tricky. It has this bass line and this guitar line, and it has this one three-bar phrase against a four-bar phrase, and I know he can do it—but is he going to want to? He learned it and told me it’s his favorite song. He’s a total phenom and he loves rhythm and harmony, and he’s going to figure it out. I’m in awe every night. He’s doing something technically brilliant and making incredible music out of it. MD: For your trio project with Ben Goldberg and John Dieterich, how do you mentally approach playing without the traditional bottom end that a bass provides? Scott: I’ve done a lot of gigs without bass. One of my favorite groups is the Paul Motian/Bill Frisell/Joe Lovano trio, and that’s kind of all I need. And I love bass. I own a bass. I love playing bass. When there’s no bass, I’m trying to hear
what my role can be. Am I holding it down rhythmically? Or playing free? Or does it go between the two? It’s not like, “What’s missing?” It’s more like, “What’s here?” I like the idea of space and a lack of low end. And what plays the role? My bass drum? My ride? It could be the clarinet or the low string of the guitar. Everybody has to commit to it. MD: You’re in so many groups that improvise. How do you deal when something’s not happening musically? Scott: You have to ask, “What can we change?” I’m all about trying stuff. Any idea that anybody has. If we’re on stage improvising and it’s not happening, you can’t just stop. You have to ask, “What can I grab on to?” In rehearsal, sometimes it’s about simply saying, “This is not working. This sucks.” [laughs] It’s like the elephant in the room. But sometimes it’s perception. I’ll walk off the stage and think something sucked, but someone else thought it was amazing. And nothing is really finished. Nels made a new arrangement of a song we’d been playing for years, and it was a great idea. It changed it. There were certain aspects I was going to miss, but this was a new direction for it. So just embrace it and make it happen. MD: The Nels Cline Singers might be where your voice shines the strongest. Talk about your approach in that group, with your use of electronics and coming up with parts. Scott: The leader, Nels, is a bottomless pit of creativity. He wanted the band to evolve and take time getting to certain places that he knew we would get to. There are aspects of my drumming, and this electronic thing I do, that he wanted in this band and that he was going to write for. He’s described the
January 2016 Modern Drummer 69
Singers as a cross between Paul Bley and Sonic Youth. Everything I love about music is in that band. Even things I didn’t know I loved were pulled out of me. I love the way we can go from complete noise with my electronics into a groove or into a super- subtle ballad, or I can play colors or sonic textures. It’s as exciting to me as anything. It took a long time to figure out what I
wanted to say with the electronics. Early on Nels was excited about it, so that sent me deep into exploring it. I wanted it to be a musical extension of the drums, to be a part
of me. There are so many technical aspects to what I’m doing, and figuring out how it affects the band musically, but also the onstage sound with things that are happening that maybe shouldn’t be, like feedback, and people getting frustrated. [laughs] Or it’s too loud. [Tortoise guitarist] Jeff Parker played with
me in a band called Crater. And he told me the electronics were cool but that I had them coming from all these monitors all over the stage. He said his amp is where his sound comes from, and my drums are
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