Andy Biskin's liner notes for "Dogmental"

One Saturday afternoon, while scouring through the moldy stacks of Southern Music, a venerable publishing house in downtown San Antonio, I came upon a batch of arrangements for two clarinets, trumpet, trombone, and tuba, a miniature concert band called "The Hungry Five." There were polkas and waltzes, marches, even light classics like "Poet and Peasant Overture." Each booklet cost seventy cents; a set of five was three dollars.

I quickly recruited four renegades from the school band. We set to work learning the music and memorizing the impossibly corny jokes and band schtick included in the front of the booklets.

Inside the front cover of each booklet was printed the following: "It is suggested that the compositions be played first in true classic manner and, when properly mastered, liberties may be taken for added effects." Though the terms "liberties" and "added effects" were left undefined, we soon figured out a way to make the music our own.

It was only recently that I realized how little my current band has strayed from sensibilities of the old Hungry Five. My original idea was to update the traditional New Orleans style, using the same front line of trumpet, clarinet, and trombone. But something different seems to have emerged, and now when I take inventory of our repertory, I'm surprised at the preponderance of polkas, waltzes, marches, and little tone poems over "pure jazz" tunes.

Every time we perform, I try to bring in a couple of new tunes. Somehow, just by imagining the band on the bandstand, with the sound of each player in my ears, I'm inspired to come up with something new. Some pieces work right out of box, others may take a while to settle in, while still others get played once with much hooplah, and then are never mentioned again.

But what could be more thrilling than to work late into the night cooking up melodies, harmonies, and rhythms for these wonderful musicians, printing up the parts, gathering together the players, and then, in the true Hungry Five spirit, performing the tunes knowing that "liberties may be taken for added effects."

For more about Andy, the quintet, and the early days of the Hungry Five, go to the Fresh Air interview.