photo: David McGraw

Early into our conversation, Skerik said, “I’ve always been a band person and recording band music. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve really been making a lot more solo records. There was no way to make a solo record in the ‘80s or ‘90s. It was just way too expensive. Now, we can experiment and make things. It’s a lot easier to put out. It’s really fun. I really like it.”

While he maintains an exhausting slate of band projects that in 2026 includes Garage A Trois, Compersion Quartet, DRKWAV, Crack Sabbath, Skerik Large Band XXL, Lorbo, Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septetand Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade as part of the Claypool Gold tour— Skerik (aka Eric Walton) can record whatever strikes his fancy at his home studio, which brings us to his latest release, six tracks of ambient music titled SKERIK 061725 which he credits as something easier to do as a solo artist.

As far back as his days as a founding member of Critters Buggin and its 1994 debut album, Guest, ambient music elements have appeared throughout his work. Here, he fully embraces the genre with a layered approach that uses saxophonics’ electronic effects to create a dreamlike state of sonic texture and sound.

“Hopefully, this album can be used in any way people see fit,” he said. “I love making these records and always find inspiration in the discovery of saxophone loops and chord creation.”

Regularly described as a player of punk-jazz or funk-jazz or free jazz or avant-garde, he references a more pleasing description that comes from jazz legend, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and prominent figure internationally Yusef Lateef and his term for jazz called “autophysiopsychic,” which means “music from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.” 

In a career that spans four decades and collaborations in the studio and onstage that includesCritters Buggin, The Dead Kenny G’s, Ponga, Tuatara, Les Claypool’s Fancy Band, Sadhappy, The Maelstrom Trio, Ween, Pearl Jam, Mad Season, Bonnie Raitt, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Fred Wesley, The Meters, Wayne Horvitz, Mike Clark, Johnny Vidacovich and Roger Waters, Skerik has been a much sought after musician.

That nearly ended three years ago when an undiagnosed neck/shoulder injury, curtailed his work ethic to nothing. He remained home, meditating and contemplating an artistic future that didn’t involve music. Over time, his body returned to its functional ways and a full schedule emerged.

During our lengthy conversation, Skerik discusses his ambient release, his life-altering injury, what he did during COVID and what’s to come.

What made you come around to ambient music? I read that it took a while for you to get into it.

With a lot of music, for me, I’m really picky. So, I like one percent of everything. I don’t listen to music based on genre or anything like that. I literally like all music, all music from all over the world. But, I tend only to like one to five percent of all that.

What I found to be helpful in my path is when someone I respected turned me on to something, it just made it more fun to listen to and check out and be curious about.

So, that’s what happened to me, hanging out with my friend Keith Lowe. He was playing for me all kinds of different music, and some of it had ambient elements, and that was really interesting to me. My mom always had that Brian Eno record [Ambient 1: Music for Airports] when it came out. She didn’t care who it was made by or what it was. It was more like, “Does it do this? Does it do that?” which was very different than me and my dad, who were super into the details of jazz. My dad was always taking me to big band concerts in the ‘70s – Count Basie, Buddy Rich, stuff like that. Go to a lot of concerts and festivals and stuff. 

Getting turned on to that kind of music in the late ‘70s and then, periodically, maybe once or twice in the ‘80s, and then a lot more in the ‘90s when I met the guys in Sadhappy and Critters Buggin. They turned me on to a lot deeper, esoteric music. Some of that was ambient stuff. So, we would record stuff in the ‘90s that emulated some of those.

You mentioned Critters Buggin. On the debut album, Guest, the song “5/4 F.T.D.,” has an ambient, droning element to it. 

Yeah, “Critters Theme” and “Los Lobos” have that element to them. Then, we made a record called Amoeba that has some of those elements, too. In the past 30, 40 years, it’s been an influence, for sure.

I’ve always been a band person and recording band music. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve really been making a lot more solo records, and it’s easier to do something like an ambient record as a solo person. There was no way to make a solo record in the ‘80s or ‘90s. It was just way too expensive. No one knew who I was. You can’t afford to do it and have your own studios that were digital with low production costs. Now, we can experiment and make things. It’s a lot easier to put out. It’s really fun. I really like it.

With the construction of the material on 061725, is it you playing saxophone and then it’s looped or treated or a combination of that and other things?

That was recorded live in the studio, all at once, with an effects rig that I put together just for that recording. It is a lot of sax loops and then melodies put over the top. No overdubs.

When you set out to make it or after you recorded it, did you have conscious plans or intentions?

Oh yeah, very much so. I’ve been working on these effects arrays, effects chains about 40 years. So, it’s a culmination of all that experimenting and spending way too much money on gear, trying to find a sound. It’s really nice to be able to go into a studio and have everything technically together. There’s no more obstructions to get to where you’re trying to go.

