
Combining a jazz concept with an electronic-influenced vocabulary, John Scofield takes us behind the scenes of his new album, "Überjam Deux," and dishes on everything from relic’d guitars to Dead tunes.
You could make a case that John Scofield gets bored easily. “Maybe a little bit,” he says with a laugh. Even a cursory glance at his output from the last decade reveals he has tackled everything from straight-ahead modern jazz (ScoLoHoFo’s OH! and Enroute) to an old-school R&B Ray Charles tribute, and even New Orleans gospel (Piety Street). Yet within each new musical outfit, Scofield’s edgy, Vox-powered tone comes through loud and clear.
On his latest album, Überjam Deux, Scofield reunites with the same outfit that was on his 2002 album, Überjam. It shares the same forward-thinking approach his previous employers, Miles Davis and Billy Cobham, explored in the heyday of jazz-fusion.
While Scofield does sneak in hints of his well-developed bebop language here and there, you always can count on a healthy dose of the blues. “Although I don’t consider myself a ’blues’ player,” says Scofield, “I love blues guitar and have been trying to get into it my whole life—B.B. King and Albert King, who’s a freak of all time.”
In all the Überjam projects, Avi Bortnick handles the rhythm guitar duties, as well as executing all the samples live and in real-time. “That’s the way Überjam has always done it,” says Scofield. “We do it all at once and Avi has a system where he can trigger the samples with a foot controller.”
That edge between where everything works out and anything could go wrong is where the most adventurous of jazz musicians live, and Scofield has taken up residence there for the better part of four decades. Even among his contemporaries—Stern, Frisell, and Metheny—Scofield’s approach is singular, and he could even be considered the most open-minded of that group. We caught up with Scofield between tours to talk about the motivation behind reuniting Überjam, his new pedalboard, and what attracts him to guitars that just feel old.
It’s pretty hard to sit still while listening to the new album. Some of the tracks have a very danceable quality.
Yeah, I agree, it uses elements of that stuff. But when I think of dance music, it’s Britney Spears and that kind of thing. This is different. It’s not music that’s made specifically for dancing. But, yeah, it has that "four on the floor" stuff that’s disco, really. It has become dance music.
When did you first start to experiment with electronics in your music?
When I started doing this band with Avi Bortnick‚ over 10 years ago‚ I’d made a record called Bump, which had a lot of things with two guitars where I overdubbed stuff. So I was looking for a rhythm guitar player and I found Avi. We started playing together and he told me about all this stuff going on out there with electronics and how he was interested in that. He brought in some loops that we started to play along with. It was probably around 2001. I was interested in it, but I didn’t even own a computer at that time. I just didn’t know how to do it.
It’s been a decade since the first Überjam album. What inspired you to revisit this group? Did you have a stockpile of material?
No, I didn’t really have tunes lying around. I was just thinking of what I wanted to do next. I always loved playing with those guys and I thought enough time had gone by that we could do something different from what we’d done before. I felt the urge to do something with electronics and thought why not play with those guys? We’re a great band and we have something else in us that could come out.
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Scofield and his Überjam band: Avi Bortnick (left), Louis Cato (second from right), and Andy Hess (right).
Photo by Nick Suttle
What as the compositional process like?
More than half of the tunes were composed by me and Avi together. But the way we composed was he had all these tracks that he’d been working on where he overdubbed and put down some grooves and stuff. He gave me 30 of these home demos and then I just messed with them. The songs are basically his kind of grooves and then I put bridges to them or created "A" sections. Turns out some of the stuff I put in was actually material I’d written earlier, but never really found a place for. He just let me take his tunes and manhandle them.
Was most of the tracking done live? Samples and everything?
We play along to the samples. There may be something where we mess up and have to stick a sample in after because the sampler didn’t work, but that’s kind of hard to do. We aren’t playing to a click all the time. On some of the tunes where we stop playing along with the groove and just play as a band, then when we come back in he can click the sample in with his foot in tempo. Hopefully there’s no train wreck and the sample comes in at the same tempo.
