"I began playing very conventionally and it's evolved over many years into what it is now"

Bill Orcutt

Co-founder of the mighty Harry Pussy almost twenty years ago, Bill did a fantastic come-back last year with his solo album "A new way to pay old debts". Here's a short interview with the man himself. Take two minutes to read it then go to the Mego website and order this masterpiece.

First of all, i'd like you to tell me about your childhood: which musical souvenirs come to mind? What made you pick up an instrument?

I didn't hear much music early on. My parents didn't have a record player or any particular interest in music outside of AM radio. Later when I was about 15, I got a record player for my birthday. I hadn't asked for one, but I suppose they thought all teenagers wanted record players. I started buying records, discovered the blues and rock and decided I wanted to play the guitar...

From Harry Pussy early days to your actual solo work, your playing is quite directly recognizable. How do you perceive the construction- be it conscious or not - of your playing?In others words, did you choose to avoid or reject some dimensions of what we can call "conventional playing"?

Sure, it's intentional. I began playing very conventionally and it's evolved over many years into what it is now.

Would you want to explain why at some point you decided to remove the A and D strings?

It happened during a time when I was drumming mostly, around 1990. Started playing a 4-string guitar, wrote a set of songs around it and then formed a two-piece band (Watt) to perform them.

Derek Bailey if often quoted to describe what you do. I wouldn't say it's wrong, but it's far from being totally true. It's "easy" to feel his jazz background; but to me yours has more to do with punk. Even if we can consider Derek as a punk, in some way!

I'm not sure what the question is, but let's say I agree. In any event I love Derek Bailey.

Last year, you made one hell of a come-back with "A New Way to Pay Old Debts". How do you feel it? I mean, is it a real come-back in the sense that you haven't played for years as I read somewhere? When I hear it, I can hardly think that you let the guitar in its flightcase for such a long time...

I did go a many years without playing, but I was playing almost every day for about a year before I recorded the LP.

There's a deep blues vibe in your playing, and I wonder what's your attitude towards scales.

As a kid I used to practice scales just for the sake of playing them, but now I just think about them when I'm playing- sometimes a piece is based on a scale, sometimes its the intersection or union of multiple scales. Anyway, I think scales are useful and I like 'em.




This make me think of the cover of "A new way..."; at some points I was wondering if there was some kind of cynical relation between the title and the mirror image that come from an old record of John MacLaughlin and Carlos Santana.

I didn't have any relationship in mind between the cover art and title- I've always wanted to use the Love Devotion Surrender jacket photo somehow- its was a coincidence it got used on this record.

Why the acoustic guitar? Could you imagine doing solo shows with an electric one?

I started playing the acoustic because it sounded good and was easier to play in the apt late at night without waking anybody up. I can imagine playing the electric solo, but I think I'd want to play with a drummer so I could really take advantage of what an electric guitar can do.

What are you planning for the future?

Editions Mego is reissuing A New Way to Pay Old Debts on CD in early 2011. I'm planning on doing some recording and releasing some new vinyl around the same time.

Last one : Give me your top ten albums, please.

I don't have a top 10 per se, but off the top of my head, here's some records I like a lot:
Captain Beefheart, "Grow Fins"
Carlos Montoya, "Guitar and Flamenco"
James Blood Ulmer, "Birthright"
Roscoe Holcomb, "An Untamed Sense of Control"
Cecil Taylor, "Silent Tongues"
Chuck Berry, "The Great 28"
Conlon Nancarrow, "Studies for Player Piano" (Arch)
Harry Pussy, "You'll Never Play This Town Again"
Joseph Spence, "Living on the Hallelujah Side"
Derek Bailey, "Lot 74"

www.editionsmego.com

"I also aspire to be as skinny and weird looking as Johnny Winter, but I don't know if that will work out"

Nate Hall (U.S. Christmas)

Appalachian guitarist Nate Hall took the time to discuss with great enthusiasm about bluegrass influence, Blood Meridian and, of course, U.S. Christmas. They just released their new album "Run Thick In The Night" on Neurot Recordings and, honestly, you'd be a fool to miss it. Read this, then run buy the album. Here we go!


First of all, I'd like you to tell me when did you pick up an instrument for the first time, and what memories do you keep from that period.

