Greg Scott: "Bring Me Back"
Paul Liberatore
The Marin Independent Journal
On his first full-length album, Greg Scott stakes his place among the finest R&B singers to ever call Marin County home.
The 26-year-old Scott is a Marin rarity, a white soul singer in the mold of Bill Champlin, who founded the Sons of Champlin in Marin in the '60s and went on to a successful career with Chicago.
The comparison is especially resonant since Scott has vowed to bring back the glory days of Marin County pop and rock in the '60s and '70s.
He's on his way to doing that with "Bring Me Back," lending his extraordinary tenor voice - reminiscent of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway - to a dozen funk and soul songs he co-wrote and recorded at the Place, his home studio in San Rafael.
The CD opens with a computerized voice reporting that "Earth has lost its funk." Then Scott sets out to remedy that situation with funky synthesizer-driven tunes like "Funkanauts," the hand-clapping "Mother's Day," which recalls "a summer day in 1975"; the percolating "Last Chance Lover," the thumping "Bring Me Back" and the street sounds of "Market St. Lady." He sets out to melt feminine hearts with the smooth pop of "Damn U Look Good Ta Nite" and the sensual sounds of "Like a Song."
Scott's vocal gifts are best displayed on the CD's two ballads, "Simple Things," with its acoustic piano accompaniment, and "Hello," another soft rock gem.
Scott has the looks and the voice to go a long way on "American Idol."
But for now, he's one of the brightest stars on the Marin musical firmament, and "Bring Me Back" proves it.
Hear him: Greg Scott's CD release concert for "Bring Me Back" is at 8:30 p.m. June 12 at Mill Valley Masonic Hall at 96 Throckmorton Ave. in Mill Valley. Tickets are $20 to $25 at www.murphyproductions.com or at 415-389-5072.
Paul Liberatore: A Marin singer with a lot of soul
Paul Liberatore
Article Launched: 07/03/2008 09:30:18 PM PDT
Soul singer Greg Scott caught the attention of Roberta Flack, who flew him to New York to meet him. (Provided by M. Albano) Marin isn't known as a launching pad for soul singers. We've got a lot of rock and blues in our heritage, but soul, not so much. So that's why I was unexpectedly blown away by a CD I got this week from a 25-year-old white soul singer and songwriter named Greg Scott.
The six-song EP, literally titled "Extended Play," arrived over the transom with no advance hoopla. It didn't need any. I put it on and immediately asked myself: "Who is Greg Scott and why haven't I heard of him before?"
I hadn't heard his records because, with the exception of a single he used to sell after gigs, he hasn't had any. "Extended Play," recorded in "The Place," his San Rafael studio, is his debut.
As for playing live, he's been quietly under the radar on the Marin club scene, performing with his band in mostly low-profile places like the defunct Rafters, a brewpub on San Rafael's Fourth Street that he used to pack on Thursday nights after the farmers market.
Young and handsome as sin, Scott has the whole package. He looks like he could kick booty on "American Idol."
But what got my attention right off is his voice. He has one. And he knows how to use it. After meeting Scott in a local watering hole and checking out the new CD, Marin's Eric Martin, former lead singer for Mr. Big, thought he was listening to a Stevie Wonder record he hadn't heard before.
"After I picked my jaw off the floor," Martin says, "I praised him for his God-given talent." Scott's manager got one of his songs Advertisement into the hands of Roberta Flack, who picked up in Scott's style the influence of her former partner, the great Donny Hathaway, one of Scott's vocal heroes. "She wanted to meet the man behind the voice," Scott told me. "So she flew me to New York, where she has a music school, and had me perform for her kids. She really respected what I did."
Scott writes mostly good-time songs with uplifting messages. Occasionally, he'll pin on humorous titles like "I Gotta Habit" and "Save Your Drama for Your Momma."
"Life's gotta be positive," he says. "So my message is positive. I was raised with that mind-set." Scott grew up in Chico as something of a vocal prodigy. His parents put him in a recording studio when he was 9 and had him sing Peabo Bryson's ballad "Can You Stop the Rain," which ain't exactly "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
"I was hitting every note," he remembered. "My parents went, 'Oh, no, now we've gotta get in the music business.' They said that because it's scary. It isn't easy."
On a small-town level, Scott got into the music business when he was 10, singing in his father's band. His dad, a funeral director, moonlighted as the leader of the Great Scott Band, playing festivals and parties.
Scott laughingly describes his father as "a wedding singer-slash-mortician."
"My mom's career was disposing of medical waste," he says with a chuckle. "So there were times when my mom would be driving a truck with frozen AIDS monkeys in the back and my dad would be driving a dead body to a service. They had real interesting jobs."
After high school, to be closer to the Bay Area music scene, Scott moved to Marin five years ago, living with an uncle who has a house in San Rafael and works for Pixar. "I fell deeply, madly in love with Marin," he gushes. "It became my heart and my home. Marin has soul and wildlife. It's Chico with art. It's lush and the people are chill."
In the long run, Scott's plan is to score a major label record deal and put Marin back on the pop music map. "In the '60s, famous musicians were everywhere," he says. "Artists were so well known for being from Marin. I want to be a part of bringing that back."
Paul Liberatore can be reached at liberatore@marinij.com
