Since Herbie Hancock's Grammy-winning success with River: The Joni Letters, a trend has emerged among jazz artists of covering Joni Mitchell tunes. This fashion was anticipated by Jazz Folk, who play the University of Hong Kong's Loke Yew Hall on Thursday as part of the 2009 HKU Concert Series.
The band, formed in 2005, comprises Australians pianist Matt McMahon and drummer Simon Barker, and Hong Kong-resident bassist Peter Scherr. They started out playing not only Mitchell tunes, but also the music of lesser-known, jazz-affiliated singer-songwriters including Nick Drake and Eliott Smith. No Mitchell songs appeared on Jazz Folk's eponymous debut album, where original compositions were featured alongside atmospheric reinterpretations of Smith's Satellite and Drake's Northern Sky and Parasite.
But the band's new EP, Electric Folk, features That Song About the Midway from Mitchell's 1969 album Clouds, alongside Beck Hansen's Cold Brains, Bob Dylan's Buckets of Rain, and the old blues standard Corinna, which takes a 1972 version by Taj Mahal as its starting point.
The EP will be available for sale at the HKU gig. Although billed as 'jazz folk from Australia', Scherr, an American, leads the band.
'We have, nine dates in China following that,' he says. 'The last time the group got together was last summer. Originally, we were planning on touring China, but we cancelled because of the tightening up of visa issuance surrounding the Olympics. Instead we spent a week in my studio recording a follow-up to the original Jazz Folk album.'
Because Scherr has been busy with other projects, several new tracks have yet to be mixed, so the EP will serve as a trailer for a full-length album to be released later. He also says that this time more production work is involved than was the case with the band's debut.