Nels Cline

From Crippling Insecurity to Channeling the Ineffable Cosmic Om

Nels Cline’s expansive musical vision encompasses, intermingles, and frequently transcends multiple idioms.

The idiosyncratic guitarist has received widespread recognition for his incendiary soloing and hip compositional contributions as a member of Wilco—though viewed within the totality of his creative endeavors, rock star might reasonably be considered his “day job.” Cline has released more than 50 albums as a leader or principal collaborator—including seven with his longstanding free-jazz ensemble the Nels Cline Singers and a celebrated duo project with Julian Lage—and performed on well over 100 others by a wildly diverse group of artists that includes Yoko Ono, Lydia Lunch, Rickie Lee Jones, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Rufus Wainwright, Tinariwen, Banyon, Wayne Kramer, Medeski Martin & Wood, Osamu Kitajima, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Carla Bozulich, Zeena Parkins, and John Zorn.

Cline’s electric guitar playing is practically devoid of cliches and to a great extent distinguished by his deft hybrid picking, distinctive rapid vibrato bar manipulations, dramatic open-string pull-offs and hammer-ons, impossibly fluid angular runs and arpeggios, atypical chord voicings, expressive bends, and edgy glissandos—not to mention his signature extended techniques, and uncanny mastery of effect pedals, especially the notoriously difficult to wrangle Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay. His nylon-string and steel-string acoustic guitar work is equally uncommon.

Whether reimaging jazz standards or generating walls of exquisite noise, adding delicate atmospherics to tunes by singer-songwriters or pounding out post-punk mayhem, infusing conventional rock songs with tasteful harmonic and melodic touches or opening fissures in the space-time continuum with otherworldly sonic manifestations, however, Cline remains true to his inherent aesthetic nature, always sounding like himself.

Do we tap into creativity or does it tap into us?

Ah, yes. It’s almost the ultimate question. Sometimes it feels like it taps into me and other times I feel like I tap into it. When it taps into me it’s more of an “A-ha” or “bulb-lighting-up” experience—the sudden feeling of an infusion of ideas or a certain resonant frequency that absorbs my attention. Much has been said about the ineffable and universal Om or whatever speaking through the musician and I guess in a sense that’s what I’m referring to.

But then there are other more nuts and bolts or even possibly banal examples of creative bursts sparked purely by something like having heard somebody else’s music. I’ll be so galvanized by a musical moment or sonic event that whatever reluctance to engage in musical endeavor that I may have been experiencing at the time will be shattered and I’ll start playing and working in a new creative burst. That could also be creativity tapping into me, though I see it more as nuts and bolts when it’s somebody else’s creativity that’s sparking mine—but maybe they are really the same thing?

Or they at least spring from the same source?

I’ve never formulated any sort of codified concepts about this, but it is certainly something that has captivated me since I was a boy. Everyone seems to possess a certain innocent joy in creating stuff, and children up to about adolescent age are very free with their creativity, until eventually it gets drummed out of them. Certainly in the early years of schooling, if you have a decent scholastic atmosphere, you get to try a bunch of different stuff like arts and crafts and painting and music, and something may snag you. I think we are all creative until we’re told that we’re not adequate, or that we have to obey all these rules, or that we have to get a real job—whatever it is that tends to put the kibosh on natural creative endeavor.

And as we get older, it becomes an increasingly complicated affair, especially when those external forces include the sorts of rules, judgments, competition, justification, and other things that the art world, and to a certain extent the music world, engages in tirelessly. These sort of outside forces that aren’t creative have certainly taken a toll on me and created what could be described as a kind of self-consciousness. Someone just sent me a hilarious pie chart that said something about musicians. A huge piece of the pie was labeled “crippling insecurity.” The next biggest piece, which wasn’t even a quarter, was labeled “practicing,” and then there were these little tiny, tiny slivers like “thinking about practicing.”

That crippling insecurity thing is an ongoing process with me, as I deal with the real world, so-called, rather than the child’s world of kind of constant creativity and constant freedom in one’s mind and soul. I remember two musician that I had been playing with for years confronting me and saying, “You and your brother and all these guys have been putting out your records for a long time, but what makes you think they are any good? What makes you think that you could hold those records up to, like, Coltrane’s records?” Those kinds of encounters are not exactly confidence instilling.

But the thing is that I can’t stop doing what I’m doing and so I haven’t. I have wanted to do what I’m doing since I was 12 years old and there’s really nothing else I can do except write and maybe make collages. I’ve always thought of artists as sort of “my people” since I was young, and my parents were always encouraging. They were school teachers who really respected art and culture. They made my brother Alex and I feel like we had talent, and that art was an acceptable path. Having that support from an early time all the way into adulthood certainly instilled at least a kind of confidence—but it didn’t prevent crippling insecurity [laughs].

I feel like in many ways, in spite of my certain, I guess, consistent artistic leanings, I have spent way too much energy just trying to get over, just trying to be acknowledged. And I don’t mean acknowledged as great, I mean just heard. I think there are compromises that an artist can make in a situation like that to maybe tread in more familiar territory just to get work, just to keep going. In my case it’s not really compromise in the worst sense, it’s subtler and even insidious, happening almost unconsciously. So, at various points I’ve had to reassess my decision making in terms of my aesthetic choices and compositions.

I have so many diverse ideas. It’s kind of like my guitar playing when people say, “Oh, yeah, man, I love your style.” And I say, “What style?” I play in a million different ways and I don’t know why except that I’m just trying to do the job of the music at hand to the best of my ability, the way I’m hearing it, which doesn’t have any kind of consistent voice, in my opinion.

You don’t believe that you have a distinctive voice as a guitarist?

Absolutely not. Take John Scofield, for example, where you can hear three notes and know it’s him. I know that there are things that people associate with my guitar playing, but I don’t always do them. There’s so much talk about finding one’s “voice” and style when one is coming up, and in my case I guess I’ve spent so much time freaking out with distortion and looping that a lot of people think that that’s all I’ve ever done. Other people may have heard my solo on “Impossible Germany,” which I guess is what I’m best known for at this point, but that’s just a particular aspect of my lead guitar playing. And when some people hear me play acoustic guitar they say, “I didn’t know that you played acoustic.”

Regarding soloing, to be honest, for the past few years one of the things I don’t want to hear, by choice, is me soloing. A lot of my own records tend to eschew guitar soloing in any large degree, and when I do it I often feel like I’m just being pressured into it due to the fact that I’m the leader writing the music and that I play guitar and people are known for that.

The reluctant guitar hero?

The “guitar hero” was invented by British rock writers when I was a little boy, and although I bought into the romance and excitement to some extent, what I was really interested in was sound and the massive amount of excitement and creativity that was going on in the late-’60s popular music. And so, yeah, it was cool. I loved how hippy musicians looked and I loved the album covers and all that kind of stuff, but in spite of my deep love of Jimi Hendrix, my main inspiration to play music for the rest of my life, I never saw myself as flamboyant or an attention getter. I just wanted to participate in music making and have the music speak for itself.

And the guitar hero thing is both positive and negative. On the one hand, it has provided instant cache in a marketplace that generally eschews instrumental music or music that’s maybe category-less, simply due to the fact that I’m a guitarist. On the other, it often means that people just want to know about the guitar. For example, in interviews I’m rarely asked about my songs, song titles, compositional structures, and things like that. And when one is an instrumentalist as well as a composer, there’s typically a sort of “show me” thing that comes up, in which it is imperative to somehow prove one’s facility, virtuosity, and possible innovation on the instrument in question.

Well, sometimes I just want to play chords over and over again or just play a drone and live in it for a while. What has always interested me more than virtuosity is some kind of cool sound or a chord voicing that’s just so transporting, which gets back to creativity. There is this feeling of going somewhere else and being immersed in it, which is a much deeper level of musical experience than the, I guess, initial sort of thrill and excitement of being in the presence of insane virtuosity, like, say, seeing Eddie Van Halen, where you just go “whoa” and your hair stands up. But then, ultimately, you have to address the aesthetics if you want to live with it.

How would you describe your creative process?

Generally, it’s a struggle and it starts with the germ of an idea—something that’s leading somewhere, but I don’t usually know where. So, the first little inkling, that first fascination, doesn’t really feel like anything at the time. It’s only in retrospect that I realize that this tiny little idea just engendered a potentially elaborate series of musical events that I deigned to happen by organizing them. Typically, it’s just one chord voicing or two chords, and usually it’s not a melody, which may be why I’m not the most melodic guitar player.

Can you provide a specific example?

Recently, I was asked to play a 30-minute solo set for a live-streamed event. I took on the composing of two new pieces because I happened to be sitting around playing this little three-quarter-size Airline guitar that’s almost impossible to play, but which I love the sound of. In fact, the sound quite often reminds me of the guitar sound on Jim Hall’s early work from the late ’50s up to the ’70s, which was all on his Gibson ES175. So, I just sat around playing this guitar and next thing I knew, I had these ideas and I thought, “Well, I should really do something with this.” And then a few days later, I had two new pieces of music that I’d practiced over and over and over just because it was so hard to actually play this instrument. And the piece that currently is called “The Shuffle Riff Variations” started out with two chords, just a little riff back and forth, in alternating odd time signatures. I just think naturally in odd meters sometimes, or, always really [laughs].

Generally, when I write this kind of material, or almost anything that’s not in some sort of classic functional harmonic structure, I follow my ear and do the musical analysis later. I just ask myself as I’m working, “What’s next? What am I hearing?” I kind of move things around and keep playing them over and over until they all start to connect to something. Then, if I have to, I’ll analyze the harmonic content and rhythmic content later. It’s basically still an intuitive process for me, typically not based on any kind of compositional organization, rules, or regulations—and is coloristic. It’s like, “Does that taste good? Does that smell good? Yeah, okay, good.”

What about when you’re playing live and you’re improvising and you get the jolt then?

Oh, that’s a whole other topic. I have definitely experienced that deep connection when I’ve felt transported, and it’s almost like I might suddenly wake up and discover it’s not really happening. I feel that way quite often when playing with Julian Lage. There’s a sort of flowing, almost like the music is playing itself. I’m so relaxed while playing with him that I just play better. I tend to get nervous and tight in a lot of other situations.

Another side of it is the “sound bath” sort of thing. For example, I was playing with Zeena Parkins and Thurston Moore in the Easthampton Town Hall in Massachusetts, and although Thurston broke a string in the first minute or so and had to five-string it through the whole thing, it was one of those gigs where basically we were traveling through another world and I was feeling light as a feather, like I was levitating. And it’s not about finger wiggling or scales or nailing it. We were flowing in the moment, with—how many cliches can I come up with? Tripping the light fantastic or flying on the wings of angels. But that’s what it feels like. And this is one of the ultimate lures to continue playing even when my crippling insecurity is sending me all these negative messages. It’s moments like those that nullify that nattering voice.

Yeah. That’s the payoff. Coming at this from a slightly different perspective, as it pertains to performing, does it feel more like the result of neurological brain activity or some other organic process—or more like some sort of transcendent or even spiritual experience?

The answer is almost the same as before, which is I’m not sure, but maybe all of the above? Again, there’s certainly a lot that has been said and written about the music of the spheres and the healing properties of resonant frequencies and all those sorts of things. But I will say that as a musician, I feel grateful and humbled to be a participant in something that’s apparently so much larger than me. I feel that way whether I’m playing a large Wilco gig or for 60 people with a group of improvisors—when that feeling’s there, it’s there.

