Scott Amendola comes home to The Back Room

A week after a new live trio record with Jeff Parker and Paul Bryan, the East Bay's busiest jazz drummer squeezes into Berkeley's 94-capacity listening room with Michael Manring, Paul Hanson and Joel Harrison.

In a room that holds 94 people, nobody is really in the back row. That's the deal at The Back Room in Berkeley, and it's the right size for what Scott Amendola has lined up this weekend: on Sunday, Nov. 15, the drummer shares a bill with Michael Manring, Paul Hanson and Joel Harrison. Music starts at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are through Humanitix.

Amendola is about as local as a working jazz drummer gets. In our listings he has played the East Bay more than any other part of the country, 23 shows and counting, and Sunday arrives barely a week after a new record with his name on the front.

On Nov. 6, Jealous Butcher Records released a live album by the Scott Amendola Trio, with Jeff Parker on guitar and Paul Bryan on bass, on CD and vinyl, according to San Jose Jazz. The set was captured at the trio's 2018 PDX Jazz Festival performance, and much of what they play comes from *Lift*, the trio album Amendola made with Parker in 2010. A single, "Momentum & Backlash," went out ahead of the album in September.

*Lift* was a self-released record when it came out, Amendola's first album in five years at the time, as All About Jazz reported then. The bassist on that original session was John Shifflett, so the new album is less a reissue than a reunion of old tunes with a different low end. Bryan, for his part, is a Grammy-winning producer best known for his work on several Aimee Mann albums.

The friendship underneath all of it is older than any of those records. As the San Jose Jazz listing tells it, Amendola, Parker and Bryan go back to the late 1980s at Berklee in Boston. Decades on, the trio still plays like people who learned to listen to each other in the same practice rooms.

Sunday is a chance to hear one of the East Bay's most-booked drummers from a few feet away.

Sunday isn't a trio night, though, and that's part of the appeal. The bill puts Amendola next to Manring, a longtime collaborator: the two recorded *Haunted by Eternity* together with Henry Kaiser, as their Shazam discography lists. Hanson and Harrison fill out a lineup built for open-ended playing rather than a tidy set of tunes, the kind of night where the best moments are the ones nobody planned at soundcheck.

That's where a room this size earns its keep. At 94 capacity, The Back Room doesn't let a drummer hide behind volume. You hear the brushes, the ride cymbal decaying, the small adjustments a player makes when the bassist leans in a new direction. Amendola's records reward close listening; this is a night where close listening is the only option.

If you'd rather hear the new album's material played by the band that made it, the Scott Amendola Trio with Parker and Bryan is booked at San Jose Jazz on Dec. 5, one of a handful of release dates around the Bay. You can find more on Amendola's own site, scottamendola.com.

But Sunday is the one to circle. A hometown drummer with a fresh record, three players who know how to push him, and a room small enough that you'll walk out feeling like you were in on the conversation. Get there early, find a seat, and keep your phone in your pocket.

Sources: San Jose Jazz: Scott Amendola, Jeff Parker & Paul Bryan (sanjosejazz.org); Humanitix: Scott Amendola Trio with Jeff Parker & Paul Bryan, celebrating the release of their new album (events.humanitix.com); All About Jazz: Drummer self-releases first album in five years (Lift) (allaboutjazz.com); Shazam: Haunted by Eternity – Scott Amendola, Henry Kaiser & Michael Manring (shazam.com); Scott Amendola official site (scottamendola.com); Humanitix tickets: The Back Room, Nov 15 (events.humanitix.com)