Jack Bruce, Vernon Reid and Spectrum Road
Spectrum Road is a groundbreaking collaboration between four giants in the music industry: Jack Bruce, Vernon Reid, John Medeski and Cindy Blackman Santana. You know Jack Bruce as the legendary bassist from Cream. Vernon Reid you know from his great work as guitarist and songwriter with Living Colour. Both are considered to be among the top musicians in their fields. Recently Jack and Vernon came by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about Spectrum Road. Below are excerpts from that interview.
***
Ron Bennington: This kind of music, we kind of haven’t heard in awhile and there are reflections back to some stuff that had been done in the ’70s, right? That’s how this started?
Vernon Reid: Yeah. I grew up listening to, I mean, all of this stuff. Miles Davis, Tony Williams Lifetime, and it affected me, I mean I remember hearing Santana when he did “Caravanserai” and then a whole series of records, “Welcome” and things like that. But of course, I grew up listening to Cream and the kind of improvisatory blues jam thing that they were doing. And it had a fundamental effect on the way I heard things. And certainly with Tony Williams, he had these insanely great guitar players. Like one after the other.
Ron Bennington: So you picked up on all this stuff when you were a kid, when you were a young person? And it took years before you got to kind of plan this yourself, right Vernon? I mean you did so many other projects before you came along with this.
Vernon Reid: Yeah, well one of the things that happened in 2001 as I was touring with Jack and the Cuicoland Express which was myself, him, Robby Ameen, Richie Flores, Bernie Worrell and Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez. We were touring Europe and I started to just ask Jack about all the amazing stuff he had done and the amazing people. And I asked him about Tony and it became real clear he was very close to Tony. And from those conversations, that’s where the spark of at least doing maybe just a show. And what happened was that, the first person I thought of for drums was Cindy Blackman because I had a chance to meet her and she’s just great. And she’s unabashed at how.. she openly talks about how much she was influenced by Tony Williams. And I had known John Medeski for a really long time. But really, how this became Spectrum Road is that after we started playing together, we just started to have this kind of chemistry that hadn’t been anticipated and it was really special every time we started to play.
Ron Bennington: How do you know that Jack? How do you know when the chemistry works? I mean you played with so many bands, so many different people. Do you know chemistry right away?
Jack Bruce: Yeah. I think you know it right away. But it doesn’t happen that often even with someone like myself who’s played with I don’t know how many different musicians and bands, but it’s very rare. Cream had it. Lifetime had it when I was playing, well as a trio, also when I joined. And this band has it. I’m very proud to say that. There’s a chemistry there. You can’t explain what it is. It’s a kind of respect for the music and for each other. Almost a tentative approach. You don’t want to go in there and…we’re all bandleaders, we don’t want to go in there and put our stamp right on it and make it into our thing. It’s a kind of a thing, so let it happen. And that’s the chemistry part of it. But how you would get that or explain that is beyond me.
Ron Bennington: Well when you’re playing this kind of fusion, where is the anchor at? Normally with the blues, you’re going to know where you come back to, but everybody…
Jack Bruce: It’s Tony. It’s Tony. It’s his spirit. A lot of the music we’re still playing are his compositions, although it’s growing from that. So the anchor in the band without any doubt is Cindy Blackman-Santana.
Ron Bennington: Still?
Jack Bruce: She’s bringing the spirit of Tony through the drums. And that’s where the chemistry’s beginning. At least, I would think.
Vernon Reid: Absolutely.
Ron Bennington: And this kind of fusion, I mean it’s blues, it’s jazz, it’s rock, it’s almost even goes back before that as well, right? And that’s why the drum becomes so important to it all.
Vernon Reid: Yeah, well the thing that’s really funny is that for a long time I thought like I think a lot of people do, that really kind of jazz-rock-fusion starts with Miles Davis.
Ron Bennington: And from an audience point of view too, there’s very few things where you see performers working it out in front of you. Normally musicians rehearse, get it together and come out and do a performance. But when you’re in the audience and you see the musicians, they get it, they’re in the pocket, oops they’re out of the pocket again. They’re battling their way back. So from an audience point of view, it puts you in a different place.
Jack Bruce: That’s a very interesting point.
Ron Bennington: Yeah, than anything else than you ever go to, because the performance changes.
Vernon Reid: Absolutely.
Jack Bruce: Sure.
Ron Bennington: Many times it just feels like oh man, I hope these guys get it back or are they getting it back? Or boom now, or you’re in another place where suddenly the audience along with the musicians gets lifted up somewhere.
Vernon Reid: Well, you know there’s…
Jack Bruce: Transcendental.
Vernon Reid: Absolutely. Okay, so if you think about a lot of this music. A lot of where it was coming from, certainly from say the ’60s, actually you would start even, you would have to include what Coltrane was doing, what (unintelligible) was doing, what (unintelligible) was doing, there was this idea of transformation. That the concert was an experience to transform the evening and possibly transform your life. And that’s the great hope going into it and that was there with The Experience, that was there with Cream, that was there with a range of groups. I mean that was really the grounding. You know, the musician as avatar.
