YOUR INFLUENCES STICK WITH YOU

Scott Henderson spent lockdown training his ears and building improv skills. As Karnevel! shows, his jazz chops flourished, but his blues-rock roots remain as strong as ever.

- BILL MILKOWSKI

GROWING UP AS a die-hard blues-rocker in 1970s South Florida, Scott Henderson fell in love with the sounds of that era's big-name rock guitarists. "Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck... I grew up listening to all those guys," Henderson tells Guitar Player. "I mean, your influences stick with you, man. I learned how to play by ear from listening to cats like that, and I don't think you ever lose those roots." A decade later, Henderson would make a name for himself, not as a blues-rocker but as one of the prominent fusion guitarists of the '80s and '90s, carrying on in the tradition of his mentors Jean-Luc Ponty, Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul, all of whom he had toured and recorded with. And while Henderson may have made significant contributions to Ponty's 1985 album, Fables, 1986's The Chick Corea Electric Band and the Zawinul Syndicate's 1988 outing, The Immigrants, it was in the context of Tribal Tech, the hard-hitting funk-fusion band he formed in 1984 with bassist Gary Willis, that his creative juices really flowed and his scintillating virtuosity truly flourished.

Henderson's searing blues-rock roots would eventually bubble up on a series of side projects, including 1994's Dog Party, 1997's Tore Down House and 2002's Well to the Bone. But otherwise, he seldom strayed from his love of jazz and fusion, collaborating with bassist Victor Wooten and drummer Steve Smith on two volumes of Vital Tech Tones fusion recordings and with bassist Jeff Berlin and Dennis Chambers on 2012's HBC, which included revved-up power-trio renditions of Zawinul's "D Flat Waltz," Wayne Shorter's "Mysterious Traveller," Billy Cobham's "Stratus" and Herbie Hancock's "Actual Proof."