On a few tunes there’s a definite Afrobeat influence coming through. Where did that come from?
Avi brought that in. There’s an older song called “Thikhathali” on Up All Night and that’s a real Afrobeat thing. Avi played for many years in a band of guys from Nigeria while he was in San Francisco. He’s quite knowledgeable about Afrobeat music. Two of the tunes on the new album, “Camelus” and “Snake Dance,” are coming out of Fela and all that.
Rhythm guitarist Avi Bortnick kicks things off with some samples before drummer Adam Deitch takes over with a hip hop-meets-disco groove. Bortnick’s “solo” at 2:02 is the perfect foil to Scofield’s angular lines.
What is it about this style of electronic-influenced, vamp-oriented music that keeps drawing you in?
I love to play bebop and will continue, probably all my life, to play modern jazz. But when we play in this area, I like the fact that it’s not as developed, that I don’t have Miles and Mingus and Mulligan and Monk looking over my shoulder. Even though it’s very related to that, it’s not that. We’re rocking out and I like that.
You could almost draw a parallel to what those guys were doing in the ’30s and ’40s.
I guess. On one hand, everybody is in love with the history of the music they are passionate about, but is also weighted down by the music of their idols. When you are able to free yourself from that a little bit, it’s a good thing.
Do you approach improvising within this group differently from your trio?
Yeah, I do approach it differently. In a trio, I’m going to play more chords and fill it up more. In this group, I can paint a little bit more and take my time. There are sections where I don’t play. I think in order for this music—or any music really—everybody just can’t jam their stuff in there. That becomes amateurish. I probably play fewer notes than I used to because I’m trying to make them work—and hopefully they are more to the point.
What were your first experiences with vamp-based music?
I started with vamp- and groove-based music when I started playing guitar. In that the music that fusion came from, the James Brown things that original fusion guys were into, is the music that I grew up with in the ’60s. I got better at it and more into it, but it’s funny because I was learning jazz music in the immediate post-fusion era. I got good at playing “Billie’s Bounce”—well, good enough at playing that style of jazz guitar—in the early ’70s. At the same time, fusion reigned, so when I got to play with good jazz players they were always playing some vamps. That was just part of it. The other thing was studying Coltrane and his music with McCoy Tyner. A lot of that music was just vamps. Music coming out of that era of jazz is very applicable to everything Überjam is doing.
Did the first wave of what we now consider jam bands—like the Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers—influence you when you were younger?
Well, I consider Hendrix and Cream jazz-influenced. They were rock groups that took the idea of jazz, in that they played extended solos and improvised together. I see that as an extension of the jazz music from the ’60s and really jazz in general. Labeling these different genres gets pretty confusing and it gets hard to do. Even when the labels are right, there’s always something wrong about it. [Laughs.] I’ve thought about it a lot and I trace the early jam band stuff back to the groups in the rock era that would stretch out like the Grateful Dead. I’m pretty sure all those groups got that idea from modern jazz. Even if they weren’t jazz musicians and couldn’t play the chords to “Stella by Starlight,” they took that concept and used it.
Photo by Margaret Fox
Your sound has been closely associated with your Ibanez AS-200 for nearly 30 years. Did you continue to use it on this album?
I used my Ibanez for half the album and my Fender Strat for the other.
What was it about the Strat that drew you away from the Ibanez?
I’ve played the Ibanez for 30 years and it’s still my main guitar, but it’s just fun to play other guitars. One thing about these Fender guitars—both the Telecaster and Stratocaster—is the more I play them, the more they respond differently. They make certain things easier to play because they speak on particular kinds of things that the Ibanez doesn’t, and vice versa. There’s one tune we were working on, and I was playing the Strat. Avi said, “Just go back and play it on your Ibanez.” I did and that was exactly what it needed.
Are they vintage Fenders or newer ones?
