Weaving Through Traffic

\Their most well-known tune, “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys,” is still heard on classic rock radio in all of its 12-minute glory. When Traffic reunited in 1994 without Chris Wood (who died in 1983), it was an occasion not just to relive old glories but also to create new music both on disc (1994’s Far From Home) and on tour. Winwood and Capaldi had a great time, and captured it all on the recently-released DVD The Last Great Traffic Jam. It’s an inspired document of what Traffic was like live as well as the wit and musical magic of Jim Capaldi, who passed away in 2005. Keyboard caught up with Winwood and chatted about this amazing band and his own musical roots.

How did you meet the guys who became members of Traffic?

I had hooked up with Chris Wood through his sister. He was playing in a band in Birmingham. Jim Capaldi played in a band with Dave Mason, also in Birmingham, but they were from Worcester. I was from Warwickshire, which was just outside Birmingham. We call it the Midlands.

You had different rhythm sections throughout Traffic’s career. Was there a definitive one?

We covered many chapters and many different styles, but really the core of it was Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and myself. Dave Mason was there in the early days and very quickly left the band. In fact, we never toured America with Dave. In Traffic we liked to create songs out of jams, and Dave didn’t like to work that way. He liked to write on his own and then present it for us all to play. Dave is a great writer, but he never quite suited the way Traffic worked, which is the reason why he was not in the band very long. We enjoyed all the different chapters: the Muscle Shoals guys [drummer Roger Hawkins and bassist David Hood recorded Shootout at the Fantasy Factory, while keyboardist Barry Beckett played with the band live.], [percussionist] Rebop Kwaku Baah, [bassist] Rich Grech, [drummer] Jim Gordon, and [bassist] Rosko Gee — who is on the DVD. He’s a great bass player.

How did you decide to hook up with the Muscle Shoals guys?

The thing with Traffic always was that we’d try to combine different elements to make this kind of music soup — it was a deliberate process. We decided that we wanted to incorporate elements of music that weren’t perhaps ideal bedfellows in order to create something that was new or peculiar just to us. We tried to use elements of folk, jazz, blues, and all kinds of ethnic music. We knew all about Hood and Hawkins from Muscle Shoals and we thought they would bring a great element to Traffic. We didn’t really want to sound like the “Memphis Soul Stew” band [a classic soul song by King Curtis. —Ed.]. I mean, we would have loved to have done that but we knew we never could. But we felt that they would actually bring an element to Traffic that would give it another dimension.

What kind of keyboards did you use in the ’70s?

Hammond organ. When we toured the States we didn’t have a bass player so I was playing organ bass on the pedals, which I’m still doing at the moment. We did have an RMI and I did actually play it sometimes; we also used a Wurlitzer and a bit later on I used a Rhodes. Though I loved the Rhodes sound, I was never quite at home on it for some reason. Maybe because of the massive adjustability in the action; I could never get it adjusted properly so that one note didn’t sound louder than another. The RMI was a strange thing but I did “Empty Pages” on the RMI and then Chris Wood would play left-hand bass on the organ and the right-hand part as well. That was the trio.

How did you mike acoustic pianos onstage in the ’70s?

I did at one point get hold of a Countryman but I think that was in the Muscle Shoals days. Before that, I don’t think I used piano; I used electric piano live. The idea of miking pianos in those days was always fraught with problems. Not to mention the fact that mixing boards didn’t have that many channels. So electric piano worked much better.

On the DVD of the 1994 tour, you had a keyboard on top of piano with a pedal you could reach with your left hand. What was that and what was it for?

[Laughs.] Well spotted. Although the audio was all the same take, many of the visuals were from different takes taken over a long period of time. The piano used on that tour was the shell of a Yamaha grand in which we put a KX88 to control a Kurzweil piano module. It was all done from the Kurzweil. I didn’t use the keyboard on top for very long. I think it was a kind of one-off deal that we tried to attach to a MIDI module to get some of the original sounds from the Low Spark record. We found that they didn’t really work that well and eventually abandoned the use of that and just kept it to piano. The organ was a Hammond XB-5 which wasn’t a tonewheel Hammond. I used it through a 147 Leslie. Now, of course, I won’t use anything but a real tonewheel organ, I’m afraid. I’ve always used the pedals and the bass and of course that makes a big difference. I think the footswitch you saw there was the Leslie switch.

On the piano solo in “Glad” are you playing in a particular mode or scale?

It does move into a whole-tone scale in the middle bit. I like to experiment using different pentatonic scales and modes, and especially the whole-tone scales.

As a songwriter, do you write the lyric or the music first? Do you have a method or formula for writing music and lyrics?

