Scott Henderson – The “Sick” Tour

Artist website: scotthenderson.net

What can you learn from the interview?

• why it’s called the “Sick” tour
• Scott’s approach when playing Blues vs. playing Jazz
• what kind of music he’s influenced by
• what a regular touring day looks like
• how to get big guitar tones
• his composition process
• why he is at “war” with keyboard players
• which band he considers to be his dream band
• teaching at GIT/M.I.
• lots of other nuggets

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On March 30th, 2005 I hooked up with Scott Henderson to hang out and chat. He was in Vienna and performed that evening at Joe Zawinul’s “Birdland” club. I knew Scott from my time at GIT/M.I. through his workshops and open counselings. Anyways, the interview turned out really well because Scott was extremely open and insightful as usual.

I published the interview on another site that I administered at that time, but after a server crash and a corrupted back-up it looked like the transcript was lost. 🙁 Fortunately, I recently discovered a back-up of the back-up. Here follows the almost lost Scott Henderson interview from and about the “Sick Tour”.

Some of the topics might seem irrelevant or dated. Anyone remember CDs? Or tape recorders? The recording and plug-in world has obviously also made some big advances over the past 15 years, but the main topics are timeless and there’s a lot of insights to be gained.

Grab yourself a nice cup of your fav beverage and enjoy this 9000+ word interview transcript. It’s well worth the time.

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Hi Scott, how are you doing?
I’m still a little shaky. I’ve had the flu for almost the complete tour. It feels like it’s never gonna go away.

Looking forward to going home again in a few days and taking a rest?
Yes, definitely!

Scott, you started the tour in Athens/Greece and I think played in Sweden. Now you are in Austria.
Yeah, we were all over the map. This was a pretty long, long tour, but it’s kinda normal you know. That’s how they all are. This one just happened to be a couple of weeks longer and just harder because of everybody being sick.

(takes a sip of tea)
Mmmmmh … never drank so much tea in my whole life, man!

Crowd Reaction in Different Places

With that amount of traveling and playing in front of all the various audiences do you notice different reactions because of a different cultural background?
Yeah, definitely. But I don’t know – it’s hard to tell whether those are city-specific or just nightclub specific; because people are different everywhere and sometimes it has nothing to do with the location. It has to do with just the way things are at the club.

Some audiences at some places are just like dead. We never know why. They are just completely dead. They just don’t react to the music and then sometimes they go crazy and you try to figure out why.

It’s really impossible to figure out. Outside from the usual, like sometimes “theater-seating” causes audiences to be a little dead when they are sitting in their comfortable chair and there is no booze and there is no table and there is no interaction among the people. That tends to be kind of a deader audience, but we’ve even had exceptions to that. Like some of the theater crowds in Italy – they go nuts and in Spain too. So I don’t know.

Otherwise who knows, maybe the dead audience consists of floored guitarists?
I don’t know. Sometimes we do get a pretty big musician crowd and some of those guys may be more analyzing than enjoying.

The guitar player syndrome …
Yeah. We much prefer to play for mixed audiences, so it’s like a real show. And we get those probably 30 percent, maybe 40 percent of the time and the rest of time is … like you see a lot of guys in the audience. It’s a little like playing a “Johnny Cash prison concert”. And then you can pretty much tell it’s a musician crowd.

Crowd reaction in different places – back to overview

Teaching at Musician’s Institute

You’ve played with Kirk Covington for a long time with Tribal Tech, but how did you hook up with the bass player John Humphrey? Did you meet at M.I.?
We played in Jean Luc Ponty’s band together. Like way back in the 80’s and yes, he also teaches in our school (Musician’s Institute in Los Angeles). So I’ve known him for years. We’ve been teaching in the same school together for a long time.

You still teach there?
I’m there Monday and Tuesday when I’m in town. I still do that – probably will forever.

Mostly open counseling?
Yeah, because that’s a pretty open gig. I just show up and do my thing. Actually, I wouldn’t mind teaching some classes just to get me out of that little room once in a while. But if I teach classes and then I leave I have to find substitutes and all that stuff and it’s a lot more complicated. So I just kind of stick to what I do there.

You still enjoy teaching?
Sometimes I enjoy it and sometimes I don’t. It sort of depends on who’s in my room that day. Most of the more advanced guys come to study with me and we study playing over chord changes and stuff – and the ones that are serious are bringing their tape recorders and are taping me playing and are transcribing what I do. And they are coming back to me the next day and go, “You did this here … and what is this?”, and you can just tell they are serious. Those guys don’t come in every day.

Some days I feel like it’s more of a babysitting job. Kids come in there, they just want to jam, they don’t have tape recorders – so it’s not gonna do them any good when they leave – you can just tell that they are not serious. They are there to have fun, they are there to do whatever they are there to do.

It’s sort of like for me, “I’d rather practice. I’d rather sit around learning new stuff than jamming with guys who really can’t play”. It’s not a whole lot of fun on those days.

And I don’t really have to do what they tell me to do. I can just say, “Well, no, I don’t want to jam with you. You don’t have a tape recorder, so obviously you aren’t that interested in learning anything – so, no, I don’t want to jam – we are gonna work on this”. And then I go into something and say, “Have you ever checked this out before?” and I just make them go through. That’s like a real teaching day and those days happen.

