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Headin' Home - Live at the University of Rhode Island

Scott Sherwood

Label: Art of Life Records
Released: 2020
Views: 295

Tracks

1. Headin' Home (Live) 2. Shadow Play (Live) 3. Diddley Squat (Live) 4. Night Waltz (Live) 5. Hymn for Her (Live) 6. Green (Live) 7. Playthings (Live)

Personnel

Album Description

The Scott Sherwood Trio performance “Live at the URI Jazz festival - 1996” was a seminal moment for the three of us. It was the FIRST gig we ever had as a unit. I’d met Scott in Austin, TX on the bandstand of the legendary Austin venue - “The Elephant Room” - on a Monday night jam session in August of 1993. I was living in Austin, checking out the jazz scene and putting my name out. Scott and I both sat in that night and we clicked like long lost brothers. We played together a number of times during the four months I lived in Austin. We did quartet and quintet gigs with a number of Austin jazz cats, Dave Morgan, Eli Haslanger, Mike Mordechai, etc. Shortly after, I moved back to the East Coast and resumed playing music with my friend Mike Nunno around the CT/NY/NJ scene. Mike and I played EVERY type of gig imaginable together - from biker bars to Fairfield U Glee Club, from Blues dates with men and woman from the Deltas and Chitlin circuit to Wedding bands, Big Bands, Jazz trios, Singer/Songwriters etc etc. Scott moved to the East Coast a year after I had and gave me a call as he was heading East. He sent me a CD he had done with his guys in Milwaukee called ‘Siren Song’ and I loved it so much I called him while the first track was playing to say: “We HAVE to play together in a trio and I know the PERFECT Bassist - Mike Nunno!” The three of us got together one afternoon at my house in Milford, CT and it was magic from the get-go. It sounded as if one musician was playing three instruments simultaneously! “WOW!” I thought - “we are so fortunate to have a group like this! Musicians are very, very lucky to get this kind of thing ONCE in a lifetime!” Within a very short period of time Scott and his wife, Jennifer got the trio booked as part of the University of Rhode Island Jazz Festival, 1996. BANG!! We were off and running! What you’ll hear on this recording is original, adventurous jazz. This recording exists as a result of amazing serendipity. Unbeknown to us, on that very night, a URI student, Mike Sartini, set up his DAT recorder and pressed the record button. It was to our good fortune and I believe your’s, as the listener, as well! It has been a long time since the three of us created this recording. Mike and I still play together as often as we can, but the Scott Sherwood Trio now exists only in our memories and the recordings we made along our journey together. Sadly, Scott Sherwood passed away in 2009. I feel his loss every day. Much of the best music I have ever made in my 40 year musical career was made in concert, pun intended, with my truly musical brothers, Scott and Mike. About the Music: Produced by Paul Hannah and Paul G. Kohler for Art of Life Records. Recorded live to two-track digital by Mike Sartini at The University of Rhode Island Jazz Festival in Kingston, Rhode Island in 1996. 24-bit digital mastering by Paul G. Kohler at Art of Life Studios, Charleston, SC in October 2020. Photos of Scott, Mike and Paul by John Samuel Peterson. Album cover design by Paul G. Kohler. Special thanks to Jennifer Sherwood Gaul. Selected Quotations: "Guitarist Scott Sherwood had a tone and sound that many smooth jazz and new age guitarists would envy, sinuous and undulating, evoking notes without recognizable pick attack. But, like the guitarists he admired—John Abercrombie, Pat Metheny, Jim Hall— he employed that sound to express substantial jazz ideas, not simply ambient noodling. Sherwood, who died of cancer 12 years ago this month at 46, grew up in Texas and began his career there and in Milwaukee. He moved to New York in 1996, where he formed a trio with drummer Paul Hannah, a confederate from his Austin, Texas days and electric bassist Mike Nunno, whom Hannah met in New York. This is the band’s first concert, a gig at the 1996 Rhode Island Jazz Festival. There are seven tracks, all originals by Sherwood that range from ballad to waltz, blues beats to bop swing. The tunes tend toward simplicity, yet resonate hypnotically, like the repeating line of the title track or scale-climbing phrases of “Hymn to Her”. There’s even a playful take on the blues clavé of the Bo Diddley beat: “Diddley Squat” opens with a Hannah solo, Sherwood then floating over the insistent rhythm with a skein of elongated notes and slurs suggestive of the Pat Metheny Group. “Night Waltz” features another felicitous melody over delicate 3/4 rhythms, guitar and bass both soloing lyrically. The wonder though is what Hannah, in the notes, calls “the magic from the get-go. It sounded as if one musician was playing three instruments simultaneously.” The rapport is extraordinary, especially considering that this was the trio’s debut. It can be heard in the way Hannah and Nunno shadow Sherwood’s lead on “Shadow Play”, a piece that alludes to meters like 3/4 and 6/8 while remaining a heartbeat ballad, and on “Green”, where Hannah’s syncopated hands and sticks create a snappy rolling rhythm, Nunno rising out of the rhythmic maelstrom, then countering and echoing phrases behind Sherwood’s solo. The group feel culminates in the closer, “Playthings”, a boppish unison line from bass and guitar that cedes into a colloquy tandem soli by all three as the tempo accelerates and recedes (à la Mingus) like a giant beating heart." George Kanzler The New York City Jazz Record

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