It’s just a little more than a week before the Jai-Alai Savant’s record-release party–which was at Darkroom on Thursday, April 5–when I meet up with guitarist and front man Ralph Darden. The first thing he asks me is if I know any trumpet players–he wants to add a horn to the band’s lineup for the show. This is typical Ralph: he comes up with ideas almost nonstop, and though he can barely focus long enough to follow through on any of them, he’s got the hustle to pull things together at the last minute.
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If you know Darden only through his exuberantly hedonistic DJ sets, the Jai-Alai Savant’s dark, aggressive dub-punk will probably come as a shock. And if you’ve seen the band–their tour schedule has already taken them all over the country and four times to Europe, so it’s likely that more people have caught a concert than have heard their previous record, the 2005 EP Thunderstatement–you might still be surprised to learn that until recently the trio’s been split between Chicago and Philadelphia. Their tightly wound sets hardly seem like the work of a band whose members have to commute 800 miles for rehearsal.
Darden finds the local talent pool especially energizing. “There’s an abundance of insane musicians out here,” he says, and several appear on Bass Delegate (as does Ikey Owens from the Mars Volta, who plays keyboard and melodica). The Watchers’ Damien Thompson adds percussion, Yakuza’s Bruce Lamont adds sax, Just a Fire’s Fred Erskine (who’s since moved to D.C.) adds trumpet–and Damon Locks of the Eternals contributes not only vocals and cover art, like he did on the EP, but a palpable overall influence. The new album, with its richly orchestrated punk-reggae fusion, is definitely a cousin to the Eternals’ recent Heavy International–but instead of meandering dub experiments it’s got a fairly straight-up pop sensibility.
In the future, he says confidently, “seeing a black guy onstage playing guitar and fronting a band won’t be this crazy thing. History always repeats itself. Rock ‘n’ roll started out with black people. I’m just trying to steal it back.”
