Getting to mouth off
by Anil Prasad
Copyright © 1999 Anil Prasad. All rights reserved.
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 20 years since Leo Kottke released an album of solo guitar instrumentals. After all, creating inimitable acoustic steel-string, fingerstyle pieces is what he does best, what he was first known for and a prime motivator in his life.
"It’s probably been my spiritual connection. What I’m always trying to do is write a guitar tune. It’s my big thrill," he told Innerviews just before hitting the stage at the Solfest solar and wind energy festival in Hopland, California last June. Apparently, Kottke’s had a lot of thrills lately, as his latest release, the self-explanatory One Guitar, No Vocals, offers up the first bushel crop of new solo pieces since 1981’s Guitar Music. It’s also kin to his seminal 1969 album 6 and 12 String Guitar. So, why was 1999 the right time to return to the solo format?
"The main reason is the new head of A&R [artists and repertoire] at the label wanted it," he said in his typically deep, rumbling voice. "But I’ve asked every record label ‘Can I just do a solo guitar record?’ So, the chance to do it was really welcome to me. Fortunately, I had a fair amount of material, so away we went."
For some, Kottke’s signature, resonant vocals and endearingly quirky lyrics are an acquired taste. Recent years have seen him situate those talents in contexts as diverse as chamber music, pop, funk and even hip-hop. But his skills as a guitarist and composer are universally acclaimed. One Guitar, No Vocals showcases both in peak form.
"The title seems to be a spoof on the music business—years of trying to figure out what category Leo’s music fits into and inane conversation about whether he should sing more or less," said John Stropes, a renowned authority on fingerstyle guitar and the only person Kottke trusts to transcribe his work. "Leo’s music captures a broad variety of idiomatic sounds from the fullness of American life. His genius for technical idiosyncrasy, his robust inclusion of coloristic effects, percussive elements and an infectious rhythmicality make this music come alive on one guitar. He possesses an effortless virtuosity. His contributions to guitar technique have been staggering and are still not fully understood. Like Fryderyk Chopin, he has created a fresh, new virtuosic literature for his instrument which fires our imagination and stirs our emotions."
One of the more stirring pieces on the new record is "Bigger Situation," a nine-minute epic that illustrates Kottke’s gift for melodic development and inventive structures. Full of unique twists, turns and roundabouts, it’s without a doubt a highlight of his career that spans more than 30 years.
"It started out as three separate pieces and somewhere along the line they connected beautifully," said Kottke, relaxing in a backstage trailer, decked out in faded jeans, tube socks and a white, untucked dress shirt. "The middle section folds back in on itself, so they became one piece. It happened over several years. I was knocked out about that. It’s all the same geography. It’s sort of like finding out you’ve been living next door to your brother for 20 years and didn’t even know you had a brother."
One Guitar, No Vocals also offers up "Accordion Bells," Kottke’s first and only Christmas tune. It originally debuted on a Windham Hill collection titled Carols of Christmas II. It’s a warm, poignant piece suitable for any occasion, but he gave it a yuletide moniker to satisfy his label’s penchant for seasonal records.
"The two themes of my career with labels have been that I should have a chick singer and that I should make a Christmas album," said Kottke, his boyish face wincing. "I used to suspect it, but because I’ve kind of canvassed audiences, I know that one of the reasons they keep coming to hear me is because I haven’t made a Christmas album or a record with a chick singer. I did the tune because [Windham Hill] is now a new outfit with new people, new A&R and I didn’t have to do a whole record. I just contributed a tune. That’s it."
The track’s name derives from Kottke’s gleeful fascination with the simple, yet clever ornaments.
"I continue to be flabbergasted by accordion bells—the actual bells," said Kottke, 54. "I first saw one when I was a little kid. You open this thing and it’s a bell or a pumpkin. It’s just great and fantastic that somebody took the time to dream up accordion paper and then dream up a bell."
The new album also contains one of Kottke’s most aggressive and mercurial pieces to date in "Chamber of Commerce." The turbulent track features hypnotic, repeating rhythms that segue into heavy, clamorous strumming. It was originally titled "Goddamnit!" and served as a tribute to Michael Hedges, the celebrated, innovative acoustic guitarist who died in a car accident in late 1997. Kottke chose to rename the piece because he felt "a little presumptuous" about discussing his friend’s intimate life details onstage every night.
"There’s this Jewish tradition, a prayer for the dead called the Kaddish. I used to think the prayer involved walking out on a storm-swept hill in the middle of the night and shaking your fist at God while saying ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing to us? Quit it!’" said an emotional Kottke as he looked up and acted out his words. "According to one of my manager’s daughters, [the Kaddish] is just a prayer for the dead. You don’t go out and yell at God. But I’ve never reacted that way to the death of someone before. It was everything you would expect. He was a good friend of mine and I was just very, very, very angry about it. It really just pissed me off. So, sometimes you take out those moods on the guitar."
Despite the fact that Kottke and Hedges have played momentous roles in redefining how the world thinks about guitar, their friendship transcended the musical and any notions of ego.
"When Michael sprang forth in a full suit of armor in the mid-1980s, many fingerstyle guitarists felt eclipsed," said Stropes. "But Michael and Leo were great friends. It was a mutually welcoming relationship."
Like several of Kottke’s recent releases, the new album contains a couple of remakes of old favorites, including the often-requested "Morning is the long way home." The tune first appeared as a vocal track on 1974’s Ice Water. He says he revisits pieces because they have lives of their own and evolve over time. But there’s another purpose too.