I was about 15 years old, the thought occurred to me that I could play guitar for the rest of my life. I wasn't good at anything else, I was little and skinny and frustrated with my inability to do the athletic things that I was pretty much forced to do in high school. I think I got a guitar that day or the next, a cheap no-name electric from a pawn shop. But I loved it instantly and I have played ever since. I still have that guitar in my garage. It was really hard to find decent gear, and I never really had anything good until we started USX, which was about 10 years after I first started playing. I was not a good guitar player when I started, it took about 12 years before I had any real experience or confidence.

How do you perceive the influence of your environment on what you do? I mean in terms of dynamics and guitar style playing.

I initially learned guitar by watching people play gospel bluegrass, not the fast-picking technical kind, but more simple songs with open chord shapes and repetitive patterns. I have always enjoyed playing like that, and it has definitely been an influence on USX. It is funny how stuff I picked up 15 years ago stuck with me so long, especialy when I seldom hear that kind of music anymore. Of course I quickly went on to other things, started listening to more classic rock and 90s players like Billy Corgan, Cobain, etc. That old style of music, what some would call old-time gospel, was developed here in Appalachia and I am glad some elements of it are part of my sound.

When you started to play, who were the main influences? Obviously I'd say Neil Young and Hawkind, but who else?... Right now I'm thinking of Caustic Resin you mentioned in an interview. Thank you for this discovering, i'd never heard of them before.

Neil Young was a big one, I heard the song Southern Man when I was just getting started and from that point on I was obsessed with him. Honstly, Hawkwind has never been a major influence on me. I really like them, don't get me wrong. But I never heard them until about 6 years ago. It was fun to learn their songs for the Triad tribute album. Brett from Caustic Resin is one of the main influences on the USX sound. He is a great player and a good person. He has been very cool to me on several occasions. The first time I heard The Medicine is All Gone I was a changed man, it was the album I had always wanted to hear. Just complete, unrestrained orgasmic guitar playing. It is a beautiful record and I still isten to it all the time. Brett plays full-time in Built to Spill now, go see them live.

On the new album there're these acoustic tracks; I'm wondering if you would have already thought of a solo acoustic project.

I guess it is possible, and I do play some by myself or with Matt or Meg. But I don't think I would enjoy it very much if that is all I had to do, I like to play wide open with the band.

I read somewhere that you're a teacher and at the same time studying literature. Do you see a link between this and what you play?I wasn't surprised to read you speaking about Blood Meridian...

Yes, Blood Meridian was a major inspiration for ETLD, and to some degree RTITN. I put a lot of work into the words I write, RTITN can be read as poem. My original ideas came from an abstract short story that I wrote, and then I broke it down to even more abstract elements and worked it into the songs. Some of the songs sort of guided the writing, hard to explain that. But as far as a literary influence on USX, I would say that it is on a mostly subconcious level. I don't try to force anything, ideas come in their own good time and I have learned to wait. But it is clear to me that the things I read influence my thoughts and in turn my songs. I use repetition a lot in USX songs and albums, and that is also a result of my exposure to literature. Again, McCarthy is the author I read the most. I enjoy William Faulkner's writing even though much of it is over my head. His words are beautiful and have the effect of washing through my head and leaving me with a vague , fuzzy idea of what is going on. I really enjoy that feeling. I think he designed his novels that way, they seem musical to me in that sense. Stream of consciousness is a good way to tell the truth.

Here's the nerd part of the interview: gear. Guitars, tunings,...Tell me everything.

We tune to E flat, a half-step down from standard.

I have tons of guitars, at least 70 of all makes and models. But I have three Monson guitars that I use in USX. My main one is the Rapture #1 that I got from Monson last year. The body is poplar and mahogany, ebony fretboard. It is a really simple single pickup design, a volume knob and coil-splitter switch. I have a Seymour-Duncan Invader in that one and I love that pickup, it is really hot and has tons of tone. I used that guitar to record RTITN, it has a very distinct, dark sound. It is irreplaceable, my favorite guitar of all time. I also have the second Rapture he made, a custom model that I designed. It has a Dimarzio Super Distortion in the bridge, but it is a model made in a p-90 housing to retrofit old guitars. I have a cheap p-90 in the mid position because I love the raunchy sound they make. Its body is a Walnut/cherry/bloodwood combo, and it has all cool inlays on the ebony fretboard, snakes, moons, symbols from RTITN and The Valley Path. I use that guitar for songs from ETLD because it has a good, stratty sound. I got the third a few weeks ago, it is a really pointy metal looking guitar. It is the first model of a design called Wendigo, which is the name of an Algonquin witch/monster. It has Dimarzio Evolution pickups and it does really well at high volume, I can get all kinds of crazy feedback and crunch. Brent Monson is an excellent builder and he has been doing his thing for about 10 years. He is getting more attention lately and I think he will eventually be recognized as one of the great guitar builders of all time, his instruments are amazing. Check them out, snag one while you can. YOu can see pics of my guitars on his website, I will include a link. Also check out the one he made for Scott from Neurosis, Nathan from Wolves in the Throne Room, Mike from Yob, and Will from Indian.

