Here is the full text from the Banjo Newsletter feature on lil' ol' me from July, 2008. Written by Jayme Stone:

Jake Schepps keeps his ear to ground. You just never know what to expect when you stop by his musical laboratory (a barn-like coach-house around the corner from me in ever-sunny Boulder, Colorado). There’s Jake working on a Bach lute suite one day, a hard-hitting Scruggs standard the next and counterpoint fiddle parts for his chamber roots ensemble, The Expedition Quartet, on a third day. Always keen to pick a fiddle tune, retrofit a pre-war pot assembly or preview a newly-penned piece, Jake is a true banjo renaissance man.

You can travel far and wide without leaving the comfort of your own headphones on Jake’s richly-textured new album, Ten Thousand Leaves. You’ll find yourself in Buenos Aires, the canyons of Utah and the American West: all the while zipping, rising (and schlepping) through some thoroughly compelling modern acoustic music. Of course when you meet Jake next, he’ll be digging a new musical well someplace, or chasing his three-year-old daughter Lucy around the yard with his two dogs, Salty and Bluff.
JS: When did you first hear the banjo?

JS: I remember hearing John Hartford's "Mark Twang" album on the Dr. Demento Show. That was a great syndicated radio show from the 70's and 80's that played all sorts of silly music, like Spike Jones, but also some interesting music like John Hartford and Frank Zappa. The first time I was inspired to play banjo was seeing Béla Fleck and the Flecktones at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I had a notion that I wanted to learn a musical instrument, and had played piano as a little kid. With the banjo, I was drawn to the uncommonness of it, but also seeing the Flecktones and Strength in Numbers that summer made me realize the possibilities were endless.

BNL: What was your learning curve like on the banjo? What were you learning? How did it go for you?

JS: One of the first tunes I remember working up from tablature was Béla Fleck's "See Rock City." The tab book from "Drive" was one of the first "instructional" books I purchased. When I finally bought my first banjo (an Imperial RB 250 copy) it came with a huge stack of instructional books, some of which were long out of print. I also took lessons with the late Mark Vann from Leftover Salmon. That band played all sorts of different genres of music, like Cajun tunes, country, rock, bluegrass, and more. So our lessons could go in any direction. Mark was a great student of these genres, and spent a lot of time trying to play something appropriate on the banjo for a Cajun tune, not just playing his banjo licks over that chord progression. All along I have had a fairly progressive mindset trying to learn and assimilate all sorts of styles of music on the banjo. I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time with musicians that are not bluegrassers and trying to make music with them. My brother-in-law earned a bachelor's degree in Composition. I was able to spend time learning about his assignments and working on some of his projects with him. I found it interesting and eye opening to see what was asked of a university music student relative to the banjo related instructional material I was also assimilating. Along the way I have had steady spurts playing bluegrass banjo and working on traditional styles. Actually I am on a Scruggs kick right now. Like any genre of music, the more you learn about it, the more nuance and detail you can hear and articulate.

BNL: What was it like to work with Matt Flinner as a producer on "Ten Thousand Leaves?"

JS: Matt was fantastic. I initially met him when I interviewed him for Banjo Newsletter a few years ago. At that time he was playing banjo with the Drew Emmitt Band. I have always been inspired by Matt's compositional style, and his improvisational sense and melodic and harmonic development is just so cool. I thought he would be a good ear and fit for the music I had been writing and arranging. He came at the recording with an incredible amount of energy and focus, and fostered a very positive and creative vibe in the studio. He really coaxed the best playing out of all of us. We recorded the entire album in 6 days, so a lot of decisions were made right there, and it resulted in a real snapshot of that week in the progression of our band (the album features the Expedition Quartet with Flinner on mandolin). Additionally, it was great to have a banjo player in the control room listening to takes. While he seldom offered banjo specific advice, he could hear amazing details and had a good feel for what is working on a banjo level. Additionally I asked him to write a tune for the record, as I know he is an avid composer, and he came back with a beautiful new acoustic "Flinner tune” ("The Seagull” was tabbed out in BNL 3/08)

BNL: What was it like writing for this record? You have been writing for years, but I am curious what your process was like this time around.

