A new band co-led by the trumpeter Dave Douglas and Montreal-born reeds player Chet Doxas with electric bass icon Steve Swallow, and Chet’s brother drummer Jim Doxas completing the quartet, debuts next month with their album Riverside.Themed partly around the timeless music of clarinettist/saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre (1921-2008), one of the links to the source is that Swallow was a member of the Jimmy Giuffre 3.The Riverside style melds improvised music, bluegrass, sacred hymns and Appalachian music and the album is released by Greenleaf music on 15 April. The quartet have already clocked up considerable road miles over an extensive 10-month period, with the album recorded over two days in Toronto in the late summer of 2012 following the initial road warrior phase.Tracks are Douglas tune ‘Thrush’ opening the album; Giuffre’s classic ‘The Train and the River’ a composition that appeared on The Giuffre 3’s 1957 self-titled debut and famously Bert Stern’s 1960 film Jazz on A Summer’s Day; Doxas’ ‘Old Church, New Paint’, introduced in a two-minute burst and then the full tune; Douglas’ ‘Handwritten Letter’, ‘Big Shorty’, ‘Front Yard’, ‘Backyard’, and ‘No Good Without You’; the Trummy Young/Johnny Mercer/Jimmy Mundy standard ‘Travellin’ Light’ title track of the Giuffre 3 1958 Atlantic album issued for the first time on CD in the UK just last year; and finally Doxas’ ‘Sing on the Mountain High/Northern Miner.’

Dave Douglas above left, Chet Doxas, Steve Swallow, and Jim Doxas