Boz Scaggs takes the scenic route on his new jazz album, Detour, showing he still knows the secret ways to make any turn interesting and every tune count.
Sometimes the best way forward is to head a little off the beaten path. On Detour, his first album in seven years, Boz Scaggs doesn’t just revisit and reinhabits the Great American Songbook with the kind of soulful reverence and elegance that few can muster. Recorded with pianist Seth Asarnow, the album comes across like a deep conversation between two musicians who know exactly when to lean in and when to let the tunes do the talking.
“I had no intention of making a record when I started singing these songs,” Scaggs admits. “It was all very casual at first — just an opportunity to explore a style of music I’ve always liked.” But what started as casual ends up being captivating. It began as a few demo sessions and slowly bloomed into Detour, an album that pulls from both the familiar (Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald) and the obscure (Irma Thomas, Lonnie Johnson), bridging eras and scenes with a confident ease.
Scaggs, long hailed by many as one of rock’s most soulful voices, brings a lifetime of phrasing and feel to every track. His weathered croon doesn’t imitate Sinatra’s urbane cool or Ella’s grace, it channels something earthier and more human. The album opens with Allen Toussaint’s “It’s Raining,” all hushed piano and tender ache, and never lets up from there. Every performance hits with a disarming intimacy, as if Scaggs were sitting on the couch across from you.
Fans of Scaggs’ chart-topping ’70s output like Silk Degrees and Lowdown will find the same immaculate craftsmanship here, only refracted through jazz’s softer light. It’s not his first time wandering these roads; But Beautiful (2003) and Speak Low (2008) both topped the jazz charts. But Detour feels like something else, something warmer and freer, the work of two players savoring the simple act of playing. Among the highlights is a gorgeous reworking of “I’ll Be Long Gone,” a deep cut from Scaggs’ 1969 debut, now reimagined as a smoky jazz reverie. It’s a full-circle moment for an artist whose career has stretched from the psychedelic ’60s to the blue-eyed soul of the ’70s and beyond.
Scaggs credits Asarnow for helping him unearth that looseness. “At first, we were just meeting up in musical conversation,” he says. “I was taken with his piano work, he with my voice. Eventually, I realized the material we’d recorded together was closer to my heart than anything I’d been able to capture anywhere else.”