Bass Musician Magazine - SPECIAL March 2014 Issue | Page 19

Tom Scott‘s big band horn arrangement
on the song is also phenomenal, it’s like
Van Morrison meets Count Basie.
And he wrote every note that you hear
basically. He wrote the rhythm charts, the
horn charts, and I didn’t change a thing.
Tom is a phenomenal musician, and again,
if you surround yourself with good people,
good things happen. We kind of had this
vision for a jazzy-meets-rock-and-roll-ish
thing, kind of Brian Setzer, Count Basie,
just a little bit of everything. Chris Gero
was really instrumental in describing what
he wanted to Tom, who was able to go
home and come up with that arrangement.
Chris had this idea about starting it with
just bass, nobody knows what’s going to
happen, and then all of a sudden you hear
this voice come in and people are like, okay
what’s that? And then all of a sudden this
big band takes your head off, you know?
[Laughs]
That’s exactly how it hit me. And I wasn’t
looking at the credits, so of course
after I heard Michael McDonald singing
“Moondance” I just assumed that he was
going to be singing the next one because
he wrote it. So that was another surprise,
because you have Sara Barielles singing
that.
Right.
I think “I Can Let Go Now” is one of the
greatest tunes ever written.

Period. And when I go see him, and he sings
it, you know, you just can’t stop weeping.
[Laughs] The song is so emotional, I’m
sure everybody can connect on some
certain level, as Sara Barielles did. Actually
her schedule was pretty crazy, and her
management passed on her singing on it
at first. We had sent her over the track
that we cut with the orchestra, and when
she heard it she called back and said “I’ve
gotta sing on this. Let me figure out a
time.” I think it was about a month later
we were able to get her in the studio.
The song is so perfect, and it sounds like
you kept the original string arrangement.
Yes. David Paich’s father, Marty Paich, did
the original arrangement. I think one of the
stories to the original was that the song
was a demo, and that demo went on the
album. So yeah, there’s like all this kind of
connectivity, and of course when you say
Michael McDonald, here’s a guy that can
do no wrong in terms of singing. For me,
he’s one of my all-time favorite singers,
and musicians, and writers, and I can’t get
enough. So when he said yes to doing the
album, that’s when I first started thinking,
okay this is gonna be great.
You recorded the Beatles’ “Yesterday” as
a duo with your son on piano. What was
that like, playing with your son and putting
him on your album?
Chris Gero and I were in pre-production
and Noah came by the studio, he had just
MAR 2014 / BASSMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM