Interview with Jason Scott Stewart

by Adam Marshall ~  The Lance Monthly

So, Jason, what is the one thing you would like people to remember about you after you're gone?

Am I dead already? I thought this interview just started? You don't waste any time, do you? Hm. It's simple, really. On the most basic level I would like to be remembered as someone who was good at what he did and wanted little more than the satisfaction of sharing his creativity in a positive way with as many people as possible.

You don't seem totally satisfied with that answer. That's not all there is, is there?

(Hesitates and smiles). No.

Well, then, what is it?

It's complicated. It's deep and spiritual and personal and universal so, naturally, it's hard to talk about. Artists are very sensitive beings and they have a tendency, shallow though they may be at times, to tap into the things in life that really matter most. They also have a tendency to carry that with them wherever they go. I guess that's why they're so goddamn difficult, sometimes (laughs). I suppose it's the reason drug use is so common among the musician culture. Drugs are an escape, as is music in its way, and escape is a very attractive thing to an oversensitive soul in a world such as this.

Wow, that's deep. Have you ever done drugs yourself?

Not according to my agent....of course not, how dare you insinuate that I've done such things! I'll have you know that...(cracks up, laughing). Of course I've done drugs, I just finished explaining why I understand the drug culture so well!

Would you like to be more specific?

Not really (smiles). Actually, to be more specific....hell no.

Interviewer just waits.

How about if I tell you all the drugs I haven't done? PCP, Crack, Heroin, Meth and lots of other stuff.

So, you stick to the lighter stuff?

You ask that like I still do drugs. I drink but I don't really care for drugs, anymore. They all seem designed specifically to bring you down so hard and fast as to make you rabid for more. I don't have that kind of money. Thank God, I don't have that kind of money.

Fair enough. You seem to have developed quite a cult following around the world, much of it through the Internet. What do you think of this technology and where do you see it going?

That's a big question. The Internet is a beautiful thing but it's also a parent's worst nightmare. Having the ability to access just about anything you can possibly imagine at a moment's notice is an incredible thing but what we have to remember is that it's such an unstoppable communication device that you are going to see just as much good as bad. Everything in our society transfers perfectly to the Internet. Our countrie's crime rates as compares to others are unbelievable. When you live in a free society it means that everyone gets to do whatever it is that they want to do to get whatever it is that they want, within reason. But that last part doesn't even matter because it's subjective, first of all, but beyond that, let's see them catch me! You know what I mean? Yuk. Yhea, this world is a bummer, sometimes.

Okay, on a lighter note, how do you feel about your own music and where do you see it going?

Excellent. There are always times in your life when it varies and the reason it affects the music is because the music is just an extension of the man. I've seen many musicians lose interest in their music when in fact it was the other way around the whole time. It's the music that lost interest in them because they stagnated and got down on themselves or chose not to keep it alive by learning and striving. As we get older it becomes much more difficult to keep your passion alive but it's a simple matter, really. Do you want to keep enjoying your life or are you ready to lay down and die? You can avoid it all day long, you can try to euphamize it out of your life but it's like that line in that movie, "Lean on Me". You either get busy trying or you get busy dying. As you go through a normal day in life you come across people who have made one choice or the other. But what's worse is that most people fall somewhere in between and living life in that kind of limbo can't be good for the soul.

Wow, again, very philosophical. Is spirituality a big part of your life?

Yes. It is. I am. We are (laughs out loud).

I see. You like to laugh, too, don't you?

Oh man, absolutely. If you're not the type of person that can get it out through rage or tears then, by all means, laugh out loud! It's almost like orgasm, sometimes. Have you ever had someone made you laugh so hard that you couldn't control your bodily functions? I mean, milk shoots out your nose or you lose control of your legs and collapse or you can't breathe for so long you think you're going to die? That's the stuff, man. If they could bottle that we'd all be better off.

I agree. So, what are some of the more memorable moments in your life?

