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SCOTT HENDERSON
- THE INTERVIEW
H2YOU:
Scott, I love your Guitar playing. It seems very intense & diverse between Blues, Rock, Jazz, how would you describe your
sound?
Scott Henderson: It's a combination of all those styles, I started off playing blues rock and then got into heavier rock
like Hendrix & Zeppelin, and then later fusion started and I started learning jazz and that vocabulary. I also love country
guitar, but don't think I have enough country vocabulary to do a whole album of country music, although I really like it.
You know, (he laughs) you can only learn so many things. One thing that I'm really happy about is that I've had a choice in
my career to either be commercial or not, and I chose not. It's more fun to do a variety of things than to be pigeon-holed
as one type of musician, and to get stuck in that one type of music. I love jazz, but I would definitely miss the power of
rock 'n roll, and I love rock 'n roll, but I love harmony so much that I would miss playing changes and doing that sort of
thing. The blues is something that has been with me since I started playing guitar. The blues are my roots, and listening
to blues guitarists is how I learned to play.
H2YOU:
How do you go about writing your songs? Alone? With the group? Improvising / jamming?
Scott Henderson: I write by myself. When
I first started composing I wrote a lot of very arranged music because when I was younger that's what appealed to me when
I first learned Jazz, and I was trying to be a great composer. I did that for 4 years or so until I finally started touring,
It took having a number of records out there before we were able to tour, and what I found out was the more notes you write,
the less fun it is! You might as well be playing in a Top 40 band, and if you’re playing the same notes every night it's not
really jazz.
So we started writing less, and less, and finally we learned how to have a good combination of composition
and improv, so that there's enough composition for people recognize the tune, but enough freedom for us to have fun from night
to night. It's all about balance. For the trio things are a little more composed than for the 4 piece group TRIBAL TECH, because
as a guitar player, I just don't have the ability to come up with different harmony every night within the context of some
of the tunes. But we still like to keep it open, as open as possible, and there's still a lot of improvising going on between
the three of us, enough to make it different every night. If I write a tune that's too composed, it usually gets dropped from
the song list pretty fast. We might play it for one tour and then dump it, and it never comes back.
H2YOU: How did you like playing with Chick
Corea's band and on the CD "Elektric Band"? Did it change your direction at that time?
Scott Henderson: No, actually I didn't really
enjoy that gig too much. It was a very controlled environment, and that's not what I like. I like things to be way looser.
Chick was into that tight kind of music where everyone's playing their parts and it's more like classical music than jazz.
Actually during that time he was writing tunes that were pretty commercial so in a way it was more like pop. I'm into music
that's more organic - music that just sort of happens as a result of good musicians playing together, more than one composer
dealing out notes to his band.
H2YOU:
What CD that you've done is most representative of how you'd like to be known?
Scott Henderson: That's going to be the most
recent one, (he laughs) because you know, I'm a work-in-progress as are most musicians. So, that would be "WELL TO THE BONE",
that's the newest of my studio records.
H2YOU:
Scott, you did two albums with "Vital Tech Tones", a trio collaboration with bassist Victor Wooten and ex - JOURNEY member,
Steve Smith on drums. These recordings were a departure from your group TRIBAL TECH lineup. Why did you do these in 1998
and again in 2000?
Scott Henderson: Those records were put together by the label TONE CENTER. Steve Smith was talking to Mike Varney, the
head of that label, and Varney asked Smith to pick a guitarist and bassist to do a project with. So they called me and Victor
up and said we want you to do this record, but there's no music for it yet. So that was the hard part - we needed to compose
in the studio and come up with the record in 9 days. I'd never done that before. I'm not really happy with the writing if
I compare it to the writing on my records, but given the time we had to come up with it! (he laughs)
H2YOU: Was this a venture that you needed
to take as a departure from what you had been doing?
Scott
Henderson: I thought it would be cool to play with those guys, 'cause I really
like Victor and Steve's playing. I knew it would be fun, but I knew it would also be really challenging since we had no music.
That was the hard part just coming up with the tunes. Basically what we did was write for a couple of hours, then rehearse
for a couple hours and then record.
H2YOU:
What's behind the name of those CD's, VITAL TECH TONES.
