Taylor Scott Band to perform April 9 in Chicago in support of new album

By ERIC SCHELKOPF

Taylor Scott's electrifying guitar playing and soulful vocals have garnered him wide acclaim.

It shouldn't be a surprise then that Steve Berlin, of the band Los Lobos, would want to produce the Taylor Scott Band's new album, "All We Have," which also features an appearance by Los Lonely Boys member Henry Garza.

The band will perform April 9 at The Bassment, 353 W. Hubbard St. lower level, Chicago, as part of an album release party for "All We Have."

The show starts at 9 p.m. and tickets are free at eventbrite.com.

I had the chance to talk to Scott about the new album.

Q – In sitting down to make "All We Have," what were your goals and do you think you accomplished them?

We wanted to really give people a portion of what we do, the kinds of ins and outs of our music, which is coming from a lot of different places all at the same time.

When I sat down with Steve Berlin, who produced it, we just decided to kind of throw out the window anything we had done before and just pick the best tunes I had written. We just tried to get the best collection of songs that best represented who I am.

And I think we did. The record is pretty diverse. There's a lot of different flavors on there coming from different places. Steve did a great job pulling all that together through his lens.

It's just a great initial profile of sort of our musical personality, you know?



Q – So it kind of reflects where you are at these days musically.

Yeah. There's so many different influences that sometimes it can be hard for us to all draw into one thing. But I think on this record, we did that well, especially with the help of Steve on the producing side. 
 
It feels like one full statement even though there's all these different sounds on it. I'm proud of that.

 

Taylor Scott, left, and Henry Garza, right, of Los Lonely Boys, play in the studio.

  
Q – I know that you've worked with Otis Taylor in the past and it seems like maybe that rubbed off on you on this album. There are a couple parts on this album that kind of sound like something he might do.

Do you think that people you have worked with over the years have kind of rubbed off on you?

I think that happens whether you mean for it to or not. There's no way to really avoid that if you're all the way in to the music.

I toured with Otis internationally for several years pretty much right after I got out of high school. So that was obviously a formative time for me and that music is still very much a part of my life.

I don't think was intentional but anytime you spend that much time with certain artists and certain types of music, it's probably going to come out for years to come in one's musical personality. It's sort of part of my makeup now.

Q – Did he give you any tips? What do you think you gained from working with him?

He definitely didn't give me any tips. He plays things pretty close to the chest. 

We didn't really have a whole lot of those types of conversations. That doesn't mean I didn't learn anything, but those sorts of conversations never really happened.

I learned the power of having a really great band behind you that really knows how to get into the sound you're looking for. He was the first person I worked with as an adult musician who really had that dialed in, which was cool to be a part of. 

He knew the sounds that he wanted and knew how to draw that out of people. So I learned a lot from him just bandleader wise.

Q – Of course Steve Berlin, from the band Los Lobos, produced "All We Have." Did you seek him out?

Yeah, we just gave him a copy of one of our earlier records and he was into the writing and everything. So he gave us a shout and said he would do this one.

We've been friends for a couple of years now. We started making this record the summer before last. 

Q – What do you think he brought to the table?

Until this record, I've always self-produced, which is cool. But there are a lot of things that you sort of miss because you are wearing a lot of hats at one time.
 
The cool thing about having a good producer is you can kind of lay that in their hands and just do what you do. There has to be trust there.

With Steve, the first day we came into the studio together, it was just like fire right away. After we finished one track, it was like, OK, there's trust there, there's mutual respect, and I was able to just sort of lay part of the creative process in his hands because I had already written and arranged the tunes.

He kind of helped put a sound to whatever this music is I'm trying to get across. Because it's coming from so many different places for me. And I think that's important.

He just had a way of packaging it to where it all sort of made sense and was fluid and seemed like one big thing rather than a bunch of little things. That's probably what I am most proud of as far as working with him on this one.

Q – You talked about your music encompassing different genres. How would you describe your music?

I kind of let people decide for themselves. Right now, it's somewhere sort of in the Americana world. There's funk and soul in there and rock.
 

But it's hard for me to just narrow it down, which is why I just leave that to the management or whatever. 

There's so much music and it's all in there somehow. I suppose it's sort of like an Americana record in that it draws from all those influences. 

Q – Who would you say your biggest influences are?

Guitar wise, I'm super into all the great blues players, you know, Hubert Sumlin, Freddie King, those sorts of people. The blues stuff is super important to me as far as my approach guitar wise.

As a writer, I'm super into Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and people like that. I'm also a Tom Waits fan.

Vocally, I'm a huge Ray Charles fan. David Hidalgo is like one of my favorite living vocalists and has become a huge influence too. I feel like he gets passed over in that conversation unjustly.

I'm super into Allen Toussaint,  especially production wise and writing wise. 

Q – There also seems to be some Allman Brothers influence in your music.

The Allman Brothers Band is probably my favorite band of all time. 

Q – You moved out to Denver four years ago. You are originally from St. Louis, I understand. 

St. Louis and then Wyoming. I really grew up in Wyoming, so I'm more so from there.
 
There's a little bit of that sound in there, too, if you're looking for it.

Q – As far as wanting to move to Denver, what was the reason to make the move to Denver?

I grew up two hours north of here in a small town in Wyoming, just across the state line. From the time that I started playing, I've been coming down here to meet musicians, to go to shows and to play shows because the town I loved in didn't have much to offer longevity wise.

And I had already made all these relationships with all these great musicians in Denver. So it was sort of just a natural jump. There was nothing left for me in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

And I can be close to my family, which is important to me. This is home for now, and I like it a lot.

Q – So you wanted to be part of a bigger music scene?

Yeah, yeah. I already knew a bunch of great musicians. My whole band was from here.
 
I just wanted to be in a city that's a little more diverse, with a little more going on. And Denver was sort of the natural choice, proximity wise.

And now I've found this really wonderfully diverse music scene. There's a bunch of great jazz players here, which is probably the coolest of the music scenes here.

But I don't know if I'll be here forever. I'm glad to be here now, though.

Q – So what should people expect when you are in Chicago. Are you going to be concentrating on the new album?
We'll play a bunch of stuff from the new album, of course. But the thing with us is that you never quite know what you're going to get as far as setlists go.

We like to throw in surprises, you know. The other thing is that we're always working it out on stage and trying to shape it differently and improve and see where things go.

We are very improvisational. The guys in the band can go any direction at any time. 

So I don't know exactly where we are going to go that night. But I know we're play a bunch of stuff from the record and then we'll improvise and see how the room feels.

Q – Do you take audience requests?

Sometimes, if they're our songs, which happens now, finally.

Q – That must be a pretty cool feeling, that people will yell out that they want to hear one of your songs.

Yeah, it is man. We were on the road a few weeks ago, and we were in all these random places – St. Louis, Kansas City, northwest Arkansas and in all those places and more, people were coming up and saying, "Play this song off the new record" or whatever and the record had just come out.

So that was a super cool feeling, being in northwest Arkansas, where I have never played before, and having somebody come up and request tunes from the new record.