Number 13 September 27, 2009

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people”. Thomas Mann.


I’m very fortunate in that I’ve very rarely experienced writer’s block in music. (In fact the only time I recall was when my friend the producer David Kahne needed a song immediately – I think it was for Jorma Kaukonen. I came up with something dreadful, I think I called it “ Not Quite Magdalena (But You’ll Do) that we both agreed wasn’t usable. I rarely have entire songs come to me out of the blue, though. Usually I’ll have a phrase, and I’ll play it for a few days or weeks or months until the next phrase comes along. I write things that are easy for good players to improvise over; often a fairly complex head with a simple modal section for solos. Although I’m facile with words and am the product of a Jesuit education complete with Latin and Greek, I’ve always felt that I was not a good writer of song lyrics. Idolizing Jimmy Van Heusen and Cole Porter (as sung by Frank) and then Dylan and The Beatles, the bar was a little too high.

But on a new band I’m involved with called The Valence Project, I’m really enjoying writing lyrics. The players are wonderful. We have Brain on drums, Jon Herrera and Kai Eckhardt on bass, and Melissa Reese and Deborah Charles on vocals. We are recording in a very unique way. Brain will record a drum pattern to 2” analogue tape (I’ll suggest rhythms; a samba, something African, something in 6/8) and Brain will then download the drum tracks to his computer and start making loops. Borrowing an idea from Dylan’s last three recordings, I’ll suggest an old blues lyric married to a modern phrase to Melissa, and we massage the words around until we have something new. Some of the songs may be about two or more completely different things. The end result is something very fresh, and yet vaguely, or eerily familiar. It’s probably the most positive creative environment I’ve been in. Everyone is excited about being involved, and there are no pre-conceived notions.

Gregory James

Number 12 September 25, 2009

I never listen to music as “background music”. I prefer to be doing nothing but listening. But, life being what it is, 95% of my listening is while driving. I still haven’t made the leap to ipod, and if I tough it out a couple of more years I probably won’t have to. I’m still an album guy, I want to hear 45 minutes or an hour of what an artist wants to say, where the artist wants to take me. I know the world has gone back to singles. My car dealer was amazed I wanted a cd changer installed in the trunk. “Let me see if we still do that”. I miss LPs; there was room for great art and liner notes. I bought my first Kenny Burrell records as an 11 year old because of the art (racy Any Warhol nudes!) and the liner notes. I figured this guy had to be serious.

I love the physicality of ordering cds from Amazon, getting the package, opening it up. They are not LPs, but they are as close as I’m probably going to get. Recent purchases have been Robben Ford Live at The Independent (I was there!) Moby’s Play, from 1999, the latest Vicente Amigo recording, Paseo de Gracia. And today, Herbie Hancock’s debut solo recording, Empyrean Isles, from 1964, and the two Boz Scaggs standards recordings, But Beautiful, and Speak Low. Of all the pop stars who have done the American Songbook (Rod Stewart being the most dismal) no one comes close to Boz. A true bluesman, he understands the music. “I improvise very little on the melody; rather, I try to coax nuance and expression out of timing and tone”. “It is the stillness we tried to preserve, a transcendent feeling of stopping time – doing nothing – and letting these great songs carry us along.” It’s taken me 40 years to learn what not to play.

Gregory James

Number 11 September 20, 2009

The Byrdland

I’ve written about instruments having their unique stories. I’ve always wanted a Gibson Byrdland (named after and designed for Billy Byrd and Hank Garland, two top Nashville guitarists in the 1950’s).

I think they are the prettiest arch top guitars ever made. They are not everyone’s cup of tea; the neck is short scale to facilitate speed and unusual chord voicing’s. A wide range of guitarists have played them over the years: Eric Clapton (Concert for Bangladesh) Blood Ulmer, Ted Nugent, John McLaughlin.

