Planetary Group took some time to get to know Scott Fisher, an LA-based artist with a melty, mellow take on funk.
Planetary Group: Tell us about your latest release. How did you come to create it?
Scott: I have a new album coming out, October 26th – it’s called 93 Million Miles. The first single “The Right Way”, you can listen to now (and thank you to everyone who’s been listening to it!). I’m happy with how it turned out, I hope you guys enjoy it. We recorded the drums here in Los Angeles at EastWest Studios’ Studio Three, which actually happens to be the room where they recorded Pet Sounds… So that was a privilege. My good buddy and longtime collaborator, Enrique Gonzalez, played the drums. He’s played with Los Lobos and… he’s played with everyone, amazing drummer.
Once we had the drums done, I took my little hard drive and went up to Texas where there’s a really wonderful place called the Sonic Ranch. Okay. I hibernated there for a little while during the pandemic and finished up the rest of the record. And then I came back here to LA to mix it. There’s mostly original songs on the album, but I did one song by Bob Dylan called “Simple Twist of Fate”, which kind of has a little gospel tinge of influence. And there’s another song by Jerry Garcia called “Mission in the Rain”, which is maybe a lesser known song of his, but I think is fabulous.
PG: Share a bit about your musical journey, from when you first started making music until now.
Scott: I started taking classical piano when I was around six years old from an exiled German concert pianist. She fled Nazi Germany in 1939 to escape, with her life, to Portland, Oregon oddly enough. And I took lessons with her up until I was about 16. Uh, incredible foundation musically for me. She was very rigid though and old school in terms of not really wanting me to improvise or play modern music, et cetera. So of course I kind of rebelled against that, and that’s where I got into fusion and Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, Thelonious Monk. Those were my favorite pianists.
I started playing a little more poppy/ rocky stuff in my twenties and got a few lucky breaks and got some of my music on some TV commercials and TV shows and stuff like that. So that kind of brought me to Los Angeles to do some more licensing and, uh, “TV music” for lack of a better term.
Then I started learning how to produce and mix and [started] working with other artists and all that was fabulous. My love is still really making quirky little, indie records, and that’s what you’ll have here with my new release, 93 Million Miles.
PG: Let’s talk about the music that you love. Pick one album for each category below & tell us a bit about it!
- An album you grew up listening to:
Scott: This is a difficult one because there’s a couple obviously, but one that I kept going back to over and over and over is Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. And since I started out as a piano player, there’s a “Voodoo Child” rendition [that I love]. [It was an] early morning or super late night jam session where Steve Winwood – they called them Stevie back in the day – plays the Hammond organ. And I absolutely fell in love with that. Not too long after that, when I was like 16, I ended up getting a Hammond organ from an old lady with a Leslie rotating speaker. I still have it here in my house in Los Angeles today.
And so that record… I mean the production… I just didn’t even understand how you can make such an incredible experimental album that could still connect so well in a popular way. So Electric Ladyland was huge for me.
- The album you currently have on repeat:
Scott: I’ve really been getting into J.J. Cale quite a bit. Uh, there’s just an understated intimacy on those 70s J.J. Cale albums, specifically Troubadour – the 76 album – [which] I’ve been listening to on repeat. And I absolutely love it. Just the confidence yet, the understatedness. It’s kind of the antithesis of modern pop music.
PG: What do you want people to take away from your music?
Scott: Maybe slowing down a little bit, and kind of settling into a more relaxed mode; I think we can use that in a lot of ways nowadays. It’s definitely not one of those “hit you over the head” with tons of changes, seven seconds changing, left and right [kind of records with,] you know, big dramatic differences and ups and downs. It’s more of a controlled burn. And that’s really where my head’s at nowadays: kind of a hypnotic grueling kind of feeling.
And yeah, a little bit of patience. I think it’s a record that you kind of need a little bit of patience to sit there and listen to some improvisational sections. And that’s what I’m most proud of on the record; Enrique, the drummer and myself and the interaction between us and being able to get some inspired improvisational moments in the recording studio, which is not always an easy thing to do.
PG: What’s next up for you?
Scott: Basically just excited for people to hear this record. So that’s kind of going to be the next few months in my life, trying to let people know that the record’s out. I am going to put together some live performances with some fantastic musicians, & getting back in game shape for live performances.