"Part of the reason is just to fill out the record," he said, chuckling. "You just don’t have enough stuff, so you re-record something. So far though, I’ve only re-recorded stuff that kinda needed it. Either it hadn’t been recorded the way I do it now or the performance or sound of when it was first recorded sucked."
The twinges of reticence Kottke harbors towards some of those earlier pieces are similar to his feelings about contributing to Leokottke.com, his newly-established website.
"It’s embarrassing and really weird to have your own website. It’s like putting your name up on a corkboard at Wal-Mart," he said. "The thing that intrigues me most about the website is there’s this little section where I get to mouth off. I don’t care what the issue is. I’m going to have to be careful though because Good Lord, can I open my mouth! And I hate beating people over the head with anything. We can all make up our own minds. What we don’t have is enough music. More music please."
Complete Interview Transcript:
The scene: The backstage trailer at the Solfest solar and wind energy festival in Hopland, California. It’s situated about 100 miles north of San Francisco in the middle of wine country. The festival features every environmentally-friendly product and device imaginable. There’s plenty of serious exhibits including electric cars, hemp clothing and food, and solar-powered lighting, kitchen appliances and heating systems. But of particular curiosity is the on-site store selling items such as potato-powered Zen alarm clocks that provide "a progressive awakening," crank-powered AM-FM radios and Endangered Species’ brand chocolate bars, now available in "Orca flavor" (meaning white and dark chocolate swirls, of course).
Innerviews began its conversation with the ever-intriguing and entertaining Kottke just prior to him jumping onstage to perform for the 500 or so attendees.
Why did you choose to play a solar energy festival?
All the jobs I do I get from the agency. They call my management and my management calls me and I respond to the management and the management calls the agency back.
Do you have an affinity for the solar and wind energy movement?
As it happens, I do, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because it’s a job. But there’s a station—I hope I get the call letters right—called KTAO. I bet that’s not right. It’s too convenient. It’s in Taos, which is why I’m thinking that. It’s not in China. [laughs] The entire station is solar powered. Their collectors are up on a mountain top. I’ve met the woman who engineered, designed and constructed it. They run the power from way off somewhere and it runs to the station which is a trailer in the dirt. When you’re on the air, you’re on the air. The wind blows right through the trailer and when the door slams, you get dust in your face. It’s the antithesis of radio. You have air, light, wind and you’re not downtown somewhere. The power is coming from nowhere. I guess the sense of it is obvious, but it’s the romance of it that knocks me out. When I was a kid, I had a crystal radio that I built. I ran a wire out to a tree from my room and listened to KOMA in Oklahoma City. It was the only city I could get. I didn’t need any power. I didn’t need a damn thing. That’s magic.
Do you have any activist leanings?
No, I don’t. I have a lot of volunteer leanings, but they all revolve around playing where I play. I don’t play benefits either, but I’ll play hospitals, schools, prisons and things.
Prisons?
Well, I’m cutting back on prisons. [laughs] I haven’t played many of them. There’s a certain kind of prison I don’t want to play anymore and that’s a state prison. I was at a friend’s house and a guy there had just been paroled from the federal prison in Atlanta. I mentioned that I was playing Stillwater [state prison in Stillwater, Minnesota] and at that time I had played Sandstone [federal prison in Sandstone, Minnesota] a couple of times. This guy said "Don’t play a state prison. There are people there who deserve to be in prison." I can’t exaggerate the difference between a federal prison population and a state prison population. All you have to do is think about what the state laws cover compared to what the federal laws cover and you’d see why there’d be a change in mood in a state prison.
How do you get a prison gig?
I volunteer to do them for free. The two federal things came from a woman called Sue While who ran Sundance [film festival] for awhile and went on to work with [Mikhail] Barishnakov and his dance troupe. She launched a lot of careers. So, she had set up this thing to bring music and other stuff into Sandstone. And for the state prison [gig], I was asked by one of the guards to come and play.
How do the prison audiences react to you?
They are not a good crowd in a state prison. It’s a tough audience. It’s a room full of kind of depressed people. In a federal prison, if you do your job right, you can work it like a crowd. It’s more congenial there. Things are just easier when you walk into the federal prison. You feel better and so does the prisoner. You’re more aware that you’re in a penal institution in a state prison. It’s a different experience. There are people there who deserve to be there. The federal prison is white collar crime, interstate stuff, smuggling and illegal immigrants. A lot of the Mexican [illegal immigrants] would get bused to Sandstone for their time. A friend of mine was incarcerated at Sandstone for three years. He said for some reason, instead of sticking [illegal immigrants] in El Paso [Texas] or somewhere warm, they send them as far away from Mexico as they can get. He said a lot of these guys had the same tattoo which said "Born to suffer." [laughs]
What made you return to the solo guitar format for the new album?
The main reason is the new head of A&R at the label wanted it.
Okay, thanks for the interview. I’ll be off now. [laughs]
Great, great! It’s gonna be a great interview! [laughs] Yeah, they told me to do it. But I’ve asked every record label "Can I just do a solo guitar record?" because it’s really how I first showed up in the marketplace. What I’m always trying to do is write a guitar tune. It’s my big thrill. So, the chance to do it was really welcome to me. Fortunately, I had a fair amount of material, so away we went.
I’m surprised that you’re still subject to being told what to do by your label. I got the feeling you really wanted to do a pop record like Great Big Boy or go in the directions that appeared on Peculiaroso.
