{"id":16003,"date":"2019-01-29T05:30:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T10:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16003"},"modified":"2019-01-29T08:20:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T13:20:21","slug":"its-just-a-box-of-wood-a-conversation-with-leo-kottke-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/29\/its-just-a-box-of-wood-a-conversation-with-leo-kottke-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Just a Box of Wood: A Conversation with Leo Kottke (Part One)"},"content":{"rendered":"

An edited version of this transcript appeared in <\/i>Rock and Roll Globe.<\/p>\n

\"\"Leo Kottke is a giant in the guitar world. While his work rarely veers into the rock idiom, even rock guitarists appreciate the creativity and fingerpicking dexterity Kottke applies to the acoustic six-string and 12-string guitar. His first album, 1969\u2019s 6- and 12-string Guitar<\/i> established him as a force to be reckoned with. Much of his work since then has been as a solo artist, though he sometimes works within the band context. He has collaborated with Phish\u2019s Mike Gordon on at least two album-making occasions, and promises more on that front (see story).<\/p>\n

Though he still tours widely, Kottke admits that he has slowed down in other areas, namely making albums and doing phone interviews like this one. \u201cI\u2019ll go on for a year and a half about something nobody gives a shit about,\u201d he warned me when we began. And he followed that caution with some advice: \u201cJust interrupt, stop me, scream \u2013 anything you want \u2013 and it will probably bring a halt to whatever soliloquy I\u2019m indulging in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He needn\u2019t have worried. We got a little technical, a little \u201cinside baseball\u201d here and there, but for the most part Kottke and I just flowed the conversation where it led us.<\/p>\n

This morning, I was spinning my vinyl copy of 6 and 12 String Guitars<\/i>, which got me thinking. There\u2019s this sort of idea which is counter-intuitive: many artists don\u2019t even own their back catalog. Sometimes it\u2019s owned by a whole bunch of different entities, and ownership changes hands all the time. Is that the case with your first record?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, very true. I had a chance to buy back the master for this record, but I have no idea even what the master is<\/i> after this much time. I should have done it anyhow, but I did not. I think people these days \u2013 if they even have a record contract \u2013 are demanding that the masters be returned to them after something like a couple years or something.<\/p>\n

What first attracted you to the 12-string guitar?<\/b><\/p>\n

It was probably Pete Seeger\u2019s playing, and especially a tune called \u201cLiving in the Country,\u201d which I heard on an LP. The Bitter and the Sweet,<\/i> I think was the name of it. It was a live recording, and more than the 12-string itself was the melody \u2026 but definitely the 12 was there. There was [also] Leadbelly, who had an entirely different approach.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve mentioned that amplifying a 12-string is a challenge. Is that because of the wide range of the instrument, or something else?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s purely mechanical. It depends what type of approach you\u2019re taking. If you just mic the guitar, that will work fine. But you can\u2019t get away with that in concert \u2026 some people do, but the only guitar that really works well on a microphone is the classical guitar. Those were made to project; flat tops were not made to project. Who knows what<\/i> anyone had in mind, but they don\u2019t project. The sound just sort of oozes off the top, and it\u2019s fine, again, playing in a little string band or small room, but it gets to be a problem after that. Also, the octaves on a 12 string are going to be a lot more ferromagnetic than the fundamental [strings], so magnetically, they\u2019re really impossible. With transducers, you run into these kind of \u201chumps.\u201d Nobody has figured this stuff out. I think it will never be figured out. The flat top just isn\u2019t amenable to broadcast.<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m very close, myself, to going back to where I started, which is just playing on a mic. I\u2019ve done it when I played gigs where the airline destroys the guitar or sends them to Hong Kong or someplace. You borrow a guitar, and you play on a microphone, and the crowds are fine with it. [Because] they know why you\u2019re on the mic.<\/p>\n

Still, somebody with more balls than I\u2019ve got could train the audience to hear the microphone again. It works fine; it just isn\u2019t hitting you over the head.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I read your trombone essay on leokottke.com I thought it was really amusing, but it doesn\u2019t address the ways \u2013 if any \u2013 in which your studies on trombone and violin might have informed your approach to \u2013 or your understanding of \u2013 the guitar.<\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a great question. You\u2019re the only person to ever ask about that, and I appreciate it. Because although it took me awhile to notice, it had a profound effect. I got real immersion in a lot of theory and harmony within music, but it was almost unconscious, so that when I started on the guitar, that kind of [mitigated] any dead ends that tend to develop for self-taught people. Nowadays, I have tried to go back and pick up where I left off \u2013 which admittedly, was very early on \u2013 with harmony and theory, but I\u2019m a slob. I\u2019m very lazy and I kind of just avoid the homework. So, yeah, it meant a lot to me.<\/p>\n

But it actually didn\u2019t work out too well as a recording. I always wanted to hear a trombone quartet or something just playing behind the guitar, and I brought in a guy named Steve Paulsen, who was ridiculed as the last rich trombone player. He played in the Tonight Show<\/i> band, and I handed him my trombone from the seventh, eighth, ninth grade and asked him, \u201cWould you mind? I\u2019d just love to hear this.\u201d He ended up recording with it and his horn, something like a six-voice layer of choral shit behind this piece, which is quite a feat in and of itself. And I got to hear the difference between old brass and new brass; it\u2019s just like a vintage guitar. The old brass really does age well. He switched out my slide for his slide because he said that on my horn \u2013 which had a good brand name; it was a Bach #10 \u2013 \u201cThey changed the diameter of one of the tubes on the slide because they thought it would make the slide work faster, ignoring the fact that if you restrict part of the tube on the way out the bell, you\u2019re going to mess up the sound.\u201d And it explained all kinds of things. It gave me a perfect excuse for my miserable embouchure, and it was just fascinating to hear about it, and to see him interchange his slide from a King, I think it was, with that horn. That looked like magic to me. So I got to hear what could have been, really.<\/p>\n

I know that you busked for a time, early on in your career. Did that have an influence at all on your performance style?<\/b><\/p>\n

Probably. People either take pity on your, or in my case, they see this child doing this, and give you a couple bucks. I don\u2019t even know anymore how much the money was.<\/p>\n

Later on, after I\u2019d recorded, I was running around Colorado with my brother in law. He didn\u2019t ask me about this, [but] he told the motel that I\u2019d play in their sort of breakfast pit that night. And then he told me. I wanted to throw him down the stairs and jump up and down on what was left! So, I did that, and then he passed the hat. It\u2019s great training for performing \u2026 not in how to ham it up, but in the license you can give yourself for even presuming to face a bunch of people and play at them.<\/p>\n

To be continued…<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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