As for amps, I use quite a few. Marshall Mosfet 100 watt heads are some of my favorites. They are really tough, cheap, light, and compact. They are solid state, but British made and will work with any cabinet as long as it is at least 100 watts. I also use a 60s Fender Bassman 50 watt head, Marshall JCM 900 SL-X 50 watt, Fender Deluxe 40 watt combo, and a Gibson Goldtone Class A 15 watt (my main recording amp). I always run at least two amps live. I have a Voodoo Lab Amp Selector, and I can run four independently if I want to, meaning I can switch each one off or on. But I always leave them all on. I like running multiple amps because it creates a really thick sound, and If one of them blows I don't lose my signal. That has helped me out on many occasions.

My live cabinets are two Emperor 2x12s. One has the celstion speakers is came with, it is 4 ohms/100 watts. I use the Bassman with that, but the Mosfets work with it as well. The other has Eminence Texas Heat speakers, 8 ohms/300 watts. I can run kinds of amps with it. Emperor makes really high-quality stuff, and they are really good guys. They are based in Chicago, and a lot of the bands we know use them - Torche, Minsk, High on Fire just to name a few. I have a ton of other cabs - Marshall/Fender/Laney/Sovtek, but they stay at home.

As for pedals, we recently got an endorsement from Blackout Effectors. They are based near us in Asheville, NC, and they make really great stuff. I am using their Twosome pedal, which is a combo of their Musket Fuzz and Fix'd Fuzz. The Musket is the best sounding OD I have ever used. It has all the good elements of the Big Muff but none of the problems (noise, muddiness, etc.) Matt is using their Whetstone phaser and he really likes it. The Blackout guys make everything themselves, and the pedal boxes are works of art. I also use a mystery wah pedal I got from our friend/tech Robert, an Inbanez Tubescreamer, Keely modded delay and an old Ibanez delay.



Matt uses old Guild S-90s and Les Pauls though a Marshall JCM 800 and Earcandy Buzzbombs. Josh uses an old Musicman Stingray and a Gibson Ripper bass through a truckload of pedals and Mesa amps. Meg runs her violin through a sweet old 80s reissue tweed 4X10 Fender Bassman. Justin has a John Bonham reissue kit, and BJ plays a C&C custom, both with the biggest bass drums ever.

What kind of material do you play when at home? Do you pratice on a daily basis?

I always keep one of the Monson guitars on the couch at home, and I play all the time. I have some little amps scattered around, I have a couple of the litte Vox Brian May Deacy amps and they sound really good at low volumes. I also have a litte Epiphone 5 watt head and a 2x8 Earcandy custom cab they made for me. But I usually just play the electrics unplugged, they sound really good. As for material, it is usually whatever we are working on in USX, I don't really know or care to know how to play anything else.

What would you like to achieve as a guitar player?

I am totally fulfilled at this point. I will keep going as long as I can but ETLD, RTITN, and The Valley Path are the guitar albums I always wanted to make. If I never did anything else I would be satisfied. I love playing guitar. I also aspire to be as skinny and weird looking as Johnny Winter, but I don't know if that will work out. I think that is a reasonable dream.

Last one: give me your top ten, please.

