TRAUT / RODBY Guitarist Ross Traut and bassist Steve Rodby have been carrying on a running dialog for about 15 years. So it makes sense that they titled their second recording together THE DUO LIFE. Their personal history allows them to bring an extraordinary amount of musical breadth and depth to this record. Technically, they draw on years of experience as players; in school, in the studio and on the road. Traut and Rodby know more than just the tricks of their trade. They have a rapport with their instruments and each other that allows them to exploit their talent without resorting to tricks. "We're playing a lot harder," Rodby asserts, "much more aggressively. Everything is more extreme. The ballads are more open, the out playing is looser. We took all the principals of the duo method and extended them." But there is far more to what Traut and Rodby do on THE DUO LIFE than mere technique. The combination of talent and taste, of player and listener comes into play extensively. As listeners they cover a diverse range of material, from a lyrical ballad version of "Some Other Time" (from On The Town), to their angular take on the Spinners' 1972 hit, "People Make The World Go Round." THE DUO LIFE also features compositions by such seemingly dissimilar talent as Chick Corea, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, George and Ira Gershwin, and Wayne Shorter. "We do Bell to Bernstein," Traut jibes. "That's Thom Bell," adds Rodby, "my hero." "Ross and 1, like so many players in our generation, really are fortunate to be influenced by so much different music," says Rodby. "There's be-bop, and the stuff after that, the later Miles era, Beatles, early rock and roll music, all of the pop music and all of the R&B music, all of those things. We just pick music that we really like, and then we try to find ways to play it. We improvise on it, but still stay true to the heart of those songs. So we always come up with a collection of diverse stuff, unusual combinations." None of this is really a surprise, when you consider what they've accomplished as individuals. Rodby has been the bassist for the Pat Metheny Group since 1981, recording six albums and co-producing two. Since the early '70s he has worked with a veritable Who's Who of Jazz, from Joe Henderson, Sonny Stitt, Milt Jackson, Roy Haynes, Zoot Simms, Jackie McLean and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, to Dave Samuels, Fareed Haque and Lyle Mays. Additionally, he is beginning to carve a niche for himself as a producer, calling the shots on recent albums by new Columbia label-mate Fred Simon, Montreux and Michael Manring. "Still Life (Talking) was the first record where I got a production credit," Rodby expounds. "About five, six years ago, I started to speak up and get more involved in that side of it. Ever since then, I've been lucky. People have invited me to do it more and more often. I've done production on all the Pat Metheny Group records since then, and have been getting some projects of my own on the side. I enjoy it very much. For me, it's a new thing." Similarly, Traut enjoyed the good fortune nine years ago of watching his self-titled debut album (featuring Rodby and others) climb up the jazz charts alongside an LP he'd done the same year with Oregon member Paul McCandless (also with Rodby in the lineup). But that was a decade in coming. He won jazz awards in high school and went to college at the University of Miami. There he played with such contemporaries as Jaco Pastorius, Gil Goldstein, Cliff Carter, Pat Metheny, Narada Michael Walden, Steve Morse, Mark Egan, Danny:Gottleib and Hiram Bullock. "It was an exciting time," Traut rhapsodizes. "I went down there to study, but then realized it's about playing as much as possible. We would hide in the practice building when they locked it up for the night so we could have all-night jam sessions. It was really inspiring to have all those great guitar players; I didn't really know how influential they would all turn out to be. Most of them were just kind of working their stuff out, just like I was at the time. I just thought, ' Well, this is the way it is, there's just a bunch of smokin' guitar players around everywhere.' I had a great time. I got to play with all those guys and still remain in contact with most of them." Ross Traut was born in Madison, Wisconsin on July 1, 1954. While going to New Trier High School, outside of Chicago, he won the 1972 American Music Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Performance of Modern Music. While performing with his high school's jazz ensemble at that year's Montreaux Jazz Festival, he received the Montreaux Solo Award. At the University of Miami, he met pianist Paul Bley and they performed together. Bley brought Traut and bassist Jaco Pastorius to New York as members of Bley's band, Scorpio. Traut returned to Miami, then headed back to Chicago to form his own jazz band, Orbit, which played the Windy City for about a year. He then took a three month hiatus to work as sideman for sax player Joe Henderson. On his return, he disbanded Orbit and concentrated on studio gigs and composing. Rodby was born December 9, 1954 in Joliet, Illinois. His father is a choir director, so there was always music In the house. But Rodby became fascinated by music when he first saw a double bass on the old 'Captain Kangaroo" television program. "I remember watching TV when I was about three years old,' he told Guitar Player mgazine. "I saw this guy with a string bass and my heart skipped a beat. Then he started to play it and I heard the of bass. I couldn't get over it. I became completely convinced that this was the instrument for me." At age ten, Rodby started playing the bass in the school orchestra. 'As soon as I was able,' he recalled, 'my father bought a guitar and we started playing songs together. He could write out root notes and bar lines, and I had to make up the the bass lines. I'm lucky because I've been improvising from the very beginning. There I was, ten years old, improvising with a guitar player -- and I'm still doing the same thing today." He began playing jazz in high school. 