It’s not that often that the Anton DeFade Quintet can get together, so a March show is something he’s looking forward to.
“It’s a group of five of the best sidemen in the country so everyone is pretty busy,” DeFade said. “I’m just really excited to be performing and releasing music with this group.”
The jazz group will drop a single, “Gaijin,” on March 12 and play a show that night at the City of Asylum on Pittsburgh’s North Side. He’ll be releasing a limited run of cassettes that includes an alternate studio take, two other singles released last year and three live tracks.
“This song is a love letter to my ever-present imposter syndrome. Gaijin is the Japanese word for ‘foreigner’ or ‘outsider,’” he said. “I constantly find myself in new and wildly different musical environments (and I love that so much), but I can’t always shake feeling like an ‘outsider.’”
DeFade also plays bass for Pittsburgh’s The Commonheart, a soul/rock band, so the quintet is a change of pace.
”On the surface it’s completely different. It’s a small jazz group playing instrumental music, as opposed to a huge band that plays loud ‘rock n’ soul’ music. That being said, there are a lot of similarities under the hood,” he said. “Aside from the obvious fact that Brian (Wolfe) and I are the foundation of the rhythm section for both bands, we implement a groove-first mentality to every project we do. Making sure the music feels good is the primary goal — anything on top of that is a bonus. There’s a lot of Joe Cocker, Ray Charles and Otis Redding in the musical DNA of The Commonheart, which I would argue is not all that far off from Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver and Ramsey Lewis.”
DeFade said he’s infatuated with so many different types of music.
“I’m really lucky to have the opportunity to be working in such diverse environments. The flip side of that is I don’t always feel a sense of ‘home.’ In any given week I could be playing a jazz club, rock concert, tribute show, wedding, etc. Each type of performance calls for a slightly different mindset, and switching between them can be disorienting,” he said. “I’m also operating in a world where I never have as much prep time as I would like and rehearsals aren’t always feasible.
“Last year I filled in for my buddy Nate in Charles Wesley Godwin’s band. They were in the middle of a pretty lengthy tour and I was just coming in for a week, so we couldn’t do any rehearsals because they were already on the road. My second show with them was opening up for Luke Combs at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville in front of 40,000 people. I was very nervous but was honored they trusted me to come into that environment and nail it. All that said, probably the actual biggest challenge is keeping a highly organized and color-coded calendar. For a while, I spent more time learning the ins and outs of Google Calendar than I did learning music.”
But if he were forced to pick only one genre?
”This is an impossible question to answer,” he said. “But if I absolutely had to pick I would probably go with jazz if for no other reason than it encapsulates a massive variety of music. Ahmad Jamal, The Brian Blade Fellowship, Ella Fitzgerald and Weather Report sound nothing like each other but they’re all under the jazz umbrella, so that’s the answer I’m going with.”
DeFade said the live music experience has an “indescribable energy” and highlighted some of his favorite places to play locally:
- City Of Asylum: Best listening room in Pittsburgh for jazz
- Golden Age Beer Company: Best place for a casual live music experience. It’s really easy to control your experience there. If you want the live music to be front and center, you can get really close to the musicians and just listen. Or if you want to just hang, drink some beers, have some food and talk with friends, you can do that too.
- MCG Jazz: Best theater to see high-level touring jazz artists
- Original Pittsburgh Winery and Thunderbird are tied for best midsize venue. Both have a mix of local and touring groups.
- I’m also really excited about the reopening of Club Cafe, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this new team takes the venue.
DeFade filled in TribLive on what else we should know about the Anton DeFade Quintet.
Band: Anton DeFade Quintet
Band members: Evan David (saxophone); JD Chaisson (trumpet/cornet/flugelhorn); Jacob Pleakis (piano/keyboards); Brian Wolfe (drums); DeFade (bass)
Founding story: This particular project came about in late 2021/early 2022. I was playing in Brian Wolfe’s funk/soul band Check Your Bucket and our guitarist left the band, which put us in limbo (we have since figured it out and play quite a bit around town). I still wanted to work with those musicians, so I decided to start booking the band without a guitarist and pivot to jazz repertoire. It was great timing because I had also really missed being a part of an original jazz project. During the covid shutdown, I wrote one tune every day to keep me sane, so by the time everything reopened I had a few hundred written. Since then I’ve been taking small batches of these songs into the studio with my quintet.
For fans of: Cannonball Adderley (particularly his more groove-oriented music from the late ’60s/early ’70s), Honestly, people who like jam bands would probably be into the music (not that I would consider what we do “jam band” music by any means).
Influences: So, so many … but in regards to my original music, I’m really inspired by the writing of Horace Silver, Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. From a bass-playing standpoint: Israel Crosby, Bob Cranshaw, Dwayne Dolphin, Ray Brown, Joseph “Lucky” Scott, George Porter, James Jamerson, Bob Babbitt…
Releases: As a leader: “Hipster Tickle” single, 2025; “Low Down Squeeze” single, 2024; “Wes of a Man” single, 2024; “No G Left Behind” single, 2023; “New Frontiers by The DeFade Family” album, 2021
As a sideman: The Commonheart’s “For Work or Love” album, 2022; The Commonheart’s “Pressure” album, 2019; Bill Deasy’s “Timeless Things” album, 2016; Elevations’ “To The Stars” album, 2015; Elevations’ self-titled album, 2013
Next show: March 12, City of Asylum for the “Gaijin” release show
How to find him: DeFade can be found on his website, Bandcamp, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.
Three other Pittsburgh area bands to check out:Zinnia’s Garden — Just a really cool rock band. They’re sometimes heavy and sometimes ethereal. They have an energy that only comes from youth. One of my favorite bands in town, for sure.)
Kelly McCafferty — I’ve had the pleasure of working with her a few times. Really great singer/songwriter cranking out the hookiest pop I’ve heard in a long time.
Kinetic — Joe Sheehan leads this amazing group and writes African-inspired modern jazz pieces. He also has the best (and possibly nicest) musicians involved. They all work so well together.
AND I’m going to list three BASSISTS to check out in Pittsburgh since bassists don’t always get that much love. If you see any of these names involved in something then it is worth checking out: Paul Thompson; Denzel Chismar-Oliver; Ava Lintz
Favorite pizza shop: Rockaway, not even close
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