Inevitable Funkiness: A Conversation with Larry Goldings on Scary Goldings

A fifth of the way into the twenty-first century, James Brown’s question of “Ain’t It Funky Now?” Is perhaps best read as “Where’s It Funky Now?” Most funk icons are gone, retired, or mere shadows of their musical former selves. The Godfather of Soul died in 2006. George Clinton continually hosts retirement tours that do not entirely capture the magic of Parliament’s 70s output, while Bootsy Collins stepped away from live performance due to his hearing impairment. Going down the line, Prince has left his throne. Even the Nigerian Afrobeaten variety no longer has its founders, Fela Kuti and Tony Allen. But does the vibrancy of funk still survive? As evidenced on LIVE! (Pockets Inc., 2023), one would be hard-pressed to find a modern band keeping the flame of funk alive more than Scary Goldings with John Scofield. 

The band’s funk bona fides should come as no surprise, given its members. At the core of Scary Goldings is Scary Pockets, an LA-based outfit co-led by keyboardist Jack Conte and guitarist Ryan Lerman, renowned for its heavy grooving reinterpretation of pop songs. Scary Pockets, whose other members are often a rotating set of artists, initiated a long-term collaboration with Larry Goldings in 2018. The keyboardist-organist has had a long and diverse career that boasts serious jazz credentials next to experience backing pop artists like James Taylor, Colin Hay, and John Mayer. Pertinently, Goldings also worked with funk icon Maceo Parker for several years. Over three decades, he has also produced several projects with John Scofield. The guitarist likely needs no introduction, but it is worth recalling his output with jam-funk band Medeski Martin Wood and Miles Davis – who had a deep interest in the music of Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and Prince. And speaking of the Purple One, his final bassist – the inimitably unique Mononeon – also occasionally joins Scary Goldings. 

Scary Goldings LIVE! featuring John Scofield presents the September 4, 2022 performance by Conte, Lerman, Goldings, Scofield, and Mononeon at Jazz A La Villette in Paris. Rounding out the rest of the group are drummers Ted Poor, Lemar Carter, and Louis Cole. One track, “Professor Vicarious,” with Will Lee, is from Echoplex in Los Angeles. The album consists entirely of originals, brief jaunty tunes that, despite their truncated length, provide ample room for improvisation. As this writer can attest from having experienced Scary Goldings at the 2023 Newport Jazz, the group excels live. At Newport, they so moved the audience that even an infant who could not quite walk found himself irresistibly dancing to their music. LIVE! reflects Scary Goldings’ intense energy well, from the high-speed movement of the tongue-in-cheekily titled “Louis Cole Sucks” to the slower late-night shimmery simmer of “Take My Jet.” 

In our conversation with Goldings, we discussed how the group came together, their Newport performance, their upcoming Monterey Jazz Festival performance, some possible future collaborations, and lessons learned from Keith Jarrett. 

PostGenre: Scary Goldings gave a fantastic performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Any thoughts on it?

Larry Goldings: I think it went off very well, especially considering that playing at Newport is very chaotic. The Festival gives you about seven minutes to do a line check to keep everybody on schedule. There’s no real sound check. That’s the age-old challenge when touring really – figuring out in the moment how to hear each other, how the equipment is doing, and the rest. At Newport, those things are even more of an unknown because you don’t have the time to get it all together. 

I hadn’t seen Scofield in a while, and it is always great to reconnect with him. It was also our first gig with Tal [Wilkenfeld] on bass. We had a rundown in our little trailer in the backstage area where we rehearsed the songs, with everyone just singing chaotically through their parts. It was hilarious. But the energy at Newport was great, and so was the audience. There is always a different kind of energy when you have a one-off show like that compared to a gig within a string of gigs during a tour. It was a lot of fun.

PG: How did you get Tal to join? Her presence was a surprise to many in the audience.

LG: Well, you know, she’s also LA-based, as are most of us in the core band. Many of us in the band knew her personally. We were initially trying to get a string of gigs with John and Mononeon since they’re the special guests on our most recent studio album [IV (Scary Inc., 2022)]. But when Mononeon wasn’t available, we had to go down the list. Tal seemed like an obvious choice. She’s played in similar circles as us and lives near me, so was able to come by my place and go over the music earlier in the week. Ryan [Lerman] had the idea and hired her.  

PG: The group’s next live performance will be at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Any idea what people can expect?

LG: We will have someone other than Ted Poor on drums, though unsure who yet. We will have John joining us again and Tal on bass. Otherwise, it’s going to be pretty much the same set as Newport.

PG: The prior Scary Goldings albums were studio recordings, but the newest one comes primarily from the group’s Jazz à La Villette performance. What do you feel a live recording captures about Scary Goldings that a studio album would not?