So, in the summer of 2007 (before the financial meltdown) I finally decided to order one. (They have only been available as a custom shop special order for some years). I prefer to deal with small, independent stores, so I went to Blue Note Music in Berkeley. The owner, James, is a guitarist. Bless him, he tried to talk me out of it, as many people do find the neck challenging. I ordered a blonde (of course) with a Venetian (soft) cutaway. James told me it would be 6 months to a year; they wait until they have several orders to do a run. I was delighted when he called me in December, after just 5 months, to tell me that it had arrived. It was beautiful! When I got home I looked inside the body with my reading glasses. The label stated that it had been assembled, tap tuned and inspected by James W. Hutchins, on October 11, 2007. My Birthday!

There is a good Wikipedia article on The Byrdland.

Gregory James

Number 10 September 17, 2009

Mary Travers dies at 72. David Crosby is 68. Dylan is up there. My generation started to lose icons in childhood; JFK when I was 11, MLK and RFK when I was 16, Jimi and Janice when I was 18. We are the elders now, as Surya Das says. Listening to Kind of Blue last night, it’s hard to believe it’s 50 years old, it sounds so fresh. And that just 10 years later, Miles would record In A Silent Way, and Bitches Brew. That’s like going from painting like Vermeer to Picasso in ten years. (Or like going from Picasso’s Blue Period to Abstraction in ten years, which Picasso did!). Art tells the big lie, that tells the truth, as Picasso said.

For someone who aspires to Buddhist thought, I’ve always been intrigued and horrified by the idea of impermanence. How many shared experiences; picnics, hikes, sails, are gone forever, because my friends are gone. Good times that I was sure would be repeated more than once, were in fact a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

There is apparently a section of the brain that exists solely to give us the illusion that we are in complete control (it was discovered by researchers working with head injuries). Samsara is often defined as the pain, or suffering of this earthly plane. A more accurate definition would be unsatisfactoriness. On the most beautiful day, driving down the coast with the most beautiful girl, there is always the dim, nagging thought that this can’t last. And, in fact, the only certainty is that it CAN”T last. We all die. And yet, in the realm of art, Mary Travers still shakes her long blonde hair out of her eyes in rhythm as she sings at The March on Washington, The Beatles are still witty and young as they chain-smoke their way through Hard Day’s Night, Jimi still reinvents The Star Spangled Banner. And with one note from Miles, it’s April 1959, and September 16, 2009, at the same time.

Gregory James

Number 9 September 16, 2009

We are mixing our new band recording, The Valence Project. Duke Ellington defined success as “Doing the right thing, at the right time, with the right people”. All the musicians are world class. They are excited about working together. There were no pre-conceived notions of what it should sound like, and a very refreshing willingness to do new things. And they are lovely people, one and all. In life, in art, in love, the effortless is also often the most magical. (Although there were plenty of technical and musical challenges, it was emotionally always very positive and smooth). I have an almost superstitious idea that the order in which tunes are written (if they are written in the studio, which these were) and recorded is often the best order sequence for the finished recording. We recorded to 2” tape, and are mastering to ½” tape, so the sound is huge, and warm. We feel the tunes will lend themselves to multiple remixes; there are so many good performances on each take that one would be happy with five or more versions of each tune.

Among the players are Brain (Primus/Tom Waites/Guns N’ Roses) Kai Eckhardt (John McLaughlin/Wayne Shorter/Clarence Clemmons/Garage Mahal) Jonathan Herrera (Zigaboo Modeliste/Miguel Megs)

Deborah Charles, Melissa Reese, Enrique Padilla, Baron Shul (Indigo Swing ) and the mysterious Blu Cube.

Gregory James

Number 8 September 11, 2009

September 11. The financial news networks are paying more attention to the anniversary of last year’s financial meltdown than to September 11, 2001. And, eight years later, the S&P index is exactly where it was on September 10, 2001. Wall St. (and London) nearly accomplished what Bin Laden set out to do; destroy world trade. Karl Marx himself would have been optimistic about the demise of capitalism last fall. But here we are, still functioning, albeit with probably 9 or 10 years of deleveraging and slow growth ahead. Capitalism’s ability to arise phoenix-like out of the ashes (which cost Nikolai Kondratieff his freedom and life when he came to this conclusion) is miraculous.

