Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey Reinvents Itself…Again.

That's saying a lot, since the group has released some brilliant records — especially 2005's Sameness of Difference, which featured clever interpretations of songs by the Flaming Lips, Neil Young, Björk, Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and Jimi Hendrix, whom Mathis was really into in middle school. "But when I got to high school," he says, "all the cool guys — I've always used music as this excuse to be among cool people — were listening to Charlie Parker and Coltrane. I was like, 'Wow, I'll play whatever those guys are playing.' And next thing I know, I'm listening to Bitches Brew and hanging out with Brian Haas."

While Haas and Mathis have been constants, they've gone through a few drummers over the years, enlisting Raymer two years ago. And on this tour, the trio has added multi-instrumentalist Pete Tomshany to play guitar and a vibraphone he made out of circular saw blades, which Mathis describes as very melodic. "He's playing it with mallets and running it through effects," he explains. "I've never seen anything like it. It's this beautiful sound being made by something that could kill you. And if that's not a description of jazz, I don't know what is."

Lil' Tae is definitely a killer album. And after completing it, the musicians spent a celebratory week at a state-of-the-art recording studio near a lake in Arkansas. "It was like a second honeymoon for me and my wife," Mathis recalls. "We all brought our significant others and just had this amazingly relaxed recording session in Eden. The next record is already in process."

The Odyssey continues.