No, they are fake vintage. [Laughs.] They’re from the Custom Shop. I told a friend of mine, Artie Smith, who is one of the great guitar guys in New York, that I wanted to get a Strat, but didn’t want to spend 15 grand on a vintage one. He said there was a good one at Sam Ash, so I went up there and played it for a while. I was totally embarrassed to buy it, because it has a fake cigarette burn in it and screws that have been rusted and two kinds of rubbed-off finish. [Laughs.] But you know, it sounds really good and it’s a great guitar.
Do you think there’s something special about playing a guitar that simply feels old?
I think it might have something to do with what the Custom Shop is doing to the guitars to make them play like a guitar that has been around for a while. I think it’s something more than just the cosmetic value, but I’m not sure because that whole thing is magic anyway.
I just bought an old ES-330 because I was playing a gig with my Tele and I broke a string and I’d left my strings back at the hotel like a dummy. The guitarist in the other band had an old 330, and I borrowed it and loved it. So I shopped around for a 330 and at one point I was trying to choose between 10 vintage ones in different stores. But one of the shops, Willie’s in Minneapolis, also had a new Gibson Custom Shop ES-330, and I came close to buying that one because it was really good. When I closed my eyes, I had a hard time figuring out which guitar was vintage. But as it turns out, each one of them is different anyway.
It sounds like you didn’t use many effects on the album.
I only used my Boomerang on one part of “Snake Dance.” However, I did get a new pedalboard for this tour. My old pedalboard died and Mason from Vertex Effects came down to a gig in Oakland. I knew he had been making pedalboards for a lot of the guys out West, including Robben [Ford]. For Überjam, I have to have my Wammy Wah pedal, although I didn’t use it on this record. Mason convinced me to try a new distortion pedal, which is the Blue Note, and that was nice. He also sold me on one of his new wah pedals, which replaced the Vox I’d been using. I use my Boomerang off the board, so he came up with a way to hook it up since it’s not true bypass and because it’s big. I use the Boomerang a lot in Überjam. You can’t program anything into the Boomerang, which is good, so I do it all on the fly. I just quickly play something in there and it comes back either in half-time or double-time, backwards or something.
Scofield's pedalboard
Did Mason mod any of your existing pedals?
Yeah, my old Boss GE-2 Equalizer and Boss CE-3. The equalizer is more like a treble booster and the chorus was modified with a faster speed, more warble, and some fatness to emulate a Leslie. He then made them all true bypass.Your previous pedalboard was a loop-based system and this new version is more linear. Why the switch?
This new one has a buffer, which is a new thing for me. My previous pedalboard, which was also really good and made by Pedal-Racks here in New York, was a different system. On that board I was able to turn on each pedal individually so my guitar would not be routed through other pedals. When you have each one on, you’re only going through that pedal. With Mason’s system, they are all hooked up through the buffer and it magically makes it sound okay. He took my old pedals and made them true bypass, so everything is true bypass and the buffer gives back whatever you’re losing. It’s pretty amazing.
Paired with longtime collaborators, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, Sco employs some reverse looping to create a call-and-response effect during a show from the North Sea Jazz Festival.
John Scofield's Gear
Guitars
1981 Ibanez AS-200, Fender Custom Shop Relic Stratocaster, ’70s Ibanez “lawsuit” T-style guitar
Amp
Mid-’90s Vox AC30 Top Boost
Effects
DigiTech Whammy XP100, TC Electronic Polytune Mini, Neunaber Technology Mono Wet Reverb, Vertex-Modified Boss CE-3, Empress Tremolo, Vertex-Modified Boss GE-7 Equalizer, Vertex Axis Wah, Rockett Audio Designs Blue Note Overdrive, Bomerang Phrase Sampler
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
D’Addario .011-.049 (on Ibanez), D’Addario .010-.049 (on Strat), Dunlop 2 mm Delrin picks
One musical collaboration that might surprise some people is your work with Phil Lesh. How did that relationship start?
