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Leo Kottke overcomes health to play like a master |
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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Thursday, 17 May 2007 |
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Quietly emerging from the late-1960s folk revival to become one of today’s most respected guitar players, Leo Kottke’s signature picking style and syncopated rhythmic accompaniment borrows as much from Mississippi country blues and Appalachian folk ballads as it does from jazz and rock.
With unmatched technique that confounds guitar enthusiasts, but delights his listeners, Kottke has released more than 20 albums, focusing mostly on instrumental work. Already suffering hearing damage in both ears — one from a firecracker, the other from weapons firing during a naval stint — tendonitis threatened to end his career in the 1980s. Kottke eventually found a suitable technique that allowed him to continue. His most recent work is “Sixty Six Steps,” a collaboration with Phish bassist Mike Gordon.
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NEXTnc recently caught up with Kottke in cyberspace for an e-mail interview:
NEXTnc: What is the joy you find in playing the guitar?
Kottke: It saved my life when I was a kid. I’d been sick. Now it IS my life. I wouldn’t call it joy, but that’s in there. It’s more than joy — and it gives me the creeps just saying that — but it’s true.
NEXTnc: By and large your career has been that of solo performances and albums.You have, however, performed with Rickie Lee Jones, and also recently did an album with Mike Gordon of Phish. Why leave the solo world? What’s to be gained by such collaborations?
It’s more of a social event than anything else, but being musicians we do it this way. Sort of. I’m kind of making that up, even though it’s true. So, let’s see ... well, musically, it stretches me. You get a little desiccated playing by yourself all the time, sort of like being locked in a closet ... but it’s a great closet. I never intended leaving solo performance, and haven’t, I just got involved.
NEXTnc: Before the collaboration with the high-profile Gordon, you always had a solid following, but how did the media coverage and success of “Sixty Six Steps” change things for you?
I don’t know. Hard to gauge that kind of thing. But my luck is holding.
NEXTnc: I read somewhere that you don’t like being called a singer-songwriter. What do you prefer to be called?
The Nutmeg of Consolation, King of Minnesota, and so on. I can’t label anything, especially myself, without feeling like a Nazi. Marketing has left us with something resembling urban sprawl, but with language. Therefore, say I: no labels, freedom from the marketplace, more corn, more pinto beans, more dancing.
I read that Mississippi John Hurt was an early inspiration. What other musicians did you look to in developing your playing style, or is your style simply of your own creation?
Nothing of it is deliberate. It’s more like being hungry and getting fed. If you’re hungry enough you’ll eat anything. If I can’t find anything to read I’ll read a cereal box. I was shoplifting a BB gun (I think I was in the fourth grade) when I heard Kim Fowley and the Hollywood Argyles doing “Alley Oop” on a sound system in a store in Cheyenne. Years later, he walked by the studio where I was recording my first record for Capitol and we put him on the record. I don’t know if that’s influence, but it’s something other than joy.
You had tendon damage that slowed you career a touch in the 1980s. Did you ever worry that you might have to stop playing music?
Sure did. Touch and go, and a lot of bad concerts, for about three years. Then, voila, I changed my technique and found home. I was very lucky.
If you did have to stop, what might you do instead?
The only other actual job I’ve had, not counting the Navy, was fiberglassing somebody’s
boat. I should have been fired and was saved by some other kindhearted guys working in the boatyard. Well, I also picked beans for a short while but that wasn’t a job, it was slavery. If I couldn’t play I would probably starve. First I’d go back to school and get a teaching degree... then I’d starve, just like most of our teachers do.
Has your hearing damage affected how you play, or approach playing with other musicians?
It’s a common kind of loss, and many people who’ve fired guns have some degree of it. In Germany it’s called “machine-gun trauma,” which is right on. We here in the home of marketing call it “noise trauma.” My favorite line about this comes from Charles Ives: “What’s sound got to do with music?” It’s kind of an empty question but it gets me off the hook. Or I could say something concrete, which is that more than 80 percent of music is in the fundamental. In other words, you can be a lot deafer than I am and still play. Violinists often lose a lot of hearing in their left ear: a violin can throw 105 decibels into the front rows. I chose a submachine gun on a submarine. I was throwing hot lead at light bulbs the O.D. had thrown into the Atlantic Ocean.
You’ve released around 20 albums. Does any one stand out as a favorite?
No, they all scare me in some way or another. And they all have one or two things, or more, that I’m fond of. In that sense, “Great Big Boy” stands out. So does “Peculiaroso.” (There are) more tracks that I like than dislike. But both contain a couple things that will hurt you. Too late to change that.
On some of your more recent solo albums, you’ve re-worked older pieces. Why? Were you unsatisfied with the original versions?
The trigger is finding out you don’t have enough material to fulfill your contract. But it’s a great chance to fix or improve on something you’ve written ... or performed. Some pieces just keep morphing, “Ojo” being one example, and some sort of grow up. Peter Pan had the wrong idea, it pretty much sucks to be a child. No respect, no place, no experience, no knowledge; if you get old enough, those things start coming and you learn to be a child again. I’ve completely exited the question.
You’ve played in prisons, and numerous festivals and venues around the world. Is there any one event or incident that stands out as being just plain weird?
I don’t know about weird but falling off the stage in Dusseldorf (Germany) was the most painful. And it was the only thing the audience seemed to like that night. These days in Dusseldorf I generate more interest with the guitar playing.
You grew up, for a time anyway, in Cheyenne. Do you still have roots in the area?
I am one big root. This is the truth that comes to people who live in motels. But I do have enormous affection for Cheyenne and for one of the other towns I lived in, Muskogee (Oklahoma). Cheyenne was — and, for all I know, is — a great place to be a child. We had our own world, our own block, more or less, and our own criminal activities. We were a force unto ourselves, un-noticed, taken for granted, and diabolically interested in world domination. We knew we would fail, and that was our greatest virtue.
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TO GO TO THE SHOW
Leo Kottke
Friday, May 18
Rialto Theater
228 E. 4th St., Loveland
962.2120
Doors 6:30 p.m., show 8 p.m.
$23
Online: www.leokottke.com | Only registered users can write comments.
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