Maybe that’s because he has to make time to get back out on the road. He seems to tour and record non-stop with Vital Information (and often with the bands of drummer Billy Cobham and saxophonist Bill Evans, too), covering just about every continent and releasing a new CD nearly every year. They’ll be in Russia and India next month! The band’s most recent CD, Vitalization (Hudson Music), features several of Tom’s compositions, all of which continue the band’s tradition of blending deep grooves, sophisticated melodic sensibility, and the language of jazz. The disc also features Tom’s command of a variety of keyboards, including Korg Triton, Korg CX-3, and accordion.
Tom stopped by our offices recently to talk about the new CD, playing, touring, and gear.
Writing Vitally
“It’s really important is to write for the band as much as you write for yourself,” says Tom, “and there are many, many ways of writing a tune. I wrote ‘High Wire’ [from Come On In] for Vital because this is a typical Vital-type tune. In fact, I got an email from Australia from a gentleman there who has a wonderful fusion show and even before he read the credits, he knew I had written the tune, because it’s got a signature Tom Coster writing. I wanted to write a line that was kind of hip, so I came up with the A section. I like to write a B section so it provides a release. In this case, the B section uses diminished chords, and they sustain more. So you have the A section being more notey, and then you have a release. That’s a very normal, consistent way that I write.
“So when you solo over the form, it’s 16 bars of open D minor and then 16 bars where you solo with the diminished scale. If you take the time to write out a diminished scale, you can figure out which notes are the primary notes that you need to play on strong beats. The secondary notes, of course, you can play those on off-beats. If you write out the notes and make intervals out of them, it suddenly sounds like a totally different scale. So the idea is to take that scale and break it up. Same scale, but you’re not going to recognize it as such.
“Another way I write is to start with a bass part. On ‘Get Serious’ [from Vitalization], I used my sequencer to come up with a new way for Steve [Smith, drummer] to play. I wrote this bass part, and on my sequencer I dragged all the bass part down into my drum tracks. Then I took those notes and gave the primary down beats to the bass drum and other primary notes to the snare. Then everything else I put on toms and cymbals and things. I had to mess around with it a little bit, but it came out great!
“It’s a pretty wild head, and everyone was complaining, ‘Aw man, we want to play this tune. It’s a bad tune but this is insane!’ And I said, ‘Look, if I’m gonna play it, you guys are gonna play it.’ So Steve was totally into it, and he started transcribing the demo I’d made. Then [bassist] Baron Browne got into it too! So the whole band picked up those parts, and it was killing! It was difficult for Steve at first because it was a new adventure for him. He’s such a great drummer and has such enthusiasm that he ended up learning it.
“There are many ways of writing. I call what I did on ‘Get Serious’ writing from bottom up. I’m going to use an example from a tune that was a huge hit for Carlos Santana and me — a tune called ‘Europa.’ That tune was written from chords and melody — it was written from the top down. ‘Europa’ was melody and chord changes, with no real rhythmic coordination; that was not the inspiration. Between that and total rhythmic inspiration, there are many, many ways to write. With all of the wonderful tools available today, take chances with whatever you feel at the moment; something that doesn’t sound great in that moment might blow your mind the next day. ‘Holy, geez! Did I play that into my computer? That’s a hip little thing, and I can build from that.’ Because each day you feel different. You want to feel happy and have everything great and groovy every day, but that’s just not life. So you want to save every little thing that you put into your computer or that you write down, because quite often what you think might not be so good ends up being quite good the next day or the next week.”
Squeezing Vitally
“My accordion had been up in the attic for about 20 years,” says Tom, by way of explaining the re-appearance of the squeezebox on Vital Information recordings and gigs, “when I got a call from Boz Scaggs. He said, ‘I understand you know how to play accordion.’ And I said, ‘Wow! You know I play accordion?’ Boz is a Bay Area guy, and I’ve known him for years through my association with Carlos. He said, ‘I got this tune that’s got a little bit of a New Orleans thing, and a little French thing. I’d like you to play it.’