That’s basically true, but for this record, it’s true within loose boundaries. What has tended to be the story almost every time is "Do what you want, but talk to us about who the producer is, where you’re gonna do it and how can we get ahold of you while you’re doing it." The other things I’ve run into are "Yeah, you’ve gotta have other instruments" and "We’d really like you to have a chick singer." I’ve managed to avoid that. The fact that people like Rickie Lee [Jones] and Emmy [Emmylou Harris] have sung on some of my stuff has nothing to do with them being chicks. So, that’s it. They’ve never said "You’ve got to do this tune or make a record this way." They’ve always left me pretty free to do stuff, but this record is the first of mine for the newly-reconstituted Windham Hill Group—blah, blah, blah.
Why does the album have such a literal title?
They did ask for that specifically. They didn’t give me the title, but after we all agreed I’d be happy doing a solo record, they asked me to indicate in the title somehow that it was a solo guitar record with no singing on it. When I say "they" I mean Larry Hamby, who is a great guy to work with. Sometimes he speaks for himself, sometimes for the whole [Windham Hill] superstructure. So, I said it wouldn’t be a problem.
Compare the collaborative approach you’ve taken in recent years to working by yourself on the new record.
[Kottke pauses for a minute]
Maybe it’s a stupid question. After all, this is what you do most of the time.
No, it’s a good question. I take these questions so seriously. I really like to think about these things and try not to talk so damn much when I answer them. [laughs] The kick you get when you hear something you like when you’re in the audience is what it’s like to bring other people in to play with you in the studio. You get the same kick out of it. It gets to be you do it for the company—just having people around. I’ve had people in the studio because I like hanging out with them more than I’ve given any thought to how they play. Ideally, both happen and that’s great fun. After all the years of playing and performing by myself, it’s a huge thrill to hear this other stuff. I think it’s a problem sometimes because you’ll fall in love with everything you’ve never heard because you’ve got no experience with it—you might not exercise a lot of judgement. It’s nice to have a good producer in that case. When you play solo, you have to know how to relax and get in and out as quickly as you can and not try to get it right. I’m getting better at that. It applies to anything but it seems to be more true of solo stuff because with solo stuff, you can’t fudge the pocket. It has to be there on its own. It’s a matter of relaxing into it, no matter what kind of tune it is and as Chet [Atkins] once told me, "waiting for the beat."
Let’s talk about "Bigger Situation." It’s as close to an epic as anything you’ve ever done. Describe how it came together.
It started out as three separate pieces and somewhere along the line they connected beautifully. The middle section folds back in on itself, so they became one piece. It happened over several years. I was knocked out about that. It’s all the same geography. It’s sort of like finding out you’ve been living next door to your brother for 20 years and didn’t even know you had a brother. What amazed me about "Bigger Situation" is that it goes over great live because you’ve got to kind of pay attention to it. You can lose an audience sometimes. I might attempt to play it tonight. I never really know what I’m gonna do. I’m playing a few things off the new record, but I’ll have nights where I don’t play anything from it. That used to be a theme with me during the old Private Music days [his previous label that was acquired and folded into the Windham Hill Group]. They’d all come to the show in L.A. and I’d have a new record out and I wouldn’t play anything from it. [laughs] Or I’d do the publicity they set me up for on radio or TV and I’d play something that’s 20 years old. They would have preferred I play something off the new record. I see their point. [laughs]
Speaking of Windham Hill, you put "Accordion Bells" on the new album. It first appeared on one of their many Christmas records. It’s a beautiful tune, but I understand you gave it a Christmas title to basically satisfy an obligation.
[laughs] Like I said, a theme of my career with labels is that I should have a chick singer and the other is that I should make a Christmas album. I used to suspect it, but because I’ve kind of canvassed audiences, I know that one of the reasons they keep coming to hear me is because I haven’t made a Christmas album or a record with a chick singer. [laughs] I mentioned that in Boulder [Colorado] once and Michael Murphy came backstage and said "You know Leo, I made a Christmas record with a chick singer." [laughs] He made millions off it. But I haven’t done one. I did the tune because [Windham Hill] is a now new outfit with new people, new A&R and I didn’t have to do a whole record. I just contributed a tune. That’s it. [pauses] You know, I continue to be flabbergasted by accordion bells—the actual bells. I first saw one when I was a little kid. You open this thing and it’s a bell or a pumpkin. It’s just great and fantastic that somebody took the time to dream up accordion paper and then dream up a bell.
Several of your recent records feature remakes of older tunes. I know you’ve said that your pieces have their own lives and evolve over time. But does your "same old shit" theory play a role in the process too?
No, part of the reason for it is just to fill out the record.
You’re just being totally dead-honest today aren’t you?
[laughs] Yeah. You just don’t have enough stuff, so you re-record something. So far though, I’ve only re-recorded stuff that kinda needed it. Either it hadn’t been recorded the way I do it now or the performance or sound of when it was first recorded sucked. "Morning is the long way home" first appeared as a vocal [on Ice Water] and second on the first Capitol greatest hits record [Did You Hear Me?] where the break was excised and put up independently. As far as I can recall, that was the last time it was done and hasn’t ever been recorded solo. I get a lot of requests for it because I stopped playing it for a lot of years. I started playing it again in the last two years. I like it. It’s a kind of tune I don’t often write anymore, so it’s nice to get on this record.