Scott
Henderson: VITAL is from VITAL INFORMATION, that's Steve's Band. TECH if
from TRIBAL TECH, my band and TONES from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, which is the band that Victor plays with.
H2YOU: How did your band TRIBAL TECH come
about, the name and the group?
Scott Henderson:
TRIBAL TECH is the band that me and bassist Gary Willis started back in the
80's. There was a lot of percussion in the band, so that was the tribal part of it. The tech was because we were using synthesizers
and stuff, so it was kinda of like old stuff mixed with new. That band really, really evolved. We started off as a composition
band, but by touring we realized we wanted things to be more open, so the songs got looser and looser, until by the later
records we were just jamming in the studio. Then we'd overdub over the jams, composing as we overdubbed. It was another new
way to make music that I'd never done before, because usually when you're overdubbing, you're re-recording pre-written parts.
Now when we were overdubbing, we were actually composing, so it was really fun. I think the band would have continued, but
Willis moved to Spain. "Rocket Science" (in 2000) was the last album we did together. We don't want to do the kind of record
where we have to send files back and forth using FedEx or e-mail, so if Willis comes back for any length of time I'm sure
we'll do another record.
H2YOU:
Is your core band John Humphrey on Bass, and Kirk Covington on Drums & Vocals?
Scott Henderson: Yes, and I also play in
the Scott Kinsey group. Scott Kinsey was the keyboard player for TRIBAL TECH. Scott has a new record that's coming out in
October.
H2YOU: Who
are your biggest Musical influences & inspirations?
Scott
Henderson: In the beginning it was Jimmy Page, cause his solo on Whole Lotta
Love inspired me to learn guitar, and then later I heard Richie Blackmore with DEEP PURPLE, JEFF BECK and HENDRIX. I listened
to a lot of the white guitarists of the 60's, and learned that they didn't invent that kind of music, that older black musicians
I'd never heard of did. I started listening a lot to Albert King, who in my opinion is the best blues guitarist ever. He and
Albert Collins were both pretty big influences on me when I was learning to play.
I played mostly blues rock until
college, then I started getting influenced by bands like TOWER OF POWER. I listened to groups like WEATHER REPORT, CHICK COREA,
MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA, and learned that the roots of that music were back with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I found myself
getting really involved in bebop for a long time, just listening and transcribing from those artists.
H2YOU: When I listened to you I kept hearing
a Modern, Rocking, but Jazzy Hendrix with all his passion...
Scott Henderson: Well, if someone said Scott Henderson plays
like Hendrix playing though changes, I would be very flattered because he's one of my big heroes. I hope to have some of the
passion and soul of Hendrix because I think that he was one of the very best rock guitarists that ever lived. And he was
also very influenced by Albert King, and you can hear so much Albert King in Jimi Hendrix's playing. That's the guy that
I probably looked up to the most as a kid and still do. I was once called a Modern Blues player by Joe Zawinul, and if I had
to pigeon hole what I do, I'd be pretty comfortable with that.
You are what you listen to. If you listen to a great
variety of musicians like I have, then your palette is going to be wider, and you're going to be doing different styles when
you play your own music. I'm just a guy that likes variety. I can safely say that I may be a "Jack of all trades and master
of none" but that's Ok with me! (he laughs). I'm sure if I didn't play Rock, or Blues and really studied Jazz, I'm sure I
would be a better Jazz guitar player than I am, but it doesn't matter to me. That's not as important to me as being able
to do what I love, and what I love is playing a variety of different styles.
footnote:
In addition, Scott Henderson currently teaches at the Guitar Institute of Technology, which is part of the Musicians Institute
in Hollywood, California.
for Hollywood2You.TV -- John Reed
Scott
Henderson Artist site:
http://www.scotthenderson.net/
Scott Henderson BOOK & VIDEOS:
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LIVE
WELL TO THE BONE
TORE DOWN HOUSE
DOG PARTY
ROCKET SCIENCE
THICK
REALITY CHECK
PRIMAL TRACKS
FACE FIRST
ILLICIT
TRIBAL TECH
NOMAD
Dr. Hee
SPEARS
VVT 2
VVT 1
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