It was perhaps 10 years ago when I first played with him. Warren Haynes recommended me, and Phil called and we played a bit in California. Back then we just rehearsed. I don’t think we even played a gig until a year after that. Lately, I’ve been doing a few gigs with him every year. I think this year we’re doing five gigs.
The Dead catalog can be quite intimidating for an outsider.
All those tunes! And I don’t know any of them. But here’s where Phil has been really nice to me: He let’s me have a music stand with the charts on it. I get the recording of the tune, I write out a chart, and I play it. Actually, I put my handwritten charts on a hands-free computer screen. I can scroll through the set, watch the screen, and play from my charts. Otherwise, I’d have to learn those tunes and I’m too stupid for that. [Laughs.]
Another recent project that has caught the ear of many guitarists is your Hollowbody Band. Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mike Stern have each toured with that quartet. Do you see that second guitar chair as a rotating spot?
Yeah. It is at this point, although I would like to do that project with both those guys again. I’d written a bunch of music a little over a year ago. I had six tunes and was thinking of making a jazz record. I thought it would sound good with two guitars, so I orchestrated them for two guitars, called Kurt, and asked if he wanted to do a tour last summer. This year, Kurt got that Clapton Crossroads gig, and he couldn’t do my thing. So then I called Mike [Stern], who’s my old buddy and one of the great guitar players, as we know. We hadn’t played together in many, many years. He wanted to give it a shot, so he learned the tunes and we did it.
How did the Blues Project with Robben Ford come together?
We’d talked about playing together for years. When we finally got around to it, Robben suggested we just call it a blues project. We’re both into blues—he especially with his background with Jimmy Witherspoon and the blues band with his brother—so we decided to do that. It was so much fun.
Any plans to record either the Hollowbody Band or Blues Project?
It’s such a weird time because I can’t record all of them on my record label. That’s all right, because maybe I can do them all eventually, although it might take some time.
It seems like you have some type of new project every year.
It’s the marketplace, mainly, because I make my living doing gigs. After you’ve played in all these places, they want you back but they don’t want you with the same thing. So they ask you about any special projects you might like to do. So that’s where a lot of these things are coming from. In a way, that’s bad because there’s little opportunity to have a band that develops, but in a way it’s good because it forces you to come up with new music and new sounds. In my case, it has really been rewarding because the stuff I might not have gotten to, but wanted to do, the marketplace has pushed me into doing. I’ve benefited from that musically.
Even with all your projects, does your trio still feel like home?
I think so. But there’s a lot of other stuff going on too. In Europe I’ve done this organ trio with Larry Goldings, who’s a long-time collaborator in different ways, and Greg Hutchinson on drums. That’s another long-standing project, I really want to get into that. But yeah, the trio with Steve Swallow—Steve’s my mentor and Bill Stewart is just a giant.
Scofield’s trio—with Bill Stewart on drums and Steve Swallow on electric bass—burns through a blues from a show in 2010. Eschewing any standard blues clichés, Scofield floats over Swallow’s propulsive bass line.
In several of your recent groups your main musical foil has been another guitarist. What is it about playing with another guitarist that interests you the most right now?
Here’s the thing: I think piano and guitar are a very hard match—they’re both percussive. Every time I hear a group with piano—not only my own group, but other groups—it seems like piano and guitar tend to get in each other’s way. That doesn’t mean I don’t love playing with piano players—I do it in my own groups. Although I think it’s weird that with the organ, that doesn’t happen. With the organ, everyone can play whatever the hell they want and it works. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the timbre of the organ is more like a choir than a percussive piano. But I think guitars really work well together. When I have another guitar comping and I blow over it, or vice-versa, it works really well because the electric guitar has turned into this thing where it’s a solo voice and an accompanying instrument, so we need each other in a way.
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J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume.
J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume. Just check out a photo of his rig to see an intimidating wall of amps pointed directly at the Dinosaur Jr. leader’s head. And though his loudness permeates all that he does and has helped cement his reputation, there’s a lot more to his playing.