That brings up saxophonics. When did you start playing with effects?

I love playing the saxophone acoustically, and that’s what I do pretty much, 90% of the time. It’s just that when I started using electronics in the ‘80s, it was…you know the expression, “Necessity is the mother of invention?”

For me, that was a thing because I was trying to play with rock musicians that were loud and the saxophone wasn’t loud, and monitors and PA back then were really shitty and expensive. We couldn’t afford anything. So, I could get a cheap rat pedal and plug my microphone into it, and all of a sudden it would boost the gain. I could start sounding a little bit like Jimi Hendrix, and that was a lot of fun because when I was a kid, I would love Hendrix, since elementary school. It was just in my DNA. I’ve always wanted to use distortion for Jimi and for punk rock energy. Crazy madness.

You play keyboards as well. Did that influence that in any way because there are all kinds of options you can do with a keyboard and you thought, “Why can’t I do that with the saxophone?”

With our band in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, everyone was trying to cover as many bases as possible, each person in the band. So, if you’ve only got three or four people in the band, people have to double instruments, sometimes.

That was a big thing in Critters Buggin. The drummers had samplers, electronic drum sounds and acoustic stuff. I doubled on keyboards and on saxophone and effects. The saxophone, even with effects, you can’t really play chords or comp for other people in the same way. The saxophone in and of itself steals a lot of focus, and people think that you’re going to be playing a melody, and if you’re trying to comp for someone, it can get in the way psychologically and acoustically when trying to do that.

Keyboards, you’re kind of given, psychologically, the benefit of the doubt if you’re not playing single note runs or something, you’re creating a supportive function in a band by playing little chords or whatever. I’m not a very good keyboard player. So, it’s an opportunity to not be a soloist but be supportive rhythmically.

Back to the album, the titles of the six tracks, I don’t know if you just find them as simply interesting titles or if the title is where your mind is musically because it opens with “Synesthesia” [a neurological condition where when once one sense is activated it then activates another unrelated sense such as seeing patterns of color when hearing music] and it ends with “Somatic.” So, are the titles giving an inkling of what the music is portraying?

Yeah, it’s fun because, like Miles Davis would use song title as a way—because he didn’t have lyrics—he could make political statements or social commentary that would be used with the use of song titles and album titles.

Since I don’t use lyrics, I like to be able to use titles that, sometimes, are humorous or make people think or are politically affiliated or psychedelic or we can use them for a lot of different reasons, a lot of different inspiration. So, the name of the album, 061725 that is the date it was recorded, June 17, 2025. Also, a lot of the records we grew up on, some of the more weird ambient records, they had cryptic titles like that and it keeps it in that realm of mystery.

You recorded 061725 and it was mixed and mastered soon afterwards. So you sat on it for a little while before it was released. I read that you’re working on some additional albums, including something with Garage A Trois.

Yeah, well, Royal Potato Family puts out DRKWAV and, OG Garage A Trois records. The DRKWAV record got mixed and the OG GAT record is almost done. One song needs to be mixed. So, that’s exciting. It’ll be cool to have those records out, especially the DRKWAV record. That’s really out there. It’ll be a double album, and it’s really cool because it’s got acoustic stuff going on with grand piano that’s John Medeski and some old school synth overdubs. Then, a bunch of electronics stuff too, but it always has acoustic drums on it. So, it’s this real soulful, trippy stuff. In 2027 hopefully one or both of them will come out.

Brian Haas and I have a trio with Stanton Moore called the Compulsion Trio that we recorded in New Orleans. I can’t wait to get that out too.

You’re in so many different configurations and projects, is it the idea that you need to be constantly stimulated or is it just that you’re such a popular guy that everybody wants you to join them?

Well, it’s kind of like basic survivor. We have to work. Unfortunately, after 40 years of trying to learn how to be in the studio and to be confident and secure, and have ideas dialed in, as soon as we get to this point of where we’re really getting good at making records in the studio, the whole industry gets decimated. It’s really heartbreaking because we don’t recoup any of these records. They don’t make any money, They’re trying but the odds are so against you.

Like a ceramicist has their pottery wheel and their oven, it’s like we have our recording gear and stuff. I’m gonna do it whether it makes money or not, and I’m going to be super happy about it. Sometimes, those opportunities come up to record—the energy of the band—where everything aligns, everything comes together, and we make a record. Sometimes, you can go months or a whole year and nothing gets recorded. It’s just very random. Chance encounters.

