Jonathan Scales

Outside of cruise ships, Caribbean folk music and New York City subway platforms, steel pan music is pretty rare; steel pans (AKA steel drums) are even more rare as the lead instrument in jazz combos. But 36-year-old steel pan innovator and composer Jonathan Scales is looking to transform the way his instrument is perceived by featuring the steel pans in an ever-expanding number of musical contexts, most of his own creation. He takes after musical spirit guide Béla Fleck, who transcended the perceived categorical limitations of the banjo to become one of the most prolific crossover musicians ever. Scales discovered Fleck’s genre-expanding music as a college student at North Carolina’s Appalachian State University; from App State’s campus in Boone, N.C., Scales would travel around the Southeast to see Fleck and his band The Flecktones, often arriving to venues hours before the show, hoping to steal a few minutes of conversation with his musical inspiration. It happened often enough that Fleck would spot Scales hours before downbeat and playfully accuse him of “lurking” before about-facing it backstage. Scales was undeterred, however, and after hitting it off with another Flecktone—harmonica player and pianist Howard Levy—one night after a show in Knoxville, a correspondence developed that led to Levy playing on Scales’ 2013 Ropeadope Records debut, the eponymously titled Jonathan Scales Fourchestra. The tune Levy plays on is a self-effacing nod to Scales’ early interactions with Fleck; it’s titled “Lurkin.’” Scales’ band, too, is ironically and whimsically named; the core group comprises a trio, not a quartet, of musicians. However, the Fourchestra regularly augments with stellar guest instrumentalists, including but not limited to everyone who’s ever been a full-time member of the Flecktones. Levy and Flecktones’ bassist Victor Wooten played on the Ropeadope debut; 2014’s Mixtape Symphony was inspired by and dedicated to Flecktones’ percussionist and SynthAxe Drumitar pioneer Roy “Futureman” Wooten (Victor’s brother); and 2018’s Pillar, an album Scales has called his most potent and representative music to date, featured former Flecktone saxophonist Jeff Coffin, Victor Wooten, and for the first time the man himself, Mr. Béla Fleck, who plays banjo on Scales’ “Focus Poem.” Also guesting on Pillar are heavy hitters like trumpeters Justin Ray and Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah and frequent collaborators like bassist MonoNeon (Prince, Ghost Note) and percussionist Weedie Braimah (Trombone Shorty, Nth Power). The two constants alongside Scales, however, are bassist E’lon JD and drummer Maison Guidry; the Fourchestra has been playing together, in one form or another, for nearly 14 years, and, in total, Scales has released seven albums as a leader—the most recent being 2019’s Mindstate Music, the rare outing where Scales is just one of a dozen steel pan players amongst an orchestra of steel. Like Fleck, Scales is constantly subverting conventions of genre in favor of mixing motifs. Fleck has been nominated for Grammys in more categories than any other musician, and in Scales’ body of work, one sees the potential for a similar kind of cross-genre prodigiousness. Jazz, funk, bluegrass, fusion, Latin—Scales shows idiomatic fluency in every area. He’s been known to even take on pop covers—see his version of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” or his take on Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose”— and classical concerti—in 2014, he covered an excerpt of The Imposter, Fleck’s concerto for Banjo and symphony orchestra. After hearing a recording of the latter, Fleck said, “To say I am impressed would be a gross understatement….” In February 2020, shortly before live gigs were cancelled due to Covid-19, Scales became the first steel pannist to play on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk concert series; the Fourchestra played a set derived entirely from Pillar and were joined on “Focus Poem” by Béla Fleck, marking the first time the band had played the tune live with Fleck on banjo. -Matt Silver

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artist