On this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re looking at each phase of the trio’s long career. How many pedals does J use to get his sound? What’s his best documented use of a flanger? How does his version of “Maggot Brain” (recorded with bassist Mike Watt) compare to Eddie Hazel’s? And were you as surprised as we were when Fender released a J Mascis signature Tele?
Editorial Director Ted Drozdowski’s current favorite noisemakers.
Premier Guitar’s edit staff shares their favorite fuzz units and how and when they use them.
Premier Guitar’s editors use their favorite fuzz pedals in countless ways. At any point during our waking hours, one of us could be turned on, plugged in, and fuzzed out—chasing a Sabbath riff, tracking menacing drone ambience, fire-branding a solo break with a psychedelic blast, or something else altogether more deranged. As any PGreader knows, there are nearly infinite paths to these destinations and almost as many fuzz boxes to travel with. Germanium, silicon, 2-transistor, 4-transistor, 6-transistor, octave, multimode, modern, and caveman-stupid: Almost all of these fuzz types are represented among our own faves, which are presented here as inspiration, and launch pads for your own rocket rides to the Fuzz-o-sphere.
Ted Drozdowski - Editorial Director
My favorite is my Burns Buzz, a stomp custom-made for me by Gary Kibler of Big Knob Pedals. Gary specializes in recreations of old circuits, and this Burns Buzzaround-inspired box has four germanium NOS transistors and sounds beautifully gnarly. It improves on the original, which Robert Fripp favored in early King Crimson, by adding a volume control. I went a little stir-crazy acquiring fuzzes during Covid lockdown and now have an embarrassing amount. My other current darlings are a SoloDallas Orbiter (which balances fuzz with core-signal clarity), a Joe Gore Duh (a no-nonsense, 1-knob dirt shoveler), and my Big Knob Tone Blender MkII 66, which taught me how smooth and creamy fuzz can be with carefully calibrated settings. These pedals allow me to cover all of my favorite fuzz sounds from the past 60 years. I do have one more secret weapon fuzz that only travels to the studio: an original Maestro FZ-1 that I picked up used for about $20 in the early ’90s. It’s banged up but functional, takes two 9V batteries, and is righteously juicy.
Nick Millevoi - Senior Editor
The two greatest fuzzes I’ve ever played are a Pigdog Tone Bender build and a Paul Trombetta Bone Machine. Both experiences will stick with me for decades to come. But creations by those two masters of fuzz come with a price tag high enough to keep my time with those pedals fleeting.
Instead, my favorite fuzz is an inexpensive, mass-produced pedal that hasn’t left my board since I reviewed and subsequently purchased it in 2021: the Electro-Harmonix Ripped Speaker, designed to emulate the distorted tones on ’50s and ’60s records that were created with broken or misused gear.
Retro inspiration is not all it has to offer though. The rip knob, which controls transistor bias, is the star of the show, interacting with the fuzz level to deliver everything from a smooth, mild fuzz to sputtery mayhem that can evoke a faulty channel strip or old tube combo that’s been set ablaze. I prefer to crank the rip knob and feed it to a phaser and slapback analog delay, which gives me a bit-crushed-like gnarliness. Pull back on the rip or add a boost in front of the pedal, and it has a more organic but still gated sound, which, for me, can be just the thing to set my sound apart in a more traditional setting.
For a cool $116, the Ripped Speaker, which seems to fly under most fuzz freaks’ radars, might be the special something that complements the rest of your board or just a tone you turn to on occasion. Either way, it’s a great deal.
Luke Ottenhof - Assistant Editor
You could give me the most powerful-sounding fuzz in the world, but if it was in a stupid-looking enclosure, I don’t know if I’d give it a second look. This is just how we operate: Vision is the sense we privilege most, even in matters of audio.