Caustic Resin - The Medicine is All Gone/Trick Question/Fly Me To The Moon
Pink Floyd - Animals/The Wall/Wish You Were Here
Neil Young - Sleeps with Angels/Harvest Moon/Weld 1 and 2/Harvest/Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Neurosis - Souls at Zero/Times of Grace/Through Silver in Blood/A Sun That Never Sets/The Eye of Every Storm/Given to the Rising
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call/No More Shall We Part
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde/Blood on the Tracks - everything else!!
Townes Van Zandt - Our Mother The Mountain - everything
Slayer - Reign in Blood/South of Heaven
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Hendrix - everything
SRV - Live at El Mocambo

Here are some links to our very supportive gear builders:

http://www.monsonguitars.com/artists/uschristmas.html

www.blackouteffectors.com

www.earcandycabs.com

www.emperorcabs.com

"I was a lot more into Dave Mustaine's solos in Megadeth than Marty Friedman's"

Mick Barr

Mick Barr is one busy man. Playing in Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilim, Krallice and many others bands, he's been developing his intense, frenzied, almost esoterical playing since many years and has already released an impressive amount of records.
He answered to my questions in the way he plays: quickly and with accuracy. Enjoy!


Let's talk about the beginning: how old where you when you started to play, and what made you want to pick up the instrument? What kind of memories do you keep from that period?

I was about 13 when i started playing guitar. I originally wanted to play bass because i was so inspired by Cliff burtons bass solo track on "kill em all". But i knew a kid in the neighborhood who was selling a guitar and shitty amp for cheap, so i went with that instead getting a bass.
I never had much interest in learning how to play guitar well, i just wanted to have an original sounding band and write riffs. I had lessons for the first year or 2. It was from a friend of my sisters. He would occasionally try to teach me scales and chords, but i just wanted to learn how to play Danzig and Voivod songs. He was an awesome metal shredder, so i learned some tricks from him like pick-squeals and hammer-ons. I didn't actually get serious about practicing until i was 19 or 20.

Your playing is instantly recognizable; this very intense, fast, repetitive alternate picking. What, or who helped you to develop this way to play?

It's hard to say exactly what lead to how i play. I was very influenced by thrash and death metal as well as the more spazzier hardcore bands and japanese bands like Ruins early on. I had a band in high-school called Thinner that started out heavy and experimental and then went a bit more melodic. I would write riffs to try and annoy the other members, and throw off the parts they were playing. But the riffs i wrote kind of worked with everything. And that helped shape a lot.

I was also later equally influenced by a lot of intense free jazz like Albert Ayler and "Interstellar Space" era Coltrane. And a lot of indonesian and moroccan music, and a lot of modern classical composers as well. And as far as influential guitarists goes, Piggy from Voivod, Tony Joy from Universal Order of Armageddon, and Mike from 1.6 band all had an impact. I never liked the traditional big names like Steve Vai and Satriani. Maybe John Mclaughlin a little bit, but much later.

I don't want you to over-analyse it, but I'd like to ask you how do you feel it. I guess that it goes beyond just "fun". When I was a child, there was a radio in the kitchen. It was never turned off. As I was growing up I started to find it quite irritable. But now I can hardly eat in silence. I'm telling you this because I'm wondering how you perceive silence and/or the fear of it. I can totally relate to an idea of fear. That's maybe why I got interested in noise and drone music years ago.

I don't have much of a fear of silence. In fact i love it when i'm able to find it. Which isn't too often as i've lived in New York for a while now. But i guess i'm more drawn to the construction of music. And i definitely feel a serious unexplainable need to do this, one that i don't question. And it all definitely transcends "fun", though it is fun from time to time.

I think that even if your playing has a "shred" aspect in it, it has a lot more in common with the "wall of sounds" of many abstract music than with the "Shrapnel- school". When I heard the "OV" album, some parts reminded me of Tony Conrad : the use of repetition and the fluidity. Do you listen to those abstract/minimalist music? Is it something that inspire you?

I'm not really that familiar with Tony Conrad, or Steve Reich for that matter (someone i always get compared to and asked about). I only just heard of that shrapnel stuff a couple years ago when Ben Chasny from Six Organs of Admittance asked me what i thought of it. Still haven't checked any of it out though. But i will say i was a lot more into Dave Mustaine's solos in Megadeth than Marty Friedman's.

I really like some philip glass. And i like Morton Feldman and some other somewhat "minimalist" composers. But OV was mainly inspired by turkish and moroccan double-reed horn and drum music. Like the Master Musicians of Jajouka and turkish wedding music.

If you haven't listened to all those guys you lost nothing. That Schrapnel thing was quite big at the time and I think they are the main reason why so much poppy nerds still consider all kind of fast playing as a dorks macho thing. Most of those albums were awful.

Alright, i'll continue to avoid.

