Russell Ferrante is on the line from Los Angeles to talk about Yellowjackets' imminent Scottish tour.
During the conversation some names crop up that you might not immediately associate with one of America's leading jazz bands of the past 30 years and counting. Joni Mitchell isn't a surprise inclusion, since Ferrante toured with her Wild Things Run Fast band in the early 1980s, but Metallica?
It turns out that Metallica's bass guitarist Robert Trujillo played a significant part in the tracks on Yellowjackets' forthcoming album, A Rise in the Road, that gave Ferrante and the band's more senior members goosebumps. Trujillo doesn't actually play on the album but by rescuing and renovating the bass guitar that once belonged to the late bass innovator Jaco Pastorius and lending it to Pastorius's son Felix, he was able to re-establish a link that goes back to before Felix was born.
"When Jaco died a lot of his belongings were scattered and his bass was lost until it eventually came up for auction and Robert was able to buy it for quite a large sum of money," says Ferrante. "Our saxophonist Bob Mintzer played with Jaco's Word of Mouth Band and, in fact, he visited Felix in hospital when he was born. So there we were in the studio, Felix has joined us while our regular bassist Jimmy Haslip takes a sabbatical and we have Jaco's saxophone player and Jaco's son playing Jaco's bass. It was quite an eerie but thrilling experience."
With Haslip gone, Ferrante is the one Yellowjacket who has been there for the entire journey. Formed in 1978 to work on guitarist Robben Ford's Inside Story album, Yellowjackets have had an up-and-down history. The first recording they put out under their own name, Yellowjackets, won a Grammy nomination in 1981, much to their surprise – "I'd heard of the Grammys," says Ferrante, "but they weren't something I thought about us being involved in." But after that boost Ford left, precipitating a catalogue of arrivals and departures that Ferrante says has brought both difficult phases and new adventures.
"Some of our personnel changes have been harder to deal with than others," he says. "Losing Robben, for example, felt like the end of the road at first. But we've always been able to go off and do other things – when I was working with Joni Mitchell that time, Jimmy was touring with Al Jarreau and I think Will, our drummer, was with Lionel Ritchie – and then come back to Yellowjackets refreshed and ready to get down to making music. It's like home base for me, certainly, and it almost doesn't matter who the individuals are in the band at any one time because it's the collective endeavour that matters. It's never been down to one guy to come up with all the ideas."
When they put together Timeline, the album that marked their official 30th anniversary in 2011, there were no grand plans.
"We wanted to recognise the fact that we'd made it to that milestone but with everyone in the band contributing material, we've never established a particular theme in advance of a recording," says Ferrante. "We all just start writing and gather all the material we have together, select what we all feel is the best and refine it. So if a theme or a focus emerged in Timeline, it was the music itself, with us just trying to be as good as we can be."
The arrival of Felix Pastorius has been a fillip and as the band prepares to tour Scotland for the first time for the new J-Word project, with Bob Franceschini replacing Mintzer and Will Kennedy back on drums after a 10-year absence, Ferrante feels the band has had an injection of youth.
"Felix is my daughter's age – 30," he says. "And the great thing about him is, he's not just a wonderful musician, he's a wonderful person – and that's important when you're spending so much time together travelling," he says. "Bob Mintzer tracked him for a few years then heard him with Jeff Coffin's band and when we auditioned bass players, we asked Felix along and he was the one who stood out. It's great having not just a Pastorius in the band but this particular Pastorius."
Yellowjackets and Trio Red play Eden Court, Inverness, on March 10; Perth Concert Hall, March 11; Music Hall, Aberdeen, March 12; Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, March 13; Rothes Halls, Glenrothes, March 15.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article