When I do a project, I have to start tuning my ears and brain to what I need to focus on for the time being. For example, when I was recording the album "The Growing Stone" I listened to the album "Blood and Chocolate" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions non-stop. Even though I came nowhere close, it was what I was trying to make my album sound like. So now I am listening to solo acoustic guitar Music. To be more precise, I am listening to Michael Hedges and the early recordings of Adrian Legg.
People have asked why I have not released a solo acoustic guitar album in such a long time. Here is the absolute truth: I could no longer perform solo acoustic material for noisy and apathetic places. Period. For years i played solo acoustic material for empty cafe's and noisy bars (and visa versa) until it wore me down to the point where I simply could no longer do it. So why would I bother to spend months of my life and money I do not have to work on a project that I would never perform live? Band projects had some momentum behind them so I went to where the action was.
While driving around today and listening to "Live on the Double Planet" by Michael Hedges, I remembered that there was a time in guitar playing that was radically different from today where the guitar. and guitar based Music, is not part of the cultural landscape. Guitar exists, guitar is present, but there are no new guitar heroes and young people would rather DJ than be in a band. Country Music has taken the guitar and preserved it the same way that people who liked to dress up and dance in the disco era went to Michael Jackson after disco became a creative blight.
Speaking only for the 1980's, I can say that guitar playing was not so much creative as it was a competitive athletic sport. It was Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads who started the ball rolling in the early part of the decade and then everyone took the concepts and ran them into the ground like a gopher on meth. Back then, you had to play faster and faster and faster and faster. The guitar solo on Michael Jackson's song "Beat It" was common cultural sound. THAT was the bench mark for guitar in POP Music. Go look at today's top 100 (do they still have that?) and tell me how the guitar sounds....
Heavy metal guitar playing in the 80's became a speed fest and you simply had to practice your scales till your fingers fell off. Hour after hour learning the modes and arpeggios and sweep picking. I even remember listening to Tony Macalpine's album "Edge of Insanity" while working on my guitar in my parents' basement. cursing the fact that I could not play that fast.
But the cracks began to show in the speed scene. The Music of the later 80's was getting less glam and more unwashed with the arrival of Guns and Roses "Appetite for Destruction". The blues scale was rising and eclipsing the Phrygian Major scale was losing ground. The amount of notes per second was decreasing.Still, the way approaching Music via the guitar was left to right and up and down. If you knew your theory and fret board, you could see the patterns in everything. The Punk and alternative people had the passion and honesty that was lacking from pop metal, but their guitar playing was lacking in depth and technique. This is not a slam against them. Their Music was a rebellion against the technically perfect Music of the age and the focus was on sound, attitude, and lyrics. Seeing some of these bands changed my life... for the better.
But where could one find a guitar player who wrote great songs and was still pushing the limits of the instrument? Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you Michael Hedges.
Somewhere around my sophomore year of college, I started writing solo acoustic guitar songs. Why? I have no idea. I had been playing Randy Rhoad's song "Dee" for some time and "Dust in the Wind"was one of the fist big songs I conquered, but nobody have ever explained to me what the hell to do, how to make them work or whatever. For reasons I will never understand, I just started making these things up.
A few years prior, I had seen an article in the magazine "Guitar Player" about some guy who played acoustic guitar and, in the pictures in the magazine, dressed like a Woodstock hippie guru outtake. When I saw that he was on the Windham Hill label, my stomach turned. That was THE label for New Age "music" and I simply refused to go near it. Boring, bland, and brain blanching sounds were all I knew from them and I wanted nothing to do with the lot of them. But the article had strange twists in it about two hand tapping and classical composition. Still, I just tossed it off as trite and read the article on Vivian Campbell from Dio. (Look it up....)
My friend Mark heard my lame recording of this work and said he had just seen a guitarist at Ryder University that reminded him of the stuff and that I shoud check him out. When the name Michael Hedges arose, I got a little sick because I did not want to do anything remotely like New Age yet, here I was, being compared to it.
When he gave me a tape of the two albums "Aerial Boundaries" and "Watching my Life Go By", I was deeply surprised. The song "Aerial Boundaries" sounded really cool, a nice use of multi-tracking two guitars and a percussionist. But then there were songs like "Hot Type" that were out of left field and "The Magic Farmer" which was crushingly beautiful. The album "Watching My Life Go By" showed that Hedges had a nice voice and some good songs. When I was old that the song "Aerial Boundaries" was done LIVE with ONE GUITAR I was floored. Literally dumbfounded. It was unlike anything I had ever conceived of as playing. There was one thing left to do.... go see the man live.