After 9/11 my love of Arabic culture and music was a great consolation to me. I have a saz and a beautiful Najarian oud. I play a little saz on Reincarnation. “The Ornament of the World” is a great scholarly book about Cordoba from the 700’s to 1492 (when Ferdinand and Isabella exiled the Jews). It also has the best analysis I’ve ever read of the Sunni/Shia schism. It is good to remember that there have been hundreds of years (also in Jerusalem) when Arabs, Jews, and Christians lived together in relative harmony.

Last year many of my friends were insisting I read “The Shock Doctrine”. I found it a little strident and conspiratorial. After the financial meltdown, I find it accurate and profound. One of the few things I like about myself is my ability to change my mind, and admit that I was wrong.

Gregory James

Number 7 September 9, 2009

Amps are of course as important, if not more, than electric guitars, for tone. My first amp, to go with my brand new 1966 Fender Mustang, was a Fender Princeton. (I probably should have stopped right there!) Then a Kustom 60 watt stack (loud and brittle, BUT black tuck and roll!) A 50 watt Marshall 2x12 combo in England and back in the US. And from the late 70’s, Fender Twins. A Mesa Boogie MKII in the early eighties, and then the Roland 120 Chorus for many years . I now have 62 and 63 Fender Champs. They are amazing! The 62 is in better cosmetic shape, but the 63 sounds better. I also have a Mesa Boogie MKI reissue. A few years ago Benny Rietveld told me Carlos was fond of Two Rock amps. I phoned them up in Cotati; the founder’s voice sounded familiar to me, it turned out he had been an acquaintance of mine, I didn’t know he made amplifiers. I believe they are the best sounding in the world by far and away. I have a 50 watt Custom Reverb (with 60’s Celestions in a 2x12 cabinet) and their 30 watt Jet Signature combo. I use my EC Strat with the Two Rock 50 Watt Custom Reverb exclusively on The Valence Project recording. For small jazz gigs I sometimes use an Acoustic Images amp, or an AER amp. The Acoustic Image amp is 400 watts, and weighs about 5 pounds. I’ve seen Pat Martino power two Boogie 4x12 cabinets at Yoshi’s with one. For a clean, well defined jazz sound, they are good.

Gregory James

Number 6 September 9, 2009

My first guitar was a $29 Japanese steel string Westbrook when I was 11. Virtually unplayable, but it did give me strong fingers and tough calluses. Then about a year later I got a nylon string for about $60 (I had a paper route by then) that was quite playable and pretty. A couple of years after that I got a student model Yairi for about $200, and I played that for years. After that I played Takamine nylon string guitars for about 30 years, until I started commissioning custom guitars. I went through 3 or 4 of the Takamines over the years. My first electric, when I was about 14, was a Fender Mustang. (Later to be made famous by Kurt Cobain). What I really wanted was a jazz guitar, and a couple of years later I got a Howard Roberts Epiphone. (Later to be made famous by Robbie Robertson. It actually was a better rock n’ roll guitar, but I met Howard Roberts once, and he was a very nice man). I think I traded in the Howard Roberts for cash and a Strat when I was 21 to go to London. In London I eventually got a 50 watt Marshall 2x12 combo, which I brought back to the States. In the late 70’s I had a blonde Gibson Super 400, with soundposts installed at the factory. It supposedly had belonged to Larry Coryell. I traded in the Super 4 for cash and a cheap Guild when I left NYC to go back to SF in 1980. Then a Les Paul (I forgot to mention the Rickenbacher 12 I had for a while in high school.) Then it was pretty much Les Pauls until the early 80’s, when I started using a midi-rigged Steinberger transtrem. A few years ago I got a Baker Robben Ford prototype, dubbed the RF. It’s Les Paul- like, with hollow chambers. A very beautiful instrument. I also have and Eric Clapton autograph Strat, and a Martin 00028EC. Clapton endorsed guitars are very well made.

