Bass Magazine
On one autumn night at Brooklyn’s BRIC House, Carter and Simmons turned raw-plucked bass lines and hotly read poetry into something that rang with meaning.
Ron Carter and Danny Simmons announce The Brown Beatnik Tomes – Live at BRIC House, a new album to be released on June 7th via Blue Note. On the bass: Ron Carter (who will turn 82 next week) not only played in Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet but, with well over 2,200 sessions to his name, is the Guinness-certified most-recorded jazz bassist in history. And on the words: Danny Simmons, a Tony-winning cofounder of Def Poetry Jam, not to mention a novelist, poet, gallerist, and neo-African abstract expressionist whose paintings have appeared in the Smithsonian and the United Nations HQ.
On one autumn night at Brooklyn’s BRIC House, Carter and Simmons turned raw-plucked bass lines and hotly read poetry into something that rang with meaning and felt like magic. What they created that night was, and still is, called The Brown Beatnik Tomes. It had began as a book, became an event, and is now an album. But what it really is, is an irresistible concept.