Jeez, man, you like those gigantic questions, don't you? Okay, let's see....The year I was 17 tops the list, so far. Everything just came together at the same time and I could do no wrong. If I had known it wasn't going to last I would have tried harder to hold on to it. The problem is I just can't bring myself to hold habitual patterns in my life. If I do, I start to go into panic mode because I'm convinced I'm going to be stuck in the same day for the rest of my life like in, "Groundhog Day". Oye. That would suck the big one. It's the reason I can't hold a damn job for more than a couple months. Quitting a job is an incredibly liberating feeling, it's like, "Fuck this, I don't need this place, man, no one can keep me down!" (bursts out laughing). The only problem is after the bender the next day you gotta get your ass up and look for another job and then you go, "Oh yhea, this is why that little irritating voice was telling me not to quit that job." (laughs again). Honestly, I would rather die alone in a ditch with my guitar in my hands than be a millionaire and have to go to work in a suit and stare at the same miserable faces and listen to the same miserable stories every day. I know a lot of people won't believe that but fuck them. (laughs again).

What was it about being 17 that was so great?

Oh, yhea, I got a little off track there, stupid short attention span. Umm...it was a great year for me. I fell in love for one thing and it was intense but it was also the year I became very popular. I'm not saying that I only enjoyed the attention, actually it was the other way around. I had a hard time getting anything done that year because everyone wanted a piece of me. But I put my foot down when it was time to practice. I used to put my chair up against the practice room door or people would just barge in on me. Even still, they would knock on the window but I would just ignore them. I was productive and commicative and truly happy and I just fed off the energy of the people around but one of my favorite things of all was giving it back whenever I could. It was very pure and real and it's too bad that age and experience can have a tendency to taint the spirit a bit.

I know what you mean. Would you do anything different in your life if you could re-live it, now?

Jeez, there you go again. That question has to be qualified. If I had the knowledge of my current life I would make some minor changes. You don't have the benefit of maturity and experience when you're younger and those things help you make better choices in life. If I didn't have knowledge of my current life I wouldn't change a thing. Experiencing things the way I did made me who I am and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I had fun in my life, I enjoy living. You're always going to have a regret or two but who hasn't figured that one out?

What are some of the things that you regret in your life?

Honestly, it doesn't matter here. I know you want some dirt for the interview but I just want to remain positive. Suffice it to say I've had my bad moments, as have we all, but the good still outweighs the bad to me.

Fair enough. Let's get to the standard stuff. Who are some of your influences and favorite guitar slingers?

Oh, there's a bunch. It's difficult to hear my influences because I never really tried to copy people too much and if I did I tried to learn the lick by ear rather than from a magazine so I could put my own spin on it.

I believe my first influence was a guitarist named Martin Howard who was in my dad's band. He really had his own style and sound, he could really whip a crowd into a frenzy. The first guitar that I bought myself was a Silverburst Gibson Les Paul, which is what Martin had.

Chet Atkins was an influence on my ecoustic playing. I love that difficult finger picking stuff. With most of today's shredders, if you put an ecoustic guitar in their hands and told them to go for it, they would just stare at you like..."What the hell is this thing?"

My bending was influenced mostly by Joe Walsh. I always loved his wry, bluesy, almost toungue-in-cheek style of playing.

Randy Rhoads was a big influence, especially on my ligado playing. He had a unique and ferocious way of playing that I adored.

Eddy Van Halen was the first tapping influence, of course. I learned Eruption and then decided to play it backwards, instead. It sounded pretty cool. I'm still amazed at what a revolutionary he was at the time. I was only 8 years old when he did Eruption. He got passed up on the speed dial later but no one was doing what he was doing at that time.

Tony MacAlpine was my biggest sticatto influence. There were a lot of Neo-Classical pickers at that time but I thought he brought a little more to the table than just liquid speed, especially when you throw in his piano playing ability.

Greg Howe was a huge influence on my ligado and tapping. Some of my licks sound very similar but I never learned any of his licks note for note, as I said before, I learned them by ear so I could make them my own.

Steve Vai influenced my whammy bar stuff, of course. I don't even use one now because it got stolen at a gig but no one wields that thing like that crazy bastard.

Satriani was an influence in writing great, listenable instrumentals without skimping on the shred. Surfing with the Alien is a classic.

Eric Johnson influenced me a bit in sliding and string skipping and harmonics. He has written some truly sonically beautiful stuff.

There were others that had a slight influence on me like Al Dimeola, Steve Morse, Jimi Hendrix, Allen Holdsworth and Jimmy Page.

And there are tons of guitarists I love who didn't really influence me (mostly because I heard them much later). I love John Petrucci from Dream Theater. Stanley Jordan is a total original. Michael Hedges was totally cool. And I love bass players, too, like Stanley Clarke, Stu Hamm and of course the master himself, Mr. Victor Wooten.