I disagree with the idea of formulas particularly in songwriting because it never seems to work. I don’t think you can really apply a formula to songwriting. Really, the answer is that in the early days with Traffic, Jim used to write the lyrics, and he would very often do that first. Then I would play. Of course with Traffic, although we may be considered songwriters, for us the idea of writing a song was really just to get a vehicle for us on which to jam. It’s not like we were writers in terms of Tin Pan Alley writers; we never wrote for anyone except ourselves, and the intention was that we would have something to jam on. Having said that, very often we would jam and that would then inspire Jim to write a lyric and then I would make that work on the jam. After that, I used to do the music first when I worked with people like [collaborator] Will Jennings who would actually thread the words into the music. But also with Will, he would write some lyrics that I could put to music. And then lately, on About Time, I’ve been writing lyrics as well and not writing the music, which is another bit of a turnaround for me. So I think the answer is: I haven’t hit on the formula yet!

Musically, how do you see the transition from Traffic to your solo material? Do you think your writing evolved between When the Eagle Flies and Arc of a Diver?

Yeah, I think so. Particularly of late, I feel the writing and the music itself seems to harken back much more to Traffic rather than the stuff from the ’80s and ’90s, which perhaps in hindsight, seems to be — not very wisely — a little more corporate driven. I used to get pressure from record companies in order to make the kind of music that would fit in with some kind of market or demographic. About five years ago I said, “No more!” I hadn’t always done that. I decided that one thing I don’t do anymore is to write to fit any kind of radio format or any kind of age group or whatever. So perhaps that’s why those two probably seem to match each other. Of course I don’t think I was doing that in the days of Traffic, either. I didn’t work with anyone on Arc of a Diver. I was purely making music that I would enjoy listening to just in the hopes that others would enjoy it and identify with it.

You played everything on that record. Have you always been multi-instrumental?

I was very lucky that I grew up in a musical family. I was surrounded by musical instruments. My father was a multi-instrumentalist. There was always an upright bass in the house. There was a drum kit that got banished to the garage.

Were your parents supportive of your teenage career?

To a large extent. I was very fortunate to have very understanding parents, particularly my father. Eventually he worked in the family business on his mother’s side. My great uncle had a series of steel foundries in what’s known as the Black Country in the midlands of England. But before that he was a musician and remained a professional or semi-professional musician all of his life. When he realized I had a passion for music, he said, “If he feels best about it he should do it.” I’m not sure my mother agreed with him wholeheartedly at the time, but I think probably she did later on.

Did you ever play with your father?

Yes, I did. In fact, there’s talk about this being my 40th year in the music business, but in fact I actually started in 1957 at nine years old when I started playing with my father’s band. He used to play weddings and local events. I was already playing keyboards then, but I played guitar in his band. One reason he got me to play with him was because in the mid-’50s he would be playing dance band music, and there were a lot of young people at these weddings who wanted to hear some rock ’n’ roll. I was employed to play the rock bits, but of course I had to learn to play the standards as well. It was a great education to me. I’m not sure whether this is my 40th year; I think I’m probably coming up on my 50th!

At what point did you discover your singing voice?

That came about when my voice broke in about 1962, I think, which is when I started with the Spencer Davis Group. I used to sing in the Anglican Church choir. The Anglican Church always used boys voices because they had a different quality from the girls treble voice. Boys with unbroken voices were considered to have a purer tone than girls. So I always sang from a very early age in the church choir. But that didn’t necessarily suit what the SDG were doing.

Who were your influences as a keyboard player?

Ray Charles was an early influence, but before that, in the very early days with my father I heard standards, Broadway tunes and pop music of the early ’50s. Then of course during the mid-’50s, rock ’n’ roll came along, and that interested me; some of the early Elvis stuff, Little Richard, Fats Domino, that kind of thing. And then through the dance band music I was discovering jazz, things like Charlie Parker and early Miles Davis and some of the Blue Note stuff. Later on, of course, the early Jimmy Smith stuff which remains a great influence on me. And then through that I discovered Ray Charles, who seemed to combine many of the elements of jazz, blues, and everything. He seemed to cover all those areas, which I found really intriguing.

Watching Steve Winwood onstage recently, I noticed that his relaxed demeanor belies the dexterity and intricacy of his performing abilities. On this tour, Winwood not only sings and plays keyboards and guitar, but he holds down all the bass lines with his feet on the Hammond organ pedals. His ability to multitask musically is incredible, and his sense of melody and rhythm shine on all fronts. Whether he’s laying down the driving bass on “Light Up or Leave Me Alone” while simultaneously introducing the band, or stepping out front with an acoustic guitar for a breathtaking solo version of “Can’t Find My Way Home,” Winwood’s talents never cease to amaze and entertain. Judging from the rapturous response to each and every song from the packed audience, the rest of his fans would undoubtedly agree.