Luckily, the most seismic, monstrous fuzz I’ve ever heard also happens to come in a beautiful package. The Mile End Effects Kollaps, built by Justin Cober in Montreal, measures an elephantine 7 3/8" x 4 5/8" x 1 1/2", and its MuTron-meets-’60s-Soviet aesthetic matches the sounds its guts produce. The Kollaps is modeled after the nasty Univox Super-Fuzz circuit, and carries a few of that pedal’s hallmarks, including its use of germanium diodes and midrange boost control. Cober added a switchable Baxandall active EQ circuit, with up to 12 dB of boost and cut to both low and high frequencies. Coupled with the mid-boost toggle, this gives the Kollaps a shockingly broad range of tonality to play with.With the mids off, the Kollaps is jagged and ruthless, a deafening turbojet of upper mids and chest-vibrating lows that yanks me toward the darker, less commercially successful corners of ’90s doom and noise rock. Kicking on the EQ circuit and boosting the lows turns it titanic. With the balance (volume) and expand (gain) controls maxed, the Kollaps starts to live up to its name, crumbling into a thick, overextended chaos in a way more polite fuzz circuits rarely do.
My favorite Kollaps sounds occur when the mids are engaged, for an articulate, deeply textured fuzz sound that retains your attack. Playing with your guitar’s volume knob, you can coax a range of EQ profiles and take advantage of the upper- and lower-octave content in the fuzz. With guitar volume lower, you can access some unbelievably emotive and sensitive sounds that still teeter on the edge of chaos and violence. It’s a rich, volatile circuit that gets as close as I’ve heard to a sound and physical feeling I’d call “planet-destroying.”
Charles Saufley - Gear Editor
My first fuzz, A Sovtek Big Muff, remains tied for first place among many favorites. The pedal’s most famous virtues—corpulence and sustain—are among the reasons I treasure it. But the way the Sovtek pairs with a Rickenbacker 330 and Fender Jaguar, which were once my two primary guitars for performance and recording, made it invaluable in various projects for a long time. Neither the Ricky nor the Jag are sustain machines, but the wailing mass of theBig Muff makes their focused voices an asset—inspiring tight, concise fuzz phrases, hooks, and riffs as well as articulate chords.
A silicon Fuzzrite clone built by good pal Jesse Trbovich (long-time member ofKurt Vile’s Violators) runs second place to the Sovtek in terms of tenure, and is a very different fuzz. It’s a piercing, hyper-buzzy thing, but a perfect match for a squishy 1960s Fender Bassman head and 2x12 I adore. Perversely, I sometimes couple it with a Death By Audio Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload or Wattson FY-6 Shin-Ei Super-Fuzz clone. These tandems create chaos and chance, but sing loud and melodiously too—at least when I’m not intentionally bathing in feedback. The Jext Telez Buzz Tone, a clone of the mid-’60s Selmer circuit, is often my go-to now. It’s a low-gain affair compared to the other fuzzes here, and I use it in its even-lower-gain (and vintage-correct) 3-volt setting. It’s pretty noisy, but it is thick, dynamic, detailed, raunchy, and plenty trashy when the occasion demands it. It’s also a very cool overdrive when you back off the gas.Jason Shadrick - Managing Editor
I rarely need fuzz in my everyday gigs, but it's one of the most fun effects to explore when I'm noodling around. At a NAMM show a few years ago I plugged into Mythos' Argo and as soon as I hit a note my eyes lit up. The sound of the fuzz wasn't unwieldy or hard to manage. It gave me the illusion of control while the octave was the magic dust on top. I knew right then I wasn't leaving the show without one. After I spent some time with it, I became enamored by how much more the Argo can do.
It's inspired by the Prescription Electronics C.O.B. (Clean Octave Blend), so the control set is similar. The octave is always present in the signal path, but you can dial it out with the blend knob. The fuzz and volume knobs are self explanatory, but dialing the fuzz and octave knobs all the way down gives you a killer boost pedal. I find my favorite settings are at the extremes of the fuzz and blend ranges. Typically, both are either all the way up or all the way down. Another great experiment is to turn the fuzz down and then pair it with a separate drive pedal. And in octave mode, Argo is one of those pedals that inspires you to head directly for the neck pickup and stay above the 12th fret.
