Catching Up With John Scofield

John Scofield‘s new album Past Present has such an indefinite, all-encompassing title because there’s a lot to encompass.

It’s a reunion, for sure: that early 1990s Scofield lineup that features Sco, saxophone legend Joe Lovano and drummer Bill Stewart, along with bassist Larry Grenadier this time around, is once again presiding. It’s a also a comment on how music with an extensive past survives, remains sturdy and vibrant, and is open to re- interpretation, hence the very Sco-like infusions of blues, soul and Americana into a somewhat mellow jazz framework heard here.

And as Scofield tells us, it’s not a tribute album, but it also doesn’t unencumber itself from personal loss and reflection – the death of Scofield’s son, Evan, from sarcoma in 2013, and the song titles, such as “Mr. Puffy,” that evoke him.

Scofield caught JamBase up on Past Present and a full slate of touring with the Lovano/Stewart/Grenadier group, including a six-night, 12-set stand at New York’s Blue Note that begins tomorrow (Tuesday, October 13.) We also got a glimpse into what he has planned with Brad Mehldau and in the idiom of country music, as well as looked back to this year’s thrilling Sco Mule tour with Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule.

Here’s John:

JAMBASE: John, I think a lot of folks have touched on this lineup with Joe Lovano and how it was beloved by fans in its previous incarnation. Why was now the right time to return to it?

JOHN SCOFIELD: I had these tunes I had written that were swinging tunes compared to the Uberjam tunes I’d been doing at the same time. Over the last few years I’d thought it would be good to do more of a quote-unquote straight ahead jazz record with these songs, and from there it was really, who do I want to do this with? I came back to those same guys I had played with. I still loved those guys and I love hearing them play my tunes. I wasn’t really composing thinking that I wanted to get more to an acoustic jazz type of thing, it just turned out to be a reunion record that way.

JAMBASE: You’ve played with a galaxy of people, as has Joe. Why do you think the two of you are so simpatico as collaborators?

JS: Well, I don’t know. We just are. We’re simpatico because we think of music in a similar way. Part of it is that we came up in the same scene. We met, really starting in the late 60s and into the early 70s, and were playing the same clubs and idolizing the same people and started playing together really early on: me, Joe and a bunch of other guys. Our musical values were all set around the same time, and that’s really it. It’s just one of those things where we seem to hear the same way, enough that we can play together well. It’s always easy with Joe. We never have to talk about what we’re going to play.

JAMBASE: I’ve seen the notes and anecdotes about tunes on this album like “Mr. Puffy” and the others that reference your son, Evan. Can you talk about the process of creating those tunes?

JS: This is how this happened. Evan got sick and he and his wife moved in with my wife and me. He was undergoing treatment and living with us. He was sick for two years before he died, and it was around that time when I wrote this music. But I wasn’t actually thinking much about music then. I was with him. When I titled them, I thought of him in the names of the songs – and I can’t hear these songs without thinking of Evan, he was part of it. On the other hand, it’s not like I was trying to make a tribute album.

I think when people write music and call it, I don’t know, the 1812 Overture or the Grand Canyon Suite or whatever it is, I think that’s reaching a bit for instrumental music. It makes a sound and it might be dark and moody or bright and happy, but it’s not really about a specific thing, and I mean that in the sense that, it isn’t like there are notes that sound exactly like the Brooklyn Bridge. You say these things because it’s an association that could work for that song. But this is instrumental music. Music is its own language. I don’t think I’d make a musical homage to anybody, it wouldn’t be right. And Evan, my life is a homage to Evan.

I’ll give you an example. The song “Tapdance” isn’t really connected to Evan. I had written that song with the musical “Oklahoma,” the Rogers & Hammerstein Broadway show, on my mind. The way that they’re dressed up as cowboys even though they’re really Broadway dancers, that whole thing is very funny to me. That’s why I call that song “Tapdance.” It came from a country place, but we made jazz out of it anyway.

JAMBASE: Has the way you’ve written songs changed much over the years?

JS: No, not really. I write on the guitar, I sit down and write the first thing that comes to my head. Then I try to elaborate on that, and that’s where the work comes in. If it’s good enough to me I’ll keep working on it, but for every one I write, there are probably four more that I ditch.

JAMBASE: Are you a constant writer?

JS: No, no, I can’t do it all the time. I’m mainly a guitar player. But I do like to write music, and I think writing music is very important for jazz. All of us really work on the art of jazz, which is improvisation. But at this point in the history of jazz you’ve got to have some original tunes and not just get up there and blow and leave improv by itself. Material is important.