I feel privileged to have those experiences, and there is something spiritual about them because music’s so much bigger than I am. And I don’t mean “big” as in important. It is certainly important to me, but it doesn’t have to be to everybody. The music has its own life, its own resonance, its own trajectory—and in some cases, its own demands. I’m not somebody who can interpret music of great complexity, requiring great virtuosity, because I wasn’t raised that way, musically. I didn’t have guitar lessons. I’ve carved out a path doing the best I can, and I’m just trying to keep up a lot of the time. But that’s great, I’ll take it!

I suspect that many audience members were also transported on those occasions you mentioned. People of all types, all over the world, seem to be able to sense when that magic is happening and the creative energy is flowing. It’s tangible to the listener as much as it is to the performer, isn’t it?

I would hope so. I don’t want to make any assumptions on the audience’s part, but as an audience member in good standing myself on many an occasion, I would have to agree with that. I remember quite a few years ago I was playing a festival in Wels, Austria with the Singers and we were on after a duo of Yamantaka Eye from The Boredoms and Otomo Yoshihide, who was doing turntables at the time. They are two people that I am extremely in awe of, and they hadn’t played together much previously, as they are from different scenes in Japan. There was plenty of histrionic drama and at times while watching and listening to them the performance was so compelling that I found it somewhat overwhelming and just started crying. And I cannot have been alone in feeling something strong from that performance. The music they played was unremittingly of an avant-garde nature, and was in no way intended to evoke sentiment, but there was something about the energy of it that felt so marvelously human. It was so unapologetically what it was.

When these things happen, I just feel like I’m on the right path in life because I get to play my music. But it also messed with my head, because at the same time that was happening I was thinking to myself, “Now I’m going to go up there and play my fucking Pink Floyd jazz?” You know what I mean? It was a little crushing in that way. But that was a positive wakeup call and it made me wonder about some of my own aesthetics. When I saw the Pop Tatari-era Boredoms, it was the only gig where I ever thought, “Okay, stage diving’s a good idea.” I didn’t do it, but I wanted to. Sometimes music just makes you go crazy.

I’ve had quite a few goosebumps moments watching you play in different contexts over the years.

Well, that’s beautiful to hear. Sometimes Julian and I would end our set with a piece called “The Bond,” which is dedicated to my wife Yuka, and people would be tearful. That’s what I was feeling, and they were feeling it, too. That also made me feel like I was on the right path—and that I was doing the right thing with my goddamned life [laughs].

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Mary Halvorson

New York City and the Pull of the Moon

Mary Halvorson has become a fixture in the New York City music scene. Encouraged by Anthony Braxton to find her own musical voice while she was still in school, Halvorson has accomplished that, leading to gigs and recording dates with luminaries such as Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Tim Berne, John Dieterich, and Braxton himself.

She also leads her own groups and is a member of several jazz and avant-garde ensembles, including Thumbscrew, a trio with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. In 2016 she founded the art-pop quintet Code Girl, for which she is also the lyricist. Halvorson was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant for music in 2019.

What does the word creativity mean to you?

That’s a really difficult question to answer, but I guess maybe it has to do with taking a risk or pushing yourself to discover something new, whether that involves music or another art, or simply finding a new solution to a problem.

On a really great night, when you are improvising and you find yourself playing something that you’ve never played previously, or played the same way previously, what is happening? How do you experience that?

First of all, isn’t it interesting that what you just described only happens sometimes, and at other times you can feel totally uncreative, like you have nothing? I’m very sensitive to those shifts in energy from day to day, whether I’m practicing, or trying to compose, or playing a gig. Some days are on and some are not, and others are somewhere in between. I don’t really know why that is. Maybe it has something to do with biorhythms or some other kind of physiological energy? But not knowing when something like that is going to happen is also sort of the beauty of it.

Is that contingency sometimes also a concern?

Well, part of the reason we practice is to raise the lowest level of what we do as high as possible, so that even on our worst days we can still make something cool from that. Also, one of the reasons I enjoy playing with bands so much is that although I might not be feeling super creative on a certain day, someone I’m playing with might raise the level by playing something that inspires me. Sometimes it can be almost like a switch that just flips on and immediately boosts my energy level. That’s also why playing solo can be so difficult. If you have a bad day, there’s nobody else there to lift you up.

Try as best you can to describe what you are experiencing when that energy is increasing. Is it like there is an actual charge of some sort of tangible energy?

Yeah, I would say so. I know this sounds cliché, but it feels as if I am channeling something, because I don’t feel like I’m making any effort. In fact, when the energy is really flowing and ideas are coming easily, it feels almost like the opposite of effort. I feel more like I’m exerting effort when I’m not feeling inspired. But as for what that inspirational energy actually is, I have no idea.

Whatever that energy is, would you say that it originates from inside you or some external source?

Probably mostly within. For me, a lot of this stuff feels personal and inward and is based on mood and emotion. People say they “woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” and that can sort of happen musically, too. A lot depends on how your body is feeling and how your energy is. Of course, just because you wake up in a good mood and your body is feeling good, that doesn’t necessarily mean the music is going to be happening. You could be in a horrible mood, and feel inspired to channel that into something. Also, sometimes at a gig I won’t know how creative I might be feeling until I actually begin playing. And speaking of waking up, creativity may have something to do with tapping into a different part of our brain, sort of like we do in sleep. We can’t get there when we are awake, but when asleep we can access this whole other reality.

Is creativity an innate ability, something that can be learned and cultivated, or a combination of those things?

It’s probably an innate ability. I think the part that can be learned or worked on is confidence and trusting your instincts when going for new ideas. One thing I hear a lot from my students is that they’ll be playing something and then think to themselves “this is stupid” or “I’m not so sure about this,” and then they just stop, like they were being held back by their own brains. But if you are trusting your instincts, then often the first idea that pops into your head will be the best one, and that’s something that can be worked on. There’s also the confidence that comes from your ability to execute on your instrument the ideas you hear in your head.

Do you ever find yourself thinking “this is stupid” or “I’m not so sure about this” or even “damn, I’m doing really well” while you’re playing?

I try not to do those things and one reason is that no matter what the situation might be it can always shift. I’ve definitely had gigs where for the first few songs I felt like I was not totally in it, and then I became more in it as the gig went along. Or the opposite of that, where I was feeling really good and went for something that fell a little flat. So, I try to not get too attached.

Of course, sometimes there are thoughts that arise from your surroundings. The audience may be bugging you out, or the amp sounds horrible, or the sound in the room is driving you nuts, or you can’t hear the bass player. Those kinds of things lead to thoughts that are difficult to get rid of, but I’ll attempt to play through them, by which I mean push them aside and try to get to more of a state where I’m thinking intuitively and in the moment.

Are there things you can do to make it more likely that creative energy is going to flow?

I almost do the opposite. If I begin writing music or lyrics or something I can usually figure out pretty quickly whether I’m feeling creative. If I am, I’ll keep going with it, and if I’m not I’ll just decide that maybe that day isn’t the right day, and instead I’ll work on chord changes or arpeggios or something that doesn’t require as much creative thought.

Is the creativity that you experience in the moment while improvising live different than your experience when sitting and composing a piece of music or writing lyrics?

Writing lyrics is something I’ve had less practice with at this point, so it isn’t as comfortable to me as writing music. I’ve experienced brief moments where the words suddenly began to flow, but writing lyrics typically involves agonizing over every little detail, so it isn’t like I can just get into a creative state and go.

As for improvisation and composing music, when I’m playing an improvised gig, I am still trying to think compositionally and to create something with some kind of logic and coherence. So, I’d say the two things are related, though they are also very different headspaces and processes.

So, part of you is trying to go with the creative flow in the moment, while at the same time, part of you is thinking rationally and trying to organize what you play in a way that you feel makes sense, or is at least satisfying to you musically?

Yeah, I would say so.

How do you find the sweet spot between those things?

What I’m thinking about most of the time is balance; what does the piece of music need right now in this moment? And that comes back to trusting my aesthetic and trying to tune into my first instinct without debating myself. So, while I try to avoid overly rational thoughts, that’s still definitely a type of thought,

You’re not necessarily thinking about how a particular chord progression or sequence of notes will satisfy some compositional need, but rather what’s appropriate relative to everything else that’s happening?

Yes. Although even when I’m writing a piece of music, I’m not analyzing it as I write. Even if I have a bunch of notes in a chord, I’m listening to the sound that chord is producing, and not saying, “Okay, this is Amin9, and now I’m going to go to this next chord.” I’m playing using my ears, and then later I’ll go back and analyze what I did. I have studied my share of theory, but I try not to be thinking about that in the actual moment that I’m playing, whether live or while writing.

Would you say that the purpose of studying and practicing is to absorb that knowledge into a subconscious place and then have immediate access to it while you’re improvising, without having to think about it?

Exactly. That’s the lifelong goal. In a documentary on Bill Frisell, he described practicing as chipping away at a block of wood, and that is what it feels like. It’s this lifelong thing, trying to get to some point where you have access to a wider range of ideas, and ideally so that anything you hear in your head can instantly be executed on your instrument.

You live in New York City. What role does environment play in your creativity?

Since I moved to New York when I was 20 or so, there’s been so much creative stuff happening and there are always new things to discover. The cross-pollination between the different music scenes and musicians is inspiring because you hear so many musicians doing amazing things all the time and that provides a lot of momentum. A big part of how I’ve grown as a musician is through collaborations and learning about how the people that I’m working with approach music. There’s also something about the energy of the city itself. I don’t know if it’s just that people are always in a rush, and doing things and going places, but it gives me energy.

Would it be correct to say that you think of creativity more as an organic process connected with, say, the brain and the nervous system rather than a “channeling the cosmic energy of the universe” kind of thing?

You know, in a weird way, I’m going to say it’s both. I think I’m both a very rational person, which would lead me to say that it’s something we’re generating in our nervous systems and in our brains, but one of my big hobbies is astrology. I’ve always been kind of tuned into the energy of the moon, for example, or researching where the different planets are in the sky. The pull of the moon on the earth and the pull of the planetary energies also interests me, and how that relates to each individual’s specific creative thing. I’m not sure, but you know, it’s nice to imagine that there is some kind of larger force happening that isn’t only internal.

In that sense, it’s like the solar system is just a big New York City.

Yeah.

Exploring the cosmic possibility for a moment, is there a transcendent or even spiritual aspect of creativity that you’ve experienced?

It can certainly feel like a transcendent experience when you’re in a creative zone where something really magical is happening musically. I would almost say it feels like a healing force. For example, we all have records we go back to when we’re going through a really tough time, that are for lack of a better word, healing. That’s a quality that I look for, and that’s important to me. I feel people really need music for their spirit and their mental wellbeing. When it’s really happening, I would say that’s what it is.

When its transcendent, can it also be transformative and affect who you are?

Yeah, I think having these experiences, whether it’s playing music, or listening to music, or checking out some art, can have a lasting effect on your perspective and your wellbeing, enriching and giving meaning to your experience and your life.

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Bill Frisell

Pushing Off the Edge of What You Know

Bill Frisell has been expanding the boundaries of what constitutes jazz for more than four decades. He doesn’t borrow directly from other styles so much as absorb the essence of those styles into his music organically, while at the same time relying on serendipity to add transcendent touches to his studio and live performance.

