RIDGEFIELD — In an interview ahead of his Ridgefield Playhouse show June 10, highly respected and award-winning blues artist Matt Schofield said after nearly 25 years in the business, it’s still incomprehensible when he is aligned beside fellow British players like Eric Clapton and Peter Green

But all humility aside, Schofield told The Newtown Bee he is excited to be able to thrill true blues fans and newcomers alike, exposing his audiences to the “irreplaceable joy of live music."

He said he will accomplish that by drawing from diverse roots in jazz, funk, and early American blues, when he and his power trio hit the Playhouse stage next month. That set will steer past a lot of all-too-familiar blues standards, Schofield said, in favor of showcasing primarily his own material including a decent sampling from his 2014 release, Far As I Can See.

His name may not be as familiar to casual blues fans as Clapton and Green, but Schofield is becoming something of a blues legend in his own right.

Drawing from familiar influences including the late B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Muddy Waters, Albert Collins, Jimi Hendrix, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, and the Vaughn brothers – Jimmy and Stevie Ray – Schofield uniquely flavors each number fusing new guitar tricks and fresh lyrics over the bedrock planted by the many journeyman blues legends who came before him.

Vintage Guitar magazine calls Schofield “The best of his generation’s European blues players," noting "His feel for the music is incredible. His playing is so interesting that latching onto his records will reward any guitarist.”

During his career, Schofield has delivered five albums and played around the world for hundreds of thousands of blues fans. And he has been richly rewarded for his talent, being named British Blues Awards Guitarist of the Year (2010, 2011 and 2012), and installing him as the first guitarist in the British Blues Awards Hall of Fame.

He received Mojo Magazine’s Blues Album of the Year award in 2011, and British Blues Awards Album of the Year 2010. Additionally, Schofield is rated among the top ten British blues guitarists of all time by Guitar & Bass Magazine, and is named in the Penguin Book of Blues Recordings as one of only two living British artists to gain a maximum four-star rating.

Although he became famous emulating early British soul jazz players like Jimmy Smith in a trio featuring guitar, drums and organ, Schofield said that for the upcoming tour he is switching to a bass, drum and guitar lineup.

“In a trio you can improvise and be really free,” Schofield said. “We have a bunch of songs we’re selecting from at the moment, but we always try to go with the feel of the audience. The new album has been out for a year now, so we’ve started mixing in a few older numbers again with some of the new material.”

The blues artist said he never goes into a gig like the Ridgefield show with a preconceived idea of what he plans to play.

“I never write a setlist,” Schofield said, “I just kind of call them off as we go.”

Upon connecting with the blues artist at a tour stop in sunny Miami, Schofield launched into the conversation talking about another major influence, friend and collaborator...

Newtown Bee: Your bio lists a raft of familiar blues players as influences like Billy Gibbons, the Vaughn brothers, BB King and Muddy Waters. But I'd like to hear about one that may not be as familiar to casual blues fans: Tomo Fujita.

Matt Schofield: Actually, I tell people I didn't know Fujita until I knew him — he's more of a friend of mine than an influence, really. We met a few years ago and we've done a lot of things - we did some teaching together, you now, like Master Classes. So when you work together like that you always find something new about our own playing when we talk about playing. It's hard to find somebody you can talk to and explore the instrument with - not just playing the music together. It's cool because we always find something new about ourselves when we get together to just hang ourt or play together. We've been doing that four or five years now.

Bee: Have you adopted any new techniques or styles as a result of rediscovering the instrument with Fujita?

Schofield: When we met I sound the same as I do now, and vise versa for him. I think it's more a philosophical thing — it's hard to explain, but it's sort of learning how to teach other people. That's what we do when we work together. Try and come up with a class we can take around. There's a lot of teaching that doesn't really address what people are missing. There's a lot of information that helps people play good music, but they're not using it in the right way. We try to teach in more of a creative way.

Bee: Are there any influences outside the blues spectrum who have played a role in how you sound today?

