The Flail, a quintet that has focuses on unpredictable compositions, plays at Blues Alley on Monday. Courtesy Reid Taylor

by Giovanni Russonello

As a young bassist coming up in D.C., Reid Taylor had the chance to learn a few things from a master.

He recalled meeting Butch Warren, the legendary hard-bop bassist, in 1995. From then on, he would head over to Warren’s house from time to time for informal lessons and two-man jam sessions. Sometimes, the aging bassist asked Taylor to share gigs with him.

“Right after I met him, he called me and he told me that he was playing at Twins [Jazz] with Cecil Payne, and he told me that he wanted me to come and play, and that he would give me half the money for the gig,” Taylor recalled. “So I went, and he played one song, and then he listened to me play for a while and he left. He never came back for the gig. But there were two nights. So he did give me the money, and he told me to come back the next night and see him. That night, he stayed.”

Taylor remembers one thing in particular that he learned from his sideman work and lessons with Warren. “I don’t know if this is from maybe playing with [Thelonious] Monk, or what it was, but he has this kind of genius for playing what would be considered a wrong note in the wrong place, and somehow making it work,” Taylor recalled.

The Flail, “Under the Influence of Stereolab”[audio:https://www.capitalbop.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Under-the-Influence-of-Stereolab.mp3|titles=The Flail – Under the Influence of Stereolab]

Taylor relocated to New York City in 1999 and enrolled in the New School, where he met four other musicians who had divergent musical affinities but all shared an appreciation for the occasional wrong note.

So began the Flail, a quintet that focuses on original compositions and constant flux and will perform at Blues Alley on Monday night. The quintet’s newest album, Live at Smalls, was released last year; its eight tunes and almost 80 minutes find the group romping from a blend of New Orleans trad-jazz and rockish post-bop (“We’re Not out of the Woods Yet”) to flights of dissonant free-jazz à la Cecil Taylor (“Light at the Beginning of the Tunnel”) to a modern jazz-meets-bossa nova tune inspired by indie bands fIREHOSE and Stereolab (“Under the Influence of Stereolab”).

Taylor, who wrote “Under the Influence of Stereolab,” was heavily influenced by 1990s punk and alternative rock while growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., and going to American University in D.C. But his compatriots draw their inspiration from elsewhere.

For one, trumpeter Dan Blankinship and pianist Brian Marsella met at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, where they were both studying classical music performance. Together, they jumped ship for the more unpredictable, free-flowing waters of jazz improvisation.

And that’s what holds the group together – a common love for subverting expectations or narrative in the name of rollicking swerves and reinventions, and doing it all within planned frameworks. Marsella’s “Better Watch What You Wish For” starts as an almost militaristic 6/8 march, unravels into cascading counterpoint between Blankinship and tenor saxophonist Stephan Moutot, and transitions into an eerie forewarning, chanted by three voices.

Over an 11-year career spanning international tours and four albums, the band has assembled a close synergy. The five players never use sheet music onstage, and they carry off unpredictable turns like a well-oiled improvisatory machine.

Butch Warren may or may not be in the audience for this Monday’s Flail show. (“He came out to see us the last time at Blues Alley, a couple years ago, which was really cool,” Taylor recalled, and he has sat in with the group at other D.C. shows in the past.) But either way, the group will draw on the bass legend’s lessons: push the envelope, upturn expectations and make your instrument sing.

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The Flail plays at Blues Alley on Monday for 8 and 10 p.m. sets. Tickets can be bought here, and more information is available here.

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