“For me, the music is always about pushing off the edge of what you know, especially when performing live,” he says. “I want there to be some risk in it because that’s the point where it’s the most inspiring, when you’re off into this zone where you don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m trying to be in that space with the music all the time.”

In this interview the venerable guitarist shares his perspective on that space and other aspects of creativity and his creative process.

Frisell’s most recent release, Harmony [Blue Note], features vocalist Petra Haden, cellist and vocalist Hank Roberts, and guitarist, bassist, vocalist Luke Bergman. Valentine [Blue Note], a trio album with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston, is scheduled for release on August 14 of this year.

What does the word “creativity” bring to mind?

When you are a little child and you discover something for the first time, you think, “Wow, this is the most amazing thing.” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to stay in touch with whatever child is left in me. I think about that a lot, that rush you get when you’re discovering something for the first time. I practice and prepare and do all this work, but it’s like I’m preparing to be ready for the unknown. With whatever groups I play with, the idea isn’t to rehearse and make everything perfect and then go out and perform that fixed thing. The reason to practice and prepare is so you can take risks. I don’t know if that’s what creativity is, but it’s just trying to stay in that place of uncertainty.

Is there also a downside to that uncertainty?

Sometimes it’s uncomfortable or you want to fall back on stuff you know. And you also have to be okay with making mistakes. Mistakes can be amazing if you don’t panic when they happen and are open to checking out what they actually are. Sometimes the “mistake” itself can be something beautiful that you hadn’t thought of, or it can just be something you’re going to have to deal with and you’re going to learn from trying to make it right. That approach only really works, though, if everyone you are playing with has the attitude that it’s okay to make mistakes, and you’re looking out for, and not judging, each other. So, if somebody goes off the rails, you either go with them or you rescue them by somehow making it sound good.

I recently read a quote from Herbie Hancock when he was playing with Miles Davis. He said one night he played some chord that was just so wrong and, in that moment, he thought he’d totally screwed up, but it didn’t faze Miles at all. Miles heard the chord and played something that made it sound right. Anyway, that kind of trust and openness definitely has something to do with keeping the creativity thing going.

On the other hand, the biggest trap can also happen with a band. If you have one night that’s amazing, and you think, “Wow, what we played on that tune was unbelievable, we did stuff we’ve never done before, it was incredible,” when you get to the next night you have to forget that ever happened, because if you try to get back to that it’s a recipe for disappointment. Because that means you’re not there in the moment. You’re thinking about, “Oh, that was so cool last night and I’m going to try to do that again.” But it’s not going to be coming from the place where it’s supposed to be coming from.

How about when you are composing?

You can’t wait for the inspiration. You can’t sit there and think, “I’m going to wait until I’m inspired and then I’m going to write something.” You just have to begin. You have to just do the work, without judging whatever it is you’re doing. And if you are lucky then sometimes something takes over.

When I so-called “write” music, I try to just sit there and play my guitar. I’ve spent years trying to get to a point where I don’t judge what I’m writing while I’m writing, because that blocks it. That’s not the time to make decisions about whether it is good or bad because doing so will stop the process. So, I try to just keep going and write and write and write. Then something will happen.

I might also try to sort of trick myself if I would really like to spend time working on something and I’m not feeling inspired. For example, I might come up with some kind of exercise, just write down a scale or something, and that will get me to the table. Then, while I’m doing the exercise, I may find myself writing a melody instead, and suddenly I’m there.

I often think of Sonny Rollins, who for me is such a master, with incredible wisdom, and also humility. I was just listening to an interview with him, and here you have one of the greatest musicians that’s ever walked the face of the earth, but he doesn’t think so. All he’s doing is trying to learn how to get better. Every word out of his mouth is so amazing, but it always comes down to something like, “Just practice, and don’t worry about all the other stuff.” He also said, “The music is happening too fast for you to be thinking about it. You can’t think about music and play it at the same time.”

Might one way to look at that be that the flow of creative energy is happening really quickly and feeling is happening almost as fast, so you can feel deeply without necessarily interrupting the flow of the creative energy—but thinking happens so slowly in comparison that if you “stop to think” it’s over?

Yeah, yeah. You need to think and to prepare, but at some point, you have to let that go. It’s like if you were riding a bike and you thought, “I’m going to push the left pedal down, and now I’m going to relax my left foot as my right foot is tensing up, and now I’m going to lean just a little bit to the left—you’d be off in a ditch in no time..

Does the creative energy feel like it’s coming from within you or outside of you or neither of those things?

Oh, man. That’s what I really don’t know. It’s weird. There are definitely times when I’ll be playing and I’ll suddenly realize like, “Holy shit, I just played some incredible thing that I’ve never played before in my life, and I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” and I could have been in that zone for who knows how long—but just as soon as I become aware of what I’m doing, the whole thing falls apart immediately.

About seven years ago I had the most incredible day with my daughter. She was working at an art center way up in the middle of nowhere in Northern Vermont and I visited her there. We spent a really nice day together and after dinner we decided to play ping-pong. We started hitting the ball back and forth, just playing and not keeping score, and then we said, “Okay. Let’s try to get up to 100 without messing up.” We would start, counting one, two, three, and get up to 21 or 22 before messing up, and that went on for a long time. We were just about ready to give up when we got to 85, 86, 87, and then 103, 104, 105. We were suddenly in this zone where we weren’t trying or judging and it was the most amazing feeling. But at the very moment we got to 608, I thought to myself, “Wow, I bet we can get to 1,000,” and the moment that thought came into my mind—bam. It just ruined everything.

Is creativity an innate ability that some people just have, or is it something that you can learn and cultivate?

I think it is just part of being a human being and everyone has it, but there are infinite ways that it can come out. That can be making music or some other art, but it can also be the way you mow the lawn or wash the dishes. When kids ask me for advice about playing music, my advice is basically just to do what you love and don’t be afraid. Part of what keeps people from being creative is being afraid to show who they really are, and trying to be someone they aren’t. I know that I used to spend a lot of time worrying about what other people thought or trying to be hip. I probably still do [laughs]. Everybody has their own story and their own voice, and everybody has something to put out there.

Circling back to whether creativity comes from within or some external source, some artists who were active during the 1960s talk about being able to access a really powerful creative force that was surging at the time and influencing all the arts, and then at one point it was no longer there in the same way. What do you make of that?

I was born in 1951, so I definitely think about that period. I grew up as rock and roll was being born, and the time that I was really getting fired up about music was when I was around 12 or 13 and heard The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and stuff like that. Then, just the way my age lined up with these extraordinary things that were happening in music, I feel really lucky that I was around at that time.

Taking New York as an example, I recently read Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña, and A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, which are about the late ’50s and early ’60s in New York City. I’m fascinated by that time and place. You had Monk at the Five Spot and Ornette and Morton Feldman and de Kooning and Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan and all these other painters and writers and other artists. It’s sort of as if that period in New York was the United States version of Paris in the 1920s.

Of course, I’d like to think that although things have changed in New York City, that kind of creativity hasn’t just gone away.

http://www.barrycleveland.com/frisell/

by Barry Cleveland Leave a Comment

Michael Beinhorn

Seducing the Muse

Michael Beinhorn began his musical career as an original member of the visionary musical collective Material in 1979, performing live and playing synthesizer and other instruments on the band’s first four EPs and albums. Additionally, Beinhorn and Material bassist Bill Laswell were members of Brian Eno’s inner circle during that era and contributed to the opening track on his 1982 release Ambient 4: On Land.

Material was also the name of Beinhorn and Laswell’s record production team and the two helmed albums by artists such as Nona Hendryx and Afrika Bambaataa before being hired to help resuscitate jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock’s flagging career in 1983. Beinhorn and Laswell were the primary writers of the music on Hancock’s Future Shock album, including the mega-hit “Rockit,” which among other things introduced New York hip-hop sounds to a global audience. The single sold more than three million copies and won a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental Recording in 1984.

After departing Material the following year, Beinhorn went on to produce dozens of major records, often pushing the artists to transcend the music on their previous albums. Examples include Mother’s Milk (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Superunknown (Soundgarden), Mechanical Animals (Marilyn Manson), Ozzmosis (Ozzy Osbourne), and Celebrity Skin (Hole).

Beinhorn provides invaluable insights into his production philosophy and strategies in his book, Unlocking Creativity, A Producer’s Guide to Making Music and Art, published by Hal Leonard in 2015.

In his role as producer, Beinhorn relied heavily on pre-production and artist development—once staples of the record business—helping artists to fully realize their potential and create truly self-expressive and meaningful work. This might involve practical considerations such as analyzing song structure and arrangement, song selection, and choosing and arranging instruments—but also interpersonal relationship skills more often associated with psychotherapists, career councilors, and shamanic healers.

Beinhorn is currently focused on evangelizing artist development as a remedy for the creative dearth resulting from the soul-crushing practices instituted by a music business driven exclusively by near-term profit. Here, we examine the essential nature of creativity itself, the creative process, and how it functions within the context of record production.

From your perspective, what exactly is creativity?

[Uproarious laughter]

I thought I’d lob you a softball to get us started.

There are so many different answers to that question. Where am I going to begin? Some people think that creativity is essentially nothing more than a series of approaches to problem solving. Some people see creativity as this amorphous kind of mechanism that I guess is connected to the unconscious mind or God or whatever you want to call it. And you can see creativity as the basic force of the universe itself—the fact that it’s this unending series of events that happen and that everything’s in a state of constant motion. Things are growing and decaying and developing and ebbing. It really depends on what perspective you want to take. As it pertains to the creation of art, I can see it from all three perspectives because they all have some degree of engagement and validity within the creation of artistic works.

Do we tap into creativity or does it tap into us?

[Laughs]. That’s not something I can answer with any absolute certainty, as I can only speak to my own connection with it. When I’m engaging with creativity on a purely non-conscious, pre-linguistic, non-rational level, I feel as if I’m a component part in this vast matrix where I’ve essentially allowed something to pass through me. At the same time, I don’t think that you can belittle the value of the individual as being a participant within a universal framework of creativity, because at that moment you really are literally the center of the entire universe and something magical is happening through you. So, you can engage with creativity while also being engaged by it.

Is creativity an innate ability, or something that can be taught?

Again, it depends on what you’re talking about. Problem solving is definitely something that can be taught, but engaging with creativity is a different matter. If you don’t have an innate ability to do that then there isn’t a whole lot that’s going to get you any further along. It’s like having facility with an instrument. There are people who aren’t incredibly musically talented, but who have spent years perfecting that facility and are extremely good—yet there’s something essential missing. And to me, that’s where having sort of a natural acclimation comes into play. If you have that and you also have skills that you’ve developed over time, then you’re able to take whatever you do know about an instrument from a technical standpoint to a completely different level. And at that point you have people who become virtuosos and are known specifically as stylists. When you listen to them play, you can tell who it is because they have a sound or a style that’s immediately identifiable.

Material backing Daevid Allen as “New York Gong” in 1979

Would songwriting from, say, a Tin Pan Alley approach be more a problem-solving type of craft, whereas when something emerges without any clear precedent, that’s evidence of a different kind of creativity?

While it is true that people coming out of Tin Pan Alley typically had a certain methodology of songwriting down, those like Neil Sedaka and Carole King were also insanely talented, and able to communicate something that went far beyond whatever techniques they employed. So you may have your problem-solving skill set and something of value may arise from that, but there’s also a challenge to go further. If at that point you switch out of a purely analytical mode of dealing with creativity and let your intuition come into play, there’s a chance you might arrive at someplace new. To me, that’s where it starts to get really exciting.