I remember of an old and short interview you gave to Guitar World mag; you spoke about this obsession of patterns. Can you talk a bit more about it?

Patterns and muscle memory play a big role in what i do. Also just letting the fingers go where they want, as opposed to thinking too much about the actual notes they hit. Letting the music shape itself outside of a pre-conceived plan. Thats not entirely it, but i plays a role.
There's not much more to say on that. They aren't really conceived by any process other than how it feels to play, and how it sounds. I'm not schooled enough to tell you what kind of intervals they tend to be. It seems to be based mostly on chance.

With Orthrelm or Octis, everything is written. Would you be interested in a more improvisation-based project? Maybe you have already one.

For a long time i avoided improvisation, but in the past 5 or so years i've come out of my fear of it. I played with a band in San Francisco called the Flying Luttenbachers, led by master composer and improviser Weasel Walter. There was a bit of improv written into the songs of that band, and that kind of got me started.
Then i made a record with master drummer Zach Hill, and that was completely improvised.
It felt absolutely comfortable improvising with him as we matched up instantly on speed and intensity. One of my problems with improv before was the empty space. It needs to be completely chromatic and intense for me to be able to play.
Other improv projects i'm involved with are Barr-Nevai (improv war metal duo with drummer madman Nondor Nevai), and Barr/Shea/Dahl (improv combo with Tim Dahl of Child Abuse and Kevin Shea of Talibam), and Improvitor (improv thrash duo with Lev from krallice). I've done a few others, but no need to list everything here.

Octis, Ocrilim, Orthrelm...How do you approch all these different projects? Krallice is obviously the most different, for the others it's less evident. But i guess the intention vary according the project. What about Orthrelm? Something scheduled?

Octis was a solo project mainly concerned with blind productivity where the compositions weren't over analyzed or even thought much about to begin with. Pure venting. And the feel was supposed to be cold and robotic. As inhuman as i could get, thats why most of the recordings feature drum machine programming and plugged in direct metal zone guitar tone.

Ocrilim is another solo project, but this time primarily concerned with pre-meditated composition. Definitely more warmth and humanity involved in the feel. Orthrelm was/is a collaborative duo with drummerJosh Blair. I was the primary writer of the early, less repetitious material, and Josh was the primary creator of the OV album and the more repetitious parts. All hail Josh Blair! Nothing is scheduled for Orthrelm at this point, but we have been jamming a little bit here and there and we have every intention of making some form of music again together.

Krallice is a full band effort, which i'm not in charge of. I would say the other guitarist Colin Marston was the one who initiated the band and sound.

Have you already thought about an acoustic project?

Yes, i've thought about it. And from time to time i feel inspired to make something like that. But i don't own an acoustic guitar, so i never get to write anything. And i wouldn't want to write something for acoustic guitar on electric. The closest i've come is the Ocrilim LP only release "Ment". It features double-reed horns, flutes, hand drums, bells, and possibly some acoustic guitar. I don't remember it all...

I'd like you to tell me how do you practice at home.

I mainly practice whatever i'm working on at the time. Never any scales or exercises.

Really? That's quite surprising considering the high level of accuracy of your playing. I'm also wondering if you know musical theory, and how important it can be for your work.

Well, i guess this supposed accuracy comes from practicing the music i play. Although only i know when it's actually accurate or not. And sometimes it is way off the mark. I don't understand music theory and spent most of my early years trying to avoid any knowledge of it.
I always felt it would hinder growth, more than aid it. Now i feel like i could benefit from some knowledge of theory, but i'm lazy when it comes to learning it.

What kind of stuff are you working on?

Right now i'm working on a new 40 minute set of non-droney non-repetitious solo guitar music; a slower 13 minute solo piece; a string quartet that i'm writing on guitar; and i'm also recording the bass lines on the new Oldest tracks. Oldest is a newer band i'm working on with Born Against/UOA drummer Brooks Headly. No shows, no pressure.


What would you like to achieve in the future?

Being able to survive by writing and recording music and occasionally performing. Not by constant touring and selling shirts. Like most musicians i know.

Does it mean that you aren't too fond of playing live shows? And how would you describe the difference between solo shows and band/duos shows?

I like playing shows from time to time. But i get burned out pretty quickly. Mainly because i don't like hanging out at bars and being the center of attention. And i have a seriously low tolerance for touring/travelling. It's not for everyone, and i'm one of those people it isn't for.

