A big weekend is upon us and a great way to celebrate it is by going to the Foundry on Saturday to see Scott Forrest at 6 p.m. I’ve known Scott for a while but recently reconnected with him musically. He did a showcase that George Nostrand and I put on at A Sound Space and he blew me away. Scott plays something for everyone. It’s just him and his guitar, and a whole lot of musical fun. Scott plays all over the state and in New Hampshire as well. This is his only local gig for a bit but he also plays the Foundry July 26, Aug. 16, 24 and 30. You can see him July 18 on the Hancock town green, part of their free concert series at 6:30 p.m.
You can expect an upbeat show. Scott said, “I use a lot of humor in my performances if I can. I’ll bring the kids into it when they come up to talk to me, or tip me. I like to respect my audience. If they’re clapping, smiling, happy, I can feed off that. It’s family-friendly.” People really like the Brazilian stuff Scott sings, nobody else is doing that. Scott can sing in so many different languages. Besides Brazilian, he also sings in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. His show will consist of covers, and originals.
Scott recently received some good news when SSM Records out of Nashville reached out to him in interest of his original music. Someone from the company saw him play and sent it up the food chain to Greg Mann, who has discovered a majority of SSM Nashville’s talent. Greg told Scott, “When we see an act like yours, we reach out to them.” They sent Scott a questionnaire and would like a couple of songs, that Scott is working on now. I wish Scott the best with this but regardless what happens, it’s quite the honor. Scott’s music tax guy said, “If nothing else, you appealed to somebody.” Scott said, “It’s exciting to at least explore it. For me I have no vision of them making me the star but if they wanted to buy a song or two and sell it to Taylor Swift, then by all means.”
Scott is originally a piano player, having began on that at age three. His mother and grandmother both played piano and organ and Scott said, “We always had a piano in the house. I started plunking away on that and later took classical music lessons.” From there he played drums and the slide trombone. Scott added, “I enjoyed both of those.” He didn’t take up the guitar until he was sixteen, and basically taught himself. “I fell for it instantly, and I’ve always sang. Both my parents sang, and all my relatives.” He wanted to play guitar after he saw a young guy playing Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” and Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away”. Scott said, “It blew me away when he did that. Another guy, an older guy, showed me the intro to ‘Pinball Wizard.’ It’s a great riff. I can still remember it even though I haven’t played it in years. I can see it in my head as we speak. That just knocked me out. I said, I’ve got to do this so I bought a guitar and never looked back.” His biggest musical influences growing up were The Beatles, Todd Rungren and Steely Dan. He loves Snoop Dogg’s “Doggystyle” album. Scott said, “To me all the good rap was the gangster rap like Dr. Dre too. I love that stuff. Another one is “Alice in Chains.” I loved them and I realized why because of the harmonies those two guys did. I’d never heard people harmonize like that before.”
When he was 18, he was in a band called The Rammers. After that he was in a band out of Burlington called The Truth. Scott said of the latter, “It was a good band, short-lived but good.” There’s a lot of things that can lead to headaches when being in a band, so Scott decided to go out on his own. He said, “I’m really glad that I did.” What’s impressive is Scott has been playing solo for close to forty years now.
Fifteen years ago Scott went into opera, and studied for quite a few years with the Weston Opera Theater. He was taught by Lise Messier and she got him into the Manchester Music Festival. Scott performed three different times with the Metropolitan Opera of NYC.
Scott spent time in Brazil and that’s when he started to learn that language. Scott said, “If it sounds good I like it, then I’ll try to cover it. It’s an eclectic mix of music that I do and the good thing is nobody has a chance to get bored because I’ll be doing something else.”
Scott has one CD to his credit (“When I’m in Paris”) that he released back in 2008 but he still has copies left and brings them to his shows. People still buy them even though CDs are nearly obsolete. One song made it to national radio after it made it onto the classic radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion.” Scott said, “It was such a strange thing. I played this pathetic, poorly advertised show at a bookstore in Brandon. There was nobody there, yet the next night I had 3.2 million listeners. Not necessarily for me, per say, but I was a part of the show. When it rains, it pours.”
Scott lived in Nashville for a bit and wrote songs in a style he dubbed “Heavy mental music” which was a bunch of wild keyboard stuff. He said, “I didn’t even own a guitar at that point. I had given it up for a little while.” Someone heard that and was surprised and drove him to a guitar store and he bought one. Scott added, “I didn’t know at that point if I could write songs on the guitar but after I got into the Brazilian stuff, it changed everything for me. My guitar playing changed. That’s when I started pouring them out.”
Scott loves the energy of his shows and said, “If people dance to some of it, that’s one of the funnest things. I’ve had people come up and tell me one of my songs was their wedding song. How cool is that? But just when people are having fun.”
Search “Scott Forrest” on Google and see YouTube videos out there and also find him on Facebook under the same name.
