Scott Henderson
The All Music Guide calls him "one of the finest fusion
guitarists of the 80's and 90's. He just recorded with his band Tribal
Tech the new CD Thick.
The interview has been taken the 9th February 1999 at the
Flandrischer Hof in Cologne (Germany) by Felix Lamouroux.
The band Tribal Tech exists since 1984, that's a long time
for a band. Why is it working that well?
Yes, that’s quite long for a jazz-band. We started out as a
studio-band, from about 1985 to 1992 we weren’t really touring. We
were just basically doing one album a year. I had gigs with other
bands and so did Gary Willis. In 1992 we started touring and then we
got the new members, Scott Kinsey and Kirk Covington, that’s who
has been with us really for the last 7 y ears.
I think it was just luck, to have a great combination of people,
that gets along good together and appreciates the same kinds of
music.
What’s a day in Scott Henderson’s life
like?
Pretty much wake-up and then sit down at the computer trying to
write tunes. I try to write songs, because I have an album that I am
supposed to do pretty soon, a blues record. That takes a long time
for me.
Now, to come to your latest CD Thick, what's the difference
between Thick and older albums?
This album we improvised in the studio, we didn’t compose for the
record. Which is what we do on stage. So, we wanted to change our
approach, do something that was fresh to us. No pre-written music at
all.
What was the idea behind this jam-session?
Well, because we jam a lot anyway, that’s one of the things, when
you have been together with a group of people for as long as we
have. You kind of really get to know musically about how each other
plays and what to expect, how to draw good performances from each
other. We have been doing that on stage for many years at our
concerts. We just thought it would be a fresh approach to make a
record to document what we are doing live on stage. It was a bit
risky, but it turned out good.
What’s the biggest challenge when you are improvising?
It’s a challenge, because if you have the most freedom, you also
have the most responsibility. You are not only creating your own
parts, but the parts you create have a lot to do with the direction
the thing can go in. Everybody has this responsibility to really
listen hard and to realize, that if someone else has a better idea
than yours, you go with them. Sometimes it’s hard to know who to
follow, but usually we all end up on the same page. It’s something
that just takes a lot of doing to get used to. So, after doing this
for at least two or three years now on stage, it feels like we know
what kind of music we want to create. We know when to play softly,
when to play loud, to balance that. To balance when someone is
soloing, times when someone is sort of creating more a melody-idea.
It’s a challenge, but it’s fun. It’s the most creative thing
you can do as a band and it’s also one of the most risky. It can
fall flat on its face and sound terrible on a day, where it’s hard
to communicate or in times where can’t really hear each other very
well. So, we kind of limit our jamming to clubs where the sound is
really great, usually smaller clubs.
How was the recording in the States?
Well, the way we set up in the studio is pretty much the way we set
up live. We were no more than 10 feet away from each other when we
played. That’s one of the big things that enabled it to work. We
tried it before in our normal way of being in the studio with more
separation between us, but it didn’t feel the same, it didn’t
work. When we all set up in very close proximity and it felt like we
were on stage, it worked very well.
Did you work hard on the songs after having recorded them?
A little bit. We got together in my house and we decided what we
were going to cut out, because we had quite a bit of music. And then
we decided which parts we were going to keep exactly the way they
were and which parts we didn’t like so much, that need a little
bit of work. So, we fixed things just to make it sound more like
compositions. I learned some of the things Scott Kinsey played and
doubled them on guitar and so did he. But basically it’s what it
was in the studio, just little fixes here and there and add-ons,
layering to make it sound fatter and bigger.
Which songs were most heavily changed after
recording?
Probably Party at Kinsey’s, because that was very
minimalist kind of jam, there wasn’t very much going on in it, but
we really liked the base and drums very much. The ideas that Scott
Kinsey had in the studio, were really cool, but there wasn’t
enough. So, Scott took it home and really layered a lot of stuff on
it.
Also Somewhat Later, what was originally there was more kind
of soloing, but we felt that the base and drums needed to be more
melody-oriented. So that was kind of heavily changed. The rest of it
is what it was. We stayed very careful with what we added-on to or
changed, because we did not want to change the vibes from what it
originally was in the first place.
How long did you stay working in the studio?
We did the jams in just a couple of days, two days.
How long did you work on the songs after
recording?
May be a week or so, two weeks. We do not all live in the same
cities, so we were fed-exing tapes around. We let each other have
the freedom to put on the tape what ever they wanted to, to either
augment or change their own part the way they liked it. It was
really fun to overdub, because it was like overdubbing and composing
at the same time, which we never had done before. This is a very
unstructured way to make an album. We still had the creative
opportunity to go back after it was done and change it to whatever
we wanted it to be. It was a lot of fun to do a record this way.
How would you describe the style of your latest release?
It's always hard for me to say. Some people call this music fusion,
but the word fusion has got kind of bad reputation. When people hear
fusion they think more of a fusion of jazz and pop, like Kenny G or
something like this. We are really nothing like that. We are more
like a fusion of hard-rock and jazz and funk.
Thank you for this interview, Mr. Henderson.
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