Andrew Bird's 'Sunday Morning' a Chicago homecoming

Sometimes home feels like putting on your favorite jazz records on a lazy Sunday morning, sipping a cup of coffee and tapping your feet along to the rhythm.

At least, it feels that way for Andrew Bird. His new album, “Sunday Morning Put-On” (out May 24), features riffs on the small ensemble, mid-century jazz that has been a lifelong muse for the virtuoso violinist. And the title, in some respects, refers to a time living in Chicago in the 1990s when his practice on Sundays, and many other days, was listening to songbook standards and letting it all soak in.

It was a time before the Lake Forest native started working with the Squirrel Nut Zippers and forming his Bowl of Fire folk-swing-big band troupe; before the indie infamy and Grammy noms and his brilliant score work; a time when Bird was living in an Edgewater building surrounded by Jesuit priests and nuns from Loyola and teaching violin at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

In those days, he was a frequent listener of WBEZ-FM and recalls spending morning to night listening to “Blues Before Sunrise” and the Dick Buckley Show. “I’d stay up all night and sometimes I’d tape the shows to listen to them later,” he shares in a recent telephone interview from his home in L.A. “It was a huge part of my musical diet on a daily basis.”

There was also another local treasure where Bird would often frequent to get his fill — the Green Mill.

“I used to ride my bike over there in the mornings because they were open. … There’d be a couple people at the bar but mostly I had the place to myself, and I got to play the jukebox mounted in the wall, [filled with] vinyl 45s of classic jazz.” He pauses, caught in the memory, before adding, “I look back and see Chicago as a very rich environment. I don’t know if I appreciated it at the time but I certainly do now.”

So, when it came time to figure out a good spot for the record release show for “Sunday Morning Put-On,” the Green Mill was a natural choice.

“It makes total sense. … Well, it doesn’t make sense economically but it makes sense artistically,” Bird jokes.

Playing the hallowed Uptown joint is a truly special affair for the amphitheater-league musician. It’s a venue he seldom returns to, the last time being 2019, though it will be a cherished spot for fans to hear the hand-picked gems on the new record. The 10 tracks feature takes on Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Lerner & Loewe and Rodgers & Hart and show tunes like "I Fall In Love Too Easily" (Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne) & "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" (Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe). There’s also one original, "Ballon de Peut-etre." 

The effort is formally billed as the Andrew Bird Trio and features instrumentals from guitarist Jeff Parker and pianist Larry Goldings. Bird’s incredible manipulation of the violin and his playful vocals are the album’s real riches, with his go-to instrument sounding like a whole other beast.

“I subconsciously adopt certain techniques to get the sounds I hear in my head,” Bird says, admitting that he’s long been drawn to tenor sax players like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young and wanted that sound on “Sunday Morning Put-On.” That sound is, as he says, “that sort of fluid, less-articulated phrasing that they were known for … even though it’s an entirely different principle of making sound with a bow and a string versus a reed.”

Bird says the album — a 30-year passion project — finally developed after he wrapped up the release and promotion rigmarole for 2022’s “Inside Problems.”

“I like to create these little sabbaticals [between albums] where I scratch an itch that doesn’t get scratched when I’m making song albums. I really didn’t feel like writing at that time last winter. I wanted to just kind of buckle down and be a student again …. and see where I could get to as a jazz soloist,” he says.

Though, ultimately, his motive in “Sunday Morning Put-On” was to “make an album I don’t think exists. … I make albums because I can’t find what I hear in my head in the record store,” he says.

While Bird’s events this month — also including a Chicago Humanities Festival event on May 31 at his old stomping grounds — the Old Town School of Folk Music — are both sold-out, there’s always the chance to see Bird again in December at his long-running Gezelligheid shows at Fourth Presbyterian Church, a now holiday tradition that seems to add more dates every year.

“I feel like I have more energy for it every year as I get older. I used to find seven shows in a row to just destroy me, and now it kind of invigorates me,” Bird admits. “Now, it’s my favorite thing to do all year.”