Let’s say you got together with Stanton Moore and Charlie Hunter because you guys had some time off. And you go into a room and improvise for several hours. It’s being recorded. Then, someone has the idea, “Let’s take what we just recorded and chop it up, mix it up, find bits that everyone likes and make an album out of it.” Is that more desirable or do you want something where there’s more song structure?

Well, that’s exactly how our last record that came out, Calm Down Cologne, happened. We were in the studio one-and-a-half days, I think, and we just improvised the whole time. Then, I took all the music and edited it down into the good parts. Did a couple of overdubs, a lot of creative mixing but it was pretty much all there.

It came together really well. I’m really happy about that. The most recent record, that unreleased one with Charlie and Stanton with Garage A Trois, it’s more songs but there’s one or two improvised pieces on there that were good enough to be used on the record, too. So, that’s exciting because that’s always fun.

Do you have a preference or is it that you like both ways of recording music—improvise then mix it and song structure?

I love both. I love it all. I love writing music, songs. or playing other people’s songs and executing that together. It feels real good. Then, the whole mysterious part of improvising is just so fun too because it’s so surprising. You never know what’s gonna happen. It’s really a mysterious, mystical, spiritual event that people can do together.

If you commit your whole life to improvising and you’re playing with like-minded people, you can really summon some crazy stuff. I like the Wayne Shorter quote, “Composition is improvisation, slowed down. And improvisation is composition sped up.” 

You’re in so many projects—the large band, trios, quartets, etc.—obviously, they see something in you that you’re asked to join them. What is it that you’re looking for in others when you put together a band or you join a grouping of people?

By this time, it’s pretty easy. There’s either something going on or there isn’t anything. If you’re starting a band with someone or joining a band that’s a little bit more of a layered commitment. So, you want to make sure you know the elements involved and the people involved.

I have different levels of engagement with other musicians and bands. Some people I sit in with once in a while. Some people I sit in with more often than not. Then, some people, we talk more about doing other stuff in the future. Oteil Burbridge is a good example. Now, he hired me to play in his band before, and we’ve been sitting in with each other’s projects for, geez, almost 30 years now. So, you never know what’s going to happen next year but it’s in the back of your mind. “Oh yeah. We were talking about doing something or about this or that was cool what he did with this other thing. Maybe we could do that.” So, there’s all kinds of inspiration out there with different individuals and different bands trigger that.

The thing is someone like me doesn’t have one band that’s touring all year round. It’s another example of necessity being the mother of invention. There’s 365 days a year, every year, and I’m just trying to play as much as I can. So, we start bands just to play some gigs. Some bands, they only need one gig to play 200 gigs a year, and some people like me need 20 bands to play 200 days a year. I don’t really think about it. It’s just something you have to do and just do it because any day I like to think that there could be something that comes along where everyone really wants to connect to, “Hey! Let’s do it!”

I read about your injury that took you away from the stage in 2023. Before I read that, I was going to ask you, because I interviewed Mike Dillon when he released three albums at once and was playing concerts at that time outside to keep with COVID protocol. For yourself, during those times when there weren’t any gigs for you in 2023 or possibly during COVID, how did you deal with that?

Well, I don’t know if you saw any of my livestreams. I was doing huge productions because I have a small, 500 square foot studio and we turned it, basically, into a film production lot—a mini-Pinewood over here. So, I had camera crews, lighting crews and audio crews. We would just go nuts and come up with these extravagant things. I think most of them are on my YouTube channel.

So, I was kind of excited because a friend of mine had started this company, LiveConcertsStream.com, and I thought, “Hey! This is a cool thing.” We didn’t know when the pandemic was gonna end. It was, like, “Well, this could be a cool thing. Maybe, the future could be where we produce hourlong video albums that are shot live in a studio and with crazy green screens…” because I would go and shoot b-roll stuff weeks or days in advance. Then, the video crew would fade those in and out during these livestream performances. It was really fun.

Now, I have a solo show with a lot of effects with the saxophone, and then I work with an artist called Blazinspace, and they project all kinds of crazy psychedelic images. They just sent me a new edit for this concert we did last year. I want to tour that. It was me with the solo sax and then this intense video takes over the whole space. It’s really an immersive kind of thing. That would be really fun to do.

I was spending thousands of dollars on production, and we would get really good donations, too, kind of break even. All I wanted to do was pay the crew. They were super-stoked to be working on something and flexing their creative muscles. Everyone’s input was super-valuable. It all made it in there.

We did some crazy stuff, right from the beginning, too, because I was on tour with my band, Skerik Band, and we were supposed to play Portland or Bellingham or Seattle or something like that and the show got canceled. My friend, Gordon Brown, who plays with me in the True Loves, is a computer genius. So, one of those days that we were supposed to play he came into my studio in Seattle, and he figured out a way to broadcast this thing and do a livestream. It was the first livestream. It was Skerik Band, and it had all these special guests coming. Horns. I had this incredible singer, Brad Mowen, come in with these costumes and everything. It was awesome. That’s on my YouTube channel.

