Don’t say ‘jam band’

Even though he’s played with such jam band circuit staples as The Everyone Orchestra, String Cheese Incident and Hot Buttered Rum String Band, and in July got to play Jerry Garcia’s “Wolf” guitar with Phil Lesh & Friends at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Portland singer-songwriter and guitarist Scott Law tells me that to use the term “jam band” for his group, Scott Law Band, “is limiting.”

“It makes people think of the word ‘meandering,'” he said. “Our thing is definitely more succinct than that. We jam, but we’re definitely into having cool structure. My [song]writing sort of encompasses some different worlds. There’s rock, there’s funk, there’s a bit of jazz. Blues runs all through it, and there’s even a folk element.”

On Law’s Web site (www.scottlawmusic.com) the sound is described as “rock rhythm and throw-down funk.”

Listen to SLB’s Deliver (on Seattle label, Liquid City) for a good idea of what to expect at its upcoming Oasis show. Even though back-up singers, Tarshene Daugherty and Jen Bernard, who help bring the serious funk to “Find Something Good” ("We didn’t come this far to turn around/ Revolutionize your song and harmonize it…/ Better find something to give…") and other songs on this great CD, won’t be traveling to Chico due to being “otherwise encumbered with home life” in Portland, the core of SLB will deliver the goods: Law on lead vocals and guitars; Damien Aitken, alto and tenor sax; Dennis “Deep Den” Smith, bad-ass bass; Asher Fulero, vocals and keyboards; and Rich Sellars on drums.