Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake are two of the most influential – and revered figures in the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene.

Both were born in Monroe, Louisiana, about 25 years apart and both eventually made their way to Chicago.

Beyond their biographical journeys, the paths they’ve taken through music have crossed and diverged and crossed again. 

Anderson plays tenor saxophone and comes out of the bebop tradition of the late 1940s.

Over the past 25 years, he’s run Chicago’s Velvet Lounge, long considered a space for nurturing avant-garde jazz talents.

Hamid Drake is a percussionist who started playing with Fred Anderson in his twenties. His own musical investigations have taken him around the world, through a wide range of African traditions and instruments.

The two have been collaborating for over 30 years, and now both Anderson and Drake have made their way to this most unremarkable of musical settings—the studios of Eight Forty-Eight.

Music Button: Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake “From The River To The Ocean” from the CD From The River To The Ocean (Thrill Jockey records)