Interview By James Jensen
The definition of alchemy as a chemical transformation of base metals into gold could certainly apply to the guitar duo bearing the name "Acoustic Alchemy." The band which features Nick Webb on steel string and Greg Carmichael on nylon string has scored five smash albums on both airplay and sales charts and has benefited maybe more than any other instrumental group from the New Adult Contemporary radio format .
Putting a definition to the Acoustic Alchemy sound is a lot more difficult. Their style of music is not spacey enough to be new age, although new age radio has been very supportive, and it's really not jazz yet they have headlined at the prestigious Catalina Jazz Festival. They will tell you that they are just a couple of blokes who compose and play what they like as well as they can.
I met them on their 1992 tour supporting the release of "Early Alchemy" and found them to be very willing to discuss their early musical inspirations, the formation of the group, Greg's audition as well as life on the road. Both Nick and Greg display a sharp sense of humor, however, they are extremely serious about their composing and recording and bristle at criticisms that they are a record company sales, or A&R creation.
JJ. Did you always have a group concept in mind?
Nick: No, not in the very beginning, I initially had the guitar duet thing in mind.
JJ. It was never your goal to be a solo?
Nick: No, because of two things that happened, the first of which was going to music college and meeting some amazingly good players. I had been king dude in my little town outside of London for all this fingerpicking and folk stuff and I ran the local folk club . When I got to college apart from improving my playing I also saw chasms of distance ahead of me as things I couldn't do and, teaming up with another guitarist was a way to further explore the guitar that wasn't limited by technique the way a soloist is. There are very few solo guitar players I can listen to for very long because I love the instrument very much but I think that it's limited harmonically , and in other ways by the fact that it's difficult to play. The acoustic guitar is a pig of an instrument and there are a handful of people that play it very, very well.
Greg: I agree and I find it quite embarrassing at times because people ask me what guitarists I listen to and, quite frankly I'd never listen to a whole album of just solo guitar because it just doesn't hold my attention. I would rather listen to a band playing or a guitar used in a different way.
JJ. You list some early influences as Leo Kottke and Pentangle, I hear some Pentangle but I don't hear any Kottke in your work.
Nick: He was an initial fingerstyle inspiration. The ragtime duet we do in concert is the nearest thing to Stefan Grossman and those guys I was looking up to when I went through my period of sitting and playing guitar pieces. The duo thing just seemed to be the thing to do, to find a soulmate who liked similar music.
JJ. Was it always your intention to mix nylon and steel string guitars?
Nick: It's an interesting question because I didn't sit down one day and say " Right, I'm going to make a career in the nylon and steel department and have a lot of success over in the states." It never happened like that. What happened was I found a soulmate in college (Simon James) and fooled around with some Pentangle tunes. He was playing classical guitar and was fed-up with the repertoire. We formed a band in college ( with future producer John Parsons) I don't think I ever told you about this (speaking to Greg) we did about three gigs. Simon started in Flamenco which at the time was a fairly unknown style in England and I was trying to play rhythms along with him. I suppose the biggest inspiration was Bert Jansch and John Renbourn for the idea of the two guitars together. The thing I didn't like about their sound was that they both played steel string and I liked the sound of the nylon and steel because there was none of the overlapping twanging that seemed to make everything sound messy. The colors were different and if I played at the bottom of the neck and Simon played at the top it was a very unique effect which opened up a lot of possibilities. I don't know what Greg thought but when I needed to replace Simon I never considered anyone expect nylon players.
Greg: When I first heard of you it was just another gig , 30 quid. I thought why not 'cause I never turned anything down.
Nick: I remember saying "I won't go outside my front door for less than fifteen bucks a night" (laughter)
Greg: I remember when I first came to your flat and you played me "Ballad for Kay" (see tab) as a demo and I remember listening to it and my first reaction was that it was that this was quite sweet , quite smooth. There was something about it I liked, it sounded like a TV theme. I had been playing with a rootsy Latin-jazz group trying to avoid playing anything that sounded smooth. I remember hearing "Casino" ... I was very impressed with the arrangements but I thought they were a bit smooth. I wanted to be involved however because I thought it was interesting.
Nick: mmmm, interesting because I remember that time...
Greg: I recall you got out the book, 'cause you had a book of the early stuff and I sat down and sort of...
Nick: Played through the tunes.
Greg: Did you think I was a good sight reader?
Nick: No (all laughing) you weren't as good as Simon. I remember thinking , 'he's not that good at sight reading', but I was even worse.
JJ. Being influenced by the great British guitarists Jansch, Renbourn and Graham usually means some interest in altered tunings, did you experiment much with them but have to give them up for the group concept ?
Nick: Very much so, there are certain things that happen to you that leave a lasting impression all your life and thinking of open tunings brings one of those to mind. When I was 18 I saw a guy named Pete Ryder who was the tremendously impressive age of 26 and this was at the height of the James Taylor period and that scene was doing very well; all I wanted to be was an itinerant professional singer-guitarist.
JJ. What kind of voice does he have Greg?
Greg: (laughs) Actually I've never really heard the sort of full....
Nick: The full works, don't throw me off...... yeah Pete Ryder, I was still at school and I went to see this singer/guitarist. He performed some James Taylor and a whole lot of songs by John Martyn who I am a massive fan of. He played in open tunings and fingerstyle and I thought that was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. I wanted to do it and when you're that young and keen you'll spend three days figuring out four notes on the guitar so I found out about open G and got started on the open tuning thing. There was a track on John Martyn's "London Conversation" album called "Fairytale Lullaby" in open D and it had sort of twiddly things on the top string, some pull-offs and hammer-ons and picking across the strings, you know. Since it was in open tuning you have those lovely major chords where you have lots of 9ths and 13ths and 6ths sort of in the chord and lots of semitones and major 7ths right next to the tonic and all that kind of stuff. I fell in love with tunings and worked up a dozen different things in them. When I went to college and learned to read music, tuning became difficult because I started to think about theory in a proper kind of way, you kind of have to unlearn things. When you are a naive guitarist you can play by ear. When you learn about building chords instead of putting your finger here then it becomes difficult to keep both schools going at once, so I dropped the open tunings. Funny enough recently Greg and I have both thought about going back to that kind of thing.