That's a very impressive list, to be sure. What is your take on the ups and downs of instrumental music?

Another big question. Instrumental music has definitely had it's ups and downs over the years. My dad's original band was in the sixties during the time of The Ventures and The Fireballs. Surf music was huge for a while and then it fell to the British invasion, basically. Over the years you've had players like Hendrix and Beck who've had success with instrumentals. When Satriani's "Surfin' with the Alien," hit the airwaves in the eighties, it was fantastic. They played every damn song on the album until it was so saturated no one wanted to hear it, anymore. This was also around the same time that Mike Varney established Shrapnel records and started an underground instrumental revolution with players like Yngwie Malmsteen, Tony MacAlpine and Greg Howe. Steve Vai, Satriani and Eric Johnson are three of the luckier ones as far as air-play goes but they also write songs that are more about song writing and strong melodies than just pure shredding. Yngwie wowed a lot of people when he first hit the scene but the problem was that after the first few minutes your attention span started to wander. It was like, "Okay, it's pretty obvious that you're unbelievably fast and talented but....what else is there?" It's the curse of the talented instrumentalist. How do you keep people interested? It's difficult for someone who has so much ability under their belt to sit there and play three chord progressions all day. It's kind of like a brilliant 3rd grader who should be doing 10th grade math because he's so bored he can barely keep from falling asleep in class. So, obviously, the only answer is balance and it's a very thin tightrope, indeed. You go too far one way and all the shredder fans think you suck but if you go too far the other way it becomes indulgent and people lose interest. It's tough. I've had to deal with it for quite a while. I always wanted to write music that everyone could love but I think that may be unrealistic...notice I said, may be unrealistic? I just can't quite destroy the optomist in me that wants the impossible but I guess that's a good thing because it continues to drive me. The problem with writing music everyone can love is not the music itself, it's social perception. Some people are just convinced that they don't like a certain type of music because it doesn't fit into their cultural or social status and it's not what their parents or their friends listen to. Well, I only have one thing to say to that. BULLSHIT. There is crappy music (which is subjective opinion, of course) in every genre out there but by the same token there are great songs in every genre there is. Have you ever gone to a friend's house and looked in their CD collection and were shocked to find something you never thought they would listen to? Like that friend who likes rock music but then you find the soundtrack to, "Beauty and the Beast" in the CD player? Of course, it's funny and of course you give him hell about it but that's exactly my point. The whole reason he never told you he liked that kind of music is social perception. It's totally bogus, man, and it's cramping my style but I'm still gonna try, anyway.

Wow, that's really cool. I couldn't agree more. So, what's on the horizon for Jason Scott Stewart?

Many, many things. I want to do a lot of theme albums, like writing a song for all the Astrological signs to see if I can't capture the essence of each one. I want to do a visualization soundtrack album, sort of a new age idea, but with more talent. I've always wanted to do an all bass album because I really love to play the bass, I don't know why I don't do it more often, I've written some interesting stuff. An all ecoustic album because I NEVER have showcased that side of my playing enough. I learned to play on the ecoustic and before I was shredding the electric I was doing it on the ecoustic and the ecoustic can be so much more personal, at times. I'd love to do an all keyboard album with some classical and ragtime and blues and shred stuff on it. It would be great to get together with really great musicians and put our heads together for ideas and projects. I would love to tour, as well, although I would keep it limited so I didn't burn out on it. I do love to play live but I know from my experience and other musicians that it can be grueling and it can suck the inspiration out of you to always be surrounded by that "party atmosphere" where everyone always wants a piece of you and someone is always shoving drugs in front of your face. I want it all, man, I want it all. But, the music will always come first. I picked up a guitar at the exact same time I was just starting to discover who I was and how I fit into this world. There will NEVER be a time when it's not a part of me and if that time finally comes, well...then it's time to die.

Wow. Jason, it's been an honor interviewing you. This has been a fascinating interview. Thank you. Is there any final thoughts you would like to ad?

Thank you Adam and I agree that this was a great interview. You asked some really big, tough questions and got to the center of a big part of who I am. I would also like to thank all my fans out there who hook into my expression. If only one of you goes home some night feeling better, a little lighter maybe, after hearing something I've done, than all of the endless hours were worth it. I picked up the guitar for personal reasons that helped me grow as a human being but it's the energy and the love of the people that will keep me playing into that good night. Viva Life!

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