Schofield: That would be Oscar Peterson — he's one of my favorite musicians. He's a piano player but I get a lot from him, so I try and apply that in my own way to what I do in terms of phrasing, his time feel — his swing. I listen to a lot of non-guitar stuff. A lot of organ trio music. My own band was an organ trio for awhile — so you know, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff — that and a lot of New Orleans stuff — the Meters, Dr John. I think it's important to get outside that box of being guitar-centric. Guitar players tend to listen to a lot of other guitar players and you have to go beyond that, or everybody sounds like everybody else.

Bee: Being put up there with the Olympic Gold and Silver Blues winners like Clapton and Peter Green, that still must blow your mind.

Schofield: It's crazy — I can't even think about that. I just try and do a good job with it.

Bee: Do you approach your songwriting from a music first, then lyrics method, or do various parts just come to you in no certain order?

Schofield: More in the moment, really. I wish I had a way of writing — but I'm just kind of open to what hits me. The last few records have been written with my ex-girlfriend. She contributed a lot of lyrical ideas. I guess you just have to be open to the ways ideas come.

Bee: Most heartfelt blues, I guess, tends to come from the dissolution of love, while many of yours songs have come from the inception of a love affair.

Schofield: To me blues is just life. It's an expression of all sides of life — good, bad, happy, sad — you should be able to find something in any of it.

Bee: What's your ratio of your own songs to covers in your current setlists?

Schofield: Probably I'll be doing most or all originals — maybe we'll throw in one cover, but it's mostly originals at this point. 

Bee: What's the difference between hardcore American blues fans, who grew up rooted in the soil that gave birth to the blues, versus those from other countries who come to the blues through those American influences?

Schofield: I grew up listening to the original American blues players instead of the British Blues players. But a lot of my American friends actually got turned on by the British blues artists of the '60s. A lot of the blues records they had, I didn't even own. My dad had a lot of those original blues recordings, so I was influenced right from the source. I know most all of my friends were switched on by British players who came over here selling it back to you guys!

Bee: Chatting with Robbie Krieger (The Doors), he said he was really turned off by a lot of that British Blues invasion — but he said when he really dug into the early Rolling Stones, he was impressed by how hard they worked at being true to the American blues artists they were covering or emulating.

Schofield: I think everybody was trying to do it that well — just trying to be part of it. There was a genuine affection for that original stuff.

Bee: What was so appealing to you about being part of an organ trio?

Schofield: It's just more colorful sounding than a power trio, even with an exceptionally good bass player. The organ made the music more harmonically interesting for me to play. But with a bass player, I inject a lot of that color myself. Organ fills a bigger musical hole. You're getting two for one really. With an organ trio you can really improvise more and be really free, where with a bass, you're locked down a little bit more. I enjoyed playing on top of that organ sound — an organ and guitar really sound good together.

Bee: Do you have a firm plan for your next project?

Schofield: I can't really talk about it much because it could involve a collaboration with one of my real heroes and I don't want to jinx it. But it will be something really cool to bring my playing full circle to be working with someone that has been really important to my music for many years. It's a guitar player, but that's all I can say because we're still kind of talking about it.

Bee: Who are your backing musicians on this tour?

Schofield: A couple of guys from down here in Miami actually  — a good friend and bass player named Rodrigo Zambrano, and Aaron Glueckauf on drums. It's an old school power trio with a couple of young dudes who really get the music. That's the challenge, to find young guys that are still into this stuff. And to try and turn young people into it as well.

Maybe we can drag a few more young people in who haven't experienced the power and irreplaceable joy of live music — that magical experience between good musicians and a band. That's what we'd like to do.

For tickets to Schofield’s June 10 show at Ridgefield Playhouse, click here.

Check out a clip of Schofield, jamming with one of his influences, Tomo Fujita, and legendary blues artist Eric Gales on the Jimi Hendrix classic "Little Wing" in 2012 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amtLZwS441M

Or view a sample of Schofield's trio playing live at New York's Iridium in 2012 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYRAYVX7AkM