"Chamber of Commerce" was originally titled "Goddamnit!" and served as a tribute to Michael Hedges. And onstage, you introduce it with a story about reacting to a fellow motel resident complaining about you making too much noise. Why did you change the track’s name and the story behind it?
I decided that the people who know me or the people who read this would know that I wrote it with Michael in mind. It seemed kinda rude to me to title a tune as a memorial to a friend.
Was the original title designed to suggest the idea of "Goddamnit, he’s gone?"
Yeah, and "Goddamnit God!" There’s this Jewish tradition, a prayer for the dead called the Kaddish. I used to think the prayer involved walking out on a storm-swept hill in the middle of the night and shaking your fist at God while saying "What the hell do you think you’re doing to us? Quit it!" [looks up and shakes his fist intensely] According to one of my manager’s daughters who’s about eight year old, [the Kaddish] is just a prayer for the dead. You don’t go out and yell at God. But I’ve never reacted that way to the death of someone before. It was everything you would expect. He was a good friend of mine and I was just very, very, very angry about it. It really just pissed me off. So, sometimes you take out those moods on the guitar.
A long time ago, I had written and recorded a song on Burnt Lips called "Low Thud." It was on a 12-string and the low E was tuned to a low A. Hedges and I were doing a tour somewhere and he said "Remember ‘Low Thud’ and you had that E tuned down?" I said "Yeah." And he said "I do that now" and he did. He has some tunes that way. So, I went there because it was a familiar place to both us and just started fooling around. And I was in a motel room in Pawling, New York. I got the call [about Hedges] a couple of days before that. I had been trying to play through that kind of feeling I had and I remembered he liked that bit [on "Low Thud."] Then I got a call telling me to be quiet. It’s the wrong thing to say to a guy who’s already pissed off. So, it’s a part of the experience of that thing and it gave me another way to introduce the tune without having to go through Michael’s intimate story and spreading it up and throwing it up all over the stage. I don’t know. I just feel a little presumptuous doing that.
It’s a shame that you and Michael never recorded together.
We’d always talked about recording together. We had about six pieces worked up together. There was some neat stuff—some really neat stuff. And some terrible stuff! [laughs] We really butchered a couple of things. I remember we did "The Night Shift" by the Commodores.
[laughs] With Michael singing?
Oh, we were both singing! [lets out a huge belly laugh] We did it more than once. Oh, it was hilarious. But I loved the tune. I was the one who suggested it actually. It almost made it, but it didn’t quite work.
Do any demos of the material the two of you were working on exist?
No. There are a couple of bootleg cassettes I’m sure, but who knows how much of it is on any of them or if it’s any good. We tended to do it where I would play my guitar and he’d play a high string. It provided a nice separation to the thumb problems you get into when you have two real thumby players like us. We kept talking about my coming out here [to Michael’s home and studio in Medocino, only a few miles away from Hopland] and we could just do it and I could stay at the place. But as usual, I procrastinated. Michael never did procrastinate. If he got a bee in his bonnet, he’d act immediately. But I don’t. I’m slow.
Why did the tune get renamed "Chamber of Commerce?"
Again, there’s a connection to Pawling in that. It’s nice to me, but it means nothing to anyone else. There are some fans there, one of whom is a bucket washer at a thoroughbred horse farm. For several years he’s called himself the ‘Chamber of Commerce.’ For a long time they never revealed themselves, but would send pens, stickers and mementos of Pawling backstage. And I really thought it was the Pawling Chamber of Commerce sending them. But it was four or five people who liked to come and hear me play. I finally met them. The other thing is that there’s not much that irritates me more than chambers of commerce. Everything they say when they open their mouths, the stuff they have to do and whole idea just kinda bugs me. I’m sure it has to be there, but I’m glad I don’t have to do it. So, there’s all kinds of threads for me with that tune, including the bucket washer. I shouldn’t call him the bucket washer, but I don’t know anybody else who does that, so that’s great. I like it a lot.
We lost Joe Pass a little while ago too. Can you offer some thoughts on working with him?
Oh yeah, oh yeah! You know, there are a lot of guitar players who’ve died in the last handful of years—a lot of them. And a lot of them in plane crashes and violent, accidental sudden deaths. But Joe died in his smile. [pauses] I suppose he did! What I meant is he died in his sleep with a smile on his face. In my experience—and this can’t always be true—great musicians are usually people you’d love to be around even if you hadn’t heard them play or didn’t know they played. Joe was one of the most straight-ahead, in-your-face people I’ve ever met and it was such a privilege to play with him. He was just being the height of generosity to play with me in that situation [the Guitar Summit tour]. I’m certainly not what he does—it’s not his cup of tea. But he was perfectly happy to step to a 12 bar blues and play with me. It was really a great gift. A lot of players of his ability wouldn’t have done that. He was happy to do it. Some nights it was a collision, but some nights it actually worked and was so nice.
I was hung up on his tone on that tour. When I saw him a few times in Australia, he would get this great tone and it kind of changed my mind about those big humbuckers and plywood tops. Joe was convinced these carved, archtop guitars weren’t worth it—he said they’re just a problem on a pick-up because you’re going to use the pick-up anyhow, so just get a pressed plywood top and put a pick-up in it. He’s got a lot of support for that argument. I loaned him my Demeter DI [an acoustic guitar "tube direct box" designed to support natural-sounding amplification] and toward the end of the tour, he thanked me for giving it to him. I couldn’t bring myself to say "I didn’t give it to you Joe. I gotta have it back." [laughs] I don’t know where it is now, but I’m glad he got it. He would come off stage several nights on that tour and say "What a great night for the guitar." When I met him the first night in Australia, we were playing on a TV show together with John Williams and Paco Pena, and we took a cab somewhere to another part of town and he said "I’m intellectually tired." He didn’t really want to play anymore. And then he would go out and play his ass off on that tour. He mentioned a couple of times how much fun it was to be playing again and how nice it was to play solo. It was quite a wonderful thing for all of us and I know I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth.