LG: In the studio, even though we commit to one full take without editing, we still have the opportunity to get things right. It is always the case with a live gig that you can’t go back and fix anything. We’ve only got three minutes of the song itself to get it right. The main challenge is making the little details of the tune pop during the first and only time it is played. 

Our main concern with a live gig is making sure we are all on the same page with the structure of each song and maintaining that discipline of who plays which part and their role in the song. It would be great to do a longer tour and to relax and make some of this stuff second nature. But, inevitably, something happens. And usually in this music, accidents are happy accidents that lead to something exciting. There will always be some unknowns that will pop up that you have to react to and turn into something good.

And then, of course, you get the audience for a live performance, and that’s the main thing. It has been great to realize that there are a bunch of people who recognize our songs. Instrumental music is not an easy thing to get over. Most people need a singer to latch on to, so part of our challenge is seeing how we can communicate something without a singer. That’s always been the challenge with jazz. In this case, it’s not as challenging to your uninitiated jazz person, because this music is very hook-based, very melody-based, and very groove-based. But, even so, the groove has to be great, the melodies have to be catchy, and the music has to feel good.

PG: Scary Goldings has been around for about five years now. 

LG: Yeah, something like that.

PG: How did the group start, and how do you feel it has changed over the years?

LG: Scary Goldings started because Ryan had introduced himself to me a few years before our first album. I’ve got about 20 years on him, and he and Jack [Conte] were fans of mine. I don’t remember exactly how we first connected, but Ryan called me to see if I could play with Scary Pockets, as a sideman for sessions with singers. For one of those sessions, we were all set up to record, and the singer didn’t show up. Ryan said, “Well, we’ve got Larry here. Maybe we should just come up with an instrumental tune that features Larry.” That was a tune called “Larry Pockets.” It worked out so well that Jack and Ryan decided we should do a whole project where instead of the Scary Pockets model, which features different singers, we do original music featuring me as the featured soloist. 

PG: How do the group’s songs come together? 

LG: Scary Goldings has the same model as Scary Pockets. We have only an hour and a half to get each track done. It’s a really quick process and a very collaborative and democratic way of figuring out a song and then writing it, rehearsing it, and recording it. We do five tunes a day, with Jack as not only a secondary keyboardist but also the musical director and producer. He knows how to take general ideas of a song and then, 30 or 45 minutes later, turn them into a pretty solid song. We then start to finesse the piece until we get to the result.

PG: How do the guest artists enter into the equation?

LG: By the second record [The Ego Trap (Scary Inc. 2019), Ryan decided to bring in a guest for each of these records, for about half of each record. So, we’ve had Robben Ford, Josh Smith, and most recently, Scofield and Mononeon. 

PG: Is there anybody you would like to see as a guest artist in the future?

LG: Yeah, we’ve talked about other bass players that we love like Pino Palladino or Lee Sklar. We also discussed other guitar players, one of them being Derek Trucks. We’ve been trying to get Derek to join us. I think he wants to do it, but he’s such a road dog, and we haven’t been able to pin him down. We also thought about maybe a core band plus horns. Or me stretching out and being featured on some keyboard instruments other than organ. Even without the guest artists, we also have an excellent group of rotating bass players and drummers, which has been great because I didn’t know some of these guys before Ryan turned me on to them. 

PG: Which may also tie into the cross-generational aspect of the group. Is that element something that first interested you in the band?

LG: Yeah. Before I knew Ryan, a friend turned me on to Jack and his duo with his wife, Nataly Dawn, called Pomplamoose. It was early on with sites like YouTube, but it was obvious to me some younger people were way ahead of the curve; way more ahead of the curve than I was in terms of figuring out in this new world of streaming, the lack of record companies, and the disappearance of record stores.

I was fascinated with Jack and Nataly and how they were churning out creative stuff while taking advantage of these changes in the industry. So, I called Jack and ultimately went out to Northern California to do some tracks for Nataly’s project. Recording those tracks gave me a sneak peek at their process. Jack is so eager to turn other people onto what he’s discovered. I think that excitement is also part of his impetus in creating Patreon; to encourage people to self-promote and get their stuff out in ways other than through a record company. 

I was, and continue to be, fascinated by the Scary Pockets world, their process, and their knowledge of how to make and sell music in this new world. I’ve learned a lot from those guys. You should always look to the younger generation and what they are doing instead of rejecting new norms. Otherwise, you get left behind. I feel that for someone my age, I’m a little ahead of the curve in terms of knowing how to handle the technological realities. I’m still learning a lot about it too, and Ryan and Jack have been very helpful in educating me on it. I feel lucky that I’m around them. Their musicianship is excellent too. And they’re very respectful to me and their elders.

PG: As far as your elders, you worked with Maceo Parker for several years and recorded three albums with him. Given Scary Goldings is an incredibly funky group, do you feel Maceo’s influence is present in its music?

