Everybody Everywhere

Hey! Let’s all lay down our burdens. Scot truly transcends the boundary between rock and roll singer and jazz singer on this track. Least you might not have realized, Scot is also playing some pretty sweet bass on this track. I remember the night Scot came home from this session. He was buoyant. Once more for the record, Scot was a product of growing up right next to one of the most humongous transcontinental waterways in the world. That’s a lot of molecules in motion. Situation: extremely fluid.

Scot had great stories about his childhood proximity to places like Davenport, Iowa—the birthplace of Bix Beiderbecke—a jazz founding father. A little sketchy on the details here, but I think that when Scot was probably 14 or 15, he played drums in a group with a guy who came out of the same scene that Beiderbecke did--so the guy was old. In this ensemble, the old guy played electric clarinet (I believe). Scot loved this morph to the jazz side as it meshed with his love of bands like "Gong" and anything Robert Wyatt.

When Scot started playing here in Indiana, he would, especially if there was brass involved, want to play songs like "Wade in Water" and "When the Saints Go Marching In." Some of the local Indiana musicians had resistance to playing this material. Here in south central Indiana (which if you look at a map is about 45 miles away from the part of Ohio that changed the outcome of the 2004 presidential election), there are plenty of folks who’ve had this stuff shoved at them, with a similar effect to water boarding, in the spiritual sense. One friend actually thanked me, telling me that Scot had helped him claim this music, which was a good thing, because he plays the most sacred (in Scot's opinion) of bass instruments: the trombone.

Scot is actually taking the lead vocal on this BC session, which features the trumpet work of a player I can’t identify today (but will ASAP). Our unknown horn man is cool. He’s obviously the real thing. For one thing, he can clearly swing, Scot's highest criteria. He’s also got taste. Bad trumpet, as we’ve already discussed, tends to stick out and kind of wreck things. This guy is cool. Jerry is on guitar and Kenny is there on drums. These recordings have become such a precious thing to me. I treasure all Scot's little whoops of joy--the ardent “hit me again!”

Today’s artwork is a beautiful little drawing done in the year 2000, which once again captures Scot’s love of music in another medium. I remember one little drawing he did called “Community Band.” I sold the drawing, opening night at the Plaza Art Fair, in Kansas City, MO. We don’t even have a file of the drawing. ☹ All I can remember is a vibe very similar to that of today’s piece, that music is one of those blessing/offering kind of things. I love Scot’s use of primary colors, how the images kind of scroll down, how the individual parts of music—the instruments, the sheet music—float among the players. The piece has its own current.