Alex Skolnick’s Code-Free Creativity

“The title definitely makes a statement,” says Alex Skolnick, referring to Prove You’re Not a Robot, the latest release by his jazz-rock ensemble, the Alex Skolnick Trio. “On the one hand, it’s a phrase we’ve all encountered online, and I think, ‘Why should I have to prove I’m not a robot, especially when a robot is posing the question?’“On the other hand, there’s a musical statement,” he continues. “There’s been a decline in many types of music, most of it in the pop world where a lot of it has become more robotic. They’ve conducted tests and have found that people can’t tell the difference between actual artists and AI-generated music, but that doesn’t happen with jazz. When you get a quality group of dedicated musicians, their work can’t be replicated.”You’d need one exceptionally crafty robot to replicate Alex Skolnick. On one side, there’s his blistering thrash-metal persona, honed over nearly four decades with Bay Area legends Testament. On the other, there’s his sharp, high-energy jazz improvisation with the Alex Skolnick Trio. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that all of it actually comes from the same person.​Alex Skolnick’s GearGuitarsGibson ES-347Allparts StratocasterRoger Sadowsky SS-16 archtopESP Alex Skolnick ESP LTD Alex Skolnick AS-1AmpsTyler Amp Works (“the one modeled after the Fender Princeton”)1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb (“also part of my tax write-off”)EffectsElectro-Harmonix POG2 octave generatorJAM Rattler distortionCrazy Tube Circuits Splash reverbMXR Phase 90Strings, Picks and CablesD’Addario flat wounds, NYXL, XSDunlop picksD’Addario cables“I’ve heard it compared to how an actor changes roles, and I get that,” he says. “When I warm up for a show with the trio, I work on my Grant Green and my Wes Montgomery. But when I’m getting ready to play with Testament, I click on the distortion and go for some Van Halen or [Allan] Holdsworth. The actor is the same, but the script is different.”Continuing with the analogy, he says, “Instead of changing costumes, I’m changing gear. I wouldn’t play screaming metal on a ’76 Gibson L-5 archtop, just as I wouldn’t try to play jazz through an Orange Rockerverb cranked on the overdrive channel. So the person’s the same, but the tools are different. The bottom line is, it all feels very natural to me.”From the start, the AST specialized in wildly inventive, improv-heavy covers of hard rock and metal tunes. Over the years, the band has had their way with “Detroit Rock City,” “Dream On,” “War Pigs,” “No One Like You,” Goodbye to Romance,” “Highway Star” and “Tom Sawyer,” among others. Not every tune lends itself to interpretation, however. As Skolnick points out, “Whenever you’re playing a song that’s essentially a vehicle for improvisation, it has to have a strong, identifiable melody—that’s key. Even when we take things really outside, the foundation of the song is the melody. The Kiss songs we’ve done—great melodies. Same with ‘Dream On.’ I would put the Scorpions at the top of the list. Every song of theirs has a melody you could play on a saxophone.”“When I warm up for a show with the trio, I work on my Grant Green and my Wes Montgomery. But when I’m getting ready to play with Testament, I click on the distortion and go for some Van Halen.”Thus far, all efforts to transpose AC/DC to free-form jazz have proved elusive. “They’ve got great riffs and grooves, but they’re not big on strong vocal melodies,” he says. “Trying to do one of our arrangements with AC/DC would be like covering James Brown. Incredible music and awesome grooves, but it’s not about the melody.”Lately, Skolnick and company (drummer Matt Zebroski and bassist Nathan Peck) have placed more emphasis on original material, but they haven’t bagged the covers entirely: Prove You’re Not a Robot includes “Armondo’s Mood,” a cheeky mashup of Chick Corea’s “Armando’s Rhumba” and Steve Howe’s “Mood for a Day” that beautifully showcases Skolnick’s breezy, delicate touch and dulcet tones. There’s also a hypnotic take on Tom Petty’s classic “Breakdown” that sees the guitarist skipping and pirouetting across the fretboard over multiple time signatures. “That one came about the day Tom Petty died,” Skolnick explains. “I went on stage and said, ‘We just lost Tom Petty,’ and we started playing the vamp. When we decided to record it, I knew that I didn’t want to just copy the original, so we made it slower and did odd-time sections. In a lot of ways, it’s inspired by Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.”Among the album’s original tunes, “Polish Goodbye” is a snarky and sassy modern-age lounge affair that offers sticksman Zebroski considerable room to stretch out and flex his chops, while “Asking for a Friend” is a shimmering (and at times, aching) ballad built on Skolnick’s spare, contemplative melodies. The effervescent “Guiding Ethos” ranks as one of the guitarist’s most memorable compositions, and his playing—in particular, an extended steel-string acoustic solo—rises to meet the quality of his writing.“I actually wrote that song on the piano,” he reveals. “That was my first instrument, but I had a teacher who wasn’t very inspiring, and so I got into the guitar. Lately, I’ve revisited playing the piano a bit—I’ve gotten into some good jams—and I came up with the parts that became ‘Guiding Ethos.’ I transferred it to guitar and thought it sounded nice, particularly this section that’s so bright and shiny. It offered me a lot of spots to go places and have cool key changes.”“Instead of changing costumes, I’m changing gear.”The song, he continues, “was meant for steel-string acoustic, particularly the solo. I knew I wanted the sound to really pop, and as it turned out, right before we did the album, I had needed a tax write-off, so I allowed myself to buy a guitar that I might normally have considered an extravagance.”The guitar in question is a 1935 Gibson L-00 acoustic that Skolnick found while poking around at RetroFret Vintage Guitars in Brooklyn. “They had over a dozen guitars from the ’30s and ’40s, and I went around and played them all,” he says. “Some were easy to play, some were hard to play. They all sounded good, but some sounded great. The L-00 sounded great and was easy to play. It’s a parlor guitar, but it blows a lot of my other guitars out of the water. The people at the studio where we recorded were like, ‘That is one of the best guitars we’ve ever heard. It sounds like it has a microphone on it.’”Perhaps more importantly, the guitarist’s accountant also weighed in with his assessment. “He said, ‘Well done,’” Skolnick says with a laugh. “All in all, it was worth the money.”