There was nothing here.”Įverything was boarded up. There was nothing, all these buildings were all closed. “When I moved down here, this was a very dangerous place to be. “This was the only place I could afford,” Tank says, standing at the corner of Easts 4th St. It is crowded with reminders of another time when the dollar was not king. Out on the sidewalk, Tank looks around his New York neighbourhood. He did that as an illegal alien for his first 16 years. He always wanted to live in New York and work the jazz scene here. After learning the tenor saxophone Tank studied at the Berklee School of Music in Boston during the mid-1960s. He was born and raised in downtown Kitchener. The band for that recording session included Walrath, the Brecker Brothers, George Coleman and Eddie Gomez, among many others. Tank is on the Mingus recording called Me Myself An Eye, and Something Like a Bird. “So Mingus turns around and says: ‘Are you going to come to my record session?’ And I said: ‘Yeah, I’ll be there,'” Tank says. “After that I was in the backroom, and Mingus said: ‘Let me hear you play a ballad.’ So I played My One and Only Love,” Tank says.A few weeks later Tank was with a group of people in Mingus’ apartment in Manhattan Plaza on 43rd Street. That’s where he sat in with Charles Mingus. The old Village Gate was a special place for Tank. She is giving voice to the experience of artists like Tank. Watch for more of Arcade’s incredible work. “It’s starts with a cafe and it ends with cupcakes,” Arcade says in an amazing performance of her unnamed work-in-progress at Joe’s Pub on Nov. She is developing a wickedly funny piece on the gentrification of New York City, and the decline of the culture in the world capital of culture. One of the last shows there before it closed in 1993 was Penny Arcade’s “Politics and Sexuality.” The club is long gone, but Arcade is still at it. in the NOHO District.”I used to go to Boomers all the time, that was a great club, now it’s like a diner,” Tank says.Īll that’s left of The Village Gate is a sign on a wall above Bleeker Street. The Ladies Fort was a jazz performance loft at 2 Bond St. Every Saturday, Tank had a gig at the Ladies Fort with Joe Lee Wilson and Monty Waters Big Band. That’s where Tank played in Sam Rivers’ band the Winds of Manhattan, and Sam Rivers’ Big Band, which also included Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. The Tin Palace was a regular venue for Tank back in the day. “Basically I just stayed in this neighbourhood.” “I had my choice of so many places to go, and they were all run by musicians,” Tank says. A jazz musician earned a living walking to and from his gigs in the East and West Village. When he first moved to the East Village the neighbourhood had lots of places to play. He sometimes jams at Fat Cat and the Zinc Bar in the West Village. He’s also playing in the Monday night jam at the 11th Street Bar that often features Charles Davis on tenor sax, Pasquale Grasso on guitar and Murray Wall on bass. These days Tank plays in the New York City Jazz Workshop’s Big Band, which recently had a gig in Something Jazz near Times Square. “I tell you something, my playing really feels good,” Tank says.
They first played as a quartet at the Uptown Waterloo Jazz Festival in 1996. This will be something of a re-union of sorts for the musicians. The quartet includes Robi Botos on piano, Dave Young on bass and Ted Warren on drums. To help pay for the trip, Tank does a show on Sunday, Dec. He is travelling to Waterloo for his 96-year-old mother’s annual Christmas party.
Tank is getting ready for his gig in The Jazz Room in Waterloo with some of the best jazz musicians on the Canadian scene. But this neighbourhood, like every other on Manhattan, was gentrified beyond recognition. The show was developed in one of the four theatres on East 4th Street where Tank lives. The smash musical RENT was set in this neighbourhood. A one-bedroom typically rents for at least $3,500 a month. Now the street-level units are all occupied with busy restaurants, shops, cafes and boutiques. The Fez closed more than 10 years ago, and the Mingus Big Band moved to the Jazz Standard.īack in 1974 most of the ground-floor units in the East Village were boarded-up. That’s where the Mingus Big Band played every Saturday. Now it is teeming with rich people, and many of his favourite places to play closed long ago.In the basement of this trendy coffee shop was a place called the Fez Under the Time Cafe. When Tank moved here in 1974 the neighbourhood was packed with musicians and venues. The over-priced java, and the gleaming cafe around him are unwelcome reminders of how money changed the former-Bohemian enclave where he’s lived for more than 40 years - The East Village.