this for a long time. But then she helped me realize the sort of lifelong dedication to the music that I was getting myself into. She would say, ‘OK, you’re stuck now. You’ll be playing music till you die.’”

Of course, taking on that journey with Russo means Benevento is spending most of his waking musical hours side by side with only one other player. To shake that regimen up, the duo sometimes plays entire evenings of improvisational music. They also participate in larger ensemble side projects, like Bustle in Your Hedgerow, which is devoted to the music of Led Zeppelin.

And there are times Benevento and Russo simply go their own ways. Last winter, Benevento released a solo album called Invisible Baby that was full of jazzy abstractions, animated pop romps, meaty piano excursions and amped up keyboard experiments.

“Sure, there will be little ruts where we’re just sort of sick of playing with each other and times where we just need a break to find that spark again.

“But one of the hardest things for the duo to do is just to accept that the music is going to move at the rate it’s going to move at. You can’t force anything. I mean, we’ve known each other since before we were ever in a band. We’re friends that are making music. So what’s the rush?”

The Benevento-Russo Duo perform at 9 p.m. Saturday  as part of the Terrapin Hill Harvest Festival at Terrapin Hill Farm, 3696 Mackville Rd. in Harrodsburg. Tickets are $20-$95 at the gate. Call (859) 734-7207. The festival runs today through Sunday. Other performers include Keller Williams, James McMurtry, Tea Leaf Green and David Gans. For a complete schedule, go to www.terrapinhillfarm.com/festival.