Thankfully he was playing at a club near where we lived called Club Bene in Morgan, NJ in October. My friend and fellow guitarist Joe went with me, not knowing what the hell to expect. The club was full of Grateful Dead fans and New Age types and, of course, guitar geeks. We took our seats nest to two guys who seemed to have been stoned since middle school. A comedian opened up and I felt so bad for him. I had just done my time as a stand-up comic and could feel the man's pain. It was a horrible crowd for such things but he stomped through his material and soon Hedges was on.
When the lights went down, the two men next to us pulled out two HUGE microphones and placed them on the table believing they were at a Dead show and were going to bootleg it in high quality. Joe and I looked at each other and thought the same thing, "What the hell?? There is no way this is going to last." Sure enough, in five minutes, management came over and they and there equipment were escorted out. Had they been a bit more discreet, say by maybe NOT putting the mics and their stands right on the table it may have helped.
Within seconds, my life changed. I could not take my eyes off the stage, off of this man who was doing things on the guitar that I had never even conceived of, making sounds that defied everything I had ever heard. What he was playing looked like what I played, but it sounded like a whole different creature. Everything I ever thought about the guitar was turned to dust. Nobody I had ever seen had ever played guitar like the man on that stage did. It was not a mater of learning scales and practicing picking. There was something so much greater going on, a depth of composition and Music that, for me, was light years away from the shredders I had been listening to. These were amazing songs! SONGS! Half way though the show I somehow remembered where I was and noticed my face was hurting and was wet. I had been smiling the whole time and crying. I had found an explorer who showed me a land I had no choice but to get to before I died. There was no turning back.
Every year after that, except for the times I was in Everett, WA and in school in Minneapolis, I went to see him play when he was on tour in the area. I brought friends who had their own minds blown when they saw him. I bootlegged a few shows myself and would listen to them over and over and over. It was like getting pictures from that foreign land every year.
This is not to say that every time I went I was on cloud 9. Michael Hedges got bored of doing guitar work and decided to play piano and sing on some songs, as well as play flute and djembe and do some atonal electronic Music he wrote in college... and walk around on stage in a yoga position while reciting "The Jabberwocky" in an odd voice. He would also tour with the frighteningly talented bassist Michael Manring. This deviation from the guitar his a peak when he decided to do what he called "A New Age Vaudeville" show. This included, the piano, the djembe, Michael Manring, the Jabberwocky Poem and... an Asian contemporary dancer improvising dance behind them while they performed, at times moving around the stage with a tree branch. Everyone in the place, having had to put up with more and more strangeness and less and less guitar for the past few tours hit a collective wall. When he finally did do a few guitar songs by himself without the dancer, everyone in the room felt less ripped off and a tad bit saved. The signals from the promised land of his Music were still coming in, though faintly.
After that tour, the crowds were not the same for him. This was made worse by the release of his album "Road to Return" that featured almost no solo acoustic guitar and oddly produced vocal songs that were stunning when he played them live with just a guitar, but fell horribly flat when he produced them with electronic drums and other synths. I did not give up faith, but I was deeply confused.
He finally came back to form with his last album, Oracle. I got it when I was in school in Minneapolis, walking around in circles for miles trying to find the record store. It was good but I can remember feeling that it was not what I had hoped. I wanted guitar Music that would make me want to play more! Inspire me! Make me feel like dirt! There were some beautiful songs on it, but I remembered putting it away after a few weeks and listening more to Bob Mould, Alice in Chains, and Brian Eno.
When I got back from Minneapolis, the time came when he was back in New Jersey. I distinctly remember not wanting to go to the concert. I was tired, burnt out from stress, and frankly, did not want to pay good money and be disappointed by only hearing one or two songs I liked. I did not buy tickets. I told nobody. Finally, the day of the show, something told me to go. I was feeling like hell, but something just told me to go. So I called and bought an overpriced seat right against the stage. On my way to the show I forgot the tape recorder to bootleg it. Again, something literally dragged me back to get it.
