Creative Listening with Veezy Coffman

 When she’s not playing with The Flood or working on her double-major at Marshall University, our saxophonist Veezy Coffman can often be seen and heard playing solo jazz sets at cool venues all around the Tri-State Area. For instance, she’s performing twice this weekend: Friday night in The Guitar Bar at The Winchester in Ashland, Ky., and then Saturday night back here in Huntington at the New Jockey Club downtown in The Frederick. Now, it was in just such a jazzy solo set that we first heard Veezy a year and a half ago and we couldn’t wait to get her into our band. We learn a lot from this 20 year old, especially about creative listening. Here’s a cool example of what we mean by that. At a rehearsal a few weeks ago, Doug Chaffin started playing “Around the World Waltz,” a tune that he learned from a 1990s Byron Berline album called “Jumping the Strings.” (Oh, incidentally, we were sad to hear of Byron’s death last week; what an amazing, influential fiddler he was!) Anyway, Veezy had never heard the tune before, so at the start of this track, just listen to her listen to it, and then, when it’s her turn, hear how she improvises her lovely impressions of that melody. Of course, Veezy learns some stuff from us too, such as how rock along on a blues with the give and take in an ensemble of band mates who are all just making it up as they go! You can hear it on the second half of this track, after the waltz, in her wailing in the final choruses of “Yellow Dog Blues.”