Jazz & Blues Lounge

As you know, this has become the website for the group the Sad Salamanders.  How did they become my new favorite group?  They reached out to me and offered me free stuff.  Yes, folks, I can be bought and I am not ashamed to say it.  You want “ink” on this blog?  Leave a comment or send me something for free.

The Salamanders have released their first album “Cigarettes and Fishnets” and it really does swing in a way you really have to hear to believe.  I had a lovely interview with the man behind the swinging madness: Scooter Pietsch.

The questions and answers are as follows…in no particular order and that is my fault, not Scooter’s.  I caught up with him just last week when he had just got back from a trip to Rome.

JBL:  So, you just got back from Rome?  What were you doing there?  Anything good come out of your trip?

SP: Not unlike a lot of other people, I love Italy. The history, the people, the language. And Rome is just fantastic. I learned Italian over the past year and plan on spending more time there. This trip I was investigating which parts of the city might be right for renting an apartment for a short time. Technology, in terms of how we’re all writing and recording music, has evolved to the point that I can now write almost anywhere. I spend a lot of my writing time on tv shows and films. I’m sent a Quicktime movie, I score to it and then I upload the mixes back to them. So after 20 years of being stuck in the same room doing it, I can now be stuck in a different room – in Rome!

JBL: Tell me about the Sad Salamanders.  What do you want people to know about the group?

SP: Sad Salamanders is a group I started for 2 reasons. One, I’m a huge fan of what’s call “Martini Jazz” or “Bachelor Pad Jazz” from the 50s and 60âs. Second, I work on projects everyday with all of these great players here in LA, and we’re always talking about doing cool, fun, interesting projects. So these ideas, influences, – goals, – I guess you’d say, are floating around. And one day you wake up and realize the time is right. Let’s make this record.  One day it is on a list of CDs I want to make in my lifetime and the next day I’m doing it. I believe everything has its own time and if you pay attention, the time will reveal itself. I have lots of records in my head that I want to make. I was a huge fan of music before I became a musician and composer, so I approach making a record almost like kid trying to decide which new CD he’s gonna buy in the store. This past year, I fulfilled one of those dreams and made Sad Salamanders.

JBL: Where did the name come from?

SP: I hadn’t given much thought to a band name during the writing and recording and then towards the end, the name just popped into my head. It was singular, not plural, the first time I wrote it down. It stuck with me so I kept it. Now with the salamander logo and the sexy pinup girl on the front it has some sort of phallic imagery I guess. And the salamander tattoo was a big hit so I’m diggin’ the name now.

JBL:  Does the band have a style or philosophy?  What is it?

SP: Most great musicians, when they decide to make a jazz record, they try and do something that shows off their virtuosity, or cuts new ground in the genre. Not that those kinds of records can’t be fun, but we wanted to bring a little party atmosphere back into jazz. Jazz is the first, real, modern party music. It was born in bars and brothels and requires a booze/female accompaniment. To put it up on a pedestal and admire it from afar, I feel, is doing a big disservice to your enjoyment of the medium. So we’re gonna make records you can play when you’re friends are over and everybody’s having a good time and you’ve got a martini in your hand and the whole situation just makes you smile.

JBL: Are you guys going to get together and tour at some point?

SP: Absolutely. I was talking to Ed Martel, the other keyboardist in the group, the other day, and we were talking about how fun it would be to play the big jazz festivals. Imagine Sad Salamanders following some totally serious bebop group with our dancing girls and martini jazz. I just know the crowds would eat it up. So we’re talking to people and trying to make it work between 10 different, very busy, very successful people’s careers. Not easy. But worth it. Put in a word for us at the Chicago Jazz Festival.

JBL: How did you get the artist to do to cover for Cigarettes and Fishnets?

SP: I’m very visual when it comes to music. Maybe from scoring all of this tv/movie stuff. But just before I decided to make it, my son and a friend were hanging out in the studio playing music. His friend saw a book I had lying around called “Playboy: 50 Years of Cartoons.”  He asked me why I had it. I told him I was a big fan of Playboy cartoons and then bored him with my theory that my entire generation’s attitude on love, relationships, sex, women, etc can be traced specifically back to those cartoons. And right there, I realized what this record needed to be. A tribute to those cartoons. And it naturally followed that I needed an artist “a real Playboy artist” to draw the cover. I began my search and found out that almost every one of those guys from the vintage days of the 50s and 60s was dead. Really sad. Doug Sneyd was the exception according to his website. I sent him a couple of emails and he didn’t respond. I continued my search and I’m glad I did. I found Dean Yeagle. Dean has been drawing for Playboy for about 10 years I think. I loved his work. As luck would have it, he lives about 20 minutes from me. We met for lunch, I told what we were trying to do, he loved the idea. Dean mocked up a couple of girls and that’s when my perversions started to shine. It was a fun, kind of surreal experience, to comment on the drawing of a sexy woman. I’d suggest bigger boobs, maybe trying some jewelry, change her hair. Dean and I laughed a lot during those lunches. In the end, Dean just got it so right. So perfect. He also did the salamander logo for the tattoos. About 2 weeks after we had finished the CDs, I heard from Doug Sneyd. He was on vacation! He and Dean are good friends. Maybe I can use Doug on the next Salamander CD.

JBL: Anymore videos in the near future?

SP: The video for “My Parents Are Swingers” utilizes public domain vintage stripper footage and is hilarious. As I try never to repeat myself, I’m working on another idea just as crazy but it takes a little more time. I don’t think the music lends itself to a storyline, acted video so I gotta do something clever or do a live performance video.