JS: I wrote or arranged 8 of the 11 tunes, and each one came from a different idea. My first record was an amalgam of different music I had written and arranged since beginning playing. But for this project, everything was new since the "Expedition" album came out two years ago. I have had 4 Keith Tuners on my banjo for years, but had never written a tune with them. The tune "Origami" just popped out, but I then spent many hours figuring out the harmony. The second half of the tune is a very simple repeating melody of just 2 notes, but the chords are constantly shifting chords underneath. The Astor Piazzolla tango "Todo Buenos Aires" was a big project. I heard it played by a piano/accordion duet, and was stunned at the intensity of it all, and the bass line was so compelling. I found the score and entered the 3 parts into the notation program Sibelius (accordion, piano right hand, piano left hand) and began to experiment with what might work in a stringband setting. I truncated the form, wrote out the chords, and made it into something we could improvise over. It is an interesting piece because the 3 parts are integral to give the sound and rhythm of the tune, and do not sound right when played alone.

I use the notation program Sibelius quite a bit in my composition process. I may have a kernel of a tune and then type it in standard notation so I can hear it come back at me. Some of these melodies or patterns may land really naturally on the banjo, but when I hear those notes played back at me, the melody may sound like it should go in another direction than the layout of the banjo neck implies. These can be small melodic details; like things I will play using an open fifth string, and when hearing it back in the sequencer, I realize that I should not use the open fifth string all the way through a specific passage. Sometimes when hearing the piece played back I realize it doesn't sound like a line that a mandolin or fiddle player would play, and I can sculpt it from there. Another thing that is great with Sibelius is you can toy with a lot of harmonies, and experiment to see what might sound good underneath. The tune "Cute-nik" popped out pretty quick, but then I spent a lot of time in Sibelius tweaking the melody and adding some unintuitive anticipations, and I then relearned it on the banjo. I later wrote out the entire counterpoint violin line on that tune.

BNL: Did you have your banjo in hand to write that?

JS: I did not use my banjo at all for that counterpoint. I have a rudimentary knowledge of counterpoint, and I grasp the basics of choosing the harmony, and then using the chord tones to create a secondary melody line that follows the harmony. I usually spend time working that line to sound like music in and of itself. It may not sound great by itself, but it still sounds like a pretty melody. For the "In the American West," the through-composed string quartet (for banjo, mandolin, guitar and bass on "Ten Thousand Leaves"), I had been studying classical string quartet scores, and was pretty inspired by some ideas in Beethoven's quartets. When writing this music, each of the movements came out in a different way. The first movement started as a chord progression on the banjo, and I wrote a melody over it on the computer. The second movement was mostly composed on the computer, and the third movement was an experiment to take a simple repeated banjo idea and try to make something interesting. I wanted to have improvisation in each movement, being that stringband music is an improvisational genre. To mix things up, the second movement starts with an improvised solo. Overall, I find Sibelius has helped me write music that does not sound like a string of banjo licks or just an interesting chord progression with a string of banjo rolls over each chord. Additionally, I wanted this record to sound like the Expedition Quartet. I had other instruments kick off tunes, and I wrote music with these specific musicians in mind. When it comes to banjo albums, I really prefer listening to band-concept records, a la Béla Fleck's "Drive."

BNL: Tell me about your new Banjo.

JS: My new banjo is a 1937 Gibson TB-12. I bought it from Craig Korth at the 2007 IBMA when he was interested in selling one of his pre-war flatheads. The original neck is lost to the ages, and this one came with a 5-string maple neck built by Robin Smith. It is a phenomenal banjo. As Greg Liszt (of Crooked Still) said when playing it, "This must be what it is like to play the piano." It has an incredible evenness all over the neck. It is bright, it is dark, it is loud, it is quiet; it can really do it all.

BNL: I am a bit new to this, so what is a top-tension, and what makes it different?

JS: In the late 30's when the banjo was being eclipsed by the electric guitar and sales were in decline, Gibson retooled their factory and started making 4 models of banjo. There were 3 top tension models (style 7, style 12, and style 18) and the Style 75 (which cost $75). For these top tensions, all of the metal parts were heavier gauge than other banjos, and the back is actually carved instead of laminated like other banjos. These are the 2 main characteristics that give the top tension a distinct sound from the standard banjo construction. It is also what makes it so dang heavy. In addition, all the pre-war top tensions were flatheads. Even after months of playing it, I am still in awe of how amazing this instrument sounds every time I pick it up. I feel honored to have the opportunity to play an instrument as tremendous as this, and to be a part of its long history. Since the banjo it is new to me, I am still getting used to it. It really takes a long time to get to know an instrument.