JAMBASE: Do you think a lot of jazz musicians do a little too much “get up there and blow” and not enough composition?

JS: Look, getting up there and blowing is where it’s at. But for me, I like to offset it with composition, or at least in some sort of setting that directs the music somewhat. We’ve always seen “get up there and blow,” since at least the 60s and free jazz. Like anything else, there are good exponents of doing that at the top of the line, and the rest is sort of just filler. It’s like any other genre of music. There are just as many bad rock bands as bad jazz bands.

JAMBASE: I wanted to ask about a few other things you recently worked on or are working on. First of all, your tour with Gov’t Mule earlier this year, and I know you’ll be back with them for the Jamaica event in January. Warren’s talked a lot about how much fun it was to do the Sco-Mule thing and revisit your collaboration – tell me about your experience on that tour.

JS: It was a blast playing with Warren, it always is. I really dig that band and have for a long time. Warren and I really got to know each other playing with Phil Lesh & Friends on and off over the years. We’re from kind of different worlds, but Warren is really knowledgeable about a lot of different types of music, and I’ve been digging The Allman Brothers and bands like that since I wa s a kid. It was so much fun. He’s very generous giving me all that space when we do our thing together. It was a blast.

JAMBASE: Warren mentions frequently about how when you two play together, he tends to play a little more jazz and you tend to play a little more rock.

JS: Oh yeah, I think we both come toward each other and I do tend to rock out. It inspires me playing with Gov’t Mule to play in that way, and they play lots of other things besides rock and blues.

JAMBASE: Were there any tunes in the Mule repertoire you really cottoned to?

JS: Oh man, there’s this one tune I really, really loved, I’m trying to remember…[hums a few notes of the head]

JAMBASE: Sounds like “Devil Likes It Slow?”

JS: Yes! That one kills me, man. That’s a really special piece. There are a lot of them with Mule, though, they have so much music, and on the tour we did different tunes every night. I was doing a lot of covers and stuff I had never played before, and from blues, to country to reggae. It’s fun doing tunes the way his band and Phil & Friends works where you don’t do the same repertoire every night. You might play the same song again like eight concerts from then.

JAMBASE: You’ve mentioned Phil a few times and you return to the Friends lineup once in a while. That format holds a lot of appeal for you still.

JS: Yeah definitely. You know, Phil is the only rock star I’ve ever met who likes, really likes, to play free jazz, and god bless him. The improvisational element is one of the things he really likes about playing with me, and it’s a thrill to play with him. These are the things that keep life interesting, you never know what’s going to happen next.

JAMBASE: What else are you working on at the moment?

JS: There’s a lot. I’m touring with Joe – we’ll be at the Blue Note for a week this month, and then off to Europe for a big long tour and more dates in the Midwest and West Coast in February 2016. Next summer, I’m going to do a special project with Brad Mehldau. It’s going to be me and Brad and a great drummer named Mark Guiliana. They have a thing where Brad plays all electronic instruments and they’re bringing me in to play guitar and also some bass.

JAMBASE: Have you and Brad played much together before?

JS: A little bit over the years, and he’s played on one of my records [2001’s Works for Me]. We’ve been friends and my trio did a tour opposite him and that was great, a few years back. We’ve loosely stayed in touch. When he went electric and did all these interesting things with Mark on their Mehliana record, I told him hats off to you, this is cool thing and there’s brains and musicality in it. And he came to me and was like, OK, well, we want you to come play with us on something like this.

I’m also going to make another record for Impulse, and will tour behind that. At this point, that record is going to be all country-western tunes.

JAMBASE: Very cool, and a lot of variation in the things you’re working on, as usual. Is there any other of your previous projects, John, such as the Piety Street Band or other combos that you’re itching to return to at some point?

JS: Yes, and actually the pianist on that Piety Street record, Jon Cleary, and I have a duo project. It’s a guitar and piano thing and Jon sings. We have some gigs coming up in December. That’s another project I really loved, and it’s mainly I would say old-time R&B, stuff from the 60s that Jon turned me on to: Little Willie John, Professor Longhair that stuff. Jon really is an heir apparent to that New Orleans piano tradition that Professor Longhair handed to Dr. John and so forth. Jon really knows that music. So we’re going to tour all over the East Coast. Who knows – we hope to do some recording, too.