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Fergus Quill picks me up from Leeds station in his Nissan Micra – 152,000 miles on the clock, two basses expertly placed between the seats – and drives me to meet his band.
I’m expecting a small crowd, but for the next half hour, the members of Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band keep coming, until the tables outside Headingley’s Hyde Park Book Club overflow with musicians and instruments. When it starts to rain, they run into the house, gather in the dining room and start singing their loud and happy songs.
Forty-one musicians play on FIBB’s second album, The New Atomic, although for gigs they usually work for almost 30 years. There was one early gig where they messed up the size. “You won’t,” says saxophonist Bess Shooter.
Even with a svelte 10-piece design, their details shine. “I’d say we’re very traditional,” says Quill, though in their hands, tradition feels strong. On the contrary, they are happy the late US trumpeter Jaimie Branchand songs from their new album such as I Shall Not Be Moved, which burns furiously.
FIBB is based on the characteristics of respected conductors such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie: saxophones, trumpets and trombones supported by the orchestra, playing combined parts that expand into solos. But FIBB is among the dreamers of big bands, from Loose Tubes to Sun Ra to Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra: friendly, anti-fascist and expansive, they’re a stark contrast to the refined musicians of mainstream mainstream.
Their sound is rough and quiet, but not without playfulness. For example, Play the Names, where the original songs of the dissidents fall into groups shouting their names in sequence. The vocals come together, calling out FERG (of course), before a vicious frenzy returns to a stunning funk scene.
To be in this group, Quill says, “you don’t have to be a very strong reader, but you do have to have an independent voice”. The best performers are people who don’t read music, who play with members who can’t even play instruments but join in wholeheartedly. “We accept chaos, imperfection and all that,” adds pianist Nico Widdowson, “but we all want to be the best musicians we can be.”
The New Atomic is the perfect vehicle for FIBB’s idiosyncratic combination of honesty and passion. And, although there are many references – New Orleans funeral dirges, Bob Dylan covers, odes to Ellington, punk and Cold War-era musical concerns – there is a strong G-force as this great piece shifts from idea to idea. You feel the loneliness in their voice.
The band is less than 10 years old, but its history has already begun to resemble that of Fall, another group with a talismanic frontman. “If it’s me and your nan on the bongos, it’s Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band,” says Quill, who is bassist, lead singer and leader, stirring up a frenzy at the front of the band.
The name started “as a metaphor,” drummer Josh Ketch says; the chat returns frequently to Quill’s plans for a giant behemoth. From Sun Ra’s music college project in 2018, the gigs grew slowly, only briefly interrupted by Covid. He played at Ronnie Scott’s festival with Love Supreme, and, thanks to the number of nine-seater buses and one “car” (for those who are late), he also toured the UK.
The continuation of their presence is a testament to Leeds and its place: in places like the Book Club, Brudenell or Domino who put on their gigs, and others like Attic and Eiger Studios who make a place to repeat on Mondays twice (“I don’t pay £30 for a venue,” Quill says). Can FIBB be held anywhere else in the UK? “It has to be done in a place where the rent is under £500 a month,” replies Quill. “Otherwise, I don’t think you can get people to do it, or have the time to do it.” It’s easy to say that no one is making money from that group. But musicians, librarians, charity workers, bar staff and teachers can still work.
Back in the Micra, we’re whipping around the back roads of Headingley and out the window Quill is pointing out some of the FIBBs who couldn’t find time off to meet up. He has always felt better when he was out of the nine-to-five conflict, and other ways of living.
As a teenager, first in Essex, then Saffron Walden, Quill was “in and out of higher education”. He loved music, but he didn’t keep up with the UK exams. An inspirational teacher gave him early jazz lessons and his parents were also very supportive. He said: “I was a child with different brains. “When it was decided that I like music, they just put musical instruments in the house, and I went among them.
After leaving a Quaker boarding school to go to the state sixth form, Quill found people playing “pure white punk, so I did some of that”. He was drawn to outsiders – his favorite musician was a 20th-century American experimentalist Charles Ives – and teachers gave him a lot: Lou Reed, Charles Mingus and Frank Zappa.
He didn’t plan to go to music college: “I was making good money being a magician at Freemason events, and then I was walking the streets.” But when his friends moved to university, he started music schools. Emphasizing that he could double on electric and upright bass, Leeds College of Music accepted him after he performed Horace Silver’s Song for My Father under the phone. He said: “I didn’t participate in research or anything else. “I don’t think you can solve this now.” In college, he quickly found Hamish Dixon, a regular in the environment of FIBB, whose position in the group is “noise”. They have been together for 11 years.
There is a punkish energy to FIBB, which includes unlearning the things that the jazz world has taught them. “When I was young, there were a lot of things that people didn’t do for show or for no money,” says Shooter. Now there are many people like us who get together and create things just for the sake of it.
The day ends at the local Hollywood Bowl, a regular visit. Quill recently turned 30 years old, which led to the chaos of the last decade. “I haven’t been happy for a long time, I’ve been very sick, but I put that aside because I had a problem creating things.” For a while, Bowling was, he says, his only “outside” from the musical life.
Over time, the balance has arrived, by embracing collaboration, rejecting “CV-driven work,” and realizing his role as the caretaker of a group that is 30 years old. “It’s good – now I have children in my band, I can try to have a good life,” he says. He is moving to the workhouses; he continues to write these songs; will visit again soon. The dream of the great team continues.