But on a good day I’ve got the better players at the school there. They know how to play over changes and they are really interested in the next level.

Teaching at Musician’s Institute – back to overview

On Touring

Ok, to come back to the tour: do you have a set list that you stick to? Is it pretty much the same tunes you play each night?
Yeah. Although we have a few switch-overs. But if one tune starts sounding better than another one we usually just keep playing it until or unless somebody says, “I’m really sick of that now. Can we play something else?”

It’s hard to play the same music day in and day out, even the tunes that are mainstays that always sound good. You still get tired of hearing them and I try my best to try to come up with new stuff to play on the tunes.

But you can’t reinvent yourself every night.

So there’s a lot of repeated shit which makes touring hard for me. It’s listening to myself play the same shit over and over and over. That drives me nuts.

So how do you deal with that? When that happens do you go like, “Damn, I played the same lick over that passage again?”
Yeah, you do. But in a way you can’t. Because you are who you are and you have the vocabulary that you have. You can’t invent a new vocabulary every night. All you can do is try to add to the one that you’ve got.

On the road that’s not really that easy because you don’t have a chance to practice in the day … a very little chance to practice during the day.

What’s a regular day on the tour like for you?
You wake up and you get in the van and drive for like … however long you drive and then you usually get there just in time to have maybe an hour in your hotel room and then you go to soundcheck and eat dinner and play. That’s it.

It’s pretty much travel during the day and play at night. There’s not a lot of time for practicing.

You don’t think, “Ok, I’ll go on tour and that’s what I’m going to work on on the side, do a little songwriting or composing?”
I always bring tools to do that and I never use them. I have my little recorder ready to go and my computer ready to go with Digital Performer and I have a “Pandora” (Korg multi-FX unit) that I can plug into my computer.

I’ve never written a note of music on the road. Even though I could if I wanted to. I don’t have time and not even the energy because after all the travel you just wanna rest sometimes or watch TV or have just a little bit of personal time to yourself. So I don’t accomplish a lot on the road outside of just playing the gigs. It’d be nice if I did, but I never do.

Do you get a chance to check out some of the cities?
Oh hell no!

Maybe now you’ll do. You have 4 or 5 days in Vienna.
Yeah, this is unusual to be able to. Actually, I’m just resting because I’ve been so sick for the last three weeks. I’m just kind of lying in bed and watching TV.

I just wanna be well by the time I go home. This is the worst flu I have ever had. I never had a flu like this before. I’ve never been sick for more than a week in my life. So this really hit me hard and it’s really hard for me to believe I could be sick for this long.

The doctors we saw in Germany said that’s the whole thing about this particular strain of flu. It hits you and it doesn’t go away. It’s like a real bastard.

On touring – back to overview

The Birdland Club

How does it feel to be playing in the “Birdland” – a club that is owned by Joe Zawinul, with whom you have played together for quite some time?
I’ve played here with Joe actually just a little while back. So I’ve been here before and it’s a nice club. It’s a dry stage. We are used to having a little bit more reaction room-wise. It makes us more of a rock band. It makes it sound pretty small, but yet if you go out in the house it sounds really good. It sounds big like it’s supposed to, but the stage is really dry.

It fools you and you think you sound really small because all the music disappears. There’s no ambience whatsoever. But that’s just this room and I imagine after a couple of nights we’ll get used to it.

Last night we were playing and it sounded really small and dry. I was adding reverb to my sound and stuff, but you know I went out in the house to hear the drum solo and the bass solo and it sounded huge. It sounded really great like it’s supposed to. It’s just a weird stage. Every stage is different, it just takes some getting used to, but by the weekend we’ll be used to it.

The Birdland club – back to overview

Jazz vs. Blues

Scott, you are famous for your world class fusion playing with Tribal Tech. There you have all those complex changes with intricate rhythms. Here you are on tour with your Blues band. Do you approach these two playing situations differently?
Well, I don’t really look at it any different from the playing standpoint. It’s more different just from the compositional standpoint because there’s music where you don’t use certain parts of your vocabulary.

I don’t really like to play Blues tunes and insert Jazz licks unless the changes require that. From a playing standpoint you don’t really change your attitude when you play. You just play from a different vocabulary, but the intent and phrasing and all that stuff, the tone … thinking about tone, it’s exactly the same. You just play within the composition. That’s it. That’s really it.

Playing Blues is just a different form of expression. The way I look at it, it is actually way more difficult than Jazz. Jazz kinda plays itself. In a way if you play 8th notes and play notes within the chord structure you are already doing it. You don’t have to think about it.

I guess the timing thing and the phrasing thing isn’t as important. It’s easy to play 8th notes. Anybody can play 8th notes and as long as you have done your technical homework and you know which notes go over which chords you are already kind of there.

Of course, some Jazz players have way more vocabulary than others. I don’t have nearly as much Jazz vocabulary as I’d like to have, but I have enough to get me through standards and whatever kind of changes or music I need to play.

