Binker Golding busts out the blues and Americana for Cheltenham Jazz Fest show

Binker Golding’s curiously titled album of last year, Dream Like a Dogwood Wild Boy, saw him move decisively away from his Tomorrow’s Warriors roots. He’s always been more of a mainstream jazzer than one might imagine from his work with, say, Moses Boyd, but on the Dogwood album he decided to explore not the familiar East or West coasts of America, but the wide-open spaces of the midwest, the big, optimistic territory of Pat Metheny. Accordingly, this music features guitarist Billy Adamson, a man steeped in Americana as well as jazz. In fact, it’s Adamson’s gutbucket National Steel we hear at the start of the album. And it was Adamson who gave this fine Cheltenham set its distinctive flavour, adding bluesy slide or grimy rock to the mix as required, particularly on ‘All Out of Fairy Tales’.

Everything the band played was taken from Dogwood. Virtuosity can be taken as read these days in the company of Golding’s regular band, Sarah Tandy (piano), Daniel Casimir (bass) and Sam Jones (drums), but this was really something special. All of them played out of their skins - not with festival-style bombast: they are a mature unit with nothing left to prove. All that matters to them is to play what’s right for the context.

Tandy has evolved into a world-class pianist, pouring out glittering runs and sweet, twinkling solos with alacrity. Casimir drives it all along with total commitment, his time and intonation as perfect as you are ever likely to hear. But on this occasion it was Sam Jones who proved the revelation. As with all the great players, it’s as often about the beats he doesn’t play as the ones he does. Sometimes he laid out for minutes at a time; at others he just knocked the toms lightly with beaters, whilst elsewhere he swung hard and fast like Buddy Rich. On ‘With What I Know Now’, he was the power behind the crazy square dance that ends the tune.