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Imagine a singer-songwriter with the lyrical sensibilities of a Jeff Buckley, the jazz guitar chops of a John Scofield, and a tendency toward Marvin Gaye-style soul and funk. What you’ve pretty much imagined is an emerging singer-songwriter-guitarist named Ryan Scott, who's just released a new album, Smoke and Licorice, for Velour Records.
Originally hailing from the Monterey Bay area of California , Scott got his start playing and singing the blues, but quickly developed an interest in jazz, specifically bebop. Scott packed up his bags and hit New York City in 2001, quickly earning a slot as one of the city’s go-to session guitarists and sidemen, playing everything from accompaniment to singer-songwriters to rock to straight-ahead jazz. All these gigs and influences helped Scott to create his own sound and style, which can be soulful and bluesy, jazzy, and even downright funky.
While Scott can burn with the best of them, his virtuosic guitar skills are never look-at-me showcases; instead, they’re harnessed within the context of the song, and typically leave you wanting more. The result is a collection of soulful, heartfelt songs that somehow manage to incorporate the more technically sophisticated chords and structures of jazz while staying within--and sometimes pushing the boundaries of--pop-music song structures.
Recently, StarPolish editorial director Jim Willcox caught up with Scott to talk about his new album, the transition from instrumental sideman to front man, and how he defines success.
Check out Ryan's music and tour info at http://www.myspace.com/ryanpeterscott.
STARPOLISH: Can you talk a bit about the transition from jazz sideman to singer-songwriter? How has that jazz background influenced how you write songs? Are there times jazz chord structures don't work within a more pop-oriented song structure because they’re just too complex?
SCOTT: I started out as a blues singer/guitar player, and then gradually got into jazz- coming to New York to play bebop. While in New York , I started to do more rock and singer-songwriter sideman gigs, along with the jazz stuff. So it was a natural progression to start writing my own songs and leading a band. My jazz background has greatly influenced how I write songs... I like to try and use some of the more intricate “jazz”-derived chord structures to freshen up what I think can tend to be a tired genre. The trick is to try and make complicated things sound simple, yet keep that feeling of freshness in the pop song field. I love it when I hear a song that has one really surprising chord change that I'm not expecting--that's what makes me want to listen to it again and again. Something like that can make you feel an unexplainable emotion that's really riveting.
STARPOLISH: You mention John Scofield and Bill Frisell as your greatest guitar influences, but the guitar playing I heard on the first cut I listened to, "You Might Change Your Mind," made me think of the Crusaders'- or Steely Dan-era Larry Carlton, in that it was unusually harmonically sophisticated—and well-played—for being in the pop idiom. Was he an influence? How have other guitar players influenced your playing?
SCOTT: That's a very keen observation... I can't say that Larry Carlton was really an influence, but it's definitely the same bag. That tune always makes me think of Steely Dan. It's hard to say where it really comes from. I mean, yeah, Scofield and Frisell were big ones for me, but when I think about that solo in particular, that's some straight up Sonny Stitt/Sonny Rollins bebop shit (with a pseudo-Larry Carlton/Stevie Ray Vaughn kind of sound). When I was younger I would try and find every guitar player out there and check out what they were doing, But when it comes down to it, the playing that I really dig, at least melodically, is usually saxophonists. The aforementioned Sonnys, Bird, Coltrane, and younger players like Chris Potter and Chris Cheek. They're playing the way that I want to play--not tied down by the standard vocabulary of their instrument as guitar players so often are, in my opinion. They're really just speaking through their horn. That's how I want to play guitar.
But I can't deny guitar influences, especially for different sounds. I owe a great debt to my mentor, Bruce Forman, a greatly under-appreciated guitar great from the San Francisco area. He taught me almost everything I know about bebop. I love Marc Ribot--that really beautiful, dirty, raw, “garbage can” sound. Warren Haynes is another huge influence.
STARPOLISH: It seems that for a while you were pretty focused on instrumental music. How hard was it to start singing again? In particular, was it difficult at first singing live, after being very comfortable as a guitarist? Were you writing songs with vocals in mind all the while you were playing instrumental music?
SCOTT: I went for about six years without singing. Starting again was difficult at first, partly because - Starpolish
Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin
Former Bay Area jazz guitarist Ryan Scott got religion in 2001, moved to Manhattan and soon traded in his Pat Martino records for a blast of David Cassidy and Bread's David Gates. What on earth moves someone to abandon his serious jazz chops for the unknown territory of open mic nights and $50 gigs? Perhaps sensing the slow decline of what used to be known as "America's classical music," Scott relegated his jazz cred to late night jams, and instead worked on his songwriting, which is in high relief on his debut, Smoke & Licorice (Velour).
Referencing the Davids (Cassidy and Gates) may be an oversimplification, but there is surely a glimmer of soft rock style in Scott's slightly warped sound collages. First up, his warm, honeyed vocals are easy to like, heck, they're actually in tune. But beyond the soft rock component, Scott alludes to a veritable Loss Leaders LP worth of weird and wonderful 70s artists, including whacked out British folk singer John Martyn, Frank Zappa in neo-blues mode (think "Tell Me You Love Me"), "Show Me A Smile" era Fleetwood Mac, and even a touch of Randy California (ditto "Nature's Way"). How does a 24 year old manage to capture the girth and gumption of such ancient pop music? Like Sweden's Dungen, Wales Super Furry Animals, and even the Flaming Lips, Scott shoots for timelessness, free of market demographics, cute band alerts or fast fame. On the other hand, music this eclectic and even esoteric may force Scott into penury or 24 hour shifts at Starbucks, but at least we'll be better off for it.
