Solo to duo (Kottke and Gordon) March 14, 2003 - Guitar Player (April Issue) by Darrin Fox Habitual soloist Leo Kottke teams up with bassist Mike Gordon "When I first met [Phish bassist] Mike Gordon, he played me a tape of my song `Driving of the Year Nail,'" says acoustic legend Leo Kottke. "He added a bass part to the song, but because it was a tune I was disgusted with at the time, I didn't listen to it for years. Eventually, it dawned on me that maybe I should listen to what he did, and his bass work was pretty damn fascinating." The result of that meeting is Clone [Private Music], a record that, behind its slightly flip facade, is as engaging and as frighteningly virtuosic as anything the 57-year-old Kottke has recorded over his 30-year career--a career that has changed perceptions of the power of soloacoustic guitar. You've recorded albums with other players, but you almost exclusively perform solo. When was the last time you played onstage with another musician? It was with a group called the Blackwells in 1965. I played with them one night, and they fired me the next night. I had just gotten out of the Navy, and they didn't like the way I dressed. At least that's what they claimed. I think I just sucked. Was it difficult meshing your busy style with Mike Gordon's playing? That's a problem Mike and I talked about at length. Normally, I step all over a bass player's territory. I'm a road hog, and you can hear that on any record I've ever made with sidemen. The difference with Mike, however, is that he's doing something on the bass that I've always suspected could work with me--he plays more like a horn player. Don't get me wrong, Mike is a bass player. He's just not a bass player with me. How do you play differently with a bass player? With Mike, I improvise more than usual because that's something the bass leaves me room to do. If I improvise without Mike, I'm having to do everything, and my fingers get tangled up. You were never a big improviser in the past. How come? It was more of a matter of taste than anything else. I've always liked composition. I like the whole architecture of a finished piece. With improvising, you have to be a genius to make music at the same level as composition. What changed your outlook? I began to see that composition and improvisation are complimentary and parallel. It was time for me to move into the modern world--I was way back there with Bach and those characters. Also, I didn't know how to improvise. I'm self taught, and if you're self taught, you're stupid. You really are. You may develop fluency, and you may develop a voice, but you remain stupid until you start doing your homework. What was your homework? Well, I still didn't take lessons, but I worked through some classical pieces to get my reading chops up. And I basically did all that so I could get a grip on harmony. Have you changed your outlook on recording acoustic guitar over the years? It has gotten easier because I've given up thinking that if I just spend another ten hours looking for the perfect way to do it, I might find it. Actually, the biggest part of getting a good recorded tone is learning how to play. What do you mean? I remember an engineer proving this point by showing me the meters when someone else was playing. There were plenty of dynamics, but the VU was staying in the same territory. But if you looked at the meters when I was playing back then, they'd be bouncing all over the place unless you really compressed the signal. I'd explode at times, and I'd whisper at times, and each sound was produced with muscle rather than balance and color. I just wanted to rip it all the time, and you can't. It wasn't until I got rid of the fingerpicks that it got a lot easier for me to record the guitar. Why is that? It's not as easy to overplay when you're just using your fingers. I think you actually widen your sonic geography by narrowing the amount of effort you use. It's the difference between force and impact. You had a bout with tendonitis in the mid-'80s that threatened your career. How have you managed to carry on so amazingly well? Getting tendonitis turned out to be a blessing in disguise, but it was very hard to change what I was doing. I've seen old footage of me back then, and it's painful for me to watch how contorted my right hand is. There's not much of a line from the forearm down to the wrist out through the fingers. Did using fingerpicks mask the physical wear and tear on your arms and hands? Well, fingerpicks haven't hurt a lot of people, but they hurt me because I was such a hog. I was on "11" all the time, and if you play hard with fingerpicks, the fingerpicks allow you to even play harder--harder than you can physically recover from. That's what happened to me. Fingerpicks or not, your playing has always had a propulsive groove. That's a matter of appetite. I