There was talk of a live album coming from that tour.
There was so much contractual shit that it was pretty much impossible. Also, none of us wanted to do it. When the idea first came up, Joe was the first one to say "If you’re going to do it, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know the red light is on. If the red light’s on and I know it, I choke." Joe Pass said that! It’s really interesting because he’s an improviser. Pepe [Romero] said "Yeah, right. I felt exactly the same way." We just wanted to play. It did get recorded a couple of times, including San Francisco at the Opera House there. I don’t know where that tape is. It sounded pretty good, but it’ll probably never be heard.
Do you ever think about your own mortality?
[laughs] Yeah. I don’t think of it in terms of being dead, but I think about it in terms of "You have a curve as an organism—if not a soul—and what do you do with it?" I think early on, you just figure out that it’ll come to you. But at a certain point, I started feeling you have to choose it. It doesn’t come to you.
So, you have to choose what happens to your soul?
Yeah. If you do nothing at all, that’s a choice. That tends to be my favorite choice and I now know it’s one of the worst choices you can make. The choice not to choose—that’s a bad choice.
What is your choice then?
It’s better to act it than to think it. I’m trying to do that more.
Can you be more specific?
That means you should make your mistakes out front, rather than premeditate them. You’re gonna tend to get to the same place given a certain degree of participation in your own life. You might as well get there by choosing, period. Doesn’t really matter what you choose. But by choosing, rather than by not choosing, you’ll find that it’s better to act than to be acted upon or that it’s better to act than it is to react. I didn’t know that earlier. It takes a little bit of the other kind of mortality thoughts like "I’ll be dead in awhile" before you get that—before I did.
You’re known as a very direct guy who tells it like it is, albeit it couched in…
…obscurities? [laughs]
[laughs] Is your outlook—musically or otherwise—based on any spiritual beliefs?
[The guitar] has probably been my spiritual connection. I know when I started playing it definitely was. It got me out of bed. I had been in bed for two months and it cured me. I have been playing since I was five but it was the guitar when I was 12 that took me apart and gave me a life. I knew instantly that I’d be playing for the rest of my life and that it was all I wanted to do. I didn’t have to think about my job. I could go with it—what I was doing was the guitar. And it was a spiritual experience and remains one. [long pause] You don’t get anything for free. I don’t want to make this sound lofty because it’s as ordinary as shoes—but that’s what it is, this spiritual trip. People who get into it will give up a lot to do it because they know it’s necessary for them and worth doing. Dizzy Gillespie talked about that in his autobiography. When I met him in Italy, we talked about how you’ll give up a lot of stuff—mainly bad habits you don’t mind losing so you can keep playing. Well, you do mind, but maybe they’re worth losing.
What were some of those bad habits?
All of the usual. You name it.
Do you want to name it?
No, no. [laughs] It’s an old story and it’s so boring. Just dissipation and decay, you know?
For some, your last record, Standing In My Shoes, stands out as one of the more incongruous releases in your catalog. I understand you disagree.
Yeah, it struck people that way. I don’t agree. For me, it’s more of the same old shit. [laughs] It’s just me again. It was a record I intended to make about 26 years ago with David Z. We were planning to do that and it would have been exactly the same record. On that album, I re-recorded "Standing In My Shoes" and "Vaseline Machine Gun"—which I wish I could re-title and I’ve tried. We did those because those were tunes David wanted to produce 26 years ago. But his career took off with Prince and it just never happened. So, the record that would have happened 26 years ago is the identical record that got made—the same kind of material and the same kind of production.
I was surprised at how funky some of the tracks on the record are.
That’s David’s thing and that’s what he was doing back then [26 years ago] too. He’d record in the studio at Sound 80 and then go check the bottom end at a gay bar downtown. It had the most reliable bottom end that he could find. [laughs] So, he and Prince would walk in there and put up their mixes and come back and tweak whatever they had to tweak. It was hard to get the subs right at Sound 80.
I recall that you had some run-ins with Prince at Sound 80 in those early days around 1972.
Oh yeah. I wish there were more of them. They were non run-ins. I would see him when he was about 16 or 17 working at Sound 80. He hadn’t released a record yet. He was just the shyest human I think I’ve ever known. He wouldn’t talk to you. It wasn’t because he was a snob—he was just uncomfortable with people. It was always a closed studio, but if he was working in the studio and you walked by him, you’d see him frequently playing with his back to the glass so he didn’t have to see people. I always heard a lot about Prince because he was the best friend of the younger brother of my best friend—a guy named Don Govan. They grew up together, so I knew a lot about him. He was in the studio a lot. He didn’t perform anywhere that I know of, but he must have been somewhere. He was a kid. Who was paying for that studio time? I still don’t know. A lot of people have recorded at Sound 80 and never let you know it. Kiss made a record there. They thought Minneapolis was too square to put on the back of their record. Cat Stevens who I had done some touring with made a record there. He carried his own cook with him. She was whipping up some of the best smelling food back in this little coffee lounge in a wok or something. I stuck my head in there and said "Gee, what’s that?" And she looked around at me and looked back and gave me the biggest sneer and said "Vegetables." So, I didn’t talk to her anymore.
