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Liner notes: Disc Two
by JOHN SCHAEFER, WNYC RADIO, NEW YORK
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HE CALIFORNIA GUITAR TRIO occupies a unique place in the world of the guitar. With their matched electro-acoustic Ovation guitars and their blend of classical, Japanese, and rock guitarists, the trio is the most successful group to have come from Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft Seminars. Belgian classical guitarist Bert Lams, Japanese guitarist Hideyo Moriya, and American “rocker” Paul Richards have been involved in Guitar Craft for over thirteen years. “On these Guitar Craft courses,” Richards says, “Robert Fripp has found a way of sharing his many years of experience with the Guitar Craft students, and no doubt has had a profound influence on Bert, Hideyo and myself.” But the King Crimson guitarist is not the only influence evident on the group’s recording of “Eve.” Richards continues, “the CGT listened to Tony Levin’s bass playing at over 130 concerts as we opened for the King Crimson world tour in 1995 and 1996. Tony plays both the bass parts and the beautiful sustaining melodies on ‘Eve’.”
HENRY KAISER and Michael Manring are two of the West Coast’s most innovative string players. Kaiser plays both electric and acoustic guitars with a distinctively sharp, clean approach. Manring is a virtuoso and an inventor; his hyperbass is a 21st century extension of the electric bass and one of several innovations he has championed. “It’s About Those Times” is a piece inspired by guitarist Pete Cosey and bassist Michael Henderson. Kaiser describes Cosey as “the Godfather of post-Hendrix, eclectic, playful, educated, explosive expression on the electric guitar. It’s odd that the jazz and jazz-rock worlds in general seem to ignore his amazing work with Miles Davis. Working together with my pal Michael Manring in the Yo Miles! project, we did some close reexaminations of the work of Henderson and Cosey.” Manring adds, “People are sometimes surprised when I tell them how much I admire Michael Henderson’s bass playing. I suppose they assume that I’d be interested in less conventional bassists, but everything he played was so filled with mystery, personality and vibe that I find his music deeply inspirational.” This piece is a “modest, little tribute,” to use Kaiser’s words, to the music of two overlooked musical geniuses.
VERNON REID burst upon the scene with his rock band Living Colour in the 1980s. In the years since then, he has pursued a restless and relentlessly personal career, collaborating with fellow guitarists like David Torn and Elliott Sharp, creating songs with public school students in New York, working on projects like a series of George Harrison songs for the New York Guitar Festival/New Sounds Live concert series, and a genre-bending collaboration with DJ Logic called The Yohimbe Brothers. But his influences include a wide variety of visual artists as well. In fact, the piece “Camille” was inspired by an artist friend known as Camille N. One of her works was a sculpture of high-fashion slippers made from shards of glass. Vernon says he was taken by the beauty and pain implied in this work of art — art that was also social commentary.
RICHARD LEO JOHNSON has been called “a one-man guitar orchestra.” His solo CDs show why: Johnson has developed a prodigious, knuckle-busting set of techniques that allow him to play apparently anything on the guitar. Still, Johnson says he is “just discovering the guitar.” And has been since the age of 9, when, according to Johnson, he had his only formal guitar lessons, from a “beer-swilling south Arkansas oil field worker who played Monkees records and chided his young student for playing too fast.” Johnson’s own explorations of the guitar have led him to unconventional tunings and treating the guitar body as a percussion instrument. Using elements of folk, jazz, and rock music, “John Henry main theme” is a good example of the elusive style of Johnson’s music. He lists among his musical influences Jimi Hendrix, John Fahey, John McLaughlin, Ralph Towner, and Igor Stravinsky.