The show was not full and most of us there seemed to be dreading another branch dance. This time he came out and played solo acoustic guitar. I remember feeling a bit creeped out by the S&M dog collar he was wearing around his neck. He was skinnier and in yoga gear, but plowed into the songs like a Panzer tank. It was amazing! It was obvious that he was hitting anther new level of playing. He had more energy than I remember him having when I first saw him. He closed the first set with the instrumental song "Ritual Dance" screaming so loud to himself that the mic on my portable ancient Walkman recorder picked it up. He was in the zone and flying high. It felt damn good.
He opened up the second set with an unreleased song called "Arrowhead" and my jaw dislocated from my face. It was a stunning work. He had taken everything he had done up to that point and moved to a new level. It involved tapping and groove, like a blend between his songs "Aerial Boundaries", "Rootwitch" and "Ritual Dance". He was hitting upon new ground and I was feeling great about it. I do not remember much more of the set, except that he did an amazing job with the rest of the set that was full of songs everyone wanted to/longed to hear.
After the show I stayed around and hoped he would meet his fans. Thankfully he did. Some guy before me, who was screaming out "Yes, Michael! YES!" after every song was in front of me. He talked to Hedges about how he liked apples that he got here last time, repeating, "Remember that! Remember last time out here! Those apples!" I could see that Hedges was, even in his adrenaline and otherwise buzz, was uncomfortable. So I walked up in my hat and tie and said hello.
"Hey," he said, "don't I know you?"
"Um, yes." I stammered, "we met about five times before. I sent you my CD last year."
He nodded and we spoke about Music and he signed his book of transcriptions. I thanked him again for being an inspiration as a composer and how it helped me. We spoke briefly about a woman he knew who saw me playing in San Francisco a year ago who knew him. He was friendly, albeit from another planet, and after a few minutes we parted ways.
Two weeks later he died in a car accident in northern California. It was a dark and rainy night and he took a turn bad and fell odd a highway cliff to his death. The workers found him two days after the fact.
Speaking for myself, when he died, it left the road in question. There would be no one out there ahead of all of us making their own mark in a new land. It was a horrible feeling. How the hell would I know what was out there if the guy who was beyond us all was gone?
I have seen and heard many many many many many many solo acoustic guitar players since then and I feel lost. It was not that Michael Hedges hit the guitar and made cool sounds and tapped and did strange things with the instrument. No. The equation everyone seems to get wrong is that he was a composer first THEN a guitarist. He wrote amazing songs that just happened to include techniques that boggled everyone's mind.
But it is time to take a step back. A few years ago, demos of his earliest work surfaced via Youtube. Honestly, there was nothing that amazing there. It was a shadow of what he would become. Thanks to Fate knocking and destiny answering, the contract he signed on a napkin when he saw Hedges perform in an empty courtyard at a place in Palo Alto, CA had a greater good.
These days I see people being praised for their solo guitar work because they are cute or nice or cut against some predisposed notion of their gender. In the end, it shall always be about only ONE thing: THE MUSIC.
After Hedges died, I did the album "firewalker" which was my best attempt at finding my way in the dark. It combined solo finger style guitar, pop songs with cello, a cappella vocals, avant solo cello with spoken word, and even some comedy. I love that record in so many ways because it was my way of trying to find my own place to exist in a land that was now without a leader.
So, as I try to get this new project in motion, all I can say is that I owe so much to Michael Hedges. I will never be him, never got to the heights he did, but I am willing to try. And, for the record, there is a blessing to not being able to copy someone. After one has hit the wall of failure in trying to duplicate a hero, all that is left is one's true self. Some people walk away. I am too stubborn for that. I just keep going.
It is really all there is...
Somewhere around my sophomore year of college, I started writing solo acoustic guitar songs. Why? I have no idea. I had been playing Randy Rhoad's song "Dee" for some time and "Dust in the Wind"was one of the fist big songs I conquered, but nobody have ever explained to me what the hell to do, how to make them work or whatever. For reasons I will never understand, I just started making these things up.
A few years prior, I had seen an article in the magazine "Guitar Player" about some guy who played acoustic guitar and, in the pictures in the magazine, dressed like a Woodstock hippie guru outtake. When I saw that he was on the Windham Hill label, my stomach turned. That was THE label for New Age "music" and I simply refused to go near it. Boring, bland, and brain blanching sounds were all I knew from them and I wanted nothing to do with the lot of them. But the article had strange twists in it about two hand tapping and classical composition. Still, I just tossed it off as trite and read the article on Vivian Campbell from Dio. (Look it up....)