Is intuition inextricably linked to creativity?

In my own subjective experience it is, yes. I can’t imagine working without having that sense engaged all the time and being highly aware of it, how it works, what it’s telling me, and where I’m being directed to go. The problem-solving approach is active in that you feel like you’re in charge and making the decisions. But that sense of ownership can lead to doing things in a more rote fashion, with more potential for conformity. When you are using your intuition, there’s surrender and vulnerability involved because you can’t really own something that came to you from the unconscious. And at least for me there’s a degree of humility because you realize there’s an endless wellspring of creative solutions out there if you just open yourself up to them.

Are there things you can do to make it more likely that sort of creativity will flow?

For me this approach is very much based on paying close attention to what my body is telling me, which is a practice informed by the field of somatics. For example, if you’re in a situation where you feel uncomfortable, you may think that the discomfort registers in your mind first, because you become aware of “I’m uncomfortable about something”—but really where it registers first is in your body, and that mechanism is employable in creative work. Meditation is one thing that can bring you closer to the sense of your body as a barometer for the world around you and also for being connected to the creative space.

Conversely, what are some inhibitors to creative flow?

Addiction to social media is one. And being immersed in your phone is another. Both tend to cut you off from that connection with your body, as well as from other people and the rest of the world. In some cases, drugs and alcohol used recreationally can also have that effect. I think anything that numbs you out and disconnects you from your body and from your senses can be a factor in inhibiting the creative flow.

Artist development has played a crucial role in your creative endeavors. How does creativity enter into that process?

As someone who has seen the affect that artist development can have on artists countless times, I can attest to how beneficial it can be to have another person that you trust involved in the creative process. That person may be able to see aspects of an artist’s work that the artist themselves can’t identify because they are too close to the work to view it objectively. Or in some cases they might be able to confirm things that the artist has been feeling but hasn’t been able to put into words. Offering that perspective can be particularly valuable to artists who for whatever reason may be floundering at the time, which happens more now than ever before, mostly because the people that might be able to help them aren’t going to make any money right away by doing it.

So much is expected of artists these days, but they are mostly left to their own devices because no one is willing to provide them with the information and other resources that they need to get to the next level. The late John Hammond is a good example of someone that was involved in artist development and got into it because he just loved artists and wanted to participate and to help them grow. It’s incredible the kind of inside track that sort of support can provide to an artist and really set them on their path with more certainty and more ambition.

Drill down on this and talk more specifically about some of the things that you think are important in terms of artist development.

There’s this idea nowadays that authenticity is all about what you do in the moment. “I wrote this song and now I’m going to knock it out. There it is. Boom. It’s authentic. It’s me.” I see so many people who think that their job is to throw together a dozen or so songs and then immediately go record them. I’m sorry, but in my experience that’s absolute nonsense.

If an artist has proven they are capable of creating that way and it works for them, great—but it doesn’t work that way for most people. Most people need to walk away from a song once they’ve written it, then come back and take it apart to figure out why it works, or, most importantly, the ways in which it doesn’t work. What are the problems? What makes the song drag in a particular spot? Would a different root note be better here? Why is that melody not working? There can be so many subtleties to consider.

There have to be very deep conversations that delve into these things, and these days the emphasis is on simply creating “content” that can be released as quickly as possible. Artists have no time to really invest themselves fully in what it is that they’ve created. That is a major problem, and what’s happening in terms of musical quality continues to prove me out. Artists are unable to maximize their talent and fully realize what their songs are capable of becoming. Paying attention to arrangement issues can often be the difference between a dreadful song and a really good one.

I enjoy listening to outtakes of artists like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles because you can see where a lot of their songs came from and how they went through this tireless process of perfecting and perfecting and perfecting them. And if a song wasn’t working they might abandon it and possibly come back to it later. There’s also music that had been kicking around for years but never got released, and when you hear what they were working on it is obvious that it got held back because it wasn’t going anywhere.

If an artist isn’t willing to apply that kind of ethic to what they do, then again, they are selling themselves short and their potential can remain very much submerged in that state, instead of pushing themselves to be the best that they are capable of. Taking sufficient time for introspection and artistic maturation is the only way that you’re going to create music that really moves people. You can’t fabricate that, which is exactly what people are trying to do. They are working overtime trying to fabricate something that resembles a feeling.

Beinhorn and Frank Filipetti working on Celebrity Skin at Quad Studios in 1998

Which leads to asking themselves who they are and why they are making music in the first place.

I think it’s critically important for artists to be aware of what their intent is. I’ve seen a lot of people who would like to have all the peripheral benefits that come with being a very successful performer, but aren’t necessarily willing to put in the effort to achieve not only those benefits, but also the actual gratification that comes with doing something that has real meaning.

To me the essence of music is communication—with self-expression being a critical aspect of that—and in some cases music can be a way to connect with divinity. Music can also be entertainment if you want it to be—but if it’s not saying something, if it’s not expressing something, if you’re not feeling something while you’re making or hearing it, then it really doesn’t have any meaning.

That’s not to say that all the crappy pop music that’s ever been made is completely useless. All the shit that’s on the radio right now has its place. But music is an ecosystem in which there has to be a balance, and currently there is an imbalance because the world is flooded with a particularly shallow form of pop music that’s imprinted on people’s lives, and if that’s all you hear then you’ve got a problem.

There’s got to be room for all types of music, including stuff that is serious, that speaks to the person, and the artist feels like they’ve achieved some kind of catharsis through. Somehow, we’ve managed to eliminate all those things so we now have popular music that is very clever and hooky, but it is missing the essential ingredients of creative expression.

This stuff is a lot different than the popular music of times gone by, much of which has had staying power. For example, people are still buying Beatles records 50 years on. How many pop records that were made ten years ago are not only still being listened to, but people are still buying them?.

Artists I’ve spoken with whose heyday was in the mid-to-late 1960s talk about accessing a powerful creative energy that was surging at that particular time.

A Zeitgeist?

Exactly. It felt as if they were riding a huge wave and then at a certain point the wave went away and it was like, “tough luck.”

Yeah, that’s it.

So maybe that helps explain what we are experiencing now. As significant as the contributing factors you’ve identified are, perhaps they are largely peripheral and the main problem is that a creative wave of that type has not been available for a while?

I think what we have right now is the diametric opposite of that wave. It’s like a gigantic cosmic vacuum cleaner that’s sucking everything into itself. Society—particularly Western society—has devolved to the point where we are reduced to a consumerist mentality and commoditize everything in our environment. There’s a deficit of emotion, a deficit of connection, and consequently we succumb to the addiction of constant consumption. So is it really any surprise that people value money more than the intrinsic spiritual value of artistic expression and music and communication and creativity?

Ironically, that same consumerist mentality and devaluation of music have precipitated the collapse of the record business. Is it possible, however, that the near impossibility of making a living from creating music will give musicians license to be more free and creative rather than discouraging them to continue?

It certainly creates the potential, though I don’t really see that happening very fully yet. And the missing bit in that equation is that while it’s all very well to say people are free now to do what they want, they may become a ship that’s no longer at the dock with the other ships, but that is also out to sea without direction or a compass, and no idea where the fuck they are going. Unless they know what the rules are before they start breaking them all they will have is discord. And, again, if they don’t understand the emotional connection they won’t understand how they might use their instruments to express themselves emotionally.

Think about John McLaughlin’s performance on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. On his solos he’s mostly playing a handful of notes, many of which are very discordant. You can detect his brain working and feel how he is moving out of a familiar range to do something that no one had really done before. It’s improvised and very free. Obviously he had the best bandleader in the world, so that’s inspiring—but there’s a real sense of knowing and trusting in his internal radar. It’s very expressive. It’s very powerful. If you don’t have that, then freedom is not really free.”

What is the most profoundly spiritual aspect of creativity that you have experienced?

I was working on a Korn record and was in the process of honing a guitar sound. A lot of the signal chains on the record were very complex, with multiple amplifiers and microphones, lots of complex signal processing, tons of EQ, etc.

At one point I was tweaking an API 550A EQ when I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing. My hands were moving, but I had completely disassociated. It was crazy. And I was aware that I had disassociated because the logical side of my brain was thinking, “How am I doing this?” The frequency numbers weren’t registering and nothing I was looking at made any sense, yet I knew that every move I made was the right move, and everything was falling into place.

Then suddenly I had this image of myself kind of floating in space with my arms outstretched and I experienced a state of total tranquility. It was a really amazing and beautiful experience, and it is very moving just talking about it now.

To me, that goes right back to the first question that you asked. That right there is the essence of creativity. It’s the result of a conscious reaction to a real temporal problem in a creative environment—getting a guitar sound—while at the same being part of a larger continuum of universal events that make up the constant flow of creativity we are all part of and participate in.

Beinhorn’s current pre-production setup.

http://www.barrycleveland.com/beinhorn/

September 8, 2016 by Barry Cleveland Leave a Comment

Mu
Richard Pinhas & Barry Cleveland
With Michael Manring & Celso Alberti
Cuneiform Records (2016)

“Similes of a scenic tour into a Black Hole star with grooving pulses come to mind. Hence, the guitarists’ streaming and phase shifting notes and the rhythm section’s undulating cadences along with melodic overtones and ghostly apparitions are other sensations that prevail throughout the production … Think of space rock with a college education as the band paints a dexterous, intertwining sonic-scape from start to finish.” —Glenn Astarita, All About Jazz

“Mu is an entirely improvised, yet extremely focused effort that explores the intersections between myriad genres and influences … Incredibly strong stuff.” —Anil Prasad, Innerviews

“This cinematic collection of tone poems … evokes strange and alluring terrains of atmospheric imagery. It’s the perfect sonic partner for those days when you just want to look out a window at something beautiful.” —Michael Molenda, Guitar Player

“Mu is fearlessly powerful, rich, and HUGE—the sounds of heavy metal jazz meeting electronic maximalism, guitars as freed by Jimi Hendrix in orchestrations rivaling Led Zeppelin’s, rock-solid drumming supporting it all. The effect is oceanic.” —Howard Mandel, Jazz Beyond Jazz

“Nothing short of a masterpiece, beginning to end.” —Peter Thelen, Exposé Online

DOWNLOAD or PURCHASE CD on Bandcamp

http://www.barrycleveland.com/mu/

by Barry Cleveland

Photo: Scott Friedlander

David Torn

The Art of Sky Gazing

Guitarist, composer, and interdimensional sonic shape-shifter David Torn has pursued a singular musical vision for more than four decades. His outré approach to guitar playing and electronic manipulation had already begun to fully crystallize by 1982, when he made his first record for the ECM label as a member of the fusion quartet Everyman Band. Torn had been mentored by Leonard Bernstein, studied guitar with Pat Martino and John Abercrombie, and performed alongside Don Cherry while honing his artistic aesthetic.

Three years later, ECM released a second Everyman Band album, a recording by Jan Garbarek featuring Torn (who also performed live with the legendary saxophonist), and an intimate guitar and percussion collaboration with Geoffrey Gordon. But it was 1987’s enormously influential Cloud About Mercury that established Torn as an undeniably consequential musical force. Featuring trumpeter Mark Isham, bassist and Chapman Stick player Tony Levin, and drummer Bill Bruford, the album interfused sophisticated polyrhythmic compositions with majestic melodies, transcendent atmospherics, and unbridled improvisations, resulting in an uncanny amalgam.