I want to get your reaction to a quote of yours—”So many people interview me and are constantly throwing genres at me like ‘jazz.’ Obviously, these people have never read anything by Yusef Lateef and his neologism for jazz called autophysiopsychic which means ‘music from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.’” 

It’s a great term, and Yusef was such a beautiful musician and an incredible intellectual. He taught at Amherst University, and his archives are currently at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

I had the honor of seeing some of those archives. Jeff Coffin took me there, and the guy who runs it there was really great. It was really fun to see some of his old papers; these incredible, theoretical equations essentially. They’re like numerical tone rows and all these…He was into all kinds of experimental concepts for writing music and for creating music. He was just open to the whole world. So, it doesn’t surprise me that he came up with that name because a lot of Black American Jazz musicians since the ‘50s, they didn’t like that term ‘jazz.’ A lot of them are very outspoken about it, but he was one that really came up with an alternative.

I think he wanted us to use it before he died. He wanted people—I never studied with him personally—but what I heard, what I’ve read in interviews with him, that people want us to use the term as much as possible because if it gets used a certain amount of times, then it can be considered for entry into Webster’s Dictionary or whatever official word and inclusion in etymology.

He’s a really inspiring person who made incredible records, too.

I also love this quote from back in 2023, when you couldn’t really play

and you discussed going through that time. It’s quite beautiful: “Music has always been a 100% spiritual, creative, and fun endeavor for me. So, I think the universe and my inner soul needed to remind me of that and that’s why this thing happened. I’m kind of back on course now, musically, and it feels really good. I’m very lucky.” Talk about coming out of a bad situation renewed rather than cynical. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had some cynical, cranky days of, “Why me?”

No. I didn’t. It was a very cathartic meditative time. It was very interesting because I didn’t want to consume any media of any kind. I didn’t want to read or watch movies or anything like that. My girlfriend had a big picture window in her bedroom that looked out over the top of some trees. I was just staring out at that, meditating, trying to breathe. It was a good stop because in the pandemic I was working a lot. I was relaxing a little bit.

I had been going on 40 years of “When’s the next gig?” preparing for the next gig. That internal stress is always on you. Sure, you might have a week off but you’re already thinking about what you’re gonna do in two weeks. This was the first time in my adult working life where I didn’t have anything planned. I had to cancel two years of gigs. I had a whole three-month summer tour with Claypool canceled, all kinds of stuff. There wasn’t anything waiting for me. There were no expectations placed upon me.

It was the first time in my adult life where I wasn’t preparing for something, and it’s a pretty amazing feeling. It’s just a total release. And when you’re not getting medical explanations for what has happened to you…when you read me that quote, maybe at the time I was trying to figure out why did this happen, looking for a more metaphysical explanation.

What exactly was the problem?

They never really figured it out. One of my physical therapists thought that it was a combination of a really intense muscle spasm and a compressed nerve in the scapula area. I couldn’t move my whole body for a while. It was really scary. I thought I was done. “Okay, I’m gonna get into some other shit, too. Maybe I’ll do some art or something.”

Music is so physical…it’s like basketball or something. Just getting to the gig is a physical marathon, hauling all the gear, getting in and out of cars and cabs and trains and planes. It’s a marathon. It’s an endurance race, like a triathlon, especially like that gig we did – Medeski, Nels Cline, Stanton and I [3/12/26 at Brooklyn Bowl]. We had to fly to New York, and this is when the TSA shit was all gnarly. Got to get to the airport early. You’re not sleeping. Then, you’ve got to get to the venue early, set up and rehearse. So, you’re going four days with no sleep, working all night, jumping around onstage and playing two shows in a night. It’s physically demanding. I guess when I say I thought I was done, in the super physically demanding aspect of music, which was our regular gig life.

It’s fantastic that you were able to be in a positive mind frame rather than frustrated or angry or something like that. That would be understandable, even if you had one bad day, but it’s a beautiful thing that you didn’t, and you kept it together in a different way and enjoyed the idea that your mind and body kind of exhaled after all those years of just working, working, working.

Yeah, in American culture, I don’t think people really talk about workaholic lifestyle and in relative ways to their own individual situations. I feel like me and a lot of the people I play with are very susceptible to that mindset, and it’s not healthy. It catches up with you.

I’m just trying to be really cognizant of that. Luckily, I have really good people around me to psychologically help me create bounds. My girlfriend, Christa Wells, is very intelligent in that world, and it helped me a lot. I’ve always been lucky to be around really smart, inspiring people.