Monday, April 19th, The Andrew Campbell Network's Ugandan Thermal Unit returned to The Baked Potato for two performances in front of an intimate but more than appreciative crowd. Led by the aforementioned Andrew Campbell on guitar and supported by Bjorn Fleuren (bass), Emir Isilay (keyboards), Matt Starr (drums), and Andy Suzuki (sax) filling in for Gilad Ronen on saxophone, the band's informal approach (in what is clearly a familiar setting) gave the show such a relaxed feeling that they may as well have just plugged in at my apartment complex. Which is not to say the guys don't play with energy. They've got that to spare. And personality too. Campbell orchestrates the proceedings with nods and smiles and winks and asides to his band mates — when he's not attempting what looks like some sort of Vulcan mind-meld with his guitar, while Isilay plays the keyboards as if (at any moment) they just may come to life and get away from him. Fleuren brings to mind the old Steven Wright line (which I will paraphrase), "He's in his own little world. But that's okay, because the groove knows him there," and Starr eagerly connects the dots with his drum set as he moves seamlessly with each rhythmic demand thrown at him. Meanwhile, Suzuki stands front and center, like a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Yoda, grounding the proceedings with his playing.

Surrounded by the "wallpaper" of faded concert posters and 8x10s of jazz yore, Campbell, Fleuren, and Starr, the founding trio of the band, launched into "Kung Fu Grip," an enjoyable chord-thick jazz funk jam, before bringing on Isilay and Suzuki to explore some of Isilay's originals. Each piece was alternately adventurous, moody, and energetic.

The group finished the set by playing a duo of Campbell's spy-themed tunes, "Musician Impossible" and "International Man of Mystery." Indeed, the songs and their performances had an edgy urgency — yes, a secret agent vibe — along with more than a smattering of groovy odd-meter textures. Such was the focus of the guys while playing the song that appreciative applause following burning solos all around were met with quick nods of "Thanks, but I've got business to attend to here." Fortunately for everyone watching and listening, these guys clearly enjoy their work.

Andrew: I met Bjorn the first week I was in school at the LA Music Academy at a party where he lived. We got to talking and said let's get together and play. He pulled along another Academy student drummer, Bao Lao, and we jammed with him for awhile but then he went back to Paris. We had been eyeing Matt because he played great in a student performance with a fusion band. So, we were trying to persuade Matt to join and we'd get together to jam. It took some doing, sort of a gentle persuasion because he didn't really know me, though he had played with Bjorn. I had sort of made it my mission to actually commit some of my tunes to the written page — which was a big accomplishment for me — getting great players to play then and actually make them real. That was a huge step.

Matt: They're very much the same thing because I consider myself an accompanist in all musical contexts that I play in. Whether I'm playing at the Baked Potato, or I'm in a class or on a gig with a singer or something like that, I'm still an accompanist. This particular gig allows me some freedom as a soloist as well which I really like, but first and foremost, I am an accompanist because that's what I do.

Matt: Well, anything goes. That's what's great about this group too. There's a lot of freedom. Because of Andrew's style as a leader, he kind of lets everybody play the way that they play.

Bjorn: He lets everyone shine.

Matt: And it really is anything goes.

Andrew: No, no. That name was spawned by a joke fest with Emir (Isilay) as to what to call the quintet because we were formed as a trio. And the quintet was the marriage of us with two really great recent Berkelee grads on the sax and the keys (Gilad Ronen and Emir Isilay, respectively) and we were trying to figure out how we could separately identify it.

Andrew: (Laughs) It was really based on the idea of, "What's the country that would be least likely to have created their own measure of heat?" And there are a bunch of them. There's Zimbabwe and Uganda, for sure. Those countries are just the polar opposite historically to the British Empire.

Bjorn: A bunch...I'm in a bunch of bands. Too many to keep track of.

Bjorn: With this gig, all my technique and everything I have learned — I can use. Which is great, after playing a straight out rock gig, it's great to be able to express myself in this way. It's great how many different situations I've been able to get into because of the school.

All three: Oh, yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, I think the first time you play you're feeling one another out — "Do I like this?" Or I'm figuring out, "Do they like this?" As far as the music goes, you know. But anybody that sticks around for basically no pay is obviously being rewarded by the music and/or the interaction of the members or the combination of the two because there isn't any pay, really. We made like, twenty bucks apiece tonight and that was, you know, a decent Monday.

Andrew: A real challenge. If you take what you learn recording in the Studio Band Class, which is a great experience in its own right, and multiply it by about a thousand — I'd say that's what we got out of it. We recorded in two different places. We learned the value and importance of getting the right sound in our headphones, how completely different it is to record as opposed to playing live... Somebody said, I think it was Mick Goodrick, who said, "Recording is a little bit like walking down a beautiful windswept beach, then stopping and looking back at the tracks." It's not completely natural, you know? In music, you are supposed to concentrate on the moment, not on looking back on it.

We learned a lot about mixing, a lot about what we value in terms of sound - starting to discuss amongst ourselves, "What are the qualities of a great recording?" You know? How loose can we get? How structured should it be? How "right"? How precise? Versus what happens live. Because it just happens.

Matt: My experience with recording has more often been with singers or recording songs as opposed to recording this kind of music. It's a much different thing and it required a lot of consciousness about, like Andrew said, "What is too loose?" "What can we get away with?" And we had to keep it under a certain amount of time, also. There were a whole bunch of different kinds of restraints on us. But it was good because it's another thing that feeds the live thing. And the live thing feeds the recording. Playing, for example, the songs we recorded tonight, I know I'm playing them differently because we recorded them. I have a different kind of understanding of those songs having done them in that context. It has an effect on how I do them live now.

Matt: Just to make sure, like everything else, that it's still musical and that it doesn't stray from that because that's the most important thing. And under that context, anything goes.

Bjorn: What we do in any normal band situation is try to find something that sounds great and people will like. And here, we've talked about freedom, and we have that freedom, but it's not a selfish freedom to do whatever you like. You still try to be an artist and to perform and play for the audience — to figure out if they like it. That's the way I approach this. That's the difference.

Andrew: I think you take it one day at a time, or one gig at a time. The end game for me, personally, as a leader and a writer and a player is potentially many things. The ideal would be to be able to record and play my music and tour my music. You know, it may be that the time has come and gone for people to actually be able to do that with jazz rock or fusion. But that would certainly be the dream for me. That said, it's also a showcase. It's a showcase for what all of us can do. At any minute, someone might hear Matt play or Bjorn play or me play and say, "I want some of that in my band." And that could in turn be a step towards a career where I or we would be touring on our own or one of us gets some notoriety. There are many potential outcomes from doing this.