In 2000, melodic and textural material from Cloud About Mercury was incorporated into Madonna’s hit song “What It Feels Like for a Girl,” with Torn receiving a co-writing credit.

Torn’s music has graced myriad films, television programs, and advertisements, in part due to making hundreds of his textural and rhythmic loops and samples available via commercial collections in the early ’90s. But he has also scored major films such as The Order, Lars and the Real Girl, Everything Must Go, The Wackness, Saint John of Las Vegas, and That Awkward Moment, in addition to making significant contributions to scores by renowned film composers such as Carter Burwell, Howard Shore, Cliff Martinez, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Mark Isham.

Torn’s creative universe has continually expanded throughout the past quarter century, as he morphed from quirky singer-songwriter (Door X) to Fourth World explorer (What Means Solid, Traveller?) to electronica innovator as SPLaTTeRCell (OAH) to post-avant-jazzer (Prezens). Along the way, he has worked in various capacities with luminaries as diverse as David Bowie, John Legend, k.d. lang, David Sylvian, Jeff Beck, Laurie Anderson, Tim Berne, Tori Amos, and Donna Lewis.

After undergoing surgery in 1992 for a brain tumor that left him deaf in his right ear and faced with some daunting medical challenges, Torn ultimately emerged even more fervently dedicated to his muse.

Torn’s latest release, Only Sky (ECM), is an entirely improvised solo guitar opus recorded partially at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York, and partially at his home studio Cell Labs. The album showcases not only the depth, beauty, and intensity of the creative currents informing Torn’s improvisational impulses, but also his complete mastery of live-looping, an art form central to his expression, which he has been instrumental in evolving both artistically and technically since the early 1980s. Torn toured the U.S. in 2015 to support the record.

More recently, Torn has turned his attention to recording, producing, mixing, and mastering a dizzying array of projects. Highlights include mixing and mastering pianist Matt Mitchell’s Vista Accumulation; contributing a co-compositional track to Danish guitarist Samuel Hällkvist’s Variety of Rhythm project; mixing The Distance by bassist Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus; mixing and playing on the rock opera La Salvación by Argentinian vocalist Vicentico and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs; and producing, mixing, and guesting on an album in progress by saxophonist Tim Berne.

Torn has also completed the recording sessions for a lengthy upcoming piece with the working title “Sobyu Sogo,” which he describes as “a hybrid of compositional cells and attendant improvisations.” It features Tim Berne; Craig Taborn (piano, electronics); Ches Smith (drums, vibes, tympani); a string quartet comprising Amy Kimball, Tachel Golub, Martha Mooke, and Leah Coloff, extended to a sextet with electric guitarists Mike Baggetta and Ryan Ferreira, who played additional “string” parts written specifically to blend with the bowed orchestral instruments.

How did you arrive at the title Only Sky?

That’s actually the title of a photograph I took a few years ago, which was originally going to be on the cover of the album. I titled the photograph that because I like to do this sky gazing thing, where I look into the sky and use it, or let it use me, as a kind of meditation. I tend to have a hyperactive mind, so the practice helps me to let things be what they are rather than working too hard on stuff that doesn’t need working on. When I first began making Only Sky, by myself, it felt a little like the emotion reflected in that photograph. Some people assumed I was referencing a line from “Imagine” by John Lennon, but I’d actually forgotten all about that for some reason.

That crossed my mind as well.

No, it was really about that sense of openness. Even when I’m sky gazing informally, just laying on my back in a field and staring up at the sky, with clouds occasionally passing by, it is easy for me to slip back into being a kid. I used to lie on the beach listening to the ocean while watching the clouds pass overhead, and I’d drift off into imagination land.

I had a similar experience while sky gazing in Yosemite recently and was thinking how it can be sort of a metaphor for musical creativity.

I was thinking of the experience more specifically as a reference point for a perspective from which to make music. There’s a fine point there. For example, when it comes to my own music, I can theorize about it and justify it in a million ways both technically and aesthetically, but what is most important is the perspective taken while I’m doing it—the process rather than the musical outcome. Otherwise, there are a few places on the record where you have some scary ass roiling skies going on and they’re not something I’d want to be staring into for very long [laughs].

Nonetheless, even when you move into those darker, roiling cloud spaces, there’s still a kind of smoothness and continuity to the transitions.

During the recording process I felt it was critical not to push when that didn’t need to happen. Because you can find new things more easily when you’re allowing the things that you’re already doing to develop, and listening to them, and being part of them, rather than constantly manipulating them forward. Maybe it’s sort of like psychologically oriented systaltic motion? I let myself have this flow of listen, respond, but listen. Don’t just respond to what you imagine it’s going to become.

Some of the pieces were a lot longer to begin with, precisely because I took the waiting thing to an extreme. There were times when I’d be like 20 minutes into a piece that I felt really good about, and I’d get to a spot where I felt a little bit at sea, or maybe it would be something practical like I’d have to pee, and I’d just put the guitar down, keep the machines rolling, leave, and then return and begin playing again in my own time.

When using multiple looping devices that aren’t hard synched they have the potential to interact in unforeseen ways, perhaps creating random harmonies. Is that the sort of thing you are listening for as pieces develop?

I’ve developed enough skills with the devices I have that harmonic events are not something I let go of easily, unless I’m resorting to extending harmonicity with noise. For me, serendipitous things mostly occur in terms of rhythmic flow. There are multiple devices and each of them has it’s own internal periodicity, and it may not even be a steady periodicity. The Lexicon PCM-42, for example, isn’t nearly as stable rhythmically as, say, the Echoplex Digital Pro. It’s not crazy off the mark, but it’s awfully easy to change a pitch or change a rhythm, even by accident, with a clumsy foot or hand. So, yes, serendipitous rhythmic events are an example of what I’m listening for. In simple terms, when there’s that pause or rest state while I’m actively making music, but also actively listening, the big decision is when to willfully act upon what’s happening.

Photo: Scott Friedlander

Can you provide a specific example?

A perfect example occurred at the Falcon in Marlboro, New York, during my solo tour last May. That was the first time I got this thing going by putting the two Hexe reVolver loop/glitch/stutter/pitch pedals in series with each other and using them as the accident makers. The maximum sampling times of each were set to one and two seconds, respectively, though the reVolver’s sampling times can be changed instantaneously to anywhere within its range. I seem to use a lot of really short, ever-changing loops these past years, some as short as single-digit milliseconds.

So, I was trying to make one massive rhythm emerge out of those two small, broken things by recording, rerecording, and modifying, one pedal into the other and going back and forth between them with both playing at the same time. To balance their volumes, however, I had to get down on my knees to reach all the knobs, so I’m on the floor and I’m playing and I’m sampling and resampling and re-triggering start/end times and otherwise whacking pedals and twiddling knobs with whichever hand was free when suddenly, as a result of having the sheer willpower to keep going and make it work, this gigantic, wicked-ass rhythmic/harmonic thing just locks into its very own place. I could feel it, and I have to believe that the audience could feel it in the room, too. It was like, “Whoa, now I’ve got some weird-ass, kicking rhythm section!” I immediately resampled the whole of that into the Echoplex Digital Pro, manually, but without listening to the EDP’s output, and without bringing up the level. Then, I transitioned out of the piece by crossfading from the pedals to the EDP loop, which worked beautifully.

I’d always assumed fancier and more expensive technology would be required to do that sort of thing, perhaps even involving a computer with need for a full-on visual monitor, mouse, and whatnot, , so it was really exciting to discover it could be done with what are fundamentally two supercool looping pedals.

You recorded four tracks in a large concert hall. What influence did the space have on your performance and the sound of the recordings?

It was huge [laughs]. The entire reason for recording there was to be influenced. I’d decided I wanted to record in a large space after doing a photo shoot for Guitar Connoisseur magazine. GC publisher Kelcey Alonzo wanted the shoot to take place in a space that looked “cinematic,” because that’s the way my music sounds to him, so we did it at Merkin Hall in New York. I asked if I could bring an amp and practice while they did the shoot, so they could get shots of me doing stuff and I could practice, because I actually find photo shoots kind of boring. So, I just played in this big space for about two hours without really talking to anyone and it was fantastic. I thought, “This is the way to make a record.”

It wasn’t possible to record at Merkin due to bureaucratic complexities, and a nice hall at Bard College and a funky warehouse in Kingston also didn’t work out. Then my friend Daniel James Goodwin reminded me about EMPAC in Troy, New York, and suggested I check it out. The ceiling is about 50 feet high and just by walking onto the stage and talking I could hear how phenomenal the sound was. We had a Pro Tools rig and Daniel engineered, controlling the mic preamps and other stuff from this little handheld thing and a remote PT controller that was onstage, behind me.

What was your recording setup at EMPAC?

I just used my normal stereo guitar setup, for that time. My dry amp in the center was a Fryette Sig:X head through a Bob Burt 2×12 cab loaded with old Celestion Blue speakers. I played through the clean channel. The THD Hot Plate Attenuator I insert between the head and the cab has a 1/4-inch line out that’s used to feed my stereo rack mixer, which is the main juncture for my looping devices, reverbs, and other rack effects. The stereo outputs from the mixer then feed a Fryette Two/Fifty/Two Stereo Power Amplifier powering Fryette Deliverance 2×12 and Bogner Goldfinger 2×12 cabs, in this case positioned on the sides of the stage for a really wide stereo field.

So, although the looping devices weren’t recorded separately, they were recorded in stereo apart from the dry amp, which wasn’t entirely dry; the “dry” amp had a Caroline Kilobyte Delay in front of it, and a Neunaber Wet Reverb in its effects loop. We put some microphones on the cabinets, a couple on the far sides of the stage, two about 20 feet from the stage, and also used two that were up in the balcony. Those balcony microphones were just phenomenal.

There are some huge reverb sounds on the record. Were they all created digitally, or are some of them actually the acoustic sound of the room?

The room sound is very much on the four tracks recorded at EMPAC, but it isn’t a cathedral sound like you’d get playing at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine or something. The cathedral-type sounds were produced using digital reverb to create those sounds within that amazing room, which actually has a sort of acoustic neutrality. That’s a big part of what appealed to me about recording there.

There’s considerable continuity between the sound of the pieces recorded in your home studio and those recorded at EMPAC. Did you use any sort of acoustic modeling to approximate the space?

Yes, to some extent. I used a couple of reverb patches I created in Native Instruments Reaktor to approximate the warmth that was produced by the particular coloration of the space.

Photo: Scott Friedlander

What guitars did you play on Only Sky and why did you choose them?

Although I brought several instruments to EMPAC, including an old National acoustic and my Godin Multi Oud, which I played for three minutes. I wound up just using my Ronin Mirari with Foilbucker pickups in the big hall. I formed a very deep and immediate bond with that pink Ronin and I’ve been playing it since I got it. I might have played the Koll Tornado on one thing, but if so I can’t remember what it was. I definitely used the Koll on two of the pieces I recorded in my home studio, as well as a my D’Pergo Stratocaster-style guitar, and also probably the Teuffel Niwa on one track.

Didn’t you get another Mirari recently?

Yes, a blue one. It’s essentially just a refinement of the pink one, which was a prototype with prototype pickups built specifically for me. The blue Mirari is more or less a backup for the pink one, though it’s quite different.

Do you have a large guitar collection?