The Blues thing is way, way more advanced. It’s trying to capture the soul of great Blues players before us. I’m nowhere near the Blues player than I am a Jazz player. Every time I listen to Albert King I wonder why I even try to play the Blues, but I love Blues so much.

My Blues phrasing and my Blues playing is on a very immature level compared to the guys that I look up to. I’m always striving to get there and to improve my phrasing and stuff and because the phrasing floats, it’s a way more harder thing to capture than just playing in time – which in my mind if you have decent time anybody can do. That’s not that hard. But when you float over the time that’s where it sort of separates the men from the boys.

When I hear guys that can really play, float over the time and play amazing shit, that’s the players I look up to the most. And there are those Jazz players that do that really well like Wayne Shorter. That’s why he is one of my favorite saxophone players, because he is not just a line player that just plays lines of 16th and 8th notes all the time but he is able to float over the time and play from more of a Blues man’s approach yet with all that Jazz vocabulary.

Zawinul is another guy who is amazing in the way that he phrases. He’s not like an 8th note “doodler” which is what he calls it – and not that I have anything against 8th notes because I play 8th notes myself when I play Jazz. But there is a certain way to float over the time that is really to me a more otherworldly type of playing. And the masters that can do that have always caught my ear way more than guys that just play 8th-notes and 16th-notes lines.

To me the whole thing is about phrasing and to play better phrases.

Phrasing and tone – those are the two most important things to me.

That’s what I listen to when I listen to music and that’s what I try to play when I play music and the optimum word there is “try” – that’s my intent, anyway.

Jazz vs. Blues – back to overview

Listening to Music

What kind of CDs are you listening to right now?
Oh, I don’t know. I mainly listen to my iPod and the music that’s on my computer. So the days of grabbing CDs off the shelf and sticking them in are kind of over for me.

What do you have in your musical library that you listen to?
I’ve got a huge musical library. Everything from Pantera to Miles Davis – and I’m pretty open to everything. So sometimes I just turn it on and see what’s in there. I just hit shuffle and listen. I bought the new Scofield Live album and I still haven’t listened to it yet and I’ve had it now for over a month. I want to, you know, it’s just finding the time to sit down and listen to it.

I’m more likely just to turn on the computer and hit a tune and see what comes on. It could be Ry Cooder, it could be Stevie Ray Vaughan, it could be Miles Davis, it could be Meshuggah. I have no idea what’s gonna pop out at me and I kinda like that. I’m kind of influenced by a lot of different kinds of music and I like a lot of different kinds of music.

Are you actually able to just listen for the pure enjoyment of it?
No, I mean I definitely suffer the musician thing, absolutely, I’m always analyzing. Especially Jazz – because almost every time I put on a Jazz record I hear something I don’t know. Some sax player plays some lick, some phrase or some concept – harmonic concept that I go, “What the hell was that?”, and then I’m more listening to it like, “How can that make me better? How can I get better by listening to that?”

It becomes more of a selfish self-improvement thing than just enjoying this guy for what he does. I’m just really curious that way sometimes.

I mean I can still just listen and enjoy more simpler kinds of music. But Jazz is sorta like the one that’s harder for me to listen to because there’s just so much vocabulary and I’m nowhere even close to scratching the surface of it. So every time I hear somebody play something I just go, “Wow”. Especially saxophone players. And I hear other guitar players that I really like play Jazz – Steve Cardenas, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Scofield or Pat Metheny – and I hear these guys play and I go, “Wow, what was that?”

Listening to music – back to overview

Shred vs. Grunge

What do you think about the general state of – let’s just limit it to guitar playing? We had the 80s with the focus on technique and then came Grunge and technique was suddenly considered “bad” ….
Well, I guess none of that really ever influenced my life at all. Only because I sort of saw that all as kind of just fads that come and go.

I never got into Shred that much. I just never really liked it because it sounded to me like a lot of notes but not a whole lot of feel and not a whole lot of phrasing. It just sorta sounded like chops to me.

When I first heard Van Halen I didn’t feel that way. You know, I heard him play with all this technique and this two-hand thing that I thought was really cool, then just about everybody that followed Eddie … I didn’t get it. I see that they are copying Eddie and I see that they are tapping on their guitars with their fingers, but I didn’t hear the soul and the phrasing that Eddie Van Halen had.

The only guys that have come around to me … like Yngwie (Malmsteen) is really good, he can actually play the guitar. When I heard everybody else it seemed like, “Ok, I don’t hear a lot of good phrasing. I just hear a lot of notes”.

It sort of bypassed me. I hear this really wide vibrato and a super amount of notes but it all started to sound the same to me.

Shred vs. Grunge – back to overview

It didn’t have a whole lot of meat to my ears but then I hear the same thing when I listen to Grunge. I listen to it and I go, “Yeah, that had a cool feel”. But there still wasn’t that much there to interest me, being a Jazz musician. I guess what I’m trying to say is the popular movements among guitar players sort of just didn’t have much effect on what I do.

What I do has never really been that popular – so I’ve just kept doing it. Wasn’t popular when Shred was around, wasn’t popular when Grunge was around, so it doesn’t really make much difference to me.

Freak show at the circus – back to overview

Peer Pressure

We’ve never been a popular band in the States anyway – and the States is where these trends happen mostly. People in Europe are way more open-minded. In the States music is not just music. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a peer group.

