Mackey Abernathy: Man and His Sax
By Oli Baker
“Sometimes I wish I was called something simple like ‘Phil’,” says Enloe McClain Abernathy, taking a sip from his trademark glass seltzer water at the bar of Parima’s on Pearl Street in Burlington. As he waits for the rest of Parima jazz band to step up, Enloe, who for simplicity’s sake foes by his childhood nickname Mackey, contemplated his given name: “Enloe is too difficult to explain to people.”
Whatever you call him, Mackey Abernathy is certainly adding a reputation to his name in Burlington’s ever-blooming jazz scene as one of the Queen City’s most promising new sax players.
The Dover, Massachusetts native arrived in Burlington in 1990 to study in the University of Vermont’s Psychology department, and he has since switched over to Philosophy (“I wasn’t into monitoring hamsters.”) During his early days as a student Mackey began playing in a mostly rock oriented format, performing at ‘open mikes’ at the University’s Slade Hall with Wide Wail guitarist David Rosenstein as the Alcoves. Hearing a recording of Brandord Marsalis playing with the Grateful Dead provided the inspiration for a return to the more traditional jazz style he’s originally studied upon firs taking up the sac, and Mackey sat in with a number of local bands including Runa Bijou, Moon Boot Lover and the Nines, but was unable to find a study project in which to invest his creative energies.
That situation changed with the formation of his current project, a quartet born when he and bassist Andy Cotton got together one night to read through some standards. Guitarist Bob Sherman and drummer Chris Kutchukian were brought in from the band Uncle Juice and the foursome began playing weekly at Muddy Waters Coffee Shop, and later picked up regular gigs at Parima’s. Today the quartet, occasionally augmented by guest musicians, provides Mackey with a regular format to work on his playing in a style which combines a respect for traditional jazz combined with an electrician, and willingness to experiment with different styles of music.
“I definitely try to stay away from conservatism,” says Mackey of his approach to music. “That doesn’t mean I don’t study a lot of Charlie Parker, for example, because that’s something that’s considered pretty traditional. But the more you do that, I think, the more original ideas you can come up with.” Originality and personal expression, in fact, remain for Mackey the most important elements of music, no matter what form they may take. “There’s a Thelonious Monk Institute that puts on competitions to see which players are better than others, to see who’ll get the chance to study intensively. Now, who’s to say who’s better? How can you have a competition in music? I’ve never understood that. I don’t want to understand it, but I don’t think that music’s about competition.”
For Mackey, the recent surge in popularity of the new hybrid acid-jazz is a step in the right direction. “It’s very exciting. For a lot of reasons jazz adds more melody to whatever type of music you apply it to, and for rappers and musicians who play hip-hop to improvise jazz is a god thing. It’s opening peoples' minds to jazz who might not otherwise hear it. And I think it’s kind of the next step in the development of music…it was bound to happen. Jazz is a fusion, in a lot of ways, of many, many things, and it;ll always continue to be a fusion of contemporary things with things of the past.”
As for the future, Mackey Abernathy is working on a project which fuses jazz with what he calls “a harder, grungy sound.” And though still in the works, with Mackey’s musicianship and hard working spirit, this project promises to be another exciting step for the man and his sax.
Olli baker is a 103 pound, 7 foot tall genius with a knack for tofu and spaghetti and an insatiable desire to spread love throughout the known universe. And he lives in the coolest house in Burlington.