DAVID PATTERSON is the founder of the New World Guitar Trio, and has gained international recognition for his solo and trio performances and recordings. He says Julian Bream and Jimmy Page are equal among his influences, and for Guitar Harvest he recorded a black-and-white tribute to the latter. “Jimmy Page began composing ‘White Summer’ in the mid to late 1960s while still performing with The Yardbirds,” he says. “It was later, after he had formed Led Zeppelin, that he incorporated the piece ëBlack Mountainside’ into his live performances of ‘White Summer.’ In addition to his great love for blues, folk and Celtic music, Jimmy Page was also heavily influenced by the music of India and Morocco. These influences are not only clearly stated in ‘White Summer/Black Mountainside’ but are evident in the music of Led Zeppelin.” Patterson’s take on “White Summer/Black Mountainside” also features percussionist Taki Masuko.
GARY LUCAS is a “guitarist of a thousand ideas,” according to the New York Times. After playing some of the most difficult guitar music ever made by an alleged rock group with Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, Lucas set out on a solo career that has seen him tour the world with his new score to the old silent film The Golem, record soundtracks for ABC News documentaries, and perform the popular songs of mid-20th century China. He is also a noted songwriter, having contributed to Joan Osborne’s hit album Relish and helping to introduce the late singer Jeff Buckley to the music world in the early 1990s. (One of Buckley’s earliest public performances was as a guest of Gary’s on a New Sounds Live concert broadcast.) Lucas wrote the music for several of Buckley’s best songs, including “Grace” and “Mojo Pin”; and “Dream of the Wild Horses” was another work that was intended for Buckley to write and sing lyrics to. Lucas says he can still imagine Jeff Buckley’s voice singing in the open spaces of the song’s atmospheric harmonies. Dan Weiss contributes percussion, using the Indian tabla. The recording was actually mastered in the same studio where “Grace” was mixed and mastered, and is dedicated to the memory of a great singer whose voice was stilled too soon.
ANDY SUMMERS made his considerable reputation while touring the world as the founding guitarist for The Police. But rock was not his first musical love: jazz was. “Monk, Mingus ñ those guys were some of my strongest musical influences,” Summers recalls. And he has spent a good portion of the last several years working out arrangements of classic jazz works, especially those of Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus, for the guitar ñ with ensembles of varying sizes, or with no accompaniment at all. His contribution to Guitar Harvest is a large-scale instrumental version of Mingus’s stinging indictment of racism, the “Fables of Faubus.” Though Summers is based in Los Angeles, the personnel here includes some of the top players on the New York music scene: Dave Carpenter, bass; Joel Taylor, drums; Hank Roberts, cello; Nick Ariondo, accordion; Michito Sanchez, percussion; Rob Thomas, violin; Bill Ware, vibes; Roy Nathanson, sax; and Curtis Fowlkes, trombone.
JOEL HARRISON made a name for himself as a guitarist, composer, and bandleader in San Francisco before moving recently to New York. His various ensembles tend to be unconventional combinations of instruments, and many of his works are dedicated to favorite musical influences, including Don Cherry, George Harrison, and Jim Pepper. His version of “Black Muddy River” is a musical tribute to the late Jerry Garcia. Joel explains that this “is a timeless American folk song, as achingly poignant, soberly poetic, and melodic as ‘Shenandoah’ or ‘’Will the Circle Be Unbroken’. Garcia, when in full form, always strove for lovely melodies. He knew American music inside out. He proceeded from the Carter family, and blasted forward from that line. And then there’s the psychedelia....” Joel is accompanied by the famed South African accordionist Tony Cedras and bassist Stephan Crump.
RUSSELL DONNELLON decided years ago that the world of making and marketing records, and trying to get gigs in all the right clubs and halls, was not for him. He took his inspiration from that ancient musical art known as busking. Playing on the streets, Donnellon has found both independence and a degree of financial success, augmenting the money that collects in his guitar case by selling his self-produced recordings. Donnellon has developed a prodigious technique and a wide repertoire of songs ñ both his own and covers of everything from folk tunes to Radiohead songs. It seemed fitting that we conclude this Guitar Harvest with Donnellon’s lovely reading of the great American classic, “Amazing Grace.”
More about Guitar Harvest, Vol. 1
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