'I walked into a record store one day, and they were playing the Ramsey Lewis Trio," Rodby remembers. "It sounded great to me. They were doing these semi-rock, semi-soul tunes -- the bassist was Cleveland Eaton and the drummer was Maurice White, soon to be with Earth, Wind and Fire -- and that music made a big impression on me. A lot of what I'm doing now comes from those-early days.' Rodby had decided to study classical bass at Northwestern University. But the summer before he started, he attended a clinic at the National Stage Band Camp in Illinois. There he met future band mates Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays and Danny Gottleib. At Northwestern, he studied classical with Warren Benfield of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and briefly was a student of jazz great Rufus Reid. While still in college, Rodby began performing regularly at Chicago's premier jazz club, the Jazz Showcase. "It's the jazz club where all the great names came through," he notes, "and they often used local rhythm sections. For years, I used to be sort of the house bassist. I got to play with a whole lot of great musicians. It's an amazing list. Even I'm impressed! I've been so busy with other music lately that sometimes I forget I did all that, but it was a great education. That was my be-bop school." Although they both lived and worked in the Chicago area for years, Traut and Rodby didn't meet each other until 1976. "We both played with Danny Gottleib," Rodby relates. "Danny was on the road with Bobby Rydell?! He was stuck out at O'Hare and he phoned me, saying, 'There's this new guitar player, he just moved back to Chicago. You guys should get together and play.' So I said, 'Sounds good.' I called Ross up. It was happening." "We first talked on the phone," Traut concurs, "and then he came over to my parents' house where I was living at the time. We played duo the first time we got together. From the beginning." Through 1977, Traut continued to be active on the Chicago studio scene, playing Jingles, R&B, whatever the session called for. Rodby finished his last year at Northwestern, earned a degree in classical double bass and won the Outstanding Bassist and Musician awards at the University of Notre Dame Jazz festival. They performed duos whenever their schedules allowed, playing throughout 1978 in the Chicago area. "Together," wrote Larry Kart in the Chicago Tribune, 'they form one of those perfect partnerships that sometimes happen in jazz, a musical marriage that inspires the performers as much as it does the audience." At the end of 1978, Traut moved to New York to expand his horizons. Over the next couple of years, he played in groups with Michael Franks, Steve Grossman, Billy Hart, Noel Pointer, Paul McCandless, Jorge Dalto, Ronnie Cuber, Eddie Daniels, Paul Bley, as well as his old U of M chums, Egan, Gottlieb and Carter. Rodby joined his partner in 1981 to record Traut's self-titled debut album (on Headfirst Records), featuring Egan, Gottlieb, Carter and Wayne Stewart. That same year, Traut and Rodby appeared on Navigator (Landslide Records) by Oregon member McCandless. The record also featured Dave Samuels and singer Jay Clayton. Both albums by Traut and McCandless charted together for months. Also in 1981, after extensive tours with Michael Franks and Monty Alexander, Rodby received the call from Pat Metheny. Metheny was looking to sound less electric, and wanted someone who could play both electric and acoustic bass. 'Steve was the first guy who came to mind," Metheny told Guitar Player. "We had him come to New York for an audition, and we knew instantly that he was the guy. We asked him right on the spot , and he joined the band." Rodby has played on five Grammy award-winning albums as part of the Pat Metheny Group -- Offramp, Travels, First Circle and Still Life (Talking), and Letter From Home. At the same time, Traut focused on his career as a studio musician in Chicago and New York. His fretwork has graced countless jingles, as well as records by Fred Simon and Dave Samuels. He has toured Europe with saxophonist Jan Garbarek in a group that included Eberhard Weber. He has played along side Steve Gadd, Eddie Gomez and Grover Washington as part of the Columbia Jazz All-Stars. He has spent a great deal of time touring around the world with Michael Franks. His guitar is featured on movie and television soundtracks. Rodby's work as part of the Pat Metheny Group on The Falcon and the Snowman film gave the bassist an opportunity to renew his acquaintance with his classical roots, as he conducted the National Philharmonic Orchestra at London's Abbey Road Studios. "The deal is, my father is a classical musician. He's a choir director. I thought I was going to be a classical bassist for most of my youth. I got my degree from Northwestern in classical bass. I had a little bit of conducting experience when I was in High School and it always seemed kind of natural. When the need arose for someone to conduct the film score who knew the music and understood its aesthetic, I was recruited. It was wild, because I felt like I'd been doing it for years." When he's not working with Metheny, Rodby's eclectic talents make him a much in demand studio musician, both for rhythm and string sections. He has recorded with folk artists like Steve Goodman, Bob Gibson and Tom Paxton. He is a member of the respected new music performance group, the Contemporary Chamber Players. Rodby has played on records by Dave Samuels, Toninho Horta, Fareed Haque, Paul McCandless and Lyle Mays. In addition to his production work on the Metheny records, Rodby has played on and co-produced two records by Fred Simon; and conducted and done additional production for Lyle Mays on Street Dreams. Rodby has also produced records for Montreux and the latest recording by ace bassist Michael Manring, due out in February. He is also slated to go into the studio to produce McCandless' second Windham Hill release in the near future. Given all the projects they have on tap individually, the work Traut and Rodby perform as a duo is something of a miracle. But they managed to follow the release of their 1988 Columbia debut, The Great Lawn with a radio tour that took them to jazz stations across the country and another tour that saw them performing in concert halls and clubs. But the duo is something they always find time for. It has, after all, been going on for over 15 years. All that time working together becomes evident in the growth between the first album and THE DUO METHOD. "There is one word that I keep coming back to when I think about our intentions recording THE DUO LIFE," Rodby maintains. 'I think this is a more extroverted record than The Great Lawn was. We've talked about it being more challenging, we've taken all the principles that we work with and just tried to push them to their limits."

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