Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sometimes it’s the little things that can test a relationship. Like screwing up the track order on your first album as co-bandleaders. Vocalist Michelle Lordi and bassist Matthew Parrish, both longtime artists and community builders on the Philly jazz scene, had scrambled to manufacture enough hard copies of their new album, Live at Dirty Dog, to sell during a European tour this summer. They paid the extra cost for a rush job, picked up the product on the way to the airport, and popped the disc into their car stereo. “And it’s the wrong song,” Lordi recalled, shooting a withering sidelong glance at Parrish across a cafe table in Chestnut Hill. “It was a quiet ride.” Parrish admits his culpability for the error, though still insists, albeit sheepishly, “I followed the directions.” The story, nonetheless, has a happy ending. The couple explained the mishap to their first audience in Paris, and offered the errant discs at a pay-what-you-wish price. “No one paid under 40 euros and we made enough to pay for the reprint,” Parrish said with a laugh. Lordi added, “I think there’s something very French about owning your mistakes. Plus they like a good fight.” Lovers’ quarrels are a relatively new addition to the decade-long musical partnership shared by Lordi and Parrish. They met onstage, when Lordi invited Philly vibraphonist Tony Miceli to join her for a gig in Croydon in 2014. Wary of the sparse instrumentation, Miceli put out a call and Parrish joined in to make it a trio. The chemistry — musically at least — was evident from the first note, the bassist said. “I feel almost no separation when we play together. I hear all this music when I’m playing the bass, and Michelle’s voice is a perfect extension of that. Her pitch is so accurate with mine that it feels like it’s one.” Lordi returned the compliment. “Matt provides the backstory and the soul to what I’m singing. I don’t have to worry when I’m playing with him. We just feel connected. It’s painful when I have to work with somebody else.” After that first call, Parrish quickly became a regular at the weekly jam session that Lordi hosted at Vintage Bar and Grill in Abington, then continued in a number of other locations during the pandemic until drawing to a close in late 2021. The bassist also produced and played on the vocalist’s three most recent albums. Work on the second of those — 2021’s atmospheric, rock-tinged Break Up With the Sound — coincided not only with the lockdown but with the dissolution of both musicians’ marriages, a circumstance perhaps hinted at in the album’s title. A romantic relationship seemed to grow organically out of their professional one. They worked together to produce livestream concerts as the pandemic raged on, and share a passion for photography that they incorporate into their self-produced releases. Released in July, Live at Dirty Dog marks the first time that Lordi and Parrish have shared billing on an album, and their first release as a couple. It is the first time that Parrish’s name has appeared on an album cover since his debut release, Circles, in 2001. Since then, he’s maintained a busy schedule as a producer and a sideman with the likes of Houston Person, Regina Carter, Stefon Harris, Freddy Cole, and Orrin Evans. Recorded during a pair of 2023 concerts at the jazz club in the Detroit suburbs, Live at Dirty Dog — a quartet date with guitarist Randy Napoleon and pianist Xavier Davis — is a more traditional venture than the pair’s exploratory work on Lordi’s own releases. (Earlier this month they followed it with a new single, the original song “Kintsugi.”) Aside from a Ryan Adams song, the setlist is packed with familiar standards by the likes of Cole Porter, Michel Legrand, and Antonio Carlos Jobim. But the spirited set captures the giddy joy of new love. That special connection is one positive outgrowth of becoming partners in life and in art. The challenge comes with two halves of a couple both trying to make a living from the unpredictable world of music, and in balancing family life with the demands of performing and touring. Lordi and Parrish now share a blended family of six children ranging in age from 8 to 26. Half of them live with the couple in their Wyncote home. These days, that translates to more time working in education than performing — both are faculty members and ensemble directors at Princeton University. They’ll next share the stage in Philly on Dec. 19, at the South Philly space NotSoLatin. “If I want for anything,” Lordi said, “it would be for more time to create and play music together. But we’re busy creating a whole life.”
