Roger Burn’s Christmas Eve, Jazz Style

After several years of playing on the local jazz circuit, musician Roger Burn has come to one conclusion: “L.A. is not a jazz town.”

“Once I saw an article proclaiming that Los Angeles has this great emerging jazz scene,” he said. “But the writer counted cocktail bars and Top 40 clubs as places where jazz is supposed to be thriving. It isn’t.”

Burn has found himself playing rehashed hits as a sideman in plenty of Top 40 clubs and at more than his share of weddings and bar mitzvahs. “We’d all like to be a lot hipper but inevitably you have to take the jobs that pay the bills. Playing ‘Tequila’ at countless weddings is a good way to keep you humble,” he said.

But Los Angeles is not completely without hope for Burn. He says clubs such as the Baked Potato, Bon Appetit, At My Place and the Catalina Bar and Grill keep jazz alive in Southern California. And tomorrow night, at Le Cafe in Sherman Oaks, he’s heading up a special holiday show called “Roger Burn and Friends Do Christmas Eve.”

The show will feature Jodie Victor, who is known not as a jazz singer but as a country singer and composer. “I’ve always wanted to take someone who isn’t a jazz musician and surround that person with jazz musicians,” Burn said. “My feeling is that whether the music is jazz or country, it’s all blues-oriented.”

Victor will be surrounded by Tom Adcock on sax, Tom McMorran on piano, Nick Vincent on drums, Ben Grey on bass and percussionist Airto. Burn will play the vibraphone.

“I know the vibraphone is an obscure instrument,” Burn said. “People are always saying, ‘Oh, the xylophone,’ but it’s different. It’s an instrument that was only invented in this century and its possibilities have yet to be discovered.”

Burn explores those possibilities when he plays with his band Triple Spec. (“I call it Triple Spec because I can’t pay the guys triple scale, but I can pay them ‘triple spec,’ which is whatever I can throw their way.”) The group is putting the finishing touches on an album that Burns describes as “Steely Dan meets Stepps Ahead.”

“Our album has rock elements--all the members have been in rock bands--but our music is more sophisticated than, say, Rolling Stones type of rock,” he said. “I don’t like to alienate people.”

And he doesn’t like to have his music thrown into the fusion category. “I prefer to call it contemporary instrumental jazz. It’s not like we play the melody once and then follow it with 5,000 choruses of solos; our pieces are more composition-oriented.”