THE LINEUP
Scott Henderson returns with a new instrumental album that fuses his rock, blues and jazz-inf luenced backgrounds seamlessly
Since playing with jazz fusion legends Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul, Scott Henderson has carved out a reputation as one of the most formidable yet melodically eloquent electric guitarists around. He joins us to discuss his new instrumental album.
Tell us about the song that gave the album its name – did it set the tone for the project?
“Well, I don’t name songs before I write them. I just listen to the songs after I write them. And sometimes it takes a long time to figure out titles. But that particular song reminded me of a carnival – there’s this particular moment in that song where there’s like a double snare that sounds kind of like a horse-trot. That reminded me of horses and, I don’t know, for some reason that translated into horses in a carnival. I thought the whole song had kind of got some creepy moments but also some fun moments. And that’s what a carnival is: creepy and fun.”
Your style seamlessly blends hard rock with virtuosic jazz influences. What musical experiences first opened up your ears to those possibilities?
“I grew up playing rock, basically rock and blues influenced by Led Zeppelin and Hendrix and Deep Purple and that whole world. So I guess the very first time that happened to me was when I just luckily got a gig with an all-black group, a big 10-piece horn band. I was the only white kid and I was completely clueless about that kind of music because they were playing James Brown, Kool & The Gang, all the Motown stuff, Tower Of Power, Earth, Wind & Fire. I was just completely lost; I had no idea what to do. Luckily, one of the horn players was a pretty good rhythm guitar player and he showed me – basically gave me guitar lessons on how to play guitar in that style because they liked my blues playing and they thought it would be cool to have a guitar player that can play solos because they’d never had one before. So I was okay when it came to playing some bluesy solos, but I had no idea how to comp, how to play rhythm.
“But over the next few years that I played with them, I grew to love that music as much as I loved rock. And that changed me as a musician. I thought, ‘Well, gee, so I can have an equal love for rock and R&B and funk.’ It just totally changed me then – through bands like Earth, Wind & Fire and Tower Of Power, where there were jazzy solos and chords and harmony that I’d never heard before. That got
