Jeff Parker ETA IVtet - The Way Out Of Easy Vinyl 2LP

On January 2, 2023, guitarist Jeff Parker and his ETA IVtet—saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose—took the stage for another Monday night at ETA in Los Angeles, a residency they had maintained since 2016. No one knew it would be the first show of ETA’s final year. Over seven years, the group had evolved from playing mostly standards to delivering transcendent, long-form journeys into groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, and mantric improvisation, drawing ever-growing crowds until lines stretched down the block. The set that night, recorded by engineer Bryce Gonzales, would become The Way Out of Easy—a document of the band’s refined chemistry, captured across a single evening.

Returning to the same analog archive that yielded the 2022 double LP Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, Parker selected four expansive performances totaling around 80 minutes. Gonzales, known for his Highland Dynamics audio gear, recorded the session using a custom mixer designed to sit discreetly at the bar, employing just one microphone per player for a pure, transparent sound. The result is an unfiltered, intimate window into the band’s interplay: from the extended opener “Freakadelic” (first recorded on Parker’s Bright Light in Winter), to the gently shifting textures of “Late Autumn,” the psychedelic drift of “Easy Way Out,” and the spontaneously born dub groove of “Chrome Dome.

A weeknight ritual for years, the IVtet often closed with a familiar standard, but on this night they chose instead to leave the audience with a groove, a sound as much as a song. Months later, in December 2023, ETA closed its doors, and Parker’s group played there for the last time. In July 2024, they reunited at Zebulon in Los Angeles before a sold-out crowd—proof that while the venue is gone, its spirit endures, carried forward in the living vessel of the music.