You played Bonnaroo 2008 and this past New Year’s Eve with My Morning Jacket at Madison Square Garden. You also appear on Umphrey’s McGee’s latest record Mantis and have sat in with them a few times [Editor’s note: And will do so again on New Year’s Eve]. When did you first cross paths with these groups?

I remember My Morning Jacket, it’s an interesting story [laughs]. The guy who was playing saxophone with them went to high school with them. He’s a music therapist, went to Berklee the same time as Rashawn [Ross]. His name is Brian Schreck, and he’s now with the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and he’s like a Patch Adams character. He’s a brilliant, brilliant guy.

So he knew Abby, Bela’s wife. Brian called her and said, “I’m going to put a horn section together for this Bonnaroo thing, do you know guys in Nashville?” She said, “Oh, well call Jeff!” So I said that I would absolutely do it and I put a horn section together in town. We did this gig which was really fun. Brian and I really hit it off and the trombone player was also playing with Carl, the guitar player, so Brian and I kept in touch and he’s come out to the gigs. So I met them through Abby, through Brian, through this high school connection, so it’s really a trip.

The first time I met Umphrey’s McGee was on Jam Cruise, and they were saying that they were doing a New Year’s thing and invited me to do a horn section thing. I think it was Vince [Iwinski] that ended up getting me a couple of tracks off of Bottom Half. He said, “I haven’t told the guys, but why don’t you see what you can come up with for horns on these couple of tunes.” It was “Intentions Clear” and “Bottom Half.” So he said, “Come up with some stuff and send it to me when you’re done.” I worked really hard on this stuff—one came really easily, a reggae one; I think it was “Intentions Clear.” It took me a couple of weeks because I kept going back and listening. I didn’t want to do the same kind of stock shit to it. But it was really fun to work on that stuff. Vince said that when he played it for them, he wasn’t sure if they would dig it or not and when he did, they totally wigged out. I did a lot of woodwind stuff on it, not just saxophone. We have such a good time together. I think the world of those guys, and I think what they’re doing is really brilliant. They’re very serious musicians, but it’s a lot of fun too, a lot of flavor in what they do.

You play with a very diverse collection of different groups. It seems like whenever a band needs a horn player, they think of you first. What do you think makes you the “go-to” horn guy for all of these groups?

Part of it is having been out there for so long. I love playing, and I probably sit-in too much, but I love it. If there is an opportunity for me to play, I’m probably going to take it. Music still feels to me the way that it’s always felt since I was a kid, it moves me in this particular way. The music that I go and I hear and that I get to be involved with, I really enjoy it, whether it’s going up with Widespread Panic, or the Flecktones or Dave, whoever. Being called for other kinds of gigs, studio stuff, I try to serve the music in a way that I’m asking the music what it wants from me. I try to bring a fresh approach to the parts and to what I’m bringing in.

Part of my background is playing the blues circuit in Texas also, and that was a huge education. Not just playing with the musicians, but playing with the vocalists. Being able to read the visual cues and being able to really listen. I love a lot of different styles of music, I’ve played a lot of different styles of music, I’ve listened to a lot of different styles of music and I write in a lot of different styles of music and I think that enables me to be a bit more chameleon-like, and that’s been the way I’ve liked it.

I could’ve spent all of my time playing bebop but I wasn’t that interested in learning a bunch of standards. I think they’re great tunes, don’t get me wrong. When you hear guys like Johnny Griffin, Freddy Hubbard, Miles, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins. Wayne Shorter is a perfect example and Joe Henderson, they’re all composers also, guys like Charles Mingus. I didn’t grow up with the music, it’s not even something of my generation. I want to be influenced by stuff I listen to now. I have very little patience for shitty music. I just know stuff that just isn’t very good, not very thoughtful, that lacks passion, that is insincere—I have no time for it. Zero. I try to stay involved with the stuff that moves me, the stuff that I want to be involved with that influences me musically and emotionally. So that’s where I’m coming from and that’s allowed me to delve into a lot of different areas of music, musically and improvisationally. So again, I’m just trying to serve the music by knowing a lot of different style of music.

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