So if you have a group of people that listen to one kind of music they don’t veer away from that very much. Otherwise they are considered a “geek” among their friends.

That whole concept to me is so ridiculous that it’s just laughable – we just laugh at it. Like these movements, to me they are just funny because in Europe it’s never been that way. You’ll find a guy that went to a Mozart concert one night, went to see a Jazz show the next night, went to see a Metal show the next night and they just go to whatever is there. They don’t have a peer group that’s gonna think they are idiots for listening to whatever they wanna listen to like in the States.

The States even in other art forms and in TV … you can see how cliquey it is. It’s very niche-oriented and people that form these little niches very often don’t veer out from them. That’s why you see what you see on TV. That’s just America. America is kind of a culturally fucked-up country, unfortunately.

Peer pressure – back to overview

On Inspiration

Scott, with all your diverse musical influences, what was the last thing you listened to that just “grabbed” and inspired you?
Recently when I first heard “Release it” by Prince – it’s really super funky – it definitely inspired me to write a Funk tune. I just heard it and went, “Wow, that’s really good Funk music”. And when I hear a tune that’s just really great and I go, “Yeah man, I wanna write something cool like that”.

Sure, I’m influenced. I try actually not to be so influenced, you know what I mean? Because I want me to come out.

It’s hard being a musician – if you listen to something that really knocks you out it’s hard not to be influenced by it. And these days it becomes harder and harder to be knocked out by different things because there’s so much out there and we’ve heard so much stuff.

These days, I mean after Weather Report …

I mean that was like the ultimate band to me. There has not been a whole lot of bands post Weather Report that have really blown me away as much as they had the ability to blow me away. And they didn’t even have a guitar player.

Are they your dream band?
Yeah sure. That band with Jaco, Joe, Wayne and Peter Erskine that’s pretty much in my viewpoint the best band that’s ever been together. It’s hard to top that.

Besides music are there other forms of art that inspire you?
Yeah, I like film, I like movies.

For me it’s a matter of time, I just don’t have time. As much as I love going to see movies I haven’t been in 3 or 4 months since I was home. Because I was so busy just trying to get ready for the tour.

A lot of my time gets also kind of eaten up with searching for better tones – because I’m kind of a gear head and I’m always investigating.

And I have a circle of friends where we are always miking stuff and experimenting in our studios. You know like, “Try turning the knob to ‘8’ and see what happens”. It’s amazing how much time that takes – but the rewards are great.

You have a studio at home?
Just an overdubbing studio and I’m always in it. Messing around with gear and playing with sounds. That takes up quite a bit of my time actually, and it’s time that I used to spend practicing. But ever since I got into recording, recording kinda became the most important thing. Not so much what you record but sometimes just the recording process itself.

Learning new software …
Yeah, learning new software, learning how to make sounds that you didn’t know how to make before.

On inspiration – back to overview

The Curse

I don’t know when it happened to me. I’ve always been into sounds but when I was in Tribal Tech it was a real one-dimensional role.

I’ve always been sort of maybe cursed to be the guitar player for keyboard players. I’ve played with Joe (Zawinul), I’ve played with Chick (Corea) and I’ve played for years with Scott Kinsey and when you play with keyboard players your role as a guitar player really gets diminished.

Everybody looks to the keyboards for the sounds and the guitar player is just the guitar player, and you have your little sound, and maybe at the most you are gonna step on a pedal.

But when you are doing a record with just guitar and you realize how infinite the possibilities are with all the pedals and all the ways you can process the instrument and mutate it, then that really becomes a big part of what you do – at least for me it does.

The curse – back to overview

Slave No More

And kind of my objective for the next 10 years is to just keep making guitar albums that challenge keyboard players – to say that I can make a sonic album that’s sonically fucking hip and not have one note of keyboards on it.

So I’m kind of at war with keyboard players because I’ve been their little slave for most of my career and I never intend to play with another one on a record anytime soon.

I just really want to make records where the guitar is as sonic and as unusual as possible. I want to create a lot of colors because it’s really fun for me.

Do you do that mostly with pedals or have you experimented with MIDI, plugins and so forth?
I have experimented with just about everything and I haven’t even started yet, because there’s a whole world of stuff that I don’t know about but I will get into. The computer plugin thing is getting really hip and if you mix pedals with that, there’s just an infinite amount of noises you can make.

Slave no more – back to overview

Plug-ins and Sounds

You have any favorite plugins that you use a lot?
Well, Enigma is really cool.

The Waves plugin?
Yes, that’s a really good one. You can make tons of cool sounds with that and River Run (by Audio Ease) is really cool and let’s see … the Rocket Science ones, Roger and Cindy, they are bubbly and expressive kinds of vowel sounding plugins.

So there’s lots of stuff out there and I’m hoping that on the next album I can get in there and really make some different sounds happen.

Plug-ins and sounds – back to overview

Guitar Amp Simulators

Scott, what’s your opinion about all the guitar amp simulators currently available?
I didn’t have much luck with them myself. They haven’t sold me yet and they are nowhere even really close to getting the sound of a real tube amp. You can experiment with that stuff until you are blue in the face. If you stick a microphone in a speaker, it’s gonna win.

