Heller High Water

A Philly expat talks about the end of Philadelphia as he knows it.

by A.D. Amorosi

Ex-Philadelphia player/composer Skip Heller is very much at home in Los Angeles. He’s worked with a seemingly endless lineup of West Coast contacts from Ray Campi, Yma Sumac, Lalo Guerrero and Robert Drasnin to author John Gilmore and The Cartoon Network. Whether the results were rough rockabilly, complex cocktail sounds or Latino-twinged noir jazz, there was always a trace of Philly in there, be it the Jewish wedding music Heller played when he wasn’t gigging in West Philly bars or the classic Philly organ sounds of Charles Earland and Jimmy Smith. Heller’s latest record, Homegoing (Innova), is his most personal, full of classic Philly grooves.

"The Œwhy' of why I made this lives on eight different layers," says Heller of his return to the classic organ combo sound. "Between Chicano music, cartoons and film and every other damn thing I was involving myself with, I felt I'd better come back to the stuff that got me going in the first place." Namely, traditional "Sidewinder" grooves, Bill Doggett blues, Hammond-hounded ballads and Jewish wedding music. "Jazz didn't pay as well as you'd hope," says Heller.

Though Heller has always, from 1998's St. Christopher's Arms on, managed to get one Philly-style organ cut onto every one of his discs, Homegoing -- from the serene standard "Time After Time" to blue-mood originals "Nika's Dowry" and "Uri Caine Memorial Barbecue," a wild card nod to both his old pal and Frank Zappa -- is full-flushed with rippling muscular grinding courtesy Mike Bolger, a devotee of both Doggett and Sun Ra. (With Ra's Knoel Scott on clarinet and alto saxophone for Heller's Tritone gig, expect some angular Arkestrations). What really makes Homegoing so intense and sad is its rapturous dedication to ambient time and space. You can feel the yearning for a bygone past in each of Heller's guitar twists.

"Every time I'd come back to Philly, more of my old landmarks were gone. I felt like I was losing touch with bits and pieces of my tradition that I loved and I didn't want it to just fall away." Crediting, in part, country legend John Hartford's final disc of old fiddle tunes played in the context he grew up in ("He knew he was dying and wanted to come home one last time. I didn't want to wait until I was dying"), Heller has made Homegoing an elegy, epiphany, funeral march and in-the-pocket party record -- all dedicated to his hometown. "I didn't want to just wave goodbye from L.A.," says Heller. "Bert Payne is gone, Uri's left town, the bars I played in have mostly closed. These are people and places I love, gone or not, and I wanted to say so."

The Skip Heller Quartet performs Sun., Dec. 8, 8 p.m., $10, Tritone, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475.