So I went in the attic and I started playing, and some of the pads came right off because it was really in a bad environment up there. It’s a Giulietti and it’s probably close to 50 years old, but I tell you man, the sound is killing. Check it out. It’s got tone control, an off and on switch, wired in stereo, and volume control for the left and right hand. And this was almost 50 years ago. It’s amazing. My Mom and Dad mortgaged their home to buy the thing for me, and there’s a lot of history behind that. So I took some Elmer’s glue and put the pads back on. I went to the session and I actually did it in one take.
“After that, I decided to leave the accordion downstairs and not put it back up in the attic any more. And right at that time, the guys in Vital said, ‘Let’s go back to our roots. Let’s go back to what you really are known for: your own sound, the organ and the accordion. We’re all going to do that — we’re going to play music that’s part of our past, and present, and future.’ And I said, ‘Are you sure? You want me to play accordion? The kids are going to throw tomatoes.’
“Well, it’s become an amazingly successful part of the band. But unfortunately, the accordion took a heck of a beating even though it had a big ATA case and all that. The cost of having it fixed was enormous because it’s all hand-crafted; it’s not a machine. So I talked to Hohner, and they were kind enough to loan me one. They’d only let me use it in Europe. I picked the Ventura 2. It’s fairly light. It had microphones, but they were so microphonic, it picked up everything in the world. It fed back terribly. And there was no volume control or on and off switch, so when I was done taking a solo, I would have to put it down somewhere on the stage and then run over to my mixer and turn the mixer down so it wouldn’t feed back. But it’s a great instrument; it sounds wonderful.
“Eventually one day after several tours, we decided not to send it back to Germany. Steve and I said, ‘Let’s smuggle it back and just not tell them [laughs], and use it in the States.’ So I took all the wrappings off the accordion that had anything to do with Germany [laughs]. And it was in this cardboard box and you know, a cardboard box looks suspicious when you bring it through customs. But it was the old accordion joke: Someone leaves his accordion in his car overnight, and comes back in the morning to find that someone had broken in to his car — and put a second accordion in. [Laughs.] So I came through customs and one of the three agents working on me said, ‘What’s in the box?’ And I said, ‘An accordion.’ And they all laughed, ‘Ha, ha, ha . . . !’ and they let me through. I feel very grateful to Hohner because it’s not my old accordion that’s being exposed to the elements, and it’s wonderful to have their support. It’s a great sounding instrument.
“But the accordion in the band, I tell you, people absolutely love it. And it’s in what I would consider a very unique environment, being in a fusion band. When I play ‘Europa’ on it, you can hear a pin drop. People cry. It’s just so beautiful. I hope everyone can hear it live, because everything grows. You grow when you get to play tunes. And I definitely play bebop on it.”
Keeping Vital
“For me, at my age, hopefully I can tour for another five years — I’ll be 70 at that point,” says Tom. “The thing about it is — first of all, I love to play, no matter how tired or run down I am. We don’t know how we pull out the energy sometimes, but we’ll play two shows and just smoke it every night. And that’s a gift.”
Tom on Time
“If there’s any question at all about your time,” advises Tom, “it’s great to bring in somebody who does have good time and have them listen to you. One of the best things to do is to just slow things down. Your hands interpret and telegraph what’s in your mind, your heart, and your soul. You either have good facility or you don’t, but your hands only do what your brain and your heart and soul tell it to do. So if you’re struggling with lines because your brain is thinking too much, it’s going to telegraph that to your hands. When your mind really knows where it’s playing, then it becomes effortless. But if you have to think about what you’re playing, there’s usually a little bit of a lag time and it’s going to show in your performance. So get a copy of The Real Book, which is kind of like our bible, and there are wonderful tunes in there that are like bebop solos. When I was young, I copped a lot of those lines and used them in my repertoire at first, because I didn’t know what to play but I wanted to play correctly. So I would take little bits and pieces of those lines and make it my own little arsenal of information and try to connect them all so that it made sense. But at least because it was already written out, I could memorize it and concentrate on playing it with a good feeling.”