Led by guitarist Jeff Parker, featuring saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose, the ETA IVtet is a band that grew out of a weekly residency started by Parker in 2016 at Northeast Los Angeles venue ETA.
Over seven years of holding down that residency, Parker’s ETA ensemble evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form (sometimes stretching out for 45 minutes or more) journeys into innovative, often uncharted territories of groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, minimalist and mantric improvised music.
With that musical growth, the crowds for Parker and his band at ETA grew across the years too. What started as a sparse gathering of weeknight drinkers, friends, family, and Chicago expats (coming to get a shot of nostalgia for the atmospheres Parker used to create at Rodan across the ‘00s and early ‘10s) grew into a Los Angeles nightlife staple with a packed house and a line of down the block for every show.
It certainly helped that the renown and résumé of every musician in the ensemble grew significantly between 2016 and 2023. Parker and Bellerose were already well-established veterans in 2016 – the former for his work with Tortoise, Chicago Underground, Isotope 217, and myriad recording dates under his own name; the latter for a huge sideman CV including work with Allen Toussaint, Robert Plant, and Joe Henry – but Butterss and Johnson were relative newcomers in the early days. Butterss has since become a high-tier first-call bassist, playing with the likes of Jason Isbell, Phoebe Bridgers, Makaya McCraven, and Madison Cunningham; while Johnson has run the gamut of studio and live work, notably doing an extended stint as Leon Bridges musical director, and producing Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grammy winning 2023 album The Omnichord Real Book.
Also in that time Butterss released a solo debut and a followup (Activities in 2022 and Mighty Vertebrate in 2024), Johnson a debut and a followup (Freedom Exercise in 2020 and Unusual Object in 2024), and Parker released a run of critically acclaimed albums: The New Breed (2016), Slight Freedom (2016), Suite for Max Brown (2020), Forfolks (2021), and Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (2022).
Mondays introduced the world to Parker and the ETA IVtet’s signature sound, chronicling their distinct, expansive approach to improvisation with a gathering of unnamed side-length tracks recorded and mixed live at ETA by engineer Bryce Gonzales between 2019 and 2021. The album was named “Best New Music” by Pitchfork, where writer Daniel Felsenthal said:
“Mondays amounts to something novel in 2022: It lays out long-form spiritual jazz, knotty melodies, and effortless solos over a slow-moving foundation as consistent as an 808. The results are as mesmerizing as a luxurious, beatific ambient record—yet at the same time, it’s clear that all of this is happening within the inherently messy confines of an improvisatory concert.”
In December 2023, just days before ETA permanently shuttered, Parker and the band played at the venue for the last time. In July 2024, the ETA IVtet gathered to perform together for the first time since then, playing for a sold-out crowd of several hundred listeners at Zebulon in Los Angeles. The space may be gone but its spirit lives and the music moves forward into new vessels.