I don’t have a crazy guitar collection, just a floating guitar collection that changes. I do have a crazy fuzz collection, though, and a lot of amps.

Speaking of fuzz and amps, what did you use to get the various overdriven and distorted sounds on the record?

I only used two fuzz pedals on the album, both made by Paul Trombetta. I used a prototype of the Tornita to get some sort of grainy fuzz sounds and also Theremin-like sounds, and I used the Mini-bone in a few spots to get an octave below the note I’m playing. Everything else was done with the amp.

I really like the clarity I’m getting in the sound now, especially since Izzy Lugo at Ronin Guitars made me the Foilbucker pickups. I’ve fallen into this desire to have a combination of the worst sludge in the world and enough available clarity, so that if I’m playing something polytonal that’s got distortion on it, and I roll back the volume control on the guitar, I can hear the individual notes in the chords unless I’m just making a noise.

Having the Mirari has completely changed the way I look at amplifiers. I’d already been heading in that new direction for quite a few years, partly because of the film work. The trend has been toward using bigger and bigger amps, with less and less preamp gain and more volume from the amp itself, and then using attenuators to reduce the overall volume.

The PTD Tornita was custom built for you, hence the name. Briefly, what’s the story behind its development?

Paul Trombetta was already making a pedal called the Donita, which I really liked, and I asked him for a specific set of things from that fuzz, along with latching and momentary feedback footswitches and a big overhanging knob for the feedback control so that I can adjust the feedback range of the fuzz with my foot while I’m playing, since the feedback pitch within that range can be controlled with the volume and tone controls on the guitar itself.

Are there other pedals that you’ve had a hand in designing?

Well, as I recently commented to [boutique pedal maker] Ryan Kirkland before he sent me this amazing new fuzz pedal, I need to have a setting that retains all of the low end my guitar produces, since I am a de-tuner and often play without bass players. The way the low end shows up is critical. It can’t be crazy overpowering, but it’s got to be there. If kicking on a fuzz pedal causes all the lows to disappear, I’ll never use it.

One pedal that I did have a major role in influencing, however, was the Hexe reVolver DT/DX, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I really liked the original reVolver and made a lot of comments to Piotr Zapart in Germany about it. I kept saying, “Dude, I want one that does this and this, and let’s you control this, but doesn’t do that.” It was a really a specific list of things, but I thought we were only talking. Then, one day he posted a picture of this modified reVolver on Facebook that did a lot of the things I’d asked for, and he called it the reVolver DT. He said that he had been insane to modify an existing pedal instead of building something new, though, and that although he would build more pedals with the same feature set, they’d have a new architecture. So, at least in that case my feedback definitely had an effect.

You’ve also worked closely with amp designer Steven Fryette.

Yes, and that’s largely because we are friends and have developed an actual relationship. It started because I fell in love with his amps, and have been using them for a long time now. My favorite amp is the Deliverance 120, which I carry around here on the East Coast or when there’s a truck. I think some of the modifications I asked for in my original Pitbull 45 made it into that amp and also the Sig:X. I helped him a little bit in voicing the Deliverance, but more with the Sig:X, and the Memphis, and I was deeply involved with the aftermath of the amazing Aether combo. I also don’t think Steve would have ever considered making the Power Station [Integrated Reactance Amplifier] attenuator if he wasn’t sick and tired of watching me play every great amp ever through compromising attenuators, for practical reasons, and if I hadn’t kept ranting in his specific direction, “Someone needs to make a fucking attenuator that actually does what’s needed for the people who need it!”

Having a relationship with the people whose products you are using creates a feedback loop. And it is actually incredibly selfish because I get two things out of it: I find out really quickly when my ideas are stupid, and when they work, I get to take advantage of the results.

A good example of the latter would be the development of looping devices, which you’ve definitely played a role in.

I believe I’ve had a lot of influence on most of what you might call the classic hardware looping devices, following Gary Hall’s, and also Bob Sellon’s, modifications of the Lexicon PCM-42. I have two, including what I think was the first one made for sale. Gary modified to have up to 20 seconds of delay time, which was more than four times the stock maximum. One also has a reverse switch installed. I had some influence on the development of the Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro in the early ’90s, as well, and I was a very active artist consultant for the team that created the original Lexicon JamMan during that same period. About a decade later I was involved with the Electrix Pro Repeater before the whole thing went belly up, and actually wrote a function chart for the next version of software, which unfortunately never occurred.

Also, although they aren’t really looping devices, I was involved with the Lexicon PCM70 and PCM80 multi-effects processors. I came up with an effect that came to be called “Shimmer” by combining a long reverb in the PCM70 with the octaves and stereo delays in an Ibanez HD1500. Then, when I got a prototype of the PCM80 I programmed variations on that effect, including big reverbs with feedback-multi-delays and pitch shifting in various intervals, into it. I’ve carried that PCM80 to every gig and recording session for 20 years, and it only just went down with a failed pitch card a few months ago. Miraculously, I located and purchased a NOS pitch card from some guy in American Samoa, and now I also have a PCM81 as a backup.

More recently I’ve been involved in an ongoing thread on the Gear Page about the state of current loopers. I think it’s an interesting read, and might be an even more engaging conversation for some folks who are okay with the difficulties of the “guitar forum” gestalt. I won’t get bloggy about it any more than I already do there, and on my Facebook page.

As far as looping software goes, when playing live I don’t want to be forced into carrying too much; it’s like I’m in a constant state of enforced slimming down. I don’t want a computer, a keyboard, a mouse, an audio interface plus cabling and/or some sort of other large physical interface so that I don’t have to mouse-around so much while I’m playing. I don’t want those things that remote me further from the more visceral aspects of actually playing the guitar and, really, those physical aspects of manipulating sound, in general. Back around 1996 or so, I reached my limit with normal pedals, voltage-control pedals, custom controls mounted on my guitar wired to variously under-responsive MIDI boxes with special cabling, additional MIDI controllers, and all the pre-programming and nightmare of MIDI reset when the power fades or goes down briefly. So, I progressively rid my rig of as many of the computerized add-ons as possible, which in most cases included MIDI.

That said, I’ve been consulting on a piece of looping software that I think is pretty superfreakingly cool, simple but powerful, and that I’m convinced will eventually be released commercially.

Photo: Scott Friedlander

Are you still mostly playing with your fingers and occasionally using your modified Min’d picks?

Yes, exactly. I also use wooden and acetate picks on steel-string acoustic guitars sometimes, but most of the time I play with my fingers. When I’m playing live I usually keep the pick tucked under my pinky when I’m not using it, just for safe keeping and more efficient integration, even though I can’t play as well with my fingers with the pick tucked in.

Briefly describe the Min’d picks.

They’re made out of agate, and I’ve been using them since 1979. I didn’t like the original shape, so I had a jeweler cut them down, and he left one side unfinished. That very fine serrated edge creates just enough friction to enable me to bow with the pick by scraping it along the string, which is typically the high-E string. And by placing my finger gently on the string at the same time I can play all of the notes between the end of the fretboard and the bridge. I can also push the pick onto the string at a fixed position to create a moveable bridge while I’m bowing, which changes the scale length and the fret-to-pitch relationships, which, among other things, allows me to play unusually microtonal phrases.

Speaking of ancient gear history, the Steinberger TransTrem was critical to your sound in the ’80s. Briefly, how did you come to embrace it so thoroughly?

I originally got into it because I wanted to play a Steinberger guitar. This was very early on and when I spoke with Ned Steinberger he told me about what the TransTrem did and I told him that sounded impossible. I told him that in about 1973 a friend and I had figured out how to get pedal-steel-like sounds using only a standard vibrato bar. I had worked out where I could get parallel transpositions, as well as some interesting nonparallel transpositions, on a Fender Stratocaster. Well, Ned probably realized how crazy I was when I told him about that and maybe decided I was the right guy to check out the TransTrem. Ned is a genius and the TransTrem was revolutionary. I really dug it!

It largely defined your sound, though it might be more accurate to say that you largely defined its sound, as you were arguably its most accomplished proponent. Why did you stop using it?

It was a real tough decision. I had started playing guitars with the old-style bridges on them, which had gotten better, and I rediscovered the extra liveliness in the strings that had been missing for many years. Also, Allan Holdsworth explained to me that from an engineering standpoint there was a loss in the connection with the strings that had never been fixed. Then when I asked Ulli Teuffel to put one on a guitar he was building for me he said, “Ned is a genius and I love that thing, but don’t put it on my guitar. It’s going to add weight and you’re going to lose the sound of the string.” Ned worked on new versions but I never tried them because I just didn’t want to go back.

Photo: Scott Friedlander

Let’s talk about a few of the tracks on Only Sky. The opening piece, “At Least There Was Nothing,” has an almost orchestral sound. Did you just improvise it straight through in one pass?

It’s in real time. I did edit out one section where I wasn’t playing for about nine minutes because I had left the room and just let the loops keep running while I was away. When I returned I started playing again and picked up the oud.

I also overdubbed two or three Ebow parts played on acoustic guitar at the very end because while mixing I realized that there wasn’t an actual ending. I improvised the parts 100 percent so they would have the same energy, rather than being written. And I did the same thing at the end of “A Goddamned Specific Unbalance” for the same reason.

I actually had to struggle with myself a little before I did any overdubs at all, because when I started out I had this grand idea about there not being any; but I wound up saying to myself, “Dude, you can do whatever you want” [laughs].

There’s a really huge amount of low end at one point in the piece. How did you get that sound?

I probably pulled the subs out of the recording. Normal engineers will roll off everything below 60 or 40 or 20 cycles while recording, but I tend not to do that, especially when I’m playing alone, so that those frequencies will be available later if I want to use them in the mix. You have to be careful not to push it too hard when you do that, or it will sound a little synthetic. But it isn’t synthesis. It’s just pulling the subs forward and equalizing the bottom to create a sounding tone. It is similar to using a sub-harmonic synthesizer, which I used to use while mixing all the time, but it sounds a little more natural.

In that particular case there may have been a loop that was dropped to half speed, lowered an octave, and then I’d have pulled the subs from that rather than the guitar itself. Those things can get really low, like 20 cycles low.

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Is that the Tornita fuzz making the Theremin-like sounds at the beginning of “Was a Cave There”?

Yeah. I used the Tornita quite a bit on that track, but not in the way you would typically use a fuzz. I turned the feedback off and lowered the guitar’s volume control, which made these weird little gritty sounds in the loops.

On “I Could Almost See the Room” there are transitions between looped sections where it sounds as if you are just playing straight through rather than initiating a new loop. Are you switching between two loopers?

No, that’s a single ReVolver. There’s nothing steady state about the way I’m using it except that occasionally I’ll let it run for a little while before I alter it. Once I’ve recorded a loop, every time I do something else, like the stutter thing, if I want to return to the original loop I have to go back and recreate it. There’s no recall.

In a particular mode, however, once I’ve recorded the rhythm, as long as I don’t change the loop length I’ll be able to feel that rhythm enough to press the switch at the right time to get exactly that length or damn close. That means I can have a lot of variations on the same riff and then eventually return to it if I want to. One thing about the ReVolver is that if you set a limit to the length of the loop and hold the switch down throughout the entire cycle, it will automatically go to the maximum without releasing the switch.

Photo: Scott Friedlander

One problem with looping is that it can be static, both in terms of rhythm and harmonic development. Introducing the sorts of variations you’ve described helps, but isn’t it still challenging to get past that inherent limitation?