Columnist Janek Gwizdala with heroes Dennis Chambers (left) and Mike Stern (right).
Keeping your gigging commitments can be tough, especially when faced with a call from a hero. But it’s always the right choice.
Saying “yes!” to everything early on has put me in a place now where I can say no to almost everything and still be okay. That wasn’t without its challenges. I’d like to share a story about a “yes” that would haunt me for years.
As bass players, we can, if we choose, quite easily find ourselves in a wide variety of situations without having to change much about our sound or our playing. If your time is good and you’re able to help those around you feel good and sound better, the telephone will pretty much always ring.
Playing jazz as an electric-bass player living in New York City from 2000 to 2010 was somewhat of a fool’s errand in terms of getting work. No one wanted electric bass, and bandleaders would go to the bottom of a list of 100 upright players before they would even think about calling you. Not only that, but I wasn’t even at the top of the electric list when I first moved there. Not even close. Anthony Jackson, Richard Bona, Will Lee, Tim Lefebvre, James Genus, Lincoln Goines, Mike Pope, John Benitez, Matthew Garrison—that’s a who’s who of the instrument when I first moved to town, and I was very much a freshman with almost no experience. Almost…
I’d been lucky enough to play extensively with Kenwood Dennard (Jaco’s drummer), and a little with Hiram Bullock (Jaco’s guitarist) before moving to NYC which helped create a little momentum, but only a VERY little.
This is where the story begins:
I’d sent Mike Stern a demo back in late ’97. He’d not only taken the time to listen to it but had called my parents’ house right after I moved to the U.S. to tell me he loved it and wanted to hang. I missed the call but eventually met him at a clinic he gave at Berklee.
Of course, I was buzzing about all of this. It helped me stay laser-focused on practice and on moving to NYC as soon as possible. I got the typical “look me up when you get to town” invitation from Stern and basically counted the seconds through the three semesters I stayed at Berklee until I could split town.
I arrived with a ton of confidence but zero gigs. And nothing happened overnight. It really took saying yes to literally everything I was offered just to keep a roof over my head. Through that process, I felt like I was getting further away from playing with my jazz heroes.
The early gigs were far from glamorous—long hours, terrible pay, and sometimes, after travel expenses, they cost me money to play.
“Whenever I have a single moment of doubt, I think about the time I had to say no to my heroes—the reasons I moved to America, the reason I do what I do.”
When Stern finally called, a few years into living in NYC, things started to move pretty quickly. I began playing a lot of gigs at the 55 Bar with him, and short road trips became a thing—a four-night stint at Arturo Sandoval’s new club in Miami, gigs in Chicago, Cleveland, and upstate New York, and then some international work, including a tour of Mexico and a trip to Brazil, if I remember right.
But the hardest phone call of my career came from Mike not long into my time touring with him. It went something like this:
“Hey man, what’s your scene in April? Lincoln can’t make a trip to the West Coast. It’s just one gig. Trio… with DENNIS CHAMBERS.”
Mike didn’t shout Dennis’ name, but that’s how I heard it. My all-time hero. Someone I’d been dreaming about playing with for over 15 years. And here’s the kicker: I had to say no.
I’d just committed to six weeks with Jojo Mayer’s band Nerve in Asia and Europe, and there was no way I could bail on him. And there was no way I could afford to ditch six weeks of work for a single gig with Mike. To say that haunted me for years is an understatement. I was destroyed that I had to turn it down.
The tour with Jojo was amazing—the posters hang in my studio as a reminder of those times to this day. And thankfully, I was able to go on some years later and play dozens of shows with Mike and Dennis all over the world—truly some of the highlights of my career.
I still think about that phone call, though. Whenever I have a single moment of doubt, I think about the time I had to say no to my heroes—the reasons I moved to America, the reason I do what I do. I get emotional writing and thinking about it even now. But I've learned to never have regrets and understand you just have to believe in the process and maintain the willpower to continue—no matter what.