Popular jazz-pop duo Tuck & Patti play the Garde Saturday

August 04, 2016 12:00 am • Last Updated: August 04, 2016 4:19 pm

By Rick Koster
Day Arts/Features writer

Tuck & Patti bring distinctive sound to Garde's Oasis Room

There are hundreds — thousands, probably — of musical acts trying to make it in the world. To find even a few that might be described as utterly distinctive is a disturbingly rare occurrence.

Over a 36-year career, though, the excellent jazz/pop duo Tuck & Patti have nurtured a sound that is as instantly identifiable as it is warm, virtuosic and eminently listenable. Even better is the fact that theirs is a creative as well as romantic partnership that started with one of those storybook "at first sight" deals — albeit with a great musical twist.

"We met at a band audition and, yes, we knew instantly. It was about as innocent as it gets," says guitarist/husband Tuck Andress. He and vocalist/wife Patti Cathcart are on the phone from their Bay Area home, answering questions in support of a tour that brings them Saturday to the Oasis Room in New London's Garde Arts Center. In conversation, the pair alternates between fluidly finishing each other's thoughts and respectfully soliciting a recollection or anecdote to augment a statement.

Cathcart chimes in on their original meeting: "We knew about each other musically, and, God forgive me, as soon as I saw and heard this pale guy playing guitar in the corner, I said, 'Please give me this gig because all I want to do is steal the guitar player. Luckily for my soul, it worked out that the band broke up soon thereafter, and I got him."

Their musical and romantic courtship flourished at once. Andress, who started out as an electric guitarist playing rock, had been experimenting with acoustic fingerpicking, refining and fusing the techniques of George Benson and Wes Montgomery — not to mention the flourishes of non-guitar innovators such as Thelonious Monk, Errol Garner and Miles Davis. Cathcart, a versatile vocalist who grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson, also drew inspiration from a pan-artistic variety of disciplines from ballet to painting — all of which contributed to the fashion in which she uses her rich voice to weave melodic minarets around Andress' percussive lines.

At the outset, Tuck & Patti focused on cover material, figuring it would be the quickest way to get work. They'd pick a tune they enjoyed from a wide variety of styles — jazz standards, pop a la Lerner and Loewe or "Over the Rainbow," sophisticated rock structures from Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Wonder — and simply and intuitively imprint the material with their own sound.

"We might try to do a loving treatment of a song, a note-for-note version, but it always comes out sounding like us," Cathcart says. "Part of it might be that we come from an era and a part of the country that focused on jamming, and so we let the song take us somewhere. And we always try to leave a little room in the arrangement for improvisation, so that lets us follow the music in new directions — and we never question it."

Once they'd amassed several tunes in their repertoire, Tuck & Patti would dress up, go to clubs or restaurants, approach management, and simply say, "We think you should hire us. Let us play for an hour." The strategy, and the magnetism and power of the material and performances, worked. Within a few years — without benefit of much original material or albums — they were much in-demand in the fruitful San Francisco music scene.

They were also hanging out with a lot of musicians, some of whom were reaching national audiences through Windham Hill Records, an upstart independent label founded by guitarist William Ackerman that focused first on the burgeoning New Age niche and then on jazz. Friends kept suggesting they send songs to Ackerman, but Tuck & Patti had relatively little original material, no demo tapes, and felt they weren't ready.

Ultimately, Ackerman's assistant started calling THEM, saying the boss really wanted to hear a demo.

"'Well, that's cool'," Cathcart remembers saying, "'but we don't have one.' They'd call again, and we still didn't have anything." She laughs. "Finally, the assistant said, 'I don't think you understand how the record business works. Normally, you call us. We don't call you.' We were stupid."

Eventually, as it turned out, Tuck & Patti signed with Windham Hill Jazz, and their career took off. Mixing their astonishing and wide-ranging cover renditions with gorgeous and thoughtful love songs written by Cathcart and arranged by the duo, they became and have remained a reliable and creative force. They've released 15 albums — including the all-original masterpiece "Chocolate Moments" — and their live shows are astounding displays of musical passion that effortlessly and charmingly convey the depth of emotion and affection between the pair.

They are not prolific in terms of writing their own songs, but the results are consistently wonderful. Cathcart says she's moved to write by mood, momentum and The Muse; she might walk around the house humming a melody that's just occurred to her, or something as emotionally transcending as 9/11 might resonate.

With pride in his voice, Andress says of his spouse's tunes, "Every song that Patti's written, we've recorded. We're not seeing the cream of the crop. We're seeing the whole crop."

"I try not to think about it too much," Cathcart adds. "I had a great teacher in school, and I learned that the writing process doesn't have to end each time with a masterpiece. Tell your story and forget the rest — and if you do that, the anxiety and angst disappear. It's magic. You end up with a song where there wasn't one before."