Marc Ribot's Young Philadelphians do TSOP with a twist of Ornette Coleman

In the course of Marc Ribot's critically acclaimed four-decade career, the chameleonic guitarist has mapped a steady path from edgy lower Gotham upstart to Zen-like American master. Long a fixture of New York's downtown improv scene, Ribot is probably best known as Tom Waits' longtime side-man, having played on seven Waits albums and corresponding tours since 1985's Rain Dogs.

He has lent his six-string sorcery to recordings by Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, the Black Keys, John Zorn, Philadelphia-born soul legend Solomon Burke, and the late, great beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The 22 albums in his discography span splenetic jazz (Electric Masada), noisy avant rock (Ceramic Dog), vintage No Wave (the Lounge Lizards), Haitian folk (the Rootless Cosmopolitans), Cuban son (Los Cubanos Postizos), and soundtracks for imaginary films (Silent Films).

His latest venture is the Young Philadelphians, a collaboration with vaunted Philadelphian jazz masters Jamaaladeen Tacuma and G. Calvin Weston that radically weds vintage Philly soul to the experimental punk-funk sonics of Ornette Coleman's legendary Prime Time band, which featured Tacuma on bass. The Young Philadelphians will celebrate the release of their debut album, Live in Tokyo, with a free performance Saturday at the 40th Street Summer Series in West Philadelphia. We recently spoke with Ribot about the band, the album, and how it feels to bring this music to Philadelphia.

The premise of the new album was to combine the Philly International Sound with, as per the liner notes, "the harmolodic mind-set of the saxophone genius Ornette Coleman's electric Prime Time band." Tell us about that band and why it's important to you.

First of all, it knocked my socks off. I just loved the sound. If you want to hear what I'm talking about, check out Of Human Feelings, which is for me an amazing record. I hear it as his way of working with North Philly funk. He transposed the keys freely so you could play the motif in different keys, backward, forward, upside down.

Can you explain Ornette Coleman's concept of harmolodics in layman's terms?

It's a very dense concept, and I would not be so bold as to pretend that I could explain it, but what I heard in Ornette's music was the idea of emotive interpretation that leaves room for the new idea that seems to come from left field. So, it's not a rigid system, it's a system that incorporates inspiration, error, and chance.

The Young Philadelphians album was recorded live in Tokyo in 2014. Why Tokyo and not Philadelphia?

Well, this has to do with the challenges of paying for record-making in the digital era. We saved bread by doing it live, because with a seven-piece band, you know, the bills can mount up. Everybody was already there, we had a great engineer who happened to have his mobile recording rig available, and it was at a great point of the tour, so we just captured a high-energy gig on multitrack.

Your performance at the 40th Street Summer Series will be something of a homecoming for this project, bringing your wonderfully bastardized take on Gamble & Huff back to its ancestral home.

Yes, it'll be this lineup's first-ever performance in Philly, and we're really looking forward to it.

You teach master classes in guitar. What advice would you have for a young person who is thinking about learning how to play guitar?

Listen to Django Reinhardt, Hubert Sumlin, Wes Montgomery, Derek Bailey. And if you're going to call yourself a rock guitarist, you should know Chuck Berry's solos and his rhythm playing. It's all in there.

I'm a big fan of Los Cubanos Postizos (which does this wonderful ersatz Cuban son, hence the name, which means "fake Cubans"). Will there ever be another album?

Well, we still play gigs from time to time with Los Cubanos Postizos, and it's a complete blast, but I haven't really been focused on doing another record. You can be convincingly postizo for only so long, and I felt like I either had to do a really major immersion and commit myself to being a serious son musician, or I had to admit that, while it was a really productive and fun tangent, I want to move on. So, we still play together [but] no immediate plans for another record, although I would love to put out a live record.

Now that Cuba's opened up, any plans to tour that music there or do some kind of collaborative work in Cuba?

I'd love to tour Cuba, so if anybody knows of any gigs, you know my number.

Marc Ribot & the Young Philadelphians, 40th Street Summer Series, 40th & Walnut Streets, 6 p.m. Saturday, free, universitycity.org.