That’s where it is now, but who knows. I mean they keep working on it and they may get it.

I have Guitar Rig, I have a Pod, I have all that stuff and none of it even comes close to the real deal. But it tries hard and it’s gonna get there sooner or later.

The weak point of it is the dynamics, the compression. It’s not breathing because it can’t simulate what a tube does – the dynamics of how you pick. Everything is still real compressed and “Holdsworth” sounding. That’s why Allan (Holdsworth) can play through digital amps and sound great. Because of his style, because he picks everything the same – very lightly, so everything comes out within the same range.

It works for a player like Allan. It works really great but if you are trying to play Blues it just doesn’t work. There’s no expression in the right hand. It’s all left hand, no right hand.

Another weakness in it is their speaker modeling. So far it seems to me from the programs I’ve heard – I’ve heard Guitar Rig, I’ve heard Pod 2.0, I’ve heard Ampfarm and I’ve heard Amplitube – from what I hear they are trying to emulate putting the microphone in the paper of the cone. Almost every sound tries to emulate that.

Guitar amp simulators – back to overview

On the Cone – Huge Tone

Well, I don’t put the mic in the paper – I put it on the cone itself which is a completely different sound. It’s more from the Jeff Beck school. I haven’t heard anything sound as big and when you put the mic on the paper you get a small sound. It’s smooth but small.

When you put the mic on the cone it’s a huge tone, but it has to be dealt with in other ways because it’s also hairier. You have to do things to calm that down. Anyway, in these modeling programs I haven’t heard them try to get that. That’s why as soon as I put a mic in the speaker it just blows all the virtual shit away that I’ve heard so far.

But they’ll get it I bet, sooner or later.

As they keep going it keeps improving and maybe someday I’ll be walking around with a little box. I won’t have a big guitar cabinet anymore or a tube amp and my back will be really thankful.

I’ve seen other guitar players do it. I’ve seen McLaughlin play with Dennis Chambers and Joey DeFrancesco, and he was just playing through a rack mount system and hearing himself in the monitors. And for that tone, the tone that he gets – it works.

I wish I could do that.

On the cone – huge tone – back to overview

On Practicing

Scott, you said that you hardly ever have time to practice anymore …
Well, I could have time to practice if I was that serious about practicing, but I guess when it comes to the point where you have to come up with music for a record – man, it’s such hard work. It’s such time-consuming work for me.

I’m not the kind of player to jot something down on a napkin and say, “Let’s go in a studio – here’s my record”. For me, I don’t know why I have this thing that makes me say, “Each tune has to really be different, each tune has to be special”.

You like to have the structure worked out in advance?
No, it’s not really about the structure. It’s more about just coming up with a concept for a song and coming up with a song that doesn’t sound like a million other songs out there and trying to come up with something different.

Maybe it’s because I’m not that talented, but it seems like for every ten hours I spend I’m lucky if I get fifteen minutes of music out of it.

On practicing – back to overview

Scott’s on a Roll
This next question triggers a great monologue. If you do compose yourself why not try that car grooving? As far as the “no talent” goes … anyone else wanna be as untalented as Scott?

The Composition Process

How do you go about writing a new tune? Do you have some preferred way, some sort of method?
First of all, I like to write in real time because you hear the music in real time. Sometimes it is more natural if you write it in real time, which is either singing to something or playing to something. So usually I have a drum groove first and I listen to it in my car for a long time until I start to just develop ideas, rhythmic ideas and I sit at home and jam to it and come up with stuff. Then it’s just a matter of cutting and pasting.

You know I might play all day and only get one decent idea, but at least that’s one thing and if I get another idea the next day I can paste that to it and sooner or later I’ll have a large vocabulary of ideas for that one groove and then I start piecing it together.

It takes a long time for me because like I say – some people are naturally talented, I’m not.

I’ve seen Joe compose, Joe Zawinul and he sits there at the keyboard and starts playing and there you have “Birdland”.

It’s done. You know what I mean?

He’s playing compositions just right out of the top of his head. He’s probably the best at it, but in general, keyboard players have a better time doing it because they can comp in their left hand and play melodies in the right hand. They can come up with music easier than guitar players can.

For guitar players, it’s harder for us to facilitate chords, rhythm and melodies at the same time over a groove, so it takes us longer to piece something together, or at least for me. I have a lot of cool harmony in my head, but I don’t necessarily have it “at the tip of my tongue” ready to come out.

The composition process – back to overview

Process of Elimination

Like I said I’m not really that talented, I don’t hear everything. I have to use process of elimination, maybe most composers do. Where you try this (grips a chord air-guitar style) and go “No” try this – “No” try this – “No”. Finally you hop on something and go, “Yeah, I like that”.

But it might take you a long time to get there.

That’s time-consuming and that’s what consumes my time when I have to deal with music, and for me sitting there just practicing “Giant Steps” would be kind of a luxury. If I never had to do another record that’s probably what I would do. I would sit there and practice standards all day and transcribe other Jazz players and build up my vocabulary which I still do some.

