Tenor and alto saxophonist Jeff Coffin’s new Compass Records CD Commonality helps demolish the myth that challenging music isn’t being made in Nashville. Indeed, his compositions, solos, and ensemble work rival anything issued this year on any national jazz label. But despite his progressive direction on Commonality, Coffin doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as an avant-garde specialist or even as a jazz player.

“I’m a musician first,” he says, “then I’m an improvising player.” Coffin is equally at home performing bluegrass, for instance, which he’s done the past couple of years with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones. He’s also a regular fixture at Bean Central’s twice-a-month jam sessions, which attract both fledgling university players and industry veterans.

Still, the specter of two jazz giants looms throughout much of Commonality: tenor titan Sonny Rollins and alto experimentalist Ornette Coleman. “Those two are certainly among my favorite players, and they’re strong influences, especially Sonny. I saw him a couple of years ago in Finland. [The Flecktones] had just flown over there, and everyone was dead tired, but Sonny was playing, so I dragged a few of the guys over.... Our mouths were just wide open.”

Coffin’s drummer Tom Giampietro and bassist Chris Enghauser have been working regularly with him for about three years, and their familiarity with his approach is evident on exacting cuts like the 10-minute-plus “Angle of Repose.” Guest trumpeter Rod McGaha provides extra spice on four cuts; on “Outside the Gray Sky Cries” and “Who’s Who,” his rapid-fire answering lines and brisk refrains punctuate Coffin’s adept leads, while the Giampietro/Enghauser team supplies adept rhythmic balance. “There was a telepathy going on while we were doing this record,” Coffin says.

Though he was born in New England and earned a degree from North Texas State, Coffin says he’s quite happy working and living in Nashville. “I initially came here because of cheap rent. I had a friend living here, and he needed a roommate. So I took a chance, and I’m very happy with the situation.”

Another friend helped link Coffin with ace banjoist Bela Fleck. “We actually met in Aspen at a festival,” Coffin remembers. “When we were introduced, he said, ‘I’ve got a message at home from a guy who said I should meet you.’ We started doing some things together at his home; I took him some Ornette compositions I was working on at the time. He wasn’t really that familiar with the songs but was intrigued by them, and we quickly found out we could work together.”

Coffin currently juggles his time between the Flecktones, his own trio, and a larger group, the Vibration Arts Ensemble, the local equivalent of Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Vibration Society or Charles Mingus’ various Jazz Workshop units. The Ensemble has rotating personnel, and its ranks sometimes include drummer Chester Thompson or the ubiquitous McGaha.

The saxophonist has high praise for Nashville-based Compass records, which gave him complete creative control on Commonality. “It’s a testament to Compass that they were willing to take a chance on something a lot of people might say isn’t necessarily representative of a Nashville label. They’re a wonderful organization, and this record shows they’re willing to take a chance on music they believe in.”

Coffin plays a CD-release party Thursday, Sept. 16, at Caffè Milano.

—Ron Wynn

Welcome wagon

It sounds like a joke: One musician leaves Nashville, another shows up a few weeks later in the same house. Only this time, the city didn’t get another Music Row wannabe or West Coast ’70s burnout. When roots-rocker John Sieger moved back to Milwaukee at the end of July, he left lots of long faces—but at least he managed to leave his house in Sylvan Park to one of the country’s coolest singer-songwriters.

At a Tin Pan South show on Lower Broad two years ago, Amy Rigby asked some local musicians and music writers what living in Nashville was like. The New York-based singer-songwriter must have liked what she heard. Last month, she and her 10-year-old daughter Hazel packed up their belongings and moved to Music City. Next Wednesday at 12th & Porter, Rigby plays her first club date since the move, opening for her Koch Records labelmate R.B. Morris.

“I feel like I died and woke up in someone else’s life,” says Rigby, who first played Nashville 15 years ago. That was when her mid-’80s cowpunk band The Last Roundup split a bill with Jason & the Scorchers at Cantrell’s. Her country leanings were also evident in the tightly constructed songs and three-part harmonies of The Shams, who put out a critically acclaimed LP and an EP on Matador in the early ’90s.

