1354 West Wabansia Ave, Chicago, IL 60642 | 773.227.4433
Joe Westerlund was reluctant to record, shy about what he might just play. It was February 2022, and Westerlund—the lauded composer, improviser, bandleader, and session drummer for the likes of Califone, Watchhouse, and Bon Iver—had booked three days at Betty’s, the wooded studio haven of his occasional bandmates in Sylvan Esso. He had worked for a year on Elegies for the Drift, his second solo percussion album and a set of poignant pieces about a triumvirate of mentors who had recently died or were dying. But he had one last idea, one more remembrance for his confidant and collaborator, Akron/Family’s Miles Cooper Seaton, who had passed in a car crash exactly a year earlier. Westerlund queued up samples of Seaton speaking during a local performance, plus the sound of a hailstorm he’d recorded 15 minutes after receiving that awful news. Sitting there alone in the studio, save for audio engineer Alli Rogers, he wondered exactly what he was doing, or if he could be so vulnerable around a near-stranger he’d hired for help. Finally, he closed his eyes, thought about what Seaton would do in such a situation, and played his feelings. The result— “The Circle,” seven minutes of wobbly bells and warped voices, coalescing into the kind of life-affirming astral drone that would make The Necks proud—is one of the most powerful and absorbing tributes to another human you will ever hear. As its name suggests, Elegies for the Drift is indeed a collection of five instrumental remembrances for people, times, and chances Westerlund has lost. It keys on two of Westerlund’s musical lodestars: Seaton and Milford Graves, the free jazz iconoclast who drew the young drummer to Vermont’s Bennington College before becoming his lifelong guide until he died only a week before Seaton. It also owes to Aaron Efird, the father of Westerlund’s longtime partner, Carson, who died after an extended illness in April 2022. Perhaps more important, though, Elegies is an exquisite index of the inspiration these people collectively offered Westerlund. Unapologetically opinionated and aggressively charismatic, Seaton, Graves, and Efird all gave the perennially polite native Midwesterner more courage to be himself, the very kind of confidence he’d need to pour out his emotions for the audience of an audio engineer. It is a wordless thank-you letter, a heartfelt transmission from a season of sadness.
Jim Becker is an admired Chicago musician whose credits include Iron & Wine, Wooden Wand, Bitchin Bajas and the cosmic ambience of Mind Over Mirrors. Along the way Becker has performed and recorded on everything from mandolin and theremin, to E-bow and Indian flute. · 21+
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