For many years, you’ve been working with John Stropes to create accurate transcriptions of your compositions. I understand it’s a process you find challenging in many respects.
A lot of my shit just sounds horrible if you don’t get the little bitty things right. The little things in most people’s things—but especially in mine—have to be there or they’ll sound pretty dumb. John gets all of these little things—the little glisses and pulls and stuff that goes on. So, I thought, "Well, this is the right guy because if he plays it, he heard it and if he heard it, he’ll write it." So, that’s why we started doing that stuff. It isn’t any fun and I really hate doing it. I have to sit down and make a [video] tape and John’s gotten very merciful about it because I only have to play the tune once from a right-hand angle and [once from] a left-hand angle. What’s interesting to me—outside of hanging around John because he’s a fun guy and so is his family—is what he asks me about the tunes. Invariably, he finds things in every one that I never thought about or didn’t know I did and don’t know how I do them. It’s a little scary because if you really look at it, you can find out you don’t know what you’re doing. So, you have to figure out what you’ve been doing all this time. On the one hand, you have to go back to just being whatever you were—blind to that section. But at the same time, you now have to watch what you’re doing so you can remember it. And as you remember it, you forget what you're doing because you've never paid any attention to it before. It's a little daunting.
John’s also working with computer-based transcription software in the process. Does that make things a little easier for you?
Yeah, John’s got this great thing where you can hear the piece played back with a computer chip—this is very common now, I guess. Boy, is that a great little tool because it’s a machine. There’s no interpretation. There’s no soul. There’s nothing at all. So, all you hear is the thing itself and it’s really illuminating. In the first place, you don’t have to play it. Second, it’s not you you’re listening to. And third, it’s not even a human being. It’s almost like all the distractions are removed. I can imagine if I had that going on when I was writing a piece that it could really help if you’re in trouble because you really hear how awkward something is rather than miss it because you can play it. If you can play it, you’ll make it sound pretty good when you don’t have to make it sound good. You could just fix the damn thing and it’d be better. It’s really fun. I really like it. It’s awful in a way, but it’s fun too.
Any news on recording the Ice Fields suite?
It’s really hard to record in this country. Australia is still the most possible place. If it happens, we’ll have to have more music than just the suite written so we can do a whole concert with the orchestra. As it is, it’d have to be partly me and partly the orchestra. From what I’m told, it’s a much more appealing package for the orchestra if you have a whole night’s worth of material. I’d like to do that, but the hard part is finding the time to sit down and write this stuff. It’s a pretty big undertaking and there are some things that need to be fixed in the original suite—some little rhythm mismatches. That alone is gonna be tough to get done. There are a couple of spots where you just kind of have to hold your breath until you get past them. There’s a piece in that suite called "Summer’s Growing Old" that was a vocal on Great Big Boy. When we hit it right with the orchestra, it’s downright wonderful. It’s the one piece where Stephen Paulus had the most to do. He could really write some stuff there. For me, it’s the best moment in the thing and I said to Steve "Let’s record this." And I learned that you do not say that in that end of the music business. "Let’s take one movement of the suite and record it." Noooo! You don’t say that. It’s either the whole thing or nothing.
Okay, it’s time for the Innerviews word association game. I toss out some names, words and ideas, and you say the first thing that comes to mind.
Oh boy, I’ll get in trouble. [laughs] Okay.
First up is 12 String Blues Live At The Scholar. [Kottke’s first album]
Oh! There was a kissing law that went into effect during the time I was playing at the Scholar during the time that record was made. You could not kiss in public. Mike Justin, the owner of the place, was having to go around to tell people in this little bitty coffeehouse that they couldn’t kiss each other because the police were coming in and busting him and fining him on this. This was in Minneapolis in the ‘60s. It was horrible. I’m embarrassed to talk about it. I don’t know what happened to that ordinance. But I think it was observed in the breach, rather than the application. If there’s still a master tape somewhere, I wouldn’t object to [the album] being on CD because it was the very first thing and what’s wrong with it is what’s genuinely wrong with it. Whereas with Circle ‘Round The Sun, the mistakes were made in pursuit of something. [Circle] was supposed to be the professional version of [12 String Blues]. That’s why [Circle] sucks and why [12 String Blues] is whatever it is. The vocals on [Circle] were [makes yodeling sound]. On [12 String Blues], you can hear a door opening on it. It was recorded with two old EV dynamic mics on goosenecks and a Viking quarter-inch tape recorder. Man, I’ll never forget it.
Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid. [A cult movie Kottke created the soundtrack for]
Oh ho! Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid is now part of the Troma catalog. They specialize in really bad movies. They’ve had a couple of hits. There’s one about this pollution monster called The Toxic Avenger. Keanu Reeves was about 11 years old when he came up to John Golden—one of the two brothers who wrote and directed it—and congratulated him on making the dumbest movie he’d ever seen. [laughs] But there’s a reason for that. There were some really funny things about that movie and it made a lot more sense before it was edited. It was loosely the biography of one of the two brothers and when they were done with the movie and I had put the music on, they realized their mother would be able to tell that it was about him. They didn’t want to hurt her feelings with what this story revealed, so they re-edited it to change the storyline and the music got cut right in the middle in several places. Both the storyline and the music have these really funny jumps in them. There’s this scene in the movie that remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on film. It involves a chess game. You’ll have to watch the movie to get the one laugh that’s in it. I still see John [Golden] and he’s still writing scripts.