Gregory James

Number 5 September 4, 2009

Studying flamenco under Jason McGuire, who also is a recording engineer and produces everything from flamenco to metal, the gear head in me was further encouraged. I played a Lester de Voe negra of Jason’s, and was blown away. Lester was perhaps the first American builder to be played by Paco. Lester is a lovely, gentle, humorous soul, and one of the most important luthiers of our time. I ordered a negra from him, and it is played on my recordings Come to Me and Reincarnation. By this time I was feeling pretty well stocked with flamenco guitars, when Lester mentioned he had a few pieces of the finest Spanish cypress he’s ever seen. So, I commissioned a blanca (blancas are my extra favorites) and it is featured on Samsara. Jason was fond of vintage Ramirez guitars for a while, and he found me a mint 1969 Ramirez 1A flamenco blanca. It had basically never been played, and it’s been opening up beautifully the last few years. (That is a guitar of my youth. I used to borrow a 60’s Ramirez from one of my high school Jesuit teachers for special gigs; he was always so nervous about it I stopped asking).

By this time I was determined to stop buying more guitars (I’ll mention the electrics and amps next time). Jason introduced me to Glenn Canin, who I started studying Alexander Technique with. (Guitar players have notoriously poor posture. McLaughlin, perhaps because of yoga, being a notable exception). Glenn is also perhaps the most gifted young guitar builder today. I’ve just taken delivery of a Brazilian rosewood negra with a cedar top. It is so loud, and has so much tone, it’s amazing. There is a youtube video of Jason playing Glenn’s guitars that has gone viral, for good reason. Then a few months ago, Glenn stopped a gardener hauling a cypress stump to the wood chipper. He pleaded with the guy, who finally let him haul it away. So, as a fourth generation San Franciscan, I figured I had to have a San Francisco blanca. It should be finished in a few months, and I’m sure it will have many songs to sing.

Gregory James

Number 4 September 4, 2009

Each instrument does have a story. I used to pride myself on having very few guitars, usually one electric and a nylon string classical. I’d borrow or rent a guitar if I needed a 12 string or something different. But over the last few years I have acquired quite a few, and they all have their stories. Flamenco players tend to have quite a few guitars, as the technique is quite aggressive, and flamenco guitars are built to be very light, and are usually battle scarred at an early age. So perhaps it was when I fell in love with flamenco guitars that my austerity relaxed and I started buying more guitars. The first guitar that I commissioned was actually an Abe Wechter nylon string cutaway with rosewood body and cypress top. Abe was the head luthier at Gibson, and made many famous guitars for McLaughlin, including the Shakti drone guitar, and the nylons that John played in the 90’s. I gave that guitar to Celia Malheiros a couple of years ago; it’s now been all around the world.

The first flamenco guitars I commissioned were from Keith Vizcarra in Santa Fe. Keith builds for Chuscales and Otmar Liebert, among others. The first was a blanca, delivered in 1994, and then a Brazillian rosewood negra, a couple of years later. (Flamenco guitars were almost always blancas – cypress – until Paco De Lucia introduced the darker sounding rosewood negras in the 1970’s) Paco, like Miles, and Picasso, is one of the very few artists to have changed the way other artists are forced to look at their art several times in his career. Just as Paco says he is a flamenco player who is influenced by jazz, and sometimes plays with jazz musicians, so I am a jazz guitarist, who has studied and loves flamenco. Flamenco guitars are wonderful for jazz, and many of the great modern flamenco guitarists, Tomatito, Paco, Geraldo Nunez, and the great Vicente Amigo, are heavily influenced by jazz and rock, while still retaining their flamenco tradition.