For solo shows, what i do can be physically and emotionally exhausting. So if i play a show that seems like a waste of time and energy, it's a lot harder to laugh it off than if i was just droning into a delay pedal. And it usually doesn't work well with the traditional rock n roll bar scene where people want to blow off steam and not be subject to a straight 45 minutes of trebly solo electric guitar. But it can also be amazing when the vibe is right and people are there with me. And the bonuses are not having to truck a whole lot of gear around and not having to split up the meager money with anybody else.

Playing shows with Krallice can be awesome, aside from having to do vocals. But the other members of the band are all amazing musicians. I feel pretty fortunate to get to play with them. And we don't get to play live very much because of busy and conflicting schedules.
All the members in the band are involved in other music projects, so it keeps us from doing too much. Which in turn hopefully keeps us from getting burnt out on the band.

Last one: give me your top ten albums, please.

Ah jeez. I'm not good with these kinds of lists. Instead i'll give a list of records i've been listening to recently that feature some interesting and/or awesome guitar work, mainly death metal.
The top ten albums of all time list is secret.

-decrepit birth "polarity"
-internal suffering "awakening of the rebel"
-nightbringer "apocalypse sun"
-nocturnus "the key"
-portal "swarth"
-ulcerate "everything is fire"
-stargazer "great work of ages"
-infested blood "interplanar decimation"
-virus "black flux"
-violent dirge "elapse"
-putrid pile "house of dementia"
-hellwitch "syzygial miscreancy"
-humanity falls "ordaining the apocalypse"

Mick: thank you!

Thanks for the interview. I'm self-releasing a new Ocrilim album "Absolve" via ocrilim.blogspot.com as well as numerous other cdrs. Thanks to readers.

More informations here:

www.myspace.com/ocrilim
ocrilim.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/krallice
www.myspace.com/orthrelm
www.myspace.com/oldestdemo

*** Sometimes guitar magazines were ok ***

I recently bought this magazine on ebay. Published in may 1978, it features a great Derek Bailey article. Sorry for the poor scan quality. Enjoy!

"Is he so fake that he's real or is he so real that he's fake?"

Chris Forsyth

Born in 1973, now living in Philadelphia, american guitarist Chris Forsyth has been crafting his style through many bands, collaborations, meetings and one surprising teacher...Finding inspiration from Loren Connors to...Keith Richards, he's now mainly busy with his solo work. He just finished an european tour with Steve Gunn and was in Belgium two weeks ago. Here we go!


Hello Chris, so how was this last european tour? This one was with Steve Gunn; last year you did one with Ignatz. They might share some roots in blues/raga, but at the end they are very different players.

Touring with Steve and getting to hear him play every night was a real pleasure. He's completely authentic as an artist and as a person. He and I share a lot of the same roots and a similar trajectory, in that we are both essentially self-taught players who come from a rock background, but have scratched and worked over a period of years to get to a point where I think the work is finding some kind of reality within itself. When I hear Steve sing and play, I hear his influences, but they are filtered through this person Steve Gunn and he makes them his own. Ignatz is also amazing, but in a different way. To me, his music is more like a constructed thing, like when he sings and plays, he's assuming a character and spinning a story, which may or may not have anything to do with the person behind the music (I'm not even sure myself). In each case, they arrive at the same place, but by taking different paths. It's like with Bob Dylan - he leaves his audience to wonder if he's so fake that he's real, or is he so real that he's fake?

The first thing i heard from you was an old video on YouTube. My first impression reminds me Earth; it wasn't heavy or dark, but it was the space - almost silence - between notes. The breath! Then I saw you perform, and I found a strong link with Steve Reich. I specially dig the repetitive, yet no-loop compositions.

I think the main thing is that I try to boil down whatever I am doing to the essential. Like with conversation, I usually find it's best to make the most clear point with as few carefully chosen words as possible. So, it really just depends on the piece - some of my pieces are more dense than others, but they're still not necessarily going to be dense with lots of different notes. I think the YouTube tune you are talking about are "Harmonious Dance"which is on my first solo CD. I like to hear and see the notes hanging in the air, resonating. And that piece was meant to be just totally pretty. I've played a lot of "ugly" music, but around the time of that record, I wanted to get into more explicit beauty and let the overtones of single notes or two or three note chords to really do a lot of the work, intersecting with each other in the space.

