Entertainment

Thursday, Jun. 11, 2009

Music Scene: John Jorgenson plays at Templeton's Castoro Cellars this weekend

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Most musicians would lunge at an opportunity to perform with Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan. But when John Jorgenson was asked to audition for the two legends’ bands, he passed.

“I wasn’t interested in backing other people up,” said Jorgenson, a multi-instrumentalist who had established himself as a top-notch session player by that time. “I just felt like I’d done that enough, and it was important for me to start working on my own music and not go off on another tangent with someone else’s music.”

After working as a sideman for years, Jorgenson — a founding member of the Desert Rose Band — liked the idea of doing his own thing.

In theory, anyway.

“Then Elton John called, and I did go on another tangent,” he said. “For six years.”

While it took a little longer than he had planned, Jorgenson did finally become a front man: For the past five years he has led the John Jorgenson Quintet, which kicks off the SLOFolks summer concert series in Templeton on Saturday.

While the quintet focuses largely on gypsy jazz, Jorgenson is a versatile musician who can play guitar, saxophone, bassoon, dobro, mandolin, piano, clarinet and pedal steel. He can also play in a variety of styles including classical, bluegrass, Dixieland jazz, new wave and rockabilly music.

While his band specializes in gypsy jazz—a genre he has helped re-energize —expect him to incorporate more styles into it.

“Our version has a lot of other elements,” he said. “A lot of world music, some Romanian, and Greek and Flamenco and Latin.”

Jorgenson was born to a musical family—his mother was a piano teacher, and his father was an orchestra conductor and college music professor. As a child, he took up piano and clarinet. Guitar would come at age 12. At the University of the Redlands, he studied woodwind instruments, focusing on clarinet, bassoon and sax.

After college he took a job performing music at Disneyland, where he had worked part-time in high school. His band at Disneyland performed three different styles of music — Dixieland jazz, bluegrass and gypsy swing — changing outfits and personas multiple times a day to match the music.

For Jorgenson, the Disneyland gig proved to be a great experience because it showed him how to work a crowd.

“You had to capture their attention and try to hold it while they were probably more interested in going on rides and meeting characters,” he said. “So if you could grab their attention and even entertain them for two songs, you were doing a good job.”

He worked at Disneyland full-time for about eight years. While doing that gig he met former Byrds guitarist Chris Hillman at a music trade show. Once Hillman heard Jorgenson play, he invited him to join his acoustic group, The Chris Hillman Band, replacing ex-Eagle Bernie Leadon.

A few months later, Jorgenson persuaded Hillman to go a different route.

“I really felt his needs would be better served with more of a country rock band,” he said. “So I kind of twisted his arm to form the Desert Rose Band.”

The Desert Rose Band, formed in 1985, would eventually record 10 top-20 singles. But Jorgenson didn’t leave his Disneyland gig right away.

“The first year and a half of touring with Chris and the Desert Rose Band, I kept my job at Disneyland because we really weren’t making much money,” he said. “I didn’t quit until we had our first No. 1 single, which was ‘One Step Forward.’ ”

By 1991, Jorgenson had left the Desert Rose Band. But the band’s success — and Jorgenson’s musical prowess — led to many session gigs with artists like Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash, Sting, Roy Orbison, Don Henley, Earl Scruggs and Sheryl Crow.

Performing with well-known musicians was rewarding, he said, and the artists were usually easy to work with.

“I had heard stories of what a diva Barbara Streisand was — that she could be difficult and all this kind of stuff,” he said. “But she was as nice as she could be.”

While he has been in demand as a session player, by the early 1990s Jorgenson was already thinking of doing his own thing, which is partly why he turned down offers to audition for Springsteen and Dylan.

Elton John was an exception.

“I wasn’t 100 percent sure I wanted to take that job,” he said. “Because at the time I was really happy with the variety of music I was playing.”

Still, he was good friends with Davey Johnson, John’s longtime guitarist, who wanted Jorgenson to join the band for a tour.

“I thought we’d have fun playing together, traveling around the world,” Jorgenson said. “Plus, I really liked the album Elton was promoting at the time — ‘Made in England.’ ”

What was supposed to be a six-month gig turned out to be a six-year gig.

Eventually, the touring schedule became hectic. And Jorgenson missed playing a variety of styles.

He had first heard gypsy jazz—as performed by pioneer Django Reinhardt— during his Disneyland days. Once on his own, he decided to focus on that style, which combines acoustic string music with swing.

Now, he and his quintet are playing a busy international tour, introducing gypsyjazz— popularized in the ’30s — to new generations.

“I never actually thought I’d be able to do that music full-time,” he said.