Heading Home

Trumpeter Eric Jacobson has put together a really good bunch of original tunes and killer band for his new record, Heading Home. Jacobson is a busy Milwaukee musical hustler, and for Heading Home he hustled Chicago
drummer George Fludas into the recording studio to push and prod the musical proceedings to wonderful heights. Fludas is a unique drummer who is equally adept at authentically playing John Bonham as he is at interpreting Billy Higgins or Tony Williams contributions the jazz lineage. Yet on this recording he is simply "being George Fludas," and the drum world needs to hear more from him. He is pushing the band to musical plateaus, into and out of chasms, and around corners, as any great jazz drummer does. Listen to Fludas' solo over a vamp at the end of "Three of a Kind' and his propulsive groove on "Manty Time" and "Sunset Suite." Fludas and bassist Dennis Carroll show a telepathic hook-up in the music, and Jacobson, Geof Bradfield, and Bruce Barth ride the musical waves like they were at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in the early 60s. In fact, the music on Heading Home could easily be confused for one of the many records that came out of Van Gelder's during that era. That is high praise.