Scott Henderson, Jeff Berlin, Dennis Chambers Trio -- A Gig Review

Last night the trio of Scott Henderson, Jeff Berlin and Dennis Chambers hit our shores, playing to a small but appreciative crowd of fusion fans.

I’ve watched Scott Henderson’s career closely from the time he was with Jeff Berlin and Vox Humana, Chick Corea’s Elektrik Band, Jean-Luc Ponty, Zawinul Syndicate, on through Tribal Tech and up to his blues guitar forays of the last 15 years or so.

But the Scott Henderson I witnessed last night was a re-invented revelation. Playing with a fury and controlled abandon rivaling vintage Jeff Beck, he propelled the band through Miles Davis’ All Blues, Billy Cobham’s Stratus, Wayne Shorter’s Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum and Coltrane’s Giant Steps in addition to the trio’s original tunes. I reckon playing all that soul-baring blues for so many years has rubbed off on his fusion style as well.

Henderson played a seafoam green Suhr strat equipped with three Fletcher/Landau single-coils into a Suhr SH100 amp and a Boss SE70 multi-effects unit for a stereo split into two rented Marshall 4x12 cabinets.

Henderson also seemed to have developed a new-found relationship with the whammy bar, using it to bend up to and from notes, giving his playing a soaring, almost vocal quality -- in fact the bar rarely left his picking hand for most of the two-hour long set. And I should mention that despite his vigorous use of the whammy bar, his Suhr guitar hardly went out of tune, requiring only minor tweaks between songs.

And I also learned something invaluable from bassist Jeff Berlin last night. He could play a cascade of notes ripping through Giant Steps and have it speak with as much authority as he would playing a simple blues line or a bass chord-melody version of Tears In Heaven (yep, that song), which he pulled off as a beautiful duet with Dennis Chambers. At the center of it all was his impeccable sense of time -- the structural foundation of his playing. And here's guy who eschews practicing with a metronome..
That same sense of timing translated perfectly to his onstage banter. (My favourite of his one-liners: “I’m a musician with a past – I never took drugs.”)

He begins a joke by setting it up perfectly with a simple premise:

“A rock bass player was about to spank his son when his wife intervenes. “Why are you spanking your son?”, she asks.
The tone of Berlin’s voice is low, almost serious.

The rock bass player replies “Because he turned one of the tuning pegs on my bass.”
Berlin allows it to sink in, allowing the audience to soak it up.

“So why don’t you just retune it?” she asks.
At the absolute perfect moment, he delivers the punchline like Joe Frazier flooring an opponent.

The rock bass player replies, “Because he won’t tell me which tuning peg he turned!”
Jeff Berlin could easily carve out a career in stand-up comedy. And I mean that in the most respectful way. He has got to be one of the most engaging human beings alive.

After the show, when most of the fans had left, I could only put in about 5 minutes with Scott Henderson. I actually had a bunch of questions I had put together, on the off-chance that I would be able to interview him for this article.

He looked really tired. And no matter how great your sidemen are, the guitar player in a trio format always has to go the extra mile or three to make things interesting.

I told him about how I had seen him play at La Ve Lee’s with Dave Carpenter, Scott Kinsey and Joe LaBarbara in 1998. Scott talked about the closing of that club due to a structural defect in the building’s roof. I could tell he missed the place, having held a weekly residency there for a number of years. La Ve Lee had become the ultimate musician's hang for LA's session elite as well as for the many GIT students that passed through year after year. And he grew somber when he mentioned bassist Dave Carpenter’s passing in 2008.

It wasn’t long before the trio was hustled back into the empty auditorium by the organizers and out the backstage door where their transport back to their hotel awaited.

Kudos to Heads Up for pulling this gig together!

Buy Scott Henderson CDs and DVDs Here!

Murphy's Law As It Applies To Guitar Players

Last Monday, at my usual weekly blues/rock gig, I was reminded of the importance of having a spare for all my essential gear.

I arrived, as usual, about an hour before the gig, hooked up my pedalboard and then proceeded to stretch-tune the new strings on my Suhr Classic.

I saw two of my guitar students in the audience, went up to them to say hello and make some small talk and then went outside with a drink to relax and discuss the set list with my band’s vocalist.

Maybe I was too preoccupied with stretching the strings on my guitar, or perhaps it was the surprise of seeing my two students, but I had neglected a key part of my set up ritual – that of firing up the Marshall JCM900 amp and checking to see if everything was working.

And Murphy knocks when he is least expected.

At 10pm the band was onstage and the house music had been turned off. I did some final tuning on my guitar, hit my volume pedal expecting that familiar roar. And nothing.

I’m usually a pretty cool customer in these circumstances having developed a deductive process for troubleshooting a ‘no sound’ situation. In this case, the amp was powered on, not on standby and the preamp and master volumes on the channel I was using were slightly above the halfway mark. My first thought was that the house guitar cable connected to the amp was faulty.

I pulled the cable from my pedalboard, leaving it connected to the amp. I turned the volume down a little and tapped on the cable end -- and nothing. I knew it was the cable. And 99% of the time I would have been right.

I switched to a different cable. And still nothing. Uh oh.

I tried a third cable with the same result.

Now I was starting to sweat. The club’s workhorse Marshall looked adamant at taking the night off.

I have great guys in my band. They were looking on with much concern and offering suggestions unobtrusively while I scrambled with the troubleshooting. Off to one corner of the stage, my drummer spotted a spare Fender Deluxe 90 amp and my singer helped lug it over, and plug in the power cable.

And we were in business.

The moral of this story is to always get to a gig early and check out all the gear to make sure everything is operating. And always carry a spare if that spare has not already been provided for you.

A guitarist’s checklist of spare equipment should include, at the minimum, spare guitar cables, pedalboard cables, extra packs of strings, and in my case, a spare overdrive pedal on my board. For important shows I also always carry a spare guitar and I ensure that the rental company has an extra amp in the van just in case.

We can’t always keep Murphy at bay, but we can be prepared if he comes knocking.