Yet it was Rigby’s 1996 solo LP Diary of a Mod Housewife that established her unique voice—that of a working mother unwilling to hang up her rock ’n’ roll shoes. In the barbed hooks of “Beer and Kisses” and “Twenty Questions,” Rigby took the stuff of jukebox weepers and infused it with enough bite, wit, and on-the-spot reporting for a post-punk Loretta Lynn. The record topped nearly every critic’s Top 10 list that year, including the Village Voice’s Pazz/Jop Poll.

While writing songs for the follow-up, last year’s well-received Middlescence, Rigby came to Nashville and collaborated with Stacey Earle, Duane Jarvis, and Tim Carroll. The idea of moving to Nashville dawned on her then, she says, even though her New York friends disdained the whole idea of cowriting. “People in New York tend to think of cowriting as evil,” she says. “I just say, ‘Look at Pet Sounds.’ ”

Production starts soon on her next album, and Rigby says she’s always open to intriguing new songwriting partners. “I don’t want to write with a bunch of me’s, y’know.” (Deana Carter’s crazy if she doesn’t give her a call.) She’d especially like to meet “another single-mother singer-songwriter to form, like, a Kate & Allie of Nashville.”

In the meantime, she’s immersing herself in the minutiae of Nashville life. “Everybody told me to ‘choose my Kroger,’ ” Rigby explains. “Other than that, the places I went to [when I came here 15 years ago] are pretty much the places I go now on my lunch hour—Ernest Tubb, Gruhn Guitars.”

So far, Rigby says the main thing she misses is bohemian style. “What I’m missing—and it’s all a trade-off, isn’t it?—is the visual stimulation: the piercings, the fashion statements. But if I get too homesick for it, I go to Bongo Java.”

—Jim Ridley

A study in contrasts

Last Wednesday’s Bob Dylan and Paul Simon concert at First American Music Center provided a study in the contrasting ways fabled performers deal with a public persona and an extensive catalog of music. To the credit of both artists, neither simply recited by-the-book versions of famous songs. Nor did either strain to modernize his songs simply for the sake of making them sound up-to-date. Instead, both purposely refashioned their material to fit their current obsessions and tastes.

Simon, who came on first, pushed every song through a world-music kaleidoscope, revealing once again how enamored he is of African and Latin American music. Even older hits were transformed into dense, polyrhythmic workouts. Unfortunately, despite an outstanding 10-piece band, the treatment didn’t always work, sapping the strength of such carefully conceived gems as “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Mrs. Robinson,” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.”

Moreover, Simon pulled too many songs from less inspired albums such as Rhythm of the Saints and Songs From the Capeman. While the band occasionally made the tunes come alive, more often than not, the arrangements simply lacked the soulful fire of good Latin or African music. A few songs, however, exploited the musical depth of this multi-ethnic group, with most of the high points coming from Simon’s superb Graceland.

A more judicious choice would have been to open with the full force of his big band, then step away for simpler, more traditional takes on his well-known songs. Instead, Simon failed to convey how strong his own songbook is; that’s a shame for someone who tours as infrequently as he does.

Of course, Dylan is quite a different story. On the road incessantly since the mid-1980s, Dylan for a while ran off some fans with too many poor shows in too short a period a time. But after hitting a low point a decade ago, he underwent a vital change; in recent years, every show seems to take another step up in quality.

Gone are the confounding concerts of old, when Dylan rushed everything into a monotonous, electronic blur. These days, he’s performing with renewed vitality. It would have been nice to hear him include more recent songs, including some from his fine 1997 album, Time Out of Mind. Nonetheless, his First American show had the spark of surprise, with each distinctive selection creating anticipation for what would come next.

In fact, this show had an extra element that made it all the more memorable: Marty Stuart, a country star with a solid folk pedigree, spent the entire concert standing next to Dylan, providing mandolin, electric guitar, and rousing harmony vocals. Dylan had contacted Stuart prior to the show to ask if they could get together while he was in town; the two spent the day writing songs and performing old bluegrass, country, and folk tunes. Onstage, Stuart meshed well with regular Dylan guitarists Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton, and his presence appeared to light a fire under Dylan, who spent much of the show trading glances and guitar riffs with his guest.

In the end, the simplicity and concentrated passion of Dylan’s performance made for one of the strongest sets he’s given in Nashville in the last 15 years. It formed an interesting contrast to Simon’s complex, overly ambitious performance, which somewhat dampened an otherwise unforgettable evening.

—Michael McCall