Right now I don’t have any new tunes, so when I get home probably what I’m gonna be doing for the next year is, every available minute I get I’ll be sitting there trying to come up with some decent music to play.

I don’t know when I go see bands, that’s still to me the most important thing. The strength of the music. It seems to overshadow sometimes the strength of the players.

I’ve many times gone to see concerts where there were good players, and if the tunes weren’t that good, it didn’t impress me as much as when I went, “Wow, that music they were playing is really great”. Like when you go and see a Jeff Beck concert or go see a Weather Report concert. The music is so strong, the tunes themselves so strong.

That’s important.

Process of elimination – back to overview

Just Getting Started

Do you find it difficult to coordinate your various projects?
Well, I don’t have that many projects. I’m just doing the trio basically. That’s it.

Tribal Tech, I doubt we’ll do anything anytime soon. Willis (Gary Willis / Tribal Tech’s bass player) lives in Spain so he’s not around and Kinsey (Scott Kinsey / Tribal Tech’s keyboard player) is doing other stuff. And I’m really into this thing that I’m doing with the guitar.

I sort of feel like I’m making up for a whole career, where I didn’t get to be much of a guitar player as far as really expressing what I could on guitar. I was more of a horn player in all these keyboard bands. That’s sort of how keyboard players treat guitar players sometimes – as a horn player or in Joe Zawinul’s case as a percussionist. I just did Joe’s gig and what Joe needs is more of a percussive thing from the guitar.

The guitar is a great instrument. It allows you to be all these different things, but if you are really trying to make the guitar all it can be, that’s a very limiting role. Just about any time you are going to play with a keyboard player, your role is gonna be pretty limited – so that’s why I do what I’m doing.

You plan on focusing more on solo records then?
I’m gonna play more guitar until I’m sick of it (laughs). I’ll probably do 10 guitar albums before I ever do one with a keyboard player (laughs some more).

Are you able to play keyboard?
A little bit but not really enough. Enough to maybe write a bit, but I never really try writing that much on keyboard because it takes me too long. It’s easier to write on guitar.

Just getting started – back to overview

Scott’s Virtual Dream Band

Scott, you already mentioned Weather Report as your dream band … if you had the chance to pick your virtual dream band together – are there any guys that you really would like to play with that you haven’t yet?
Not really, because what I’ve really discovered in being a sideman many times is that just because you really like someone’s playing, it doesn’t mean playing with him is gonna be all that much fun. Because what they expect from you might be different than what you want to do.

It’s sometimes better just to check out those guys on record and to enjoy them on the records.

If I was to pick a dream band, it would be guys that do their separate thing, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that what we do would click. There are certain musicians whose playing I love, but I’d rather be listening to them on records and just do my own thing. It seems like I’ve just started with “Well to the Bone”. It’s the very first trio record I’ve ever done in my whole life.

Every other record I’ve done before … my guitar track has been one one-track or two tracks – that’s it. I’ve never done a multi-track guitar record before, and shit – Jimmy Page has been doing them for ages, you know what I mean?

I feel like I never really got to be a guitarist in my whole career and I wanna make up for that. I feel like I just started scratching the surface as far as making guitar records.

So that’s what I want to do and it doesn’t really have anything to do with playing with somebody else. It’s just like expressing myself as a musician, and sure I love Wayne Shorter, but I’m sure if I ever got the opportunity to play with him, he’d have a keyboard player in his band, and then I’d be playing some dumb shit that I’d hate.

I mean every time I get asked to do a band it’s like that. A couple years ago I got asked to do a band by this record company ESC. They said, “Would you like to do a tour with Bill Evans?” And I went, “Bill Evans the sax player, what a great player. I love his playing”.

“… and Dennis Chambers”. And I went, “Awesome”.

“… and Victor Wooten“. I went, “What a great bass player, I’m in”. And then they said the name of a keyboard player whose name I won’t mention.

And I went, “No!” because I know it’s a keyboard band. Keyboard’s gonna be doing all the work. I’m gonna be picking a little one-note fucking thing back there in the background and coming out and playing a sax solo every once in a while. Fuck that. It just doesn’t appeal to me at all.

Scott’s virtual dream band – back to overview

Ode to Scott Kinsey

The only guy that’s really fun for me to play with as a keyboard player is Scott (Kinsey) because he really gets playing with guitar players. He’s one of the only guys that really knows how to stay out of a guitar player’s way and let a guitar player actually be not just a one-note instrumentalist.

Scott loves to play solos with just one line and play with tones and be more like a synthesizer player so that the guitar player can play chords under him. Because as soon as a keyboard player starts comping there’s nothing for a guitar player to do. You’re just supposed to stand there.

He likes it. He’ll leave the stage and just say, “Ok, play – go for it. Play some chords, have some fun”. And we’ll both just walk off and let each other have it. It seems like when we play, we aren’t stepping all over each other.

He’s about the only keyboard player that I’ve played with that I don’t feel like I have to just interject myself into the holes. You know what I mean? Like here’s a little hole I can jump in …

When the keyboard player’s left hand gets tired …
Exactly.

I still do gigs with Scott at “La Ve Lee” every once in a while and we just get a drummer and bass player and play together, and I really enjoy that.