I tend to use a lot of repetition in general, but maybe the "non-loop" track you're thinking of is "Soft History," which I often play live and is on my last solo LP "Dreams." That piece is really rhythmic and driving, but the figures within it are pretty simple.

A number of people have mentioned Steve Reich in reference to that piece, but I always think of Keith Richards or Roger McGuinn's rhythm guitar as being more of an inspiration. I've listened to some Steve Reich, but he's in no way a primary influence for me.

Since I was young, I always gravitated towards the sound of rock guitar, but, even before I knew how to play the guitar, I'd hear a great 60s or 70s guitar riff on the radio and be pissed when it would only repeat a few times and the singer would come in. I've always wanted to swim in that sound, and hear it over and over. It becomes like a trance for me. In any case, when it comes to silence or density, I'm just looking to edit the pieces down the most necessary notes. I've always liked simple music.

Can you tell me about your band(s)? I know Peeesseye, but don't know the others.

Peeesseye is a group I formed in 2002 in Brooklyn together with Jaime Fennelly (electronics, keyboards) and Fritz Welch (percussion, vocals). It's a total three-headed monster with no leader. In some ways, it's always been a strange combination of players, because our individual styles are really pretty different, but that's also always been the strength of the group - I can't really think of another group that behaves quite like us. I lived in Brooklyn from 1996-2009, and early in that time I was really involved in the improv scene there, which is more or less the scene from which Peeesseye emerged. And I had another group, called Phantom Limb & Bison, with Jaime Fennelly, reed player Chris Heenan, and synth/keyboardist Shawn Edward Hansen. We made two CDs and did a collaboration with Tetuzi Akiyama as well.

I also have a collaboration with Shawn Edward Hansen - him on Farfisa organ, me on guitar - called Dirty Pool. We put out an LP on Ultramarine in 2009 and I'm really fond of that project. But Phantom LImb & Bison's members always lived in different cities, so it's been nearly impossible to keep together in a functional way. It's similar with Peeesseye, though we've toured quite a bit and managed to keep the collaboration productive. We've all left Brooklyn at this point - I'm in Philadelphia, Jaime's in Seattle, and Fritz is in Glasgow. This decentralization is partly why I've started playing solo more and more over the past 3 years or so.

Aside from solo stuff, and the groups, I've always done a bit of ad hoc improvising as well with people like trumpeter Nate Wooley, all the members of the Peeesseye/Phantom Limb & Bison family, and Tetuzi Akiyama.

You play in bands and play solo shows. Do you feel equally comfortable in those very different context? Does it change your attitude towards the instrument?

I've been really concentrating on the solo stuff in recent years. It's taken me a long time to get comfortable doing it, but at this point, it's my favorite way to play.

The first solo gig I did was at a club called Tonic in NYC in 2000, when I was asked by Derek Bailey to do a solo set. His concept for the night was to have a few different people who had never played solo doing solo sets. I was terrified and from my point of view, the show was a musical disaster. My ability to feel free within a group context or at home alone was impossible to translate to playing alone in front of people.

Derek was encouraging, but I think he also liked to see trainwrecks on occasion and it sure felt like one to me. At the same time, I'd always had melodic or compositional ideas brewing in my head, but found it difficult to translate them to a band setting. Peeesseye, for example, has always existed as a totally free chaos zone where we've been able to successfully access the magic of collaboration. We've dabbled with some compositional ideas, but I think the free playing has always been our strength. In the end, I think learning to play solo has really been about learning to trust myself and to play what I really want to hear. Playing solo is sort of a selfish position to be in - I get to be the dictator at all times, and I don't have to compromise with anyone - but it also requires a lot of responsibility and conviction to be able to pull it off properly.

Lately, on the "Dreams" LP and my forthcoming "Paranoid Cat" LP , I've been combining the different approaches by having friends and collaborators (Fennelly, Welch, Hansen, Wooley, drummer Mike Pride, Koen Holtkamp from Mountains, Hans Chew and Marc Orleans from D. Charles Speer, and others) contribute to the recordings to flesh out the pieces as band arrangements. Sometimes I give them specific parts to play, but more often I give them some parameters and ask them to simply do what they do on the given tracks.



How is improvisation important to you?