remember wanting that feel in my playing before I could play "Kumbaya." I had this Jerry Lee Lewis idea about the guitar--that it's a little piano, and you should be able to make it chug. But I never found what I was hoping to hear. I tried to play the banjo for about a year, because it was apparent that they were doing something with that perpetual motion-type feel, but the banjo didn't fit me. Did you work with a metronome? No, but I could benefit from that. Every now and then, I'll work with one to see what condition my rash is in. But, back then, I just wanted to get up and ride the guitar like a bicycle. You have to be careful with that heavy rhythm thing, though. It can be a trap. You have to remember that you can't just establish a pattern and play it over and over again. Getting locked into patterns seems to be a common trap for fingerstylists. I've felt them forming before, and I'm sure if I looked back I could find places where I was stuck. From the beginning, getting stuck in fingerpicking patterns seemed to be one of the problems of building the bicycle. How did you get around that? I was constantly trying to figure out how to get my thumb to sound like a finger. To break out of the patterns, I would add beats or drop beats with the thumb. One of the best examples of this is the Flatt and Scruggs song "Jimmy Brown, the Newsboy." That rune will tell you how your thumb should work musically. You can hear how they can drop a beat, add a beat, or put a little push in there. I find it ironic that your style embraces so many rootsy-type elements, yet you used to say that you didn't like the blues. Well, when I was saying those things I was referring to the Delta form--it bugged me the most. But you know what? Once I got those guys playing right in my face, I didn't dislike it anymore. I got to see Fred McDowell play at a party a long time ago. He failed with this young woman, and began getting plastered. He sat down in a room, and everyone else either left the room or ignored him--except me, of course. I sat right in front of him, and he closed his eyes and started playing. He didn't know I was there--he certainly didn't care--and he had this little amp and a horrible slide that was hardly bigger than a ring. I sat there for a couple of hours listening to him. Man, I can still go to school on that experience. Have you been influenced by many electric players? Oh, tons of them. It's a long, long list. But when I say "influenced," it doesn't mean I figured out what they did and tried to do it. I just have a list of guys who knocked me over. Guys like John McLaughlin--who I opened a lot of shows for. I also listened to "The Cleanup Woman" by Betty Wright. The guitarist on that track was a guy named Willie Hale, but people know him as "Little Beaver." At one time, I had three of his solo albums. Roy Buchanan is another player who always knocked me out. I saw him at the Roxy in L.A., and it was the only time I ever stood on a tabletop and screamed. How have you solved the conundrum of amplifying your acoustic? Well, like every other guitar player, I try everything that comes along. Eventually, I just settled on the Sunrise pickup. I also carry a few direct boxes--a Brooks Siren, a Countryman, and a Fishman that has some onboard EQ and frequency-sensitive compression. It seems as if you're happy with what you have, but do you still view amplifying acoustics onstage as a major compromise? It's not what you dream of--and that's a fact! I'll tell you the thing that helped me deal with it, though. The first time I played Los Angeles, it was at the Troubadour, and all of my guitars had been stolen. I had an absolutely unplayable guitar as a replacement, and I complained about it onstage which I would never do now, but I didn't know any better then. So, after the show, I go back to the dressing room, and a man named Dick Rosmini walks in and introduces himself. He had a record of acoustic solo pieces in 1964 called Adventures for 12-String, 6-String, and Banjo that I really liked. So I fall down and immediately start to say things like, "Yeah I really sucked tonight" and "I wish I had my guitars." Then, Dick sits down and says, "Let me look at that guitar." He played it, and it sounded perfect. Now I was really confused. He looked up at me and said, "See, if you know how to play, it doesn't matter what guitar you're playing," and then he left. He was right. You should be able to play anything, but that doesn't mean it will be a pleasant experience. Clone Tones "For Clone, I recorded my signature series Taylor 6- and 12-strings with a pair of Shoeps mics," says Kottke. "The guitars have spruce tops, mahogany backs and sides, and ebony fretboards. I string them with D'Addario lights, although I occasionally use John Pierce lights." Article Copyright © 2003 Miller Freeman Publications