Gun control.
There’s a great song by Cheryl Wheeler called "Take Away The Guns." Amen to that.
Bill Clinton.
[laughs] You know, I was in the Oval Office when he gave his radio address on Lincoln’s birthday two years ago. Shawn Colvin knew George Stephanapolous. I was snowed in and she was playing the Birchmere and I went to go see her. George was there and he came backstage and his appointment secretary invited me to drop in the next day at the White House, so I went. There are a couple of things I remember. One was the White House photographer was there and he spent a long time lining up the bust of Lincoln. He wanted to shoot it from below the desk and get just the right look and angle. The first thing Clinton did when he walked in was reach over to the bust, tweak it and move it because he didn’t think it looked right. So, he’s a real details sort of guy. [laughs] The other thing was, I never got my picture. You line up and you get your picture taken with the president. I told him "Thanks for talking to Salman Rushdie" and he said [makes mumbling sound]. I voted for him. I’m pretty far to the left of Democrat, but Democrat will do. Sometimes I don’t know where the hell I am or fit. But it’s got to be off to the left somewhere.
Baggage check.
One of the great things about having a signature model guitar is that when the airline breaks one, there’s another model I can get right away that’s gonna sound very similar to the one they squashed. They get one every year-and-a-half I’d say. I’m used to it now. It used to completely freak me out, but as Dick Rosmini said, "If you really know how to play it, it doesn’t matter what guitar you’re playing." And what that means to me is you can always make it work. You might be miserable doing it, but you can always make it work.
Ralph Towner.
Oh man. One of the few 12 string players and a great one. I love Ralph. I was just reading the Penguin Jazz Encyclopedia and their review of Ralph’s stuff. I love to hear Ralph and he does something that I think is really brave and worth emulating—he doesn’t use a pick-up, even on a 12-string which is a bastard to mic. He just puts two mics up there and that’s it. It’s hard to get a mic sound off a flat-top. It’s no problem with a classical guitar, but it’s tough with a flat-top.
Leokottke.com.
It’s embarrassing and really weird to have your own website. It’s like putting your name up on a corkboard at Wal-Mart. But the people who did it, did it beautifully. It’s fast and database-driven or something. You can go anywhere very quickly. By the way, typing lessons? I know now why I play like I do because when I was teaching myself to play the guitar, I was also learning to type. That was in Muskogee and the typing teacher’s name was Enis. He’d get up and type—he was a typing machine. It was astounding. You learn finger independence when you type—you get that thing going. I know it helped. I’m about 60 words a minute on a good day. The thing that intrigues me most about the website is there’s this little section where I get to mouth off. I don’t care what the issue is. I’m going to have to be careful though because Good Lord, can I open my mouth! And I hate beating people over the head with anything. We can all make up our own minds. What we don’t have is enough music. More music please.
Michael Hedges on Leo Kottke:
This interview was conducted in support of a previous Innerviews piece on Kottke titled "Blowing The Saddletank." To read the complete transcript, visit "Michael Hedges: Inspiration and imagination."
What first comes to mind when you think about Leo Kottke?
I was in New York City in 1973 and I had just sort of left Oklahoma for the first time after high school. I was on a short tour with a college band in New York. We were playing in churches. I went to a college which is sponsored by the Disciples of Christ Church. So, in New York City, I’m a boy from Oklahoma. Where do I go? To the record store and try to find every record of steel string guitar I can. Everybody said this 6 & 12 String Guitar record by this guy Leo Kottke was the one to get. I guess I was never the same since. I started writing and becoming aware that it was possible to maybe make one’s living or make a record based on all steel string guitar. I’ve got some [John] Fahey records too, but they just didn’t touch me like Leo touched me. It was like he was more modern or something. So, that’s what started me out. He was my first and only steel string fingerpicking guitar idol. Ten years later, I got my record deal, but in between that time, I had all his records. I'd get 'em as soon as they came out. I had fantasies about meeting him. Once, I went to see him in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He was playing at the college there and I took my guitar with me and snuck backstage. I had my hand on the dressing room door when the security guard got me. [laughs] That was probably in ‘75. Ten years later in ‘85, after I had that incident, we had our first gig together. I felt like my dream is coming true. Then we did one USA tour together. We did about 30 shows I guess and we got to play some of our tunes together. He’s one of my good friends now. One thing about Leo is that he’s got so much soul, but he’s also got so much rhythmic drive. You just can’t beat him. He’s a real groovemaster. And you'd never want to beat him. [laughs] You just want to listen.
What is it about 6 & 12 String Guitar that you were particularly fascinated by?
It wasn’t so much that it was Leo at that point, but it was just here’s a guy who was playing steel string guitar solos and they were like modern compositions, rather than folky stuff. [Folky stuff] is fine, the tradition is fine, but here was a guy that was making a new tradition. I first heard the album in 1974. You don’t get that stuff in Oklahoma. So, hearing it for the first time was just sort of a revelation that this can be done! There’s somebody else in this world. It’s like I’ve found a soulmate. Leo was my only inspiration for years. I’d listen to him all the time. It was awhile before I started listening to other people. Probably Ralph Towner was the next guy I latched onto. I really liked that album Road by the Paul Winter Consort that he played 12 string and nylon guitar on. But Leo was the first acoustic guitar hero of mine.