It is indeed. But I continually try to push all of my looping devices out beyond that point. For example, unlike a [Electro-Harmonix] Freeze pedal, which does nothing except give you something to play over, the ReVolver allows me to continually create new structures. I’m also always manipulating the Lexicon PCM42 in real time, like changing the time and pitch constantly, even while I’m recording loops. Or I’ll use Square Wave modulation to create rhythms and then slow them down and speed the up without changing pitch, or modulate the pitch at the same time, etc.

I also use two or more loopers simultaneously. For instance, I might record a loop on the ReVolver and then record that into the Echoplex Digital Pro. And if the two loops begin to drift apart I might insert bits of silence, or new material, or random slices of the ReVolver loop at the input to create something longer and more rhythmically complex. And then I might multiply the length further, or divide it down to a very small thing that fits with another loop that’s playing, or purposefully doesn’t fit, so I have a new rhythmic cycle starting. And sometimes I’ll fade a looper out using my mixer, mess with it without monitoring the sound, or only hearing the sound in the reverb returns, and then bring it back in so that it’s a surprise. I’ll also manipulate the controls of pedals on the floor by bending over, maybe while simultaneously holding down a footswitch with one foot and reaching over to adjust the mixer. All of those sorts of things keep the music from becoming static. But, you know, all that said? Sometimes, going static is just the right thing to do!

What are some of the factors that determine the quality of a live improvised performance—be they physical, psychological, or even spiritual?

The whole idea of improvisation is that there will always be some elements of it that can’t be predicted or controlled beyond a certain point. You set up a stochastic process and then try to bend it to your will in some way in the hope of there being happy serendipitous moments.

Sometimes a performance can be compromised by something as simple as having the flu, which happened to me on my last solo tour. Things like the quality of the sound system and the responses of people in the audience can also affect a performance. But the main things for me are intention and focus. I need to know that beyond putting on a show—and it is a show, because you are performing for people—my focus is on the creative process and the music, and that I have made by best effort to remain present.

There isn’t any particular thing that I do. For example, sometimes I’ll have a drink before I play and I’ll just be killing it, and sometimes I’ll have a drink and I can’t get my shit together at all. There’s no magic formula. And that internal focus can also have to do with whether I’ve been practicing and whether my hands are unglue-y.

That’s a great word.

That’s a big one, right? I like to feel comfortable before going on. I like to know that everything in my kit is working. Everything. I’m famous for being insanely panicky about all sound checks at all times in every place. Everything must work before the doors open. Sound check to me is a ritual.

Like preparing a magical circle?

That’s what it feels like, this ritualistic thing. Knowing that I’m there for some purpose. I also have some expectation that my improvisation will be a journey. And as with any journey there should be some sightseeing, and we might learn something, and we should definitely feel something about where we’ve been. It’s all about being in tune. If you can start out by being in tune, you’re great.

Premiere performance for solo guitar and oud, "only sky": David Torn at TEDxCaltech

David Torn performing and speaking about his brain tumor and subsequent recovery at TEDx at Caltech: The Brain on January 28, 2013 (click for video)

Some time ago you practiced tantric yoga for a number of years. Do you still meditate and if so is your practice directly connected to your creativity and creative process in some way?

That is a really tough question with a particularly complicated answer. I would say that the effort that I expended in tantric yoga for a big part of my young life was super important for me to be able to maintain some kind of focus.

As a kid I didn’t have focus. I was scattered and thrown around like a little ship in a big stormy ocean by everything that came at me—socially, conversationally, and idea-wise in my own head. I was like this little flailing thing for a long time. That’s one of the reasons why I needed something at that time that required intense concentration. And one result that has stuck with me is that I can focus very intently on what I’m doing from an interior perspective. It’s really important and I don’t think I would be this person without a practice.

I have gone back and forth in my actual practice like a lot of people do; sometimes I practice meditation and sometimes I don’t. It has become threaded into my daily life, though not necessarily in a way that requires a lot of effort. There are times I’m practicing when I’m really not exerting any willpower. I might be doing something like walking or driving and I just fall into it. And that’s the same way that I write a lot of music. I might be gardening, and there will be music that goes along with it, but I’m still gardening.

Whatever drove me to practice meditation, and drives me to continue doing it, also helps me play music. It helps me to focus and be more open at the same time. I’d probably become a practicing Buddhist if I had the social makeup to be part of a group. But I don’t. I really hate taking directions from people except for very brief periods of time, and then only when they are geniuses and exuding love and generosity.

Given your ability to focus and pay attention internally, describe as best you can what is going on inside while you are improvising, particularly during those moments when you are really inspired.

It’s a multifaceted state that moves as much as the music does. The critical thing is to realize that I’m the music and at the same time that the music is me. I’m listening to it, but it’s me, there’s no separation.

Emotionally, I might be experiencing anything from fear to thrills. For example, I might be scared to death that the whole thing is going to fall apart. “What happened to that low note? I need that note. Okay, I don’t have enough time to look for it, so I’ll make a new one.” You know, all the fear-based stuff. And then there’s the excitement or rush that comes when you are really one with the movement of the music and that thrill can become overpowering. It’s less of a concern now that I’m an older and more experienced improviser, but it can still derail everything if I let it get the better of me.

All of these sorts of things, even the “positive” ones, are distractions. Feeling things is wonderful, but you can’t allow your feelings to prevent you from serving the music. And the same goes for thinking. The stream of thoughts can be very distracting, and we all have to deal with it, no matter how accomplished we are. Bill Bruford used to talk to me about the stuff that went through his head while he was playing, and although I looked up to the guy, and still do, I thought, “Dude, really? That’s what you were thinking?”

Prezens at Joe’s Pub in 2008. Torn, Tom Rainey, Tim Berne, and Craig Taborn (left to right). Photo: Scott Friedlander.

How does one cope with those thoughts and feelings?

You can’t and shouldn’t try to block your thoughts and emotions. But what you can do is let go and just allow them to pass by as quickly as possible, like a storm system or just a simple cloud that is blocking the sun. It’s going to go by, so just let it go, because you’ve got to play, or create. And that goes for playing music in general and not just improvising.

Does the sun represent creativity? And if so, is that something that is inside you that you are accessing, or are you interacting with something beyond yourself? Language gets a little squirrelly here.

The language is squirrelly because we’re bordering on talking about magic and spiritualism and things that are beyond our ken. On the other hand, we’re thinking human beings who live in a world that we look at and try to understand, so I believe it’s fair to talk about these things, as squirrelly as our words may be.

Having said that, I don’t know what the source is. I know that it’s me and I know that it’s not me. And I know that it’s good enough for me to be a part of it and feel integrated with it. But I also know what it feels like to become alienated from the music, and to experience that painful separation and distance that most musicians struggle with at times. That’s the scary part for me. When I look down at the instrument and it’s not part of my body, and I think, “What the hell is this thing in my hands? I can’t even remember how to play.” That happened much more when I was younger, but that alienation from the creative process is something that I believe all musicians and other artists fear.

But where does creativity come from? I have no idea. I do know that I have a need to say something. I know that all of the stupidity in the world makes me angry. And I’m angry about death. I’m angry about kids shooting each other and about people being hungry everywhere. I love all these people so much, it’s incredible. The sky is incredible. I don’t understand any of it. How could there be this beauty and horror all at the same time? And I think all of that is what we play with as musicians. It’s not the notes and it’s not the technology—it’s the connection to everything you perceive about the world that comes through in the music.

I wish I had an answer. Then again, as long as I can play and write I don’t really care whether I have an answer. I’m comfortable with the reality that there is a region that I cannot or at least do not understand with my intellectual mind.

Photo: Tim Berne

Yeah, it is difficult to get your head around. In my experience, when the creative energy is really flowing, and I have enough presence of mind to notice, it is as if there are several distinct faculties in play. My thinking faculty—which is concerned with things like what happens if I step on a particular switch, or whether I’m playing okay—is very slow and plodding compared to the other things that are happening. My emotional responses are a little faster and more closely linked to the creative energy, so they keep up with it a bit better. And my physical body—fingers moving, when they aren’t glued—moves much faster than thinking or feeling. And there’s also something else that sometimes goes on, particularly during group improvisations, which is like some sort of collective consciousness. And when you really get absorbed into it, after it’s over you don’t even remember what happened.

I would say your recounting of all of that just now was 100 times clearer than anything I said in the last half hour, so we should shift the interview around [laughs]. I would add, though, that emotions and thoughts are often connected; you have an emotion and then you have a thought about it, or you have a thought and it makes you feel something.

Good point.

And regarding that collective consciousness, in every one of the bands I’ve been in, after playing a set where something really meaningful happened in a group setting, we would just look at each other afterward and ask, “What the hell was that?” And that’s because we were involved in something that was about a voyage to those spaces that music can take you to.

And the audience also participates in the journey.

Yes, and more than that. I would argue that we musicians—especially those of us who are not primarily there to entertain—play a critical role in every culture and civilization. We expunge people’s demons and help them to remember that life’s not just about demons; that there are little angels floating around that you don’t necessarily see in this dimension all the time. I’m putting it in airy-fairy terms, but I think history supports my view.

Music isn’t medicine, per se, but it can enable people to have other perspectives on their lives by taking them to places they haven’t been to before and thereby refreshing or energizing them in some way.

I would never want to be anybody’s teacher—I don’t want a guru or to be a guru—I’m just saying that this is what we do as musicians. In the old days they said you were crazy and they’d put you in a hut and feed you and then take you out for the special events so that you could help everybody celebrate them [laughs].

It sounds as if you are describing a form of shamanism.

Yes, though when I talk about things this way I don’t think of myself as any form of shamanic dude. I’m a regular guy. I have a family. I have to pay my bills. I do the same things that everybody else does. But when I’m playing music I feel that some service is being done to the universe at large as I know it myself. I feel like somebody’s going to get something from it in the same way that I might get something from it, and that means growth, expansion, relief, new thoughts, new perspectives on life. That’s what it’s all about.

I hate to sound like it is some super-serious business or whatever, but music is about life and life is serious business. I sometimes feel that the kind of communicating we do now over the Internet and everything being kind of lighthearted and quickly flowing—“I like this and I like that and here’s my opinion about what I hate in life”—divorces us from the fact that we’re musicians. It’s not just about our struggle to succeed. It’s about our struggle to actually play music, too, and do something valuable with it. It’s always been that way. I don’t know. These are strange times, right?

Chourmo at The Tea Lounge in Brooklyn on February 9, 2007. Torn, Tom Rainey, and Tim Berne (left to right). Photo: Scott Friedlander.

Have you scored any films lately?

Things have really slowed down. It might have to do with the fact that getting work is something you need to be personally pursuing all the time no matter how many people are working for you, because the Hollywood scene is personality oriented in every way. It isn’t that I abandoned it entirely, but I’ve spent the last year or so doing things like working on a lot of other people’s records, touring and promoting Only Sky, and doing a bunch of recording including another entire record of my own.

There’s also the fact that the Hollywood scene has become increasingly difficult to work in since 2007. Budgets have been reduced, more people are competing, and more people are working for free. Another change is that the big guys are taking everything because they have teams. And when I say “everything” I mean it—all of the films and the TV shows.