Some say that a true artist can make a good song work, regardless of style or arrangement, and Scott pulls that off in spades. In "You Might Change Your Mind," Scott declares a serious early Steely Dan vibe, the dusky "Harmony" and "5 O'Clock News" recalls lost drunkard folk genius John Martyn, "I Think I Love You" chugs and bumps like Lowell George channeling Howling Wolf. Weird, spooky, and totally winning.
"Love Thy Neighbor" shows off some jazz theory and a slapdash of electronic tomfoolery. Ben Harper wishes he could write something this dark and mysterious, yet oddly uplifting. Like the rainbow relief after the perfect storm. Tablas and off-kilter drums flummox the song's driving rhythm, brass shouts and Celeste showers drop in to comfort the song's waltzing 3/4 chorus. Singing about "greasy palms" and "daddy's little girl in a microcosm of the past" won't win Scott any fans of literate logic, but in this case, the obfuscation only adds to Smoke & Licorice's dramatic weight.
- www.Yahoo.com
Discography
5 O'Olock News (2004 / Crystal Top Music)
Smoke and Licorice (2007 / Velour)
Photos
Bio
If theres one feeling Ryan Scott wants to create with his debut disc, Smoke & Licorice, its the feeling of escapism. He wants us to slip out of reality, to lose ourselves for a moment, because thats exactly what he was trying to do when writing the songs. I want to get the listener to the point where their mind is turned off, a kind of Zen emptiness. You know, Michael Jordan would call it "the zone" -- Im looking for paths to get there.
And that makes sense. Smoke & Licorice is an album about a young man trying to figure things out, looking for answers, creating his own voice while honing his ample skills, trying to find peace within himself and a path to live his life. The album is a journey, a scrapbook built up over many years, and Scotts inviting listeners to experience that with him.
Raised around the Bay Area and Central Coast of California, Scotts introduction to music began with his discovery of a nylon-string guitar given to his mom as a child. Delving into the likes of Leo Kottke, Eric Clapton and Doc Watson as a youth, Scotts early teens brought him an electric guitar and the joys of Van Halen, Metallica and Nirvana and the Blues, which became his sole focus for several years. Forming his first band at 12 (and soon gigging at local bars in the Monterey area), he played from the songbook of Freddie King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and other greats. But the Blues led him in many other directions, from the exploration of jamband giants like the Allman Brothers Band, to funk and jazz, and ultimately, to two of his greatest inspirations: the avant guitarists John Scofield and Bill Frisell.
By 1999, Scotts prodigious guitar skills had taken him to the Monterey Jazz Festival and to numerous festivals in Europe and Japan. In 2001, the then-eighteen-year-old moved to New York. I knew about one and a half people, but I started meeting like-minded players within about a week. He sat in all over town, often skateboarding across town from jam session to jam session (a particularly difficult feat with a guitar on your back). Scott soon crossed paths with personal heroes like guitarist Peter Bernstein, as well as other East Coast musicians that he admired while still in Northern California. I was a huge fan of Chris Cheek while I was in high school, and now he's on this record. I feel very lucky to have met so many amazing musicians here. I've managed to put together my dream band."
While entrenching himself in the jazz world in addition to Scofield and Frisell, he considers Bruce Forman a significant influence and cites Jim Hall, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt as additional inspirations -- Ryan began to sing again, something he had abandoned along with his teen Blues band. After scoring a regular gig at the Anyway Café in the Lower East Side, his voice and songs coalesced. Blending his vocal influences, which ranged from Elliott Smith to Randy Newman to Marvin Gaye, Scott began writing songs that owed something to jazz, R & B, 70s rock, and singer/songwriter records, but didnt borrow directly from any of them. I tried not to write with any genre in mind, he says. But I did try to combine interesting, jazz harmonies and chord changes with a more of a pop thing, something where the musicianship came through -- a pop record with dudes that can really play.
Bringing this goal to life are a cast of friends/peers/neighbors, all of whom Scott met playing jazz in New York: cellist Christopher Hoffman, organist/pianist/keyboardist Ben Stivers, percussionist Matt Kilmer and drummer Bill Campbell, bassist Matt Pavolka, violinist/vocalist Christina Courtin, and aforementioned saxophonist Chris Cheek.
Smoke & Licorice is thus the formal unveiling party for the avant-guitarist turned singer/songwriter, who has carefully melded all of his musical interests into a mélange of sound. Throughout the disc, a gentle, airy, acoustic-driven song may dip ever so slightly into bouncy, jazz piano-inflected changes, only to float right on out of it the next moment. Other tracks are meditative lullabies, and still other tracks have a dark and hard edge -- but theyll surprise you with oddball instrumentation, like when a distorted baritone sax plays the role of an electric guitar.
Lyrically, Scott ranges through a vast territory too, from the deeply personal to the directly political. In Harmony, he yearns for peace of mind while engulfed by the buzz and lights of New York City; in the poetic Unrequited, meanwhile, his breath is taken away by a passing beauty: Its about seeing someone on the street and projecting things about how it could be. In Kill Another Day, he takes a hard look at himself. Thats about loneliness and alcoholism, and not getting what one wants. Theres real anger in there. One could surmise that Kill Another Day would be as publicly confessional as anyone would care to be, but Ryan disagrees. A lot of the songs on the album are just as personal a
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