If ever there was a map drawn of jazz music, guitarist/composer John Scofield would be all over it. In just recent years, he’s released a tribute to Ray Charles (That’s What I Say), an experiment with horns (This Meets That), and a re-entry into more traditional jazz (Works For Me), all this after the Seventies and Eighties stints in bands led by the late Miles Davis and drummer Billy Cobham.
On top of all that varied activity, Sco has also pursued an extended, versatile solo career that has found him in collaboration with kindred spirits like Pat Metheny, on 1994’s I Can See Your House From Here, and almost a decade later with Joe Lovano, Dave Holland and Al Foster on Oh!. But perhaps the man’s most widely-recognized adventures in eclectics was his 1998 foray into funk with Medeski Martin & Wood on A Go Go.
Gaining Scofield favor with the jamband nation the forward-thinking trio was courting at the time, it was only logical–and perhaps inevitable–that John would subsequently assemble a band to delve more deeply into the realm(s) of rhythm and so he did with his so-called Uberjam Band. Their self-referentially-titled 2002, plus Up All Night a year later, provided the ensemble plenty of material as they commenced to tour extensively, after which the guitarist moved on to sundry other projects like the trio with bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bill Stewart (to which he returned in 2020); as before, the beauty of all these ventures is that, skillfully wrought as is each of them, any one alone might constitute a niche for an artist of lesser versatility than Scofield.
This is also true of what’s actually billed under the moniker of the ‘John Scofield Band’. Some ten years since the Uberjammers last worked together proved to be only a temporary interruption in their evolution and a decade further on from their reunion, hearing 2013’s Uberjam Deux (released 5/5/13) only further substantiates the chemistry of the group.
This studio set flows as effortlessly as the musicianship at its foundation. The album begins in leisurely enough fashion with “Camelus,” a relaxed track that might not be wholly out of place on a set of more straight-ahead pieces like Sco’s 2011 recording A Moment’s Peace. The group begins to dig a groove on the aptly titled “Boogie Stupid:” guitarist/sampler Avy Bortnick, co-writer with Scofield of most of the material here, brings his flickers of rhythm guitar nearly to equal prominence as the lead guitar and he’s even more insistent on “Al Green Song”. Meanwhile, Andy Hess’ bass forms a staunch foundation upon which the whole band can rest, allowing Adam Deitch and Louis Cato to move lightly around their respective drum kits.
“Endless Summer” is one of six cuts to which John Medeski lends color and soul, his funky organ comping here offset by the way Scofield bends the notes he squeezes from his own instrument. Here too is where the logic of the track sequencing of Uberjam Deux kicks in. Scofield and company rock along handily, before accelerating to a similarly styled, but slightly more upbeat, “Dub Dub,” while the Jamaican influence on “Cracked Ice,” widens the dance floor scope of this nouveau jazz-fusion music as epitomized by the r&b leanings of “Torero.”
Recorded with as much warmth as clarity by engineer extraordinaire James Farber, Uberjam Deux is the end result of a recording studio turned into a veritable hothouse, nurturing to vibrant life tunes such as the ever-so-slightly ambient closer “I Don’t Want to Be Lonely.” Such material flowered further when Scofield and his comrades took to the stage, but, with the added perspective of a decade now, it’s even more obvious the beauty of Uberjam Deux lies in the sturdy record’s own terms, apart from those inevitable live transformations.
In the interim since this title came out, John Scofield has continued on a peripatetic path. Multiple collaborations live and in the studio with MMW have been interspersed with novel genre explorations such as 2009’s gospel homage Piety Street plus Nashville tribute Country For Old Men seven years later. Early 2015 saw the release of 1999 recordings with the original trio lineup of Gov’t Mule, in the wake of which the combined forces that came to be known as ‘ScoMule’ hit the road.
The ease with which the venerable guitarist eased in and out of those concerts was perfectly reminiscent of how effortlessly he’s navigated the purposeful twists and turns documented in his lengthy discography. With the clarity of extended hindsight now available to us, Uberjam Deux sounds like only one of the more accessible Scofield efforts and, as such, it can serve as a viable introduction to the work of a veritable renaissance man of jazz.
