Keith Jarrett Greenlights Release of ‘More From The Deer Head Inn’

The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.

(Photo: Courtesy Poconogo.com)

Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn. It arrives 30 years after ECM issued At The Deer Head Inn, documenting eight tracks from a memorable 1992 gig at the four-story, mansard-roofed, porch-wrapped mid-19th country hotel that has presented high-level jazz in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, population 666, since 1951. Recorded direct to two-track on DAT, the albums feature Jarrett on the house Steinway with his regular bassist Gary Peacock and (filling in for Jack DeJohnette) Paul Motian, swinging hard, as he’d done in the 1950s with Oscar Pettiford and Lennie Tristano.

“Not many people knew about the Deer Head then,” said drummer Bill Goodwin, who produced both albums. A Los Angeles native, Goodwin moved his family to the Poconos in 1970, the year he and Jarrett — a friend since 1966 — toured and recorded with Gary Burton. Goodwin recalled a picnic at Jarrett’s nearby home in western New Jersey, where Chris Solliday (Jarrett’s piano tuner) and his wife Dona (the daughter of original Deer Head proprietors Bob and Fay Lehr, and Jarrett’s friend since both were young) revealed that they’d purchased the business from her parents. Soon thereafter, Jarrett told Goodwin his plan to perform a benefit for the Deer Head, and asked if Motian could use his drums. Goodwin agreed, and asked Jarrett to allow him and Kent Heckman, owner of nearby Red Rock Studios, to document the evening. “As long as you don’t get in our way,” Jarrett said.

On an early December phone call, Jarrett corroborated Goodwin’s account. “The music had a seamlessness,” was all he’d say of his initial decision to release the proceedings, noting that the first CD contains his favorite version of “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

Jarrett grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania., 45 miles west of Delaware Water Gap, where his mother worked across the street from the Deer Head in the headquarters of Fred Waring, who brought Jarrett on tour with his Young Pennsylvanians in 1962, a year after Jarrett played his first Deer Head gig as a sub for pianist Johnny Coates. Coates was also 16 when he debuted at the Deer Head in 1954. In 1962, Coates began a 50-year run as de facto house pianist with a distinctive Americana-tinged concept, while working days for Waring’s Shawnee Press as an editor and choral arranger. Jarrett continued to frequent the club on trips home during the ’60s; in 1969, he convened a trio with local musicians Gus Nemeth on bass and Bob Ventrello on drums for an attenuated European tour.

Goodwin discovered Coates on his maiden voyage to the Poconos with pianist-composer Bob Dorough. “Bob said there was a bar nearby that had a piano player,” he reminisced. “At 10 p.m., John comes out, sits down and starts playing. Within 32 bars, I thought, ‘This guy’s a genius.’ After I moved to the Poconos, Keith and I would bring our drumsets and sit in.”

“John was writing new songs every few weeks,” current co-owner Bob Mancuso recalled. “He caught everybody’s attention. The place was packed.”

Jarrett cosigned, “I’d see the cars coming down the highway and think, ‘I know where they’re going.’”

The room became a magnet for musicians looking to unwind from gigs in one of the area’s resorts, among them the Mount Airy Casino, where Goodwin — again via Dorough — spent a year playing alongside bassist Steve Gilmore in a dance band. When the eminent alto saxophonist Phil Woods (a resident of nearby New Hope from 1957 to 1968) moved to the Gap in late 1973 with Goodwin’s sister, Jill, after four years in Europe and California, Goodwin helped him form the band that launched the efflorescent second stage of Woods’ career, recruiting Gilmore, pianist Mike Melillo and guitarist Harry Leahey. Chris Solliday found Woods a good Yamaha piano and regularly tuned it, perhaps spurring Woods, who died in 2015, to bequeath it to the Deer Head, where he performed frequently, generating an album with his last quintet and two freewheeling duo albums with Coates.

Mancuso, his son Jay, his college classmate Dennis Carrig and Carrig’s sister, Mary Carrig, purchased the Deer Head from the Sollidays in 2005, 35 years after Carrig — who died last Nov. 15 — introduced him to the club. “The place was in bad shape,” said Mancuso, who had a construction business. “Over time, we fixed the porches, which were rotted out, replaced the roofs, rewired and replumbed each floor, put private baths in each room and worked on the kitchen. After that, we were doing pretty well, but many of our big-name players either passed or moved away, and it took a few years to find a new pool of musicians. The crowds started to build up again, but COVID knocked us back a while, though a few permanent apartments covered our basic expenses. With insurance, taxes and overhead, it’s not easy. Nobody’s getting rich. But we’re lucky because musicians like the place and want to come back.”

Among them is vocalist-songwriter Tessa Souter, whose third 2024 appearance at the Deer Head transpired Thanksgiving Saturday before a full house. The patrons paid rapt attention as Souter sang her lyrics to Erik Satie compositions that constitute a forthcoming album, accompanied masterfully by Billy Drummond on drums and Poconos-adjacent residents Jim Ridl and Evan Gregor on piano and bass, respectively. “My policy is to play only in places I feel comfortable inviting people to,” Souter said. “The Deer Head is definitely one of them. The owners and patrons respect the music, the food is good, and so are the sightlines and the sound.”

“Our overall philosophy is to try to treat people right,” said Carrig, who operated the soundboard that night. “That means trying to treat them as you’d like to be treated if you were coming into a place to work.”

Gone are the bibulous days when, Mancuso recalled, “Bob Lehr would pull the shutters down — next thing you knew, it was sunrise.” But the blend of high standards and relaxed atmosphere remains at the Thursday night jam sessions, led by guitarist Bill Washer and propelled by Goodwin. So does the admixture of musicians, artists, artisans and other nonconformists who’ve formed the room’s core audience since 1951. “We’ve developed a reputation that the music is good and you enjoy yourself,” Mancuso said . “We don’t get a lot of complainers.” DB

from https://downbeat.com