My friend Mark heard my lame recording of this work and said he had just seen a guitarist at Ryder University that reminded him of the stuff and that I shoud check him out. When the name Michael Hedges arose, I got a little sick because I did not want to do anything remotely like New Age yet, here I was, being compared to it.
When he gave me a tape of the two albums "Aerial Boundaries" and "Watching my Life Go By", I was deeply surprised. The song "Aerial Boundaries" sounded really cool, a nice use of multi-tracking two guitars and a percussionist. But then there were songs like "Hot Type" that were out of left field and "The Magic Farmer" which was crushingly beautiful. The album "Watching My Life Go By" showed that Hedges had a nice voice and some good songs. When I was old that the song "Aerial Boundaries" was done LIVE with ONE GUITAR I was floored. Literally dumbfounded. It was unlike anything I had ever conceived of as playing. There was one thing left to do.... go see the man live.
Thankfully he was playing at a club near where we lived called Club Bene in Morgan, NJ in October. My friend and fellow guitarist Joe went with me, not knowing what the hell to expect. The club was full of Grateful Dead fans and New Age types and, of course, guitar geeks. We took our seats nest to two guys who seemed to have been stoned since middle school. A comedian opened up and I felt so bad for him. I had just done my time as a stand-up comic and could feel the man's pain. It was a horrible crowd for such things but he stomped through his material and soon Hedges was on.
When the lights went down, the two men next to us pulled out two HUGE microphones and placed them on the table believing they were at a Dead show and were going to bootleg it in high quality. Joe and I looked at each other and thought the same thing, "What the hell?? There is no way this is going to last." Sure enough, in five minutes, management came over and they and there equipment were escorted out. Had they been a bit more discreet, say by maybe NOT putting the mics and their stands right on the table it may have helped.
Within seconds, my life changed. I could not take my eyes off the stage, off of this man who was doing things on the guitar that I had never even conceived of, making sounds that defied everything I had ever heard. What he was playing looked like what I played, but it sounded like a whole different creature. Everything I ever thought about the guitar was turned to dust. Nobody I had ever seen had ever played guitar like the man on that stage did. It was not a mater of learning scales and practicing picking. There was something so much greater going on, a depth of composition and Music that, for me, was light years away from the shredders I had been listening to. These were amazing songs! SONGS! Half way though the show I somehow remembered where I was and noticed my face was hurting and was wet. I had been smiling the whole time and crying. I had found an explorer who showed me a land I had no choice but to get to before I died. There was no turning back.
Every year after that, except for the times I was in Everett, WA and in school in Minneapolis, I went to see him play when he was on tour in the area. I brought friends who had their own minds blown when they saw him. I bootlegged a few shows myself and would listen to them over and over and over. It was like getting pictures from that foreign land every year.
This is not to say that every time I went I was on cloud 9. Michael Hedges got bored of doing guitar work and decided to play piano and sing on some songs, as well as play flute and djembe and do some atonal electronic Music he wrote in college... and walk around on stage in a yoga position while reciting "The Jabberwocky" in an odd voice. He would also tour with the frighteningly talented bassist Michael Manring. This deviation from the guitar his a peak when he decided to do what he called "A New Age Vaudeville" show. This included, the piano, the djembe, Michael Manring, the Jabberwocky Poem and... an Asian contemporary dancer improvising dance behind them while they performed, at times moving around the stage with a tree branch. Everyone in the place, having had to put up with more and more strangeness and less and less guitar for the past few tours hit a collective wall. When he finally did do a few guitar songs by himself without the dancer, everyone in the room felt less ripped off and a tad bit saved. The signals from the promised land of his Music were still coming in, though faintly.
After that tour, the crowds were not the same for him. This was made worse by the release of his album "Road to Return" that featured almost no solo acoustic guitar and oddly produced vocal songs that were stunning when he played them live with just a guitar, but fell horribly flat when he produced them with electronic drums and other synths. I did not give up faith, but I was deeply confused.
He finally came back to form with his last album, Oracle. I got it when I was in school in Minneapolis, walking around in circles for miles trying to find the record store. It was good but I can remember feeling that it was not what I had hoped. I wanted guitar Music that would make me want to play more! Inspire me! Make me feel like dirt! There were some beautiful songs on it, but I remembered putting it away after a few weeks and listening more to Bob Mould, Alice in Chains, and Brian Eno.