Describe how you and Leo hooked up for the Strings of Steel tour in 1988.
Leo didn’t want to call it that. [laughs] I don’t know why. It was my idea, but I said "Okay Leo, what do you want to call it?" He wanted to call it Tour ‘88! [breaks out into laughter] We did a double bill at one point and the show worked. At that point our agents said "Hey, we could probably get more people to a duo show than we could for either one of them solo." So, the business got us together. Now, we talk fairly often. Once every couple of months, we’ll call each other and catch up. I really liked Great Big Boy and I love the vibe on Rickie Lee Jones’ new record [Traffic From Paradise which Kottke guests on]. She produced his new record and it’s probably gonna be great.
What did you make of That’s What? Leo took a bit of shit for that record from critics and fans because of his use of six string bass. Personally, I thought it was brilliant.
I liked that album too—with the trombones. That’s a cool record. I listen to that a lot! It’s funny, I don’t even think his wife liked it.
What are some of your favorite Kottke albums?
Dreams and all that stuff—he’s got this tune "When shrimps learned to whistle" on it. I like the one with the bowler derby on it too—Ice Water. I like all of them in fact. He’s just an original. He's got so much integrity, depth and groove and he's just a sweet, sweet man. I can’t say enough good things about him.
How do you think Leo has influenced the guitar world as a whole?
The fact that he’s recorded steel string solo guitar albums is the biggest influence I think.
Do you believe there was a stigma attached to recording or performing as a guitar soloist prior to Leo making waves?
Were there any steel string guitar albums that were any good [before Leo]? Maybe so as accompaniment, but not solo—except for John Fahey. But like I said, Leo was more of a modern guitar player than a traditional guitar player. There’s nothing wrong with being traditional, but what’s wrong with a new tradition? [laughs]
Both you and Leo have roots in folk—certainly much more so than any affinity with new age. Yet both of you are signed to labels associated with that stuff. Do you ever have any concerns about public perception as a result of the way they market your work?
Well, that’s just what it is—marketing. That’s all it is. [laughs] Neither Leo nor I sit down and think "Okay, I’m going to write a new age song today!" [laughs] We’re just writing music. I feel we’re pretty close in opinion too. It’s only marketing. Who’s to say where you would rather be in the record store? Like, five years ago, nobody would ever go to the folk bin that was kind of stuck in the back—if there was a folk section at all. But up at the front, there was a big new age section for the yuppies. Are you gonna piddle around with the pennies you’re going to make with every 15th record store that happens to have folk? Or are you going to cash in on the yuppie trade? Well, if it’s just marketing and I don’t have anything invested into it, sure, I’ll take the money because I’m not peddling the stuff.
What about the potential legitimacy and acceptance of this music in higher circles? After all, there are precious few artists marketed under the new age banner that are taken seriously as composers.
I’m not worried about it. [laughs] I’m not worried about my image. To me, marketing doesn’t affect the pock marks in the CD. The place that it is in the record store is not going to change the music and to me, that’s what speaks. I'll go wherever I need to go in the store to find Leo's records. I don't give a damn where I find them. Sometimes I’ll find Leo in rock, sometimes in folk and sometimes in new age. To me it's a real compliment that people don't know where to put him. That’s cool.
John Stropes on Leo Kottke:
John Stropes is a leading authority on American fingerstyle guitar. In the past 18 years, Stropes has been President of the Milwaukee Classical Guitar Society, Chairman of the Guitar Department of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, and Artistic Director of the American Fingerstyle Guitar Festival. Stropes is also the author of a book of Kottke transcriptions titled Eight Songs.
I've worked with Leo Kottke for 17 years, and have admired him far longer. I am convinced that he is one of the great artists of our era.
Leo Kottke was 24 in 1969 when his first major recording, 6 and 12 String Guitar, was released. He stepped forward in a musical milieu that we all knew entirely too well and redefined the potential of the guitar. Remarkably, after the groundbreaking success of this first recording, he refused to be limited by the expectations of his audience, never buying into the pigeonhole mentality of the music industry, preferring to be directed by his own more demanding desire to grow as a composer and performer.
Leo Kottke's music captures a broad variety of idiomatic sounds from the fullness of American life. His genius for technical idiosyncrasy, his robust inclusion of coloristic effects and percussive elements and an infectious rhythmicality make this music come alive on one guitar. He possesses an effortless virtuosity. His contributions to guitar technique have been staggering and are still not fully understood. Like Fryderyk Chopin, he has crafted a fresh new virtuosic literature for his instrument which fires our imagination and stirs our emotions.
Andrés Segovia is generally given credit, by virtue of his dedication to a vision of the classical guitar on the modern concert stage and his longevity, for having created the current popularity of the classical guitar. Similarly, Leo Kottke by his model and his durability has single-handedly inspired several generations of enthusiasts to take up the steel-string acoustic guitar. In addition, Leo Kottke's brilliant synthesis of serious vernacular tradition with classical intent has fostered a new tradition in guitar music. Yet with his self-effacing Midwest stage persona, his audiences have accepted his enormous contribution to the arts as if receiving a gift from a good friend.
In the, shall we say, fast-paced world of music commerce, Leo Kottke has survived for 30 years, with some modest commercial success. As a composer and performer, he has flourished and has had an enormous impact on other artists and the world at large. He is a brilliant and modest man. For some reason he is still known primarily as a guitarist. But he is much more than a instrumentalist: his connection to us through his music has illuminated our lives.