When I need a keyboard fix and I want to interact with someone else’s sounds – he’s the only guy. Scott is like the best. I love playing with Scott and I miss playing with him in Tribal Tech, but I guess “onward and upward.”

Ode to Scott Kinsey – back to overview

Solo Guitar Gigs

You plan on doing any solo work, where it’s just you?
No, I’m not good enough to do that yet. I’m always working on my voicings, and I can figure out chord melodies and play them. But there are so many guys out there that are light years ahead of me. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Phil DeGruy? Or Ted Greene?

I’ve met Ted a couple of times when I was still in L.A. …
Phil DeGruy is like Ted Greene on acid. You’ve got to hear this guy to believe it. He’s from New Orleans. He’s got three albums. Frightening. He’s like a freak of nature. Like Ted Greene, but way more modern. You know, I love Ted Greene, but this guy is even more modern and he’s just ridiculous.

So when I think that there are solo guitar players out there that are like that, I don’t nearly have the vocabulary to step into that arena. People ask me a lot, “Why don’t you do this or why don’t you do that?” It’s sort of like, “Why don’t you become a doctor?” I know how to clean a cut with peroxide, so why don’t I become a doctor? Nah. I think I’ll better stay out of that area.

It takes so much energy just to do one thing. That’s why I really respect guys like Pat Metheny. He can play solo guitar and really say something. Guys like Pat Metheny and John McLaughlin, they have quite a versatile thing happening. If you look at John McLaughlin’s career and all the different types of guitar he has played: acoustic, solo acoustic, electric stuff – he has done a lot of different styles and I haven’t that much.

My main thing has just been Blues and Jazz. I’m hopefully going to be remembered someday as a guitar colorist. Someone that really got different sounds out of the guitar other than the usual thing. That’s what I really want to do and hopefully that will happen.

Solo guitar gigs – back to overview

More M.I. Stuff

Speaking of colors … do you still offer that workshop at M.I. where you bring in your gear?
No, because it doesn’t seem like there is as much interest for it. Maybe it’s because a lot of the kids at M.I. don’t even know what I do. They’ve never seen me play live – they don’t even know that I use gear. They just see me up in that room with the little Peavey (practice) amp playing Jazz. So in their minds I am just a Jazz player – unless they heard one of my records and they are not likely to hear one of my records because they are not likely gonna leave their “Green Day” niche to hear it.

My position at GIT has turned into a real specific type of fan-based thing. Guys that come into my room are the guys that already know what I do. A 16-year old kid coming to GIT from Lake Elsinore/California is not likely to even know who I am. And not likely even to step in my room the whole year he is there.

Although I have to say, GIT has been really good for the exposure because a lot of the kids, if they never came to GIT, they would have never had that exposure. At GIT at least, even though a kid comes to GIT and he’s only into his little thing, usually by the end of the year his mind is way more open. Because he’s had the opportunity to see people come through the school and do all kinds of different things.

Mainly because he’s made to, right? If he had the choice he probably wouldn’t. But because they make them. Like, “You have to go here and hear this guy!”

Normally they’d go, “Who the fuck is that – I’ve never heard of him. Why should I go?” And then they go see him and say, “Wow, there’s really something else that I like besides Green Day”.

As long as that keeps happening there’s hope for some of these kids. They won’t just become little cardboard cut-outs of what they like. They’ll actually have a chance to expand as musicians and maybe even make some money in the world of music.

Most of them that come to school wouldn’t even have the ability to play a gig. If they got stuck on a gig and they’d have to read a chart, they couldn’t even read a chart – they couldn’t even work on a casual. They’d only be able to make money if they’d got a little band together and got discovered by a record label. In other words, their chances are one in a million of ever actually making a dollar with their instrument.

So that’s the one good thing about school that it actually takes these guys who just come in with only that ability, only those tastes and by the time they leave the school they could actually work as a guitar player. They could actually make money and not have to pump gas or do something like that.

And in that the attitude of the school has been the same ever since I went there: to kind of expand the minds of the kids and to get them out of their little niche.

And a huge factor is the interaction with the other students.
Of course, that’s really important. You relate to a person who shows you another style of playing. And you can find different elements that you can relate to. It may not be the whole of the music, it may not be all which you like, but there are elements in there you recognize.

That’s another thing about school. There are players there teaching that have careers sometimes the kids don’t know about. They only know them as a teacher. They don’t even really know that someone like Robben Ford comes to school and for a lot of the kids this is just a guy in a room playing guitar. They’ve never heard one of his records or they never heard one of my records. This is just the teacher that happens to be here today.

You sort of like to say to the kids sometimes, “Why don’t you check out my records and see what I do and then if you have any questions …” But usually they won’t do that. Usually the only way that I can find a point of relation to the students is to actually play a gig at school. And now, in the last couple of years, that’s what I’ve been insisting on doing. When the new kids come in we do a concert.

That way they see me do what I do and then they are more likely to come into my room to ask me a question about a pedal. Whereas they would have never come in to ask. “Why am I gonna ask this guy playing Blue Bossa with a clean sound about a RAT pedal?”

That’s why it’s important to do a show in front of them, so they see what you do and you’re not just some alien.