JBL: What other musical endeavors are you engaged in these days?

SP: We started an eclectic record label here last year and we’ve got all kinds of things coming up. Next up is a pop/hip hop CD from Sweet 17. It’s 2 girls, Jessica New and Dannielle Gaha. I write, play and produce. Aside from this project, Dannielle is an incredible jazz singer. Then, I have a new classical CD coming out mid summer, then a swampy, rock, instrumental guitar record that sounds like Ry Cooder and Neil Young got together and drank too much. And finally on the slate for this year is a very interesting, very different percussion record that my buddy and fellow Salamander M.B. Gordy and I are making. MB does all the cool drums on Battlestar Galactica and The Sarah Connor Chornicles. And then next year, a new Sad Salamanders CD which will have some songs on it as well as instrumental cuts.

JBL:  How can people find out more about you and the band?

SP: The most up to date stuff is usually on the wall at the your local post office but . . . my main website is www.scootermusic.com. And on My Space it is www. myspace.com/sadsalamander otherwise always check jazz and blues lounge.com they have the inside scoop. I also write an irreverent, honest blog about music and creativity at http://scootermusicblog.blogspot.com/
 

JBL: Where can someone get their hands on a copy of Cigarettes and Fishnets?

SP:  The CD is available on iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon, and every major digital distributor online. You can also buy directly from us, and we’ve been known to throw in some extras not available elsewhere because we’re so damn nice.

JBL:  Let’s get the rundown of the band so everyone can know who the players are…

SP:  Sad Salamanders is made up of some mighty fine players. You’ve got your drums and percussion handled by Rick Latham and MB Gordy. We’re talking groovemeisters who’ve worked with The Doobie Brothers, Edgar Winter, Juice Newton, Chuck Rainey, Pat Travers, Rick Derringer, Bill Withers, & Frank Zappa. Anything brass is impeccably blown by Nick Lane and Steve Crum who’ve hung with Maynard Ferguson, The Who, Chicago, Brian Setzer, The Eels, Tom Jones, & Diana Ross. All flutes, ethnic flutes, wind fx and saxophones are ably fingered by Don Markese, who has graciously played with Neil Diamond, Ray Charles and more damn movie soundtracks than you’d think humanly possible. Accordion licks, runs and squeezing are executed flawlessly by the legendary Frank Marocco who is the most sought after accordionist in the world. His credits are longer than Hugh Hefner’s conquests. Suffice to say Les Baxter, Dave Grusin and Henry Mancini. All guitars, electric & acoustic, ukuleles and whatever the hell else we threw on here, were plucked nimbly by Nick Brown, who has plucked some of the best in town. And finally, those awesome stabs, glisses, runs, vamps and general brilliant keyboard frills are poked and prodded by Ed Martel and me. There were times we had so much fun we almost didn’t get anything done.

JBL: Who were/are your musical influences?

SP:  I’m influenced by every style of music. For me it’s all about the feeling I get. The genre almost doesn’t matter. Old to new, I listen to anything I can get my hands on. How about instead of the usual suspects of influence, I mention what I am currently obsessing over? Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn CD with all of the extra cues from the show, Jane Birkin’s CD “Ex Fan des Sixties” especially her song “Yesterday Yes A Day” it just kills me. Ravel’s “Daphnis Et Chloe”, and then on a more recent vibe Duffy and LCD Soundsystem.

JBL: What first got you interested in music?

SP:  I’m a late starter. I was just an avid record collector/concertgoer/fan until I was 19. I was kind of lost or misdirected at the time and the only thing I could come up with that was cooler than listening to records was making them. So I started taking piano lessons and made my first record 2 years later. Still love it more than anything else in the world. Sometimes I think I’m just trying to make my own version of every great piece of music I’ve ever heard. A very daunting task.

JBL:  Is there anything else you would like the readers to know?

SP: Yeah there is. And it’s about music. And what it means to me and everyone else in the world. It is the most powerful art form in existence. More memories, experiences, and emotions are tied to music than anything else. Music was there when my son was born, for someone’s first kiss, someone else’s favorite movie, and it will be there at your funeral. And yet all I read about music right now is that music is in trouble. Music has no value. Music is going nowhere. And my response to that is that music is better, more alive, more influential and more important that at any point in history. And it’s only going to get better. Music is being put back into the hands of those who make it. Musicians today have an opportunity to write exactly what they want, record it and release it directly to you, the listener, without the obstacles of lawyers, executives and marketers who have only one thing on their minds control. Oh, and money. OK, 3 things, control, money and advertiser friendly acts they can manipulate to reinforce the first two things. But music should be in the control of those who make it and those who listen. Those who make it an asset to their lives. This new world will finally allow music to be democratic. You, the listeners, decide what you want. The time is here for you to be the leaders of what is heard and talked about.

The music that will come out over the next fifty years will be the most innovative, original and phenomenal music ever heard by mankind. Instead of just one artist every now and then releasing exactly what they want, imagine a world where what you listen to is almost always exactly what the artist wants. The music will be more pure, less homogenized and ultimately more satisfying to the listener. And everyone will be able to have access to it. At an extremely reasonable price. You will be able to directly contact your favorite artist. Everyone will have a closer, more intimate relationship with the music and the people who make it. There has never been an opportunity like this in the history of music. Be a believer. The best is yet to come.
 
Now, everybody go put on their current favorite record and have a martini.

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