JJ. Nick , you play a combination pick and fingerstyle although in your more recent albums you're getting away from the fingerstyle and leading more with a pick.
Nick: Yes, I suppose I am, actually, although I do try to keep the fingerstyle going.
JJ. Do you use real or artificial nails?
Nick: Real, the problem I have is when I'm playing a lot of rhythm I wear down the first finger nail in my plectrum technique.
Greg: Touch wood, I don't have to use artificial nails, I find if you keep them filed and playing keeps them strong.
JJ. Do you ever use a plectrum?
Greg: No, for lead lines I use my index finger nail like a pick.
JJ. Your training was classical?
Greg: I studied at the London college of music. Up to that point I'd always played with a pick in bands (electric and steel string) but I got to that stage in my school career (17) where it was sort of ... 'what do I want to do when I leave school?', I wanted to carry on with music. The prospects of getting a .......
Nick: JOB ! (laughs)
Greg: was horrifying!
Nick: Yeah, I remember that feeling
Greg: But the only way I could do it (buy more time) was to play classical and audition for the college of music.
JJ. By the time you met Nick you were into flamenco?
Greg: Jazz, when I left college all I was listening to was Jazz , all the Blue Note stuff, Miles Davis, Coltrane. It was the most wonderful feeling to play music that was sort of improvised on the spot. I haven't any training in flamenco I just do it by ear so my technique is my own and not proper or traditional. An example would be they strum a Rasqueado a,m,i, (3rd ,2nd, and index fingers) and I strum the reverse, i,m,a,.
Nick: I've been meaning to talk to you about that!
Greg: It seems to work and I get across enough of the flavor that people say that's great flamenco but it's not in the true sense. What I like about flamenco is the passion of it. I was never into classical guitar--I was into Jimi Hendrix , I always wanted to go out on stage and stand in front of a Marshall stack and.......
Nick: Break it !
Greg: Let it rip! (laughs) and flamenco in the show comes closest to that.
JJ. You both play Lowden guitars and endorse them?
Nick: One of the things I've always missed about playing a steel string guitar is the fatness of sound you get with the nylon string, the roundness and bigness of it. I always like the ringing, bright sound of steel but the Lowden sounded big and fat without sounding crude. George then surprised us by making Greg a couple of fabulous nylon string guitars.
JJ. So you have the nylon prototype for the new line of Lowden's?
Nick: Greg was the test-dummy for that pretty much.
JJ. What are your favorite tracks you've recorded?
Nick: I can tell you my favorite album , " Red Dust and Spanish Lace" because I think like a lot of things in life this was a sort of seat of the pants kind of thing. We had a tiny studio not a lot of money, everybody put out 150% effort for 20% of what we thought we'd get in pay, it was a total 'let's make it work' kind of feel with my old school mate John Parsons running us hard as a producer. It was very inspired because we didn't know what we were doing and it turned out to be very influential over here and got massive airplay. A lot of the material was written over a 2-3 year period and some cream from my old songs was also used.
JJ. "Mr. Chow" was almost the first NAC or NEW-AGE hit.
Nick: Something I really want to put across is that whatever that new age scene was or radio situation was I had no concept of this. I had only been over to the states once and had luckily got this recording deal. I got a check and went to John Parsons and said 'help us make this record as we don't know what we are doing.' The fact that it became the most perfect example of a new format and a new way of looking at instrumental music just meant we were thinking like everybody else on the west coast, we didn't aim for a market we didn't know existed. I get very annoyed at people writing that we aimed for the pop acoustic guitar market. This is what we play if you don't like it don't listen to it. I like melody, I like simple tunes, Greg likes simple tunes, Mr. Chow is fun to play.....
Greg: It is not as simple as it seems, harmonically it's quite complicated....
Nick: Check the chords out....
Greg: It's not your straight ahead chords....... I suppose my favorite track would be the song "Red Dust and Spanish Lace" I remember listening to it for the first time after it had been mixed and I got very emotional about halfway through and realized it's really happening.
JJ.. Was your success a surprise to you ?
Nick: Completely and utterly, of all the things I had wanted to do just getting a record deal and selling a few copies maybe a few thousand copies I'd have thought....
Greg: We've done it...
Nick: We've arrived, I'm doing the right thing kind of verification. Luck has a lot to do with it. We got turned down by Will Ackerman at Windham Hill, I wonder what they think about that now. I know MCA pressed 5,000 LPs, cassettes, and CD's--put it out and they disappeared. Radio was playing it like crazy and for a couple of months you couldn't get it because they had to repress it and we were at the back of the line for manufacturing so MCA had and embarrassing hit on their hands which they couldn't make fast enough. I should mention that Tony Brown in Nashville was great to work with . We couldn't afford to tour until "Natural Elements" was released and proved to be a success as well. We never did the thing we'd done in Europe for years playing wine bars with 12 people in the audience. We showed up halfway across the world playing to full houses and feeling like celebrities.
JJ. How much revamping went into the release of "Early Alchemy" ?
Nick: A fair bit, I suppose. I thought for along time it wouldn't be good enough to release and could damage Acoustic Alchemy's current standing. I was so upset at the failure of it when it first came