LG: Yes. Scary Goldings has brought together many of the different worlds that I’ve existed in musically.

This morning, coincidentally, I posted to Facebook a video of the one gig that I did with James Brown in 1991. MC Hammer was putting together an HBO show to feature a few people, including James Brown. James had just gotten out of prison and didn’t have a band, so he called Maceo and asked if he could use his touring band to do the show. And I was in his band back then.  

Although I did two other records with him before then, Maceo’s Life on Planet Groove (Minor Music/Verve, 1992) was one of the first things to expose me to funk lovers. It got me on the map very quickly as an organ player. I’ve been lucky to work with someone as authentic as Maceo in my first funk experience. 

PG: Taking the lineage of funk a generation further, Maceo also worked with Prince. You mentioned Mononeon earlier, who was Prince’s final bassist. You also contributed to Bob Belden’s Prince project [When Doves Cry: The Music of Prince (Metro Blue, 1994)]. Do you feel Prince’s influence shapes Scary Goldings at all?

LG: I guess vicariously through Mononeon, the influence is there. Although I am a huge fan of Prince, he is not necessarily someone on my mind when we’re making these records. But, with Mononeon joining us, I guess Prince is part of this group by extension.

I knew of Mononeon’s, YouTube videos and the unbelievably creative stuff he does by taking videos and playing to them. He’s a freak of nature and one of the funkiest bass players playing today. Having him join us was a huge boost to the groove. I would love to do more with him.

PG: As far as John Scofield joining the group, you have been working with him for almost thirty years.

LG: Yep, something like that. Since the early 90s.

PG: Do you see him joining Scary Goldings as a continuation of your earlier work together, or is this something different?

LG: It’s a continuation, but it’s different. I think it’s different for him, too. Even though he and I have moments to improvise on the records and in live performances, Scary Goldings still very much follows a pop-like presentation in that we keep the songs short – only about two or three minutes. We don’t stretch out how we would during your average John Scofield gig or one of my gigs. And it’s a challenge to find those spots to shine, while not doing extended improvisations, which is cool.

PG: Why the shorter song lengths?

LG: I think many people who enjoy Scary Goldings’ music are unfamiliar with my work, or perhaps John’s. They are more accustomed to the model of the three-minute song. I think the shorter songs go over well with people unready to absorb a nine-minute performance of each tune. However, it’s a challenge to make our ideas fit into such a short song.

PG: Do you feel you have learned some tricks from working with James Taylor or John Mayer on shorter songs that assist you with meeting that challenge? 

LG: Yeah, I have. That experience may also be why I was so open to the concept behind Scary Goldings. When you are trying to provide support for something larger – in the case of James Taylor or John Mayer, the lyrics – you’re supporting the song and the frontman. Those experiences have greatly prepared me for this type of presentation.

PG: To ask you about one of your influences that may not enter into Scary Goldings – you studied with Keith Jarrett, correct?

LG: I did, sort of unofficially. I took three lessons with Keith over about three years. It was a long time ago; I was still in high school. But it was quite an intense, unique, and incredible experience.

PG: What do you feel you learned the most from him?

LG: He advised me on a few things. 

One was to study with the strictest classical teacher that I could find. I did not take that advice, sadly. Though I still could. At that time, Keith was playing a lot of classical music, including performing incredibly difficult pieces with orchestras. I think he was getting ready to do a Samuel Barber piano concerto. To be around someone on that level was amazing. It was incredible to see him play; to hear the sound that he was getting out of the piano, and to see that it was happening right there from this human being.

He was also very encouraging. I mean, he liked me enough to invite me back for more lessons. And he had a few nuggets of things that I’ll never forget.  Keith taught me using a several-volume workbook. Volume one gave you two bars of a very simple monophonic melody. Then your job was to take as much time as you needed to finish that melody. By around volume six, it focused on atonal harmony. The book gave you two bars of an atonal idea and then made you finish it.

PG: It sounds like an interesting exercise. 

LG: It got me thinking about the usefulness of composing and taught me the discipline of having the time to think about these things. The better composer you are, the better improviser you can become. 

These exercises were especially helpful in teaching you to be careful in selecting notes to end your thoughts. The way Keith put it, “when it’s done, it should sound like it was inevitable.” He told me that when you’re improvising, your goal is to end in a way that your finished idea sounds not predictable but inevitable. You aim to produce an ending that sounds like the best choice you could have possibly made out of many choices. That was a very deep lesson.

‘Scary Goldings LIVE! featuring John Scofield’ is now available. The group will perform at the 2023 Monterey Jazz Festival on Friday September 22, 2023 at 8:30 PM. More information on the performance can be found here. You can also read more about Larry Goldings on his website.