Gregory James

Number 3 The Teacher of My Teacher’s Guitar

I’ve mentioned the great San Francisco guitarist, Eddie Duran, who I often call my “Root Guru” Eddie used to let me sit in with him in the early 70’s in clubs in North Beach, and at a club called The Red Chimney, where he had a steady gig with his brother Manny on keyboards. I was a young, fiery fusion guitar player, probably considered a little wild, and it was a stamp of approval, or at least a sign that I might turn out to be an OK musician, for Eddie to let me sit in with him. He would usually call All Blues, I assumed because it was modal, and would be hard for me to completely ruin. He was always very kind and gracious. We never spoke about it, but I knew he was consciously extending the tradition of letting younger jazz musicians jam with their elders, and learn. (I would take what I thought was a pretty hot solo, only to have it rendered irrelevant with the first few bars of Eddie’s). Over the years we’ve often played at the same clubs, and I try to see him play as often as possible. At 86 he’s still going strong, gigging with his wife Mad, a sax and flute player. A few years ago I was in a used instrument store south of Market St. There was a 1938 Gibson ES100, completely beaten to death, on the wall, with and Eddie Duran Stan /Getz LP cover stuck through the strings. I asked if it was Eddie’s guitar, it looked like the one he used to play at The Red Chimney. The owner assured me it was, and in fact was asking about double what the instrument was worth if it was in perfect condition. After confirming with Eddie that it was his instrument (and declining his kind offer to sell it to me directly) I went back to the store and bought it. It had an incredibly sweet old tone, although I was afraid it would disintegrate in my hands. I took it to my master luthier friend Al Milburn to restore, and he’s still working on it. I called up Eddie, and in detailing the restoration, asked him how and when he had acquired it. “It was given to me by the widow of Paul Smith”, he said. I was speechless. Paul Smith was a legendary SF guitarist in the 50’s, killed (I think by a cab) at a fairly young age on his way to a gig. My guitar teacher, David L. Smith, (no relation) had studied with Paul Smith. So, not only had I purchased my mentor’s guitar, I had purchased the teacher of my teacher’s guitar!



“These instruments all have stories…”

- George Gruhn

Number 2 September 1, 2009

Tibetan Buddhists have a concept of direct transmission. If your teacher studied with a great recognized master, he is thought to have a direct transmission of the teachings, and hence the line can extend to your teacher, and to you. (These ideas are also in Christian and Muslim thought, with perhaps less emphasis). So in music, I’ve always felt there was a tradition of direct transmission. All the great players who came through Miles’ bands, many of them to become important leaders of the music. When I lived in New York in 1979-80, I was fortunate to play with Jack McDuff, who had nurtured Pat Martino and George Benson. I was also playing with Chico Hamilton, who had had so many great guitar players in his band; Jim Hall, Blood Ulmer. Chico’s band when I was with him had three guitarists, including Rodney Jones. Chico told me I reminded him of another of his guitar players, Gabor Szabo. (I think I was doing some sitar-like droning, as Rodney was playing a lot of linear be-bop lines). Chico meant it as a great compliment, and I took it as such. I got to play with Ray Charles as a sub one night in Croydon, England. “Let me hear some more of that Git Tar player!” is probably the highest compliment I’ll ever hear. My dear friend Eddie Duran, who, played with Cal Tjader for years, backed up Charlie Parker for a week in San Francisco. Eddie used to let me sit in with him when I was in my early twenties. There is a buzz, a direct transmission, if you will, that musicians can give if they have learned it from the source. It astounds me that I’ve played and recorded with Benny Rietveld, who played for years with Miles, and has been with Carlos since then. Or that I’ve played with and recorded 2 projects with Kai Eckhardt, who has played and recorded with John McLaughlin and Wayne Shorter, who of course are Miles alumni. I envy Benny, and Robben Ford (and anyone that ever played with Miles) to have been able to hear his playing, night after night, from the stage.

I guess the big lesson from the masters is that every note, and every space, counts.

Gregory James