by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Two years ago, it seemed very possible that Montreal’s longstanding populist jazzmeisters Swing Dynamique had swung their last. Mike King, guitarist and ringmaster, had bailed for the Prairies, then Toronto. His father’s death brought him back to Winnipeg, and a bit of windfall, sad as it was. "It was an intensely personal time," recalls King, "but lo and behold, I was the sole beneficiary. I’ll be honest, that’s where the money for the album came from."

Ah yes, the self-titled latest joint from Mike King & Swing Dynamique Featuring Guy Nadon (jeez, whatever happened to easy band names, like Kiss?). Tangible, empirical proof that King and his court are as dynamic as ever. "It’s just been morphing itself into something else," he explains. "It’s like a golden age now, because some of the people I’ve been working with for 12 or 15 years. Colin Biggin, the clarinetist, he was part of our first gig as Swing Dynamique here at the Rising Sun, in its second incarnation on St-Laurent. So he’s been in there for donkey years. We’ve all gone through a lot of stuff, so taking a little break for a year and a half was good - let some of that water flow under the bridge. We worked a lot and built up issues as a band, and misunderstandings. These guys are thoroughbreds, so they’re high-strung - nothing really bad, but it caused the music to get flat. That all got cleared up when I got back."

King’s strategy was a blitzkrieg strike, hustling the band into Studio Victor less than a month after his return. "It was nice, right after this hiatus, to get back into this tremendous burst of creative energy, and to have the opportunity to put it down, everything we’ve been processing for the last couple of years since we stopped playing these songs too much. The versions came out with a bit more of a musicality, maybe."

For all that rush, the results ooze a certain patience at odds with the band’s live show. "Mo (Muhammad Abdul Al-Khabyyr, trombonist) and I got together in the initial, pre-production meetings, and I wanted to get something bluesy, long and moody, and have segueways between the tunes, to get more into the idea of how in dance clubs now, everything’s just one long song. It’s nice to play with that - as a snotty-nosed, intellectualized artist," he mumbles with a smirk.

"We’re known for our frenetic live show, but that doesn’t translate that well to a record. I also wanted something that would express me more, and the personal things I’d gone through. I wouldn’t have felt right about doing some ‘Hey, wow, c’mon, get happy!’ type of thing."

There’ll be enough of that when the band crawls onto the Jazz Fest outdoor stage, thanks in part to veteran drummer Guy Nadon, who shouldn’t be half so fun, funny and lively at his age. "He’s been in it 56 years now - he’s got pictures of himself playing his homemade kit from 1945. I took a walk down Ste-Catherine with him, just around the Main. ‘Oh, this was here and this was that, and we were playing here one night when we heard a bang and came down the stairs and some guy’s lying there dead.’ He’s quite the wild man to hang out with."

On the FIJM’s General Motors stage (Ste-Catherine at Jeanne-Mance) on Monday, June 30, 9pm, free

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