On Okonski's Magnolia & Wintry Mixes

Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Look: This life is filled with Mahogany moments, and it is our humble and thankless job to navigate them. So we need romance. We need bigness of feeling. And not least, we need someone who is along for the ride with us, an ace rollie who is there to provide the vibe for the struggle ahead, even when shit gets weird, even when the word we have to grapple with is the word “difficult.” 

Meet Steve Okonski, a pianist and composer working out of the great American midwest, where they know from winter, and they know from holing up to get the important work done. Magnolia was released in February of 2023, to not a lot of fanfare outside of the network of deep modern soul fans who follow the every move of the label that released it, Colemine, based in Loveland, Ohio.

Drop the needle and you’ll instantly hear why: On Magnolia, Okonski (accompanied by upright bass and drums) effortlessly blends elements of some of our favorite (wintry) music. You’ll hear shades of Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Pharaoh Sanders, and Vince Guaraldi, but you’ll also hear something akin to Nick Drake’s piano ballads and even, somehow, somewhere, the lightest boom-bap touch from the stellar rhythm section. (This listener even hears distant traces of chillout legends The Durutti Column and the shooting star piano bit from The Rolling Stones’ “Moonlight Mile.”)

That’s a heady mix, so before we get ahead of ourselves, some of the basic facts: Okonski and his rhythm section have all spent time playing with Durand Jones & The Indications, another Colemine signing that has really influenced the overall Daptone-influenced vibe of that label as a whole. (Okonski also has credits on records by Say She She and Diane Coffee, among others.) The record that would become Magnolia was begun at Colemine’s home studio on 122 West Loveland Avenue in that town of the same name in the winter of 2020, just before what we’ll call The Unpleasantness, and was meant to be a more beat-driven affair. But as the world began to fall apart and put itself back together, Okonski and his fellows realized something: The flavor of the group’s improvisations were really what was needed, that maybe the signature mode of this whole age would in fact be… improvisation. 

So the following winter, the trio reconvened and recorded live to a Tascam 388 tape machine. And that’s what you hear here. Without trying to gild the lily too much, it’s gorgeous music. It has what the best music has: You don’t need to really know anything about it — the listening and the feeling of it is its own reward. It feels eternal. 

Together, these seven tracks constitute a kind of statement, and if we’re picking up what Steve from the Midwest is putting down, that statement could run something like this: Genres aren’t important. Soul is what’s important. Taking the moment is important. In life and in music, do not agonize. As Sam Cooke put it: Don’t fight it, feel it. 

— Joey Sweeney

Note: These words originally appeared as the liner notes for the 48 Record Bar Record Of The Month for December 2023. To learn more about our ROTM program, click here.