He's got a different playing style what was that experience like? RM: You toured recently with Virginia guitarist Keller Williams. Performance is following some curve that's in the air: You can't improve on the curve, but you can definitely screw it up with a set list. What you need next is usually something you played 10 minutes ago. The set list is always wrong, by the way. I don't need to see that, and I don't want to do it. What's terrifying is someone alone on stage following some map. RM: Do you still make up your onstage set list on the spot? Isn't that terrifying? Mike Gordon and I have some more ideas, for example. Who knows where records go these days? I've got a lot of new stuff and some recording approaches that are working themselves out. RM: You haven't released an album in more than 10 years. Ry Cooder called playing with picks “taking a bath with your clothes on.” I'm grateful to be rid of the damn things. And it's much more fun to actually feel the strings rather than the picks that screwed me up in the first place. I had to relearn the right hand but learn it right. It took a while to shake, but it had a salutary effect on my playing. RM: Does tendonitis still affect your playing, or have you worked out ways around it? I know Bob likes a pretty loose approach. It wasn't registered mail we were sitting in an airport somewhere. His brother was managing Bob at the time, and the invitation came from him. RM: Is it true that you declined a spot on Bob Dylan’s legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour in the 1970s? Also it's really rude NOT to talk to the crowd, so you could call it a courtesy. When I open my mouth I really don't care where I wind up, as long as it's a guitar. It isn't banter or stories or jokes, it's what I have to do to follow the guitar. I talk to the crowd until I know what to play next. Has that changed in the current heated political environment? RM: You are known for your lively stage banter. And I love the playing more than I ever have. Leo Kottke: It felt more like 50 years in the beginning. Richmond Magazine: You've been at this for more than 50 years. 28. Even after five decades of music making, the self-taught virtuoso says that he "can't let go" of the guitar. Kottke will bring his expansive repertoire - and trademark stage musings - to The Tin Pan on Sept. The legendary folk musician has been called one of the greatest guitarists of the modern age a blues master, a country picker, a jazz explorer and someone who can take the oddest cover (like the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" or Buck Owens' "Buckaroo") and make it his own. "I'm typing on a phone with my thumbs, which is sort of like typing on a fish," he says. Since my guitars were stolen, thanks to Lew Jansen for the gift of his Martin and to Fred Gerlach for the loan of the biggest twelve-string I've ever seen.Leo Kottke is sitting in a restaurant in his hometown of Minneapolis, trying to eat some seafood while having an online conversation with a reporter. For four of the tunes I brought my own geese along and on "Monkey Lust" you are fortunate enough to hear the prehistoric, prehensile throat of the Jukebox Phantom, who arrived just in time encased in a shipment from Wasco, Texas. So now after three solo records - one of which on the expired Oblivion label sometimes turns white and crumbles around the edges - here's this one with bass and drums on some of the cuts and no crumble. That's when I decided to record my own stuff. For all that bother, and a chapel full or empty isn't very thrilling, I would up with a tape of a cleaning lady performing on her Hoover. The nuns got worried so I was left alone with my fruity fee, my Magnavox, and an empty room. Sitting beside two nuns in the balcony, I dangled my microphone over the edge and waited for something to happen. So as soon as I could meander I got my own syringe, doused the kid, and went down to the chapel (it was a Catholic hospital) with a tape recorder. Cloud hospital being squirted by a malformed ten year old with a syringe full of water ad having my "feet" started at by assorted appendectomies who wanted some excitement in their lives. Recorded at the Sound Factory, Hollywood, Calif.įour years ago in Minnesota I froze my feet solid as a rock and spent some weeks in a St. Wilson Observatory Parking Lot - southwest view above Los Angeles, January 10, 1971. Bach - arranged by Leo Kottke)ĭesign and Photographs by John Van Hamersveld.Ĭover photo taken from the Mt. Leo - bottleneck National steel guitar and vocalīourée (J.S. Juke Box Phantom - guest vocalist extraordinaire "Peachfuzz stared from the bathroom and said 'What's going on?'" Leo - 12-string acoustic guitar and vocal Leo on Record: Mudlark Recordings: Mudlark (1971)Ĭripple Creek (traditional arranged by Leo Kottke)Įight Miles High (McGuinn, Crosby, and G.
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