It's 100% crucial. I think another word for "improvisation" could be "music". Although I do play compositions, they are often rather skeletal - sometimes just a couple of chords, a melody, and maybe a mood - and the performance is really where the magic comes out. It's like breathing life into an object. Everything I play has some element of improvisation within it. Especially playing live, I like to give myself the freedom to interpret what I'm doing every night, allow the vibe or mood or weather or whatever to influence the way the music comes out in a performance.

Do you practice on a regular basis? I mean, if you pick up your guitar at home, what kind of stuff do you play?

Yes. Although I consider myself to be primarily self-taught, I did study with Richard Lloyd (of Television) for a few years and he gave me some invaluable exercises that I still use to warm up or just keep in shape on the instrument. Some people go jogging, I play these little patterns to keep my fingers and hands in working order. I also like to decipher old songs and riffs by artists that I like just to have them in the back of my mind. Those riffs and pattern tend to come out in strange ways in my music. Although I'm kind of a punk (or at least a contrarian) at heart, I think it's good to have a conventional grounding on the instrument that you can then ignore or transgress if you choose.

Would you tell me a bit more about Richard teaching?

When I learned that it was possible to take lessons from him, it blew my mind, because I'd been listening to and admiring his playing since my teen years, especially (but not only) his work with Television. It's funny that within the general story of Television, he's considered the straight man foil to Tom Verlaine's spaced out seeker. Because Richard is as much of a mystical searcher as you're likely to find on this Earth, and certainly in the realm of guitar players. His knowledge of philosophy, like his knowledge of his instrument, is deep and esoteric and profound.

He claims to have learned to play guitar from a guy named Velvert Turner, who is supposedly the only person that ever received regular lessons from Jimi Hendrix. Sometimes I'm not even sure if he was telling the truth, but it didnt matter, because the point he was trying to make was always true.

Richard also happens to be a very good teacher. Some days we would discuss the most fundamental aspects of music theory, other days he would break down these cubist patterns of scales all over the guitar neck, and other days he would just read poetry. The knowledge he gave to me didnt change the way I played guitar, but it did allow me to access and realize things that up until then I had been wandering around in the dark seeking.

His teaching really shined a light on my practice, helped me get myself to another level, and for that I am forever grateful.

Gear/effects/guitars/... What has changed through years? Any secret weapon?

I try to keep it simple. I have a couple of cheap acoustic guitars and a few electric guitars that I use - an early 90s Fender Strat, a 70s Les Paul Deluxe, and a Rickenbacker 660 12-string. If I'm playing a local show or traveling somewhere by car, sometimes I'll bring all three to use on different pieces in my set.

But when I tour in Europe, I usually bring the Strat because it's the most versatile and it's also the lightest to carry! As for effects, I do have a few distortion/overdrive pedals that I like - a 90s Sovtek Big Muff, a MidFi Electronics Octave/Fuzz pedal which is pure insanity, a Fulltone OctaFuzz that I like a lot, and Systech Overdrive from the 70s. But on this last tour with Steve Gunn, I brought only a Boss DD6 delay pedal, which I use for simple looping, and my 80s ProCo Rat distortion pedal, which I've used for about 20 years.

I used to use more pedals, but more and more, I try to use the volume control on the guitar and the dynamics of playing to get the tone, volume, or feedback that I'm looking for. Check out Roy Buchanan for an example of someone with ferocious tone and dynamics - he never used effects at all, other than amp reverb. If I have one secret weapon, it's my 72 Fender Deluxe Reverb amp. I've also had that almost 20 years and I absolutely love it. I have a couple of other 70s Fender amps - a Champ and a Bassman - but the Deluxe is my sound.

Last one: give me your top ten favorite albums...

This list is likey to change on a regular basis, but here's today's version, off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones Records,1972)
Derek Bailey - Aida (Incus, 1980)
Crystalized Movements - Revelations from Pandemonium (Twisted Village, 1993)
Television - The Blow Up (ROIR, 1982)
Loren Mazzacane Conors & Alan Licht - Live in NYC (New World of Sound, 1994)
The Dead C - Harsh 70s Reality (Siltbreeze, 1992)
Jack Rose - Kensington Blues (VHF, 2005)
Jerry Garcia Band - Winterland 12/20/75 (bootleg)
Ornette Coleman - Of Human Feelings (Antilles, 1982)
AC/DC - Powerage (Atlantic, 1978)

More informations at:

http://www.thechrisforsyth.com
http://www.evolvingear.com
http://www.peeesseye.com