When I got back from Minneapolis, the time came when he was back in New Jersey. I distinctly remember not wanting to go to the concert. I was tired, burnt out from stress, and frankly, did not want to pay good money and be disappointed by only hearing one or two songs I liked. I did not buy tickets. I told nobody. Finally, the day of the show, something told me to go. I was feeling like hell, but something just told me to go. So I called and bought an overpriced seat right against the stage. On my way to the show I forgot the tape recorder to bootleg it. Again, something literally dragged me back to get it.
The show was not full and most of us there seemed to be dreading another branch dance. This time he came out and played solo acoustic guitar. I remember feeling a bit creeped out by the S&M dog collar he was wearing around his neck. He was skinnier and in yoga gear, but plowed into the songs like a Panzer tank. It was amazing! It was obvious that he was hitting anther new level of playing. He had more energy than I remember him having when I first saw him. He closed the first set with the instrumental song "Ritual Dance" screaming so loud to himself that the mic on my portable ancient Walkman recorder picked it up. He was in the zone and flying high. It felt damn good.
He opened up the second set with an unreleased song called "Arrowhead" and my jaw dislocated from my face. It was a stunning work. He had taken everything he had done up to that point and moved to a new level. It involved tapping and groove, like a blend between his songs "Aerial Boundaries", "Rootwitch" and "Ritual Dance". He was hitting upon new ground and I was feeling great about it. I do not remember much more of the set, except that he did an amazing job with the rest of the set that was full of songs everyone wanted to/longed to hear.
After the show I stayed around and hoped he would meet his fans. Thankfully he did. Some guy before me, who was screaming out "Yes, Michael! YES!" after every song was in front of me. He talked to Hedges about how he liked apples that he got here last time, repeating, "Remember that! Remember last time out here! Those apples!" I could see that Hedges was, even in his adrenaline and otherwise buzz, was uncomfortable. So I walked up in my hat and tie and said hello.
"Hey," he said, "don't I know you?"
"Um, yes." I stammered, "we met about five times before. I sent you my CD last year."
He nodded and we spoke about Music and he signed his book of transcriptions. I thanked him again for being an inspiration as a composer and how it helped me. We spoke briefly about a woman he knew who saw me playing in San Francisco a year ago who knew him. He was friendly, albeit from another planet, and after a few minutes we parted ways.
Two weeks later he died in a car accident in northern California. It was a dark and rainy night and he took a turn bad and fell odd a highway cliff to his death. The workers found him two days after the fact.
Speaking for myself, when he died, it left the road in question. There would be no one out there ahead of all of us making their own mark in a new land. It was a horrible feeling. How the hell would I know what was out there if the guy who was beyond us all was gone?
I have seen and heard many many many many many many solo acoustic guitar players since then and I feel lost. It was not that Michael Hedges hit the guitar and made cool sounds and tapped and did strange things with the instrument. No. The equation everyone seems to get wrong is that he was a composer first THEN a guitarist. He wrote amazing songs that just happened to include techniques that boggled everyone's mind.
But it is time to take a step back. A few years ago, demos of his earliest work surfaced via Youtube. Honestly, there was nothing that amazing there. It was a shadow of what he would become. Thanks to Fate knocking and destiny answering, the contract he signed on a napkin when he saw Hedges perform in an empty courtyard at a place in Palo Alto, CA had a greater good.
These days I see people being praised for their solo guitar work because they are cute or nice or cut against some predisposed notion of their gender. In the end, it shall always be about only ONE thing: THE MUSIC.
After Hedges died, I did the album "firewalker" which was my best attempt at finding my way in the dark. It combined solo finger style guitar, pop songs with cello, a cappella vocals, avant solo cello with spoken word, and even some comedy. I love that record in so many ways because it was my way of trying to find my own place to exist in a land that was now without a leader.
So, as I try to get this new project in motion, all I can say is that I owe so much to Michael Hedges. I will never be him, never got to the heights he did, but I am willing to try. And, for the record, there is a blessing to not being able to copy someone. After one has hit the wall of failure in trying to duplicate a hero, all that is left is one's true self. Some people walk away. I am too stubborn for that. I just keep going.
It is really all there is...