I also played an all mahogany Nechville American Vintage for years, which is a great instrument. Tom makes some great banjos, and I now have a Turbo Module in it for playing gigs where I need to be loud and not feed back.

BNL: I know we met at the Maryland Banjo Academy about 10 years ago. How did you end up there?

JS: I was attracted to the Maryland Banjo Academy because Béla Fleck and Tony Trischka were going to be there. It seemed like a fantastic opportunity to be in close proximity to Béla and Tony and learn from them. Since then it doesn’t seem like there have been many opportunities quite like that. What blew me away was the entire team of people that were into such incredible facets of the instrument. Minstrel banjo, classic banjo, clawhammer, etc. While there are many banjo players in Colorado, we simply do not have the diversity of styles like some other parts of the country. That was incredibly eye opening for me. I have ended up studying many different kinds of music as a result of that experience. Bill Evans taught a great introductory class on Classic style banjo and I have learned some of those tunes. That was a great primer into reading standard notation, since that small body of material is music actually written for banjo in standard notation, and is idiomatic for the banjo. This helped me find a whole world of music that tab reading banjo players don't usually tap into.

BNL: How did you start writing for Banjo Newsletter?

JS: I began with Banjo Newsletter because there were some very notable players that were friends here in Boulder, Colorado, and I thought it would be great to have them featured in the magazine. My first interview was Dave Johnston of Yonder Mountain String Band, and then Noam Pikelny (who was living here in Boulder at the time playing with Leftover Salmon). I get a lot from it as a musician as I get the chance to ask other musicians in depth questions that I might not ask them just hanging out in an informal setting. I also get to probe musical ideas and concepts I am thinking about and working on with musicians I respect.

BNL: Where do you see the Banjo Community going?

JS: While the banjo community is tiny on the one hand, it is also quite large on the other. When I first went to IBMA a couple years ago, it was an incredible window into the breadth of the bluegrass banjo world. Much of my world in Colorado has been in part defined by Planet Bluegrass (who promote the RockyGrass and Telluride Bluegrass Festivals), and that is a much more progressive slant on stringband music. So I do not feel qualified to make any kind of overall statement about the banjo world.

I think the history of progressive banjo styles is fascinating. To see Tony Trischka be honored this year at IBMA was wonderful, but it is also notable to think that his band Skyline met such resistance in the 70's and 80's for their choices of notes and chords. At the same time, some of Tony’s challenges laid the framework for Béla Fleck. I think Béla's path has been so remarkable; winning Grammy's, delving into so many genres of music, and the overall success of the Flecktones is astounding. With all that, I think the stereotypes associated with the banjo are still pervasive. Lately, I think part of this may come from how the instrument is taught. The dogmatic way is to teach banjo through Scruggs tunes. I do think this is a fine place to start, (it is where I started) but teaching methods for other instruments often don't rely on one particular artist to define the educational model for the entire instrument. Most of the other bluegrass instruments (mandolin, fiddle guitar, bass) have deep reservoirs of material from so many genres to delve into. There seems to be a dearth of material for banjo like that, but I have hopes that this is changing. There are some very smart people thinking about banjo teaching curricula, and certainly a big new world of fantastic progressive players.

I listened to a great interview with Pat Metheny discussing his particular style relative to some of the other top modern jazz guitarists (John Scofield, Bill Frisell). He said that since the guitar (think banjo) is so idiosyncratic in terms of how things lay out on the neck that everyone develops their own way of thinking, their own systems. There are so many ways to finger a G major scale. What might feel natural to you might not work for me. So these guitarists all think differently when laying things out melodically and harmonically. I certainly see it when you and I play together. You see things and play things in different positions than I might, and vice versa.

BNL: And amazingly, it wouldn't be like that on piano. There is really only one way to play a G major scale!

You recorded a classic banjo piece?

JS: On my first record "Expedition" I recorded “A Footlight Favorite” by Emile Grimshaw. There is a second banjo part that I have never learned, and probably a piano part. But I love stringband music and how those instruments sound together, so I wrote out what I thought might be the chords for a swing or sock-rhythm style and slap bass rhythm section, and gave it more of a swingy bluegrass feel than the original stiffer ragtime feel. It is a really fun tune to play.