I really love doing music for picture, though, because it forces me to use musical resources that I have but won’t use in any other situation. In the same way, if I don’t improvise, or if I don’t have a band that I’m playing with, I’m not using all of my musical resources. Then again, whichever thing I’m doing, I look at the other things and ask myself why I’m not doing them [laughs]. And the same goes for producing and mixing. Even if I’m playing a great gig I’m thinking, “Ah, dude, I should be mixing that record.”

Speaking of which, provide an example of your approach to mixing and producing.

Let’s take Tim Berne. He can talk to me about his very difficult music and I’ll give him my straightforward opinion and make suggestions based on the fact that we know and trust each other. Tim’s music is complicated. The writing itself is very complex, intense, and soulful, and it’s married to really deep improvisational communication. Tim’s writing is always unique, but the improvisations have also become increasingly unique as the band continues to play together, and on his latest record they are semi-orchestral in nature. He also made it clear to me that the door was open if I wanted to add anything, so I made a few subtle additions where I thought something in another range or with a different timbre was called for.

And so between the writing and the improvisations there’s this sense of, okay, what is this really supposed to sound like? Did I get the sound right in the room? And just a simple rebalancing of the music changes it, so you have a lot of different options sort of as an arranger, especially when it comes to the improvisational sections. With any project I ask what are they saying? What is the intention here? What do they really want to hear?

The influence of Jon Hassell is evident in your music, though not in overt or obvious ways. Describe your relationship to his music.

He’s a tremendous influence. Everything about Jon’s music validated something for me in my own music when I heard him play. We know each other, we’ve discussed music a lot, and we’ve discussed doing a project together at least as recently as two years ago.

What’s an example of his music validating something in your own music for you?

Well, I’ve had the North Indian and Arabic thing in my playing for a long time, though I didn’t really let it come out during the fusion years. Then, in the early and mid ’80s, I started letting it come out again. And the two foundations of it being an integral part of my sound were Don Cherry telling me to do it in 1979, and hearing Jon do it on his early albums on E.G. Records. Here was this guy who was a student of Pandit Pran Nath putting that into his trumpet sound and I just thought, “Right. I’m free. I can do this.” Realizing just what kind of commitment he had to his art really moved me.

Outside of the jazz world it was people like Jon, Brian Eno, and Terry Riley that really informed my musical concept and provided a greater sonic picture. I also heard Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting album about the time it came out, which I found inspiring, but in terms of working with tape-loops Terry Riley’s A Rainbow In Curved Air had a far-greater impact. I was actually introduced to Terry Riley recently and one of the first things he said was, “Please, just don’t blow me, okay?” And I thought, “Right, I guess I’m not going to have any discussions with him, because I just want to tell him how fucking great he is!”

Prezens at Joe’s Pub in 2008. Torn, Tom Rainey, Tim Berne, and Craig Taborn (left to right). Photo: Scott Friedlander.

A lot of people don’t realize that the tape-loop setup used by Brian Eno and dubbed “Frippertronics” by Robert Fripp, had actually been used by Terry Riley years earlier. He called it a Time Lag Accumulator.

Yes, and that’s a real bugbear for me. I love Robert, and he’s an amazing guitar player and musician and human being, but he should tell people where “Frippertronics” came from, for historical reasons if nothing else. And that raises the larger point of musical history. For example, kids and other people should understand that without the early tape-loop experimenters in the ’60s there’s no hip-hop and probably no turntablism and certainly no minimalism, at least in the way it turned out.

Also, since we were talking about Jon Hassell. I attended a BMI panel discussion with director Duncan Bridgeman and film composers Stewart Copeland and Krishna Das last year. Duncan talked about his influences and the amazing sampling on David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and I took him aside afterward and asked him whether he knew that the sampling he was talking about was, in fact, done by Jon Hassell and not Byrne and Eno. I’m sure they did some processing, mixing, etc.—but the process absolutely reflects Jon’s own sound and was based on work that he’d already been doing. And Duncan said that he did know that and that he was sorry he said it the other way. I was afraid I’d put my foot in it by correcting him, but he was like, “Of course, you’re right” [laughs].

I sometimes feel that maybe I’ve had a broader influence on people than my career might reflect, primarily in the guitar world but also in the world of electronics. So, then I can briefly feel as if I’ve not received adequate recognition or success, buuuuuuut then I look at a freaking genius like Terry Riley or Tim Berne or Craig Taborn or someone like Jon Hassell and I think, “Dude, man, just shut the fuck up, already!”

Selected Facebook Question from Anil Prasad: Pesto or Marinara?

I was hoping that would be the question you picked because I love to eat! The thing is that I am a known pesto freak, and really a nut freak. However, for the past nine years I’ve had an intestinal condition that bars me eating whole nuts and seeds. So, while I love pesto, a simple marinara with fresh fire-roasted tomatoes is the bomb. Little bits of basil, salt, and garlic cooked with a tiny pinch of sugar. Aaahh!

http://www.barrycleveland.com/torn/

September 29, 2014 by Barry Cleveland

Hologramatron
Moonjune Records (2010)

An avant-rock 21st Century protest album featuring Robert Powell, Michael Manring, Celso Alberti, and Amy X Neuburg, with Harry Manx, Deborah Holland, Erdem Helvacioglu, Artist General, Rick Walker, and Gino Robair.

“There are a handful of albums in my life that hit me the way this album did. For me it sits in a small group of very special musical experiences: David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Bill Bruford’s Feels Good to Me, NIN’s Downward Spiral, and King Crimson’s Discipline.” —Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie, The Cure)

“A fantastic, essential rock album. Several of its ten mini-epics explore the precarious state humanity finds itself at the present moment, with deep insight, humor, and wit—not to mention some ferocious playing from an avant all-star ensemble.” —Anil Prasad, Innerviews

“An imaginative progressive rock-oriented release … The songs are rich in sonic texture, and with panoptic social political messages that require a close listen … a delightful milestone.” —Mark Redlefsen, All About Jazz

“Cleveland stitches world fusion, ambient, avant metal, and psychedelia together into a glorious progressive tapestry. This is pretty amazing stuff, and one of the better prog releases this year.” (Score: 15/16) —Warren Barker, Progression

“Hologramatron has really bowled me over, so much so that yesterday I had to remain sitting in the car long after I arrived at my destination and long after the complete album had finished playing … An artistic rock album in the best sense of that term, with multilayered influences … Exciting from start to finish … Honestly, this year I have not heard a better album.” —Sal Pichireddu, Babyblaue-Seiten

“In other news, I recently received a copy of Barry Cleveland’s Hologramatron, new on Moonjune Records. I listened to it five times yesterday, and serial listening is rare for me. While it is not overtly avant, I think it is a great release.” (Pick of the Week) —Mike Borellas, Avant Music News

<a href="http://barrycleveland.bandcamp.com/album/hologramatron" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hologramatron by Barry Cleveland</a>

DOWNLOAD or PURCHASE CD on Bandcamp
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http://www.barrycleveland.com/hologramatron/

September 29, 2014 by Barry Cleveland

Volcano
Supersaturated Records (2004)

An explosive mixture of African and Afro-Haitian rhythms and progressive, jazz, ambient, and world music elements, featuring Michael Manring, Michael Pluznick, Norbert Stachel, Michael Masley, and other outstanding artists.

“A series of rhythm-based pieces that draw on inspirations from a multitude of sources to create a sonic landscape that becomes an entity unto itself. It’s an album that leans towards Eastern harmonies and yet clearly comes from players with a Western background. And, in the end, it’s an appealingly multilayered aural experience that continues to reveal new things with every listen.” —John Kelman, All About Jazz

“Cleveland’s third album as a leader finds the renowned guitarist and composer exploring the nuances of rhythm. Drawing from a varied palette of traditions, timbres and tonalities, Volcano bridges the impressionist leanings of his previous releases with a more audacious, kinetic approach. Listeners will appreciate the disc’s pulsing rhythms, inter-weaving melodies, and layers of evocative atmospheres.” —Anil Prasad, Innerviews

<a href="http://barrycleveland.bandcamp.com/album/volcano" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Volcano by Barry Cleveland</a>

DOWNLOAD or PURCHASE CD on Bandcamp
PURCHASE on iTunes

http://www.barrycleveland.com/volcano/

September 29, 2014 by Barry Cleveland

Memory & Imagination
Supersaturated Records (2003)

This double-CD compilation contains the best of Cleveland’s Mythos and Voluntary Dreaming albums, six guitar and percussion pieces from 1992, two ambient guitar pieces from 1981, and an entirely improvised solo guitar piece recorded live on the Echoes radio program. Featured artists include Michael Pluznick, Michael Masley, Robert Powell, Kat Epple, Bob Stohl, and Carl Weingarten.

“”Much of Cleveland’s music doesn’t sound like the work of your conventional guitarist at all, but rather a far-reaching compositional visionary who uses whatever instruments and processes necessary to achieve his ends.” —Peter Thelen, Expose’

“I was immediately struck by the prominence of percussion and world music influences on several of the tracks, elements that have apparently informed Cleveland’s work through the years. The effects and sound processing that made Volcano such an interesting and beautiful experience are present, though the earlier music is characterized by more mellow, floating journeys, with a powerful ambient soundscape element.” —Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations

<a href="http://barrycleveland.bandcamp.com/album/memory-imagination" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Memory & Imagination by Barry Cleveland</a>

DOWNLOAD or PURCHASE CD on Bandcamp
DOWNLOAD or PURCHASE CD on Amazon
PURCHASE on iTunes

http://www.barrycleveland.com/memory-imagination/

September 29, 2014 by Barry Cleveland

Voluntary Dreaming
Scarlet Records (1990)

Originally slated for release on the Audion Recording Company, this disc has a more electronic feel than than Cleveland’s other albums. It features Michael Pluznick (acoustic and electronic percussion), Michael Masley (bowhammer cymbalom), Robert Powell (pedal-steel guitar), and Anastasia Johnson (soprano voice).

“The contrasting balance of electronics, the old European earthiness of the cymbalom, the familiar croon of pedal-steel guitar, and the global percussion mix gives Voluntary Dreaming a depth that one finds all too rarely. The song sequence holds the varying styles together and rewards the listener with a challenging, compelling listen.” —Richard Price, BAM

“Voluntary Dreaming is an intricate, multi-layered work full of subtleties and inventiveness, an imaginative blend of unusual instrumentation, delicate textures, bright rhythms, and plenty of inspiration.” —Lloyd Barde, AllMusic

All but one of the tracks on Voluntary Dreaming are included on the 2-CD compilation Memory & Imagination.

http://www.barrycleveland.com/voluntary-dreaming/

Nels Cline

From Crippling Insecurity to Channeling the Ineffable Cosmic Om

Mary Halvorson

New York City and the Pull of the Moon

Bill Frisell

Pushing Off the Edge of What You Know

Michael Beinhorn

Seducing the Muse

Mu Richard Pinhas & Barry Cleveland With Michael Manring & Celso Alberti Cuneiform Records (2016)

David Torn

The Art of Sky Gazing

Hologramatron Moonjune Records (2010)

Volcano Supersaturated Records (2004)

Memory & Imagination Supersaturated Records (2003)

Voluntary Dreaming Scarlet Records (1990)

Mu
Richard Pinhas & Barry Cleveland
With Michael Manring & Celso Alberti
Cuneiform Records (2016)

Hologramatron
Moonjune Records (2010)

Volcano
Supersaturated Records (2004)

Memory & Imagination
Supersaturated Records (2003)

Voluntary Dreaming
Scarlet Records (1990)