Ron Bennington: In this project with Spectrum Road, you’re looking to be daring. You’re looking to change it on a nightly level.
Jack Bruce: Absolutely.
Ron Bennington: And you’re putting that out to the audience when you show up for this show. You’re going to approached it from a different way. Youguys just played this at Bonnaroo.
Vernon Reid: Yeah, it was great. We had a good time.
Ron Bennington: And a big crowd like that, and again people aren’t used to this as they used to be. Was the audience able to…?
Vernon Reid: The thing that was interesting, it was really cool because people were really with us. And the band was playing, I mean we hadn’t played together in– we had a little rehearsal, but we hadn’t played to together in really like 16 months or whatever. And when we hit, we were like one thing. And from beginning to end, it felt, it’s one of these things you can destroy very easily. Because if anybody decides to go off their head or just stop being connected to one another or stop listening, it can go sideways. But it was just wonderful and the thing that was really cool, you talk about having things that people know, it’s actually really fun when it’s a treat. So we ended our set playing the Cream song “Politician” and people were like wow. Because no one expected…
Jack Bruce: Yeah, nobody expected that.
Vernon Reid: Nobody expected it and it was beautiful.
Jack Bruce: I think you did maybe. (laughs)
Vernon Reid: And it was beautiful because it was a real treat. And we did it in our style.
Jack Bruce: Almost like a reward. You given us your attention. And it was work for a lot of those cats who were listening. It’s not easy if you’re not used to listening to that kind of music. You got to work at it. It’s like going to see a kind of interesting movie. You have to give yourself to it.
Ron Bennington: Yeah. And there is a place for the audience to be something other than just an observer. There’s a place for the audience to do something other than just judge. Because of the TV shows we have, we sit and we judge singers and we give them certain number grades, but we’ve lost that integration factor that obviously Jack came up with in the ’60s. When you’re John Mayall, the same thing is going to happen. The blues, it’s not going to be note for note every night. You’re looking for places to take off.
Jack Bruce: Right. With John Mayall, John Mayall, was I think trying to recreate Chicago Blues Band. But the difference with Cream, we used the language of the blues. It was an improvising band. So, that’s the difference.
Ron Bennington: And for you Jack still after all these years, music means just as much to you as when you were a kid. It’s the same.
Jack Bruce: I think it’s, now I’ve just become like this old thing, I’ve become music. I’m just a part of it now. Too late to be any… I was thinking of maybe becoming a brain surgeon. (Everyone laughs) I think maybe that time has passed.
Vernon Reid: That first incision. (laughs)
Ron Bennington: It’s Spectrum Road. You guys are taking this out on the road as well and again, you play it one way in the studio, but the songs are going to keep changing.
Vernon Reid: It’s so much fun. I mean one of the things that we have going on is just the different colors that people bring to what this is.
Jack Bruce: The audiences that we’ve had so far have loved the band.
Vernon Reid: They’ve been really good.
Jack Bruce: They loved it. It’s the only word I can use. Because there is a feeling, that kind of feeling again we don’t talk about that anymore. But there is that kind of feeling that we’re all in this. This great feeling.
Ron Bennington: And Vernon and even though you’ve had such a great career for such a long time what is it like for you to look over and just realize every once in awhile that that’s really Jack Bruce that you’re playing with?
Vernon Reid: Oh man, I’m going through it right now. (laughs) I don’t need to be on stage. I mean it’s something, I can say that this whole thing for me has been a magical mystery tour. Because I started out as a guy with his guitar on his knee in Brooklyn listening to the radio and hearing people like Carlos Santana, Robert Fripp, Jack Bruce and the universe or what have you, has arranged in the way it does for me to be doing interviews with…(laughs)…I’m amazed to be in a band, that’s completely….
Jack Bruce: It’s nice for me as well. It goes both ways.
Vernon Reid: But it’s like…that’s something, I have a real policy about keeping the wow alive in life.
Jack Bruce: No, I agree with that. Just for me, to be able to be playing with these younger guys. I mean, well, Cindy, she’s fantastic.
Vernon Reid: Oh my God.
Jack Bruce: It’s just fantastic to be able to play with these inspirational musicians and for them to accept me as one of them. That is a real compliment.
Ron Bennington: Yeah, because there’s plenty of careers that people can have where the younger generation wants to push it aside.
Jack Bruce: Well quite really, that’s the job of the younger generation.
Vernon Reid: That’s true.
Jack Bruce: But I ain’t gettin’ out of the way! (everyone laughs) Not yet.
Ron Bennington: I don’t know if they’re big enough to push you yet either. Spectrum Road is the album. Thanks so much guys.
————————————————————————————————————————–
.
You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. Not yet a subscriber? Click here for a free trial subscription.
.
You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.
.