BNL: Do you still delve into that material?

JS: Occasionally, but I have found it hard to find much of that music that is hip to my ears. Sometimes I find something that might be cool in the first section or two, but I'll think the C part is too corny. This spring I was asked to be a part of a Banjo Festival in New York City and I worked up an old Joe Morley tune called Nadasia as a duet with Noam Pikelny. It too has some corny parts, but some of the harmony on that tune is amazing. I recently found a website www.classicbanjo.com and it has a lot of the old songbooks uploaded as PDFs so I have been searching for more material to learn. In their heyday, those banjoists were playing real classical repertoire, and writing in some of those forms (Bourees, Nocturnes, Mazurkas), yet it was arranged for the banjo. I'd really like to learn more of that music. I have also been digging into Brazilian choro music, which in some ways is similar to Classic-style banjo as it is through composed material with several parts often played in Rondo form (AABBAACCAABBAA). But the music was not written for the banjo so some of the tunes are real projects and challenges. Also the rhythmic possibilities in Choro music are quite sophisticated.

BNL: How do you learn things and develop new ideas? What does it look like in your laboratory?

JS: It is not hard for me to find things to work on. What is hard is finding the time to get to it all. A simple metronome clicking at 60 offers a world of exploration that I have barely tapped into. Like 1 note per click, 2 notes, 3 notes, etc. Then putting the click on the off-beat, then click on beat 4, or pushing the beat, dragging the beat, quarter note triplets, quarter note triplets behind the beat; it can go on and on. I have quite a few instructional books discussing all sorts of music: pentatonics, hexatonics, a book of all of Thelonious Monk's compositions, Django Reinhardt tunes, the Scruggs book, and many more. Also I can work on some scale I am unfamiliar with and work out the chords involved with it. Transpose licks of mine into that tonality. I transcribe lots of music, sometimes just a lick or certain idea, and sometimes an entire solo. These days I transcribe mostly solos by instruments other than banjo. The computer program "Transcribe!" is amazing, allowing you to slow things down to a crawl, and then easily repeat small sections. I have been working on a lot of fiddle breaks lately. The fiddle can be so free in a bluegrass context and still come across as bluegrassy. I was amazed by a Michael Cleveland set I saw this spring. Stunning . And the fiddle/banjo duets were brilliant: creative and so driving.

BNL: Tell me about the instructional book you are working on.

"The Modern Banjo Toolbox" is a book of musical ideas. The concept is that you can open the book to any page it will singularly give you an idea for musical exploration. Some are musically general, and some are more banjo specific. For example, you might open to a page on Triplets and there a way that they lay out interestingly on the banjo or t here is an interesting way to phrase triplets applicable to any instrument. I have contacted a several progressive- oriented players to submit contributions, and am working with about 20 players, including Chris Pandolfi, Noam Pikelny, Lubos Malina, Ben Krakauer, Charles Butler, and Tony Trischka. It is currently in production, but I have been quite consumed with writing music, playing with the Expedition Quartet, continuing to teach wilderness medicine, and being a dad. So I am hesitant to give a specific release date! Check out www.banjotoolbox.com for updates.

BNL: Who is the Expedition Quartet?

JS: It is myself on banjo, Ryan Drickey on fiddle, Greg Schochet on mandolin and guitar, and Eric Thorin on bass. The band came together around the time I did the Jazz and Creative Music Program at the Banff Centre in Canada. I came away from that experience with a renewed love for the stringband format. It is a relatively undeveloped instrumentation for genres outside of bluegrass and old-time music. At the Banff program, I realized that many of the compositional concepts that are commonplace in jazz are virtually unexplored in most stringband music (but certainly not all). Sometimes little concepts were incredibly motivating. That experience was the big inspiration to through-compose a piece for bluegrass stringband. What I love about the Expedition Quartet is that everyone can read music (actually much better than me), so I can hand the band charts and we go for it. Everyone comes in part from a stringband mentality, so the band can infuse the music with drive or punch, even while playing really hard chord changes. But also each member has delved deeply into other genres of music such as swing, classical, Swedish fiddle music, and straight-ahead jazz. Everyone is open to anything, they are great improvisers, and routinely blow me away on stage. I feel quite fortunate to play with such phenomenal musicians on a regular basis.

Jake can be found on the web at:

www.jakeschepps.com
www.expeditionquartet.com