When you’re on TV, everybody knows you, or at least thinks they know you. Take Kevin Eubanks, who was on NBC’s Tonight Show five nights a week for 18 years, the first three as a bandmember and the rest as bandleader. Jazz aficionados may know Eubanks for his prolific years before and after that show as a gifted guitarist with chops and taste, but most people know him only as Jay Leno’s affable sidekick. What neither party likely knows are his passion for rhythm guitar, his comfort with playing free, his love for the organ in gospel music, his accomplishments as a presenter at tech conferences, and his commitment to education. Kevin Eubanks is not a man on a mission. He’s a man on many missions.
“I see a disparity or space between society and jazz now,” he says. “During the magical period back in the ’50s and ’60s, it was tied to what was happening in the world. Jazz music was still relevant to what was going on in everyday society and the struggle that people were going through. It wasn’t just in and of itself, like ‘Listen to what we do.’ But we’re not listening to society.”
Eubanks knows something about listening, as he shows on his latest album EEE (Eubanks-Evans-Experience), a stripped-down duo recording with pianist and fellow Philadelphia native Orrin Evans. In the tradition of Bill Evans and Jim Hall’s Undercurrent (released 60 years ago), the two show a chemistry born out of common roots and influences. There’s no question that the music and people of Philly shaped Eubanks, who was born there in 1957.
Growing up as a member of one of the city’s many notable jazz families (his uncles were pianist Ray Bryant and bassist Tommy Bryant, while brothers Robin and Duane are respected jazz players), Eubanks came relatively late to the genre. His first instruments were violin and trumpet. He describes himself as