And that other workshop called “Improvising Concepts” – you do that one?
Yeah, sometimes when that’s what they want to know. These days the kids are not quite as advanced. A lot of times they come in and they just want to know like “What the hell is a mode?” or “Why should I even bother learning a major scale when I don’t hear a major scale in any form of music that I listen to?” Which is true.

And then you have to sort of say, “Well, if you ever plan on getting out of that world of this music, then this is where this happens”.

Because of the economy, and I’ve heard it’s the same way in Berklee, that whole thing of testing a student into the school has become a big joke. Because they need money and the only way you are going to get money is to let anybody in. They hold a mirror to your nose, and if it fogs, you’re in. In other words, if you are not a corpse, you can get in – and your cheque clears.

So we’ve got guys at our school that literally don’t know what a C chord is. Those kids are starting from the very, very beginning. And then they’ve gotten a little bit more loose with their testing out of classes. So if you’ve already been playing for several years and you are walking into a class where they are talking about C chords and G chords you can go, “I don’t need to be here. Get me the hell out of here”. They have to do that. So now that’s a little bit different than when you were a student. There are a lot of different levels, because now we’ve let in total beginners.

Luckily I don’t really see these kids. They don’t come into my room. But they are there. The kids that just bought their guitars last week. And there are classes for them.

It’s actually turned into what teachers feared the most, having to teach non-musicians. You are teaching a guy and he’s not even a musician and he won’t be probably by the time the year ends.

He’d be lucky if he can call himself a musician and he can actually play through a song. Oh well, that’s a relative term, when do you call yourself a musician? I guess if you can play a C chord and strum it in time, then you are a musician of some sorts.

But we’re talking about a guy who doesn’t own a guitar until the day he comes to school. And they are there. They have arrived. Scary.

How are the LPWs (Live Playing Workshops) working out?
I don’t know. I try not to go in there too much. It really is somewhat funny especially when you consider that GIT was formed in 1980 by five of the top Jazz musicians, and it started out as a Jazz guitar school for upper-level players. And of course, they started out with 20 students and these students had been playing for twenty years. And just as the school got bigger and bigger, the level went down.

But luckily we still have the players that come from Europe and that come from different places in the States, who are serious players. They’ve already been playing gigs for years. They want to improve what they do, they want to get into Jazz. They are usually Rock players looking to elevate themselves musically to other forms of music or they are Jazz players from Europe, who started out listening to Jazz, and we still get quite a few of those guys. There’s usually between 15-20 guys for me during the year who are really into more serious stuff.

More M.I. stuff – back to overview

Hindsight

To wrap it up because I’ve already taken up too much of your time – is there anything you wish you knew way back at the beginning that you know now?
So much stuff. But if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t be the player that I am now. I think everybody probably looks at their playing and wishes they could do something else.

For me it’s hard to see a Jazz guitar player playing Jazz guitar and never bending a note or playing with distortion or trying to be like Jimi Hendrix. It’s like, “Dude, that’s what the electric guitar was made for. How can you miss that?”

And because of my ADD, every aspect of guitar I somehow want to be able to do and I sort of have become a Jack of all trades and master of none.

So when I look in hindsight, I think I could have been a real straight-ahead Jazz guitar player if I never cared about tones or never spent hours and hours turning knobs and trying out different amps or writing music. I could be one of those Joe Jazz guys playing incredible shit over standards. And part of me wishes that I was a better this or that, I wish I was a better Rock player, I wish I was a better Blues player, I wish I was a better Jazz player. But I’m like a little bit of all three.

I’m not as good in any area, but to miss the variety is something I couldn’t really live with. Because I get off on the energy of Rock, I get off on distortion and trying to capture that spirit of Hendrix and those types of players. But I also love Jazz harmony, I love improvising over changes. And the tone thing like I said.

You could spend your whole career like Fred Frith does. And Henry Kaiser – basically their whole career is about making the guitar sound weird. It’s such an amazing instrument for tone, you can get so many different tones out of the guitar. You could spend your whole career just doing that. And that’s definitely something a lot of my time has gone into. Hard to specialize in something – at least for me.

So in hindsight, I could say I wish I could have taken one thing and really gotten great at it. But whatever (laughs).

Hindsight – back to overview

Weird Gig

Well, that’s it. Looking forward to seeing you at the concert, but I have to warn you – tonight is supposed to be fairly dead. Like this is the weirdest gig. Last night I was just guesstimating, but I was thinking about 20% of the people knew who I was and came to see me. And the other 80% were just walk-ins from the Hotel here.

They are there no matter who’s playing and there were some real sour-faces. I had a whole table in front of me just whincing all night because they think it’s going to be (starts to hum the theme of the Jazz standard “Misty”). That’s what they think it’s going to be, and the Club didn’t even put “Blues” on the marquee. So a lot of people are thinking well, it’s a Jazz club. So I suspect tonight might be the same.

The weekend is when our people are going to be here. The long-hairs and the people who want to rock out. Last night we were all just in the dressing room going “Oh, fuck, it’s just horrible. Oh boy, it feels just like a casual. If we can just get through to the weekend, we’ll be ok”,

The life of a musician (laughs).

Weird gig – back to overview

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