{"id":16007,"date":"2019-01-31T05:30:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T10:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16007"},"modified":"2019-01-31T07:50:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T12:50:15","slug":"its-just-a-box-of-wood-a-conversation-with-leo-kottke-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/31\/its-just-a-box-of-wood-a-conversation-with-leo-kottke-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Just a Box of Wood: A Conversation with Leo Kottke (Part Three)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"When you\u2019re playing a song that\u2019s written by someone else, do you feel a responsibility to deliver it in a recognizable style, or do you take more of a jazz approach and view a tune as a canvas upon which you can paint your own picture?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ve tried with kind of both approaches, but the approach will be dictated by the material. The first thing that is just obvious is whether I even have a chance with it. It\u2019s like a hat. There\u2019s some hats that look great, but not on your<\/i> head. Or they won\u2019t fit. And you know right away.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of pieces I\u2019d love to cover, but I just can\u2019t. It won\u2019t fit. I don\u2019t cover a lot of them, but there are some that fall right into place. I did try with a tune I\u2019ve always loved called \u201cTwilight Time.\u201d I did try to stick as closely as I could to the original composition. I had a real surprise talking to one of my favorite musicians, Joe Pass. I mentioned \u201cTwilight Time\u201d and I said, \u201cI heard the original recording of that,\u201d and I was about to say how goddamn silly it sounded by The Three Suns. I\u2019ve forgotten now exactly, but it\u2019s something like accordion, saxophone, and some other thing. Very odd sound. But Joe said, \u201cOh, The Three Suns,\u201d and he listened to them a lot.<\/p>\n

So, somebody as developed as Joe had no problem with The Three Suns. Someone as ignorant as me thought it sounded weird, but they wrote it and they did it right. So, I fucked it up. I haven\u2019t heard my version in awhile, but I\u2019m trying to get it back in my hands and maybe improve on it a little.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re writing an instrumental tune, do you start with a non-musical idea or a mental image, or would you say that your instrumental work is purely musical?<\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s this kind of stream of something that\u2019s running through me all the time. It\u2019s just kind of like a sensation, and the guitar fit that when I first picked it up, unlike the trombone or the violin, and so I just picked the guitar up and fiddle within that. It just kind of reaches that part of what it feels like for me to be alive, and every now and then I just stumble across something and if I like it, I\u2019ll keep playing it until I\u2019ve driven it into the ground. And more of it will come in so that I have an excuse to play what I\u2019ve already driven into the ground, and that\u2019s how these things get written.<\/p>\n

Once, on a movie score \u2013 it\u2019s kind of grandiose to call it a score<\/i> \u2013 I had to come up with kind of a love scene for Margot Kidder and Ted Danson in a truck<\/i>, and I was there when the scene was shot and the truck was parked by a stream, and it\u2019s supposed to be very romantic. The truck interfered with that, but I knew what the stream smelled like! I just couldn\u2019t think of \u2026 sometimes, with that movie stuff, you have to actually try to play to an idea, which is kind of ridiculous, but I gave up.<\/p>\n

So, the only time I\u2019ve done it: I just notated a guitar thing without hearing it or without a guitar (I\u2019m pretty illiterate. I have to go back to the old bass clef in junior high to write). But I wrote something and when I played it, I liked it. It worked, too, for the scene. It lifted me out of the sewage that\u2019s in the stream. What I came up with, really, is what sounds like a terrible, terrible, almost-parody of Bach. But it was simple enough \u2013 I think I did it on the 12 \u2013 that the guitar could make it kind of real. It was an interesting exercise for me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I know that two forms are very different, but to my ears, your folk playing \u2013 especially on the 12 string \u2013 has kind of a hypnotic ambience. It\u2019s the same feeling that I get when I listen to Indian ragas. Do you see any connection at all between what you do and those styles of music?<\/b><\/p>\n

I do, and for me, it\u2019s just that sensibility that floats up in those things. It\u2019s true, also, for calypso, and for German baroque lute. When these things take off, they have this [quality that] you\u2019re talking about; you could just treat it as a little motor and let it run all by itself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had the experience. One that stuck in my mind \u2026 in the \u201860s, I was at a party \u2013 a very loud party \u2013 and I walked past some little room in this house and I heard [on a television] this shehnai, the Indian horn that looks like an oboe. It was playing whatever raga this guy was into. So, it was a Pakistani player named Bismillah Khan; I found that out later.<\/p>\n

But as I walked by, he hit a phrase of about six notes that floated up out of that stream \u2013 and I\u2019d only just got plugged into that stream as I walked by \u2013 and the phrase stopped me. It was as clear as a bell in all of the noise, and just shatteringly beautiful. Just five more notes and the world\u2019s infinitely stuffed with notes, and I stopped and stared at this tiny portable TV screen. And at the end of that phrase, the camera cuts to several women in their saris who are in tears. It looked like a private concert. And clearly, it hit everybody.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth a tear because it\u2019s so goddamn beautiful. There\u2019s these weird things that happen where people know what they\u2019re doing and set up harmonies as they move that generate sounds that aren\u2019t being played, but are generated<\/i>. The overtones \u2026 it can happen with the way the rhythm of more than one instrument meets the instrument of the other, and the third part appears out of pure air. And that happens on all kinds of levels. It\u2019s rare, and when it happens, that\u2019s it. That\u2019s the great stuff.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard that described as phantom tones.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Oh, I love that.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been performing now for some 50 years now. What keeps it fresh and interesting for you?<\/b><\/p>\n

The guitar itself. The guitar saved my life as a kid, and that\u2019s not an exaggeration. And it has stayed with me ever since. It\u2019s the center for me, and it\u2019s really endlessly interesting to me. I\u2019m just fascinated with it. I enjoy just picking one up and holding onto it. I don\u2019t have to come up with anything to get met by that thing. It\u2019s just a box of wood, but it fits some kind of combination in me that has never gone out. And that fit is never going to go away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… When you\u2019re playing a song that\u2019s written by someone else, do you feel a responsibility to deliver it in a recognizable style, or do you take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,41],"tags":[3714],"class_list":["post-16007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-folk","category-interview","tag-leo-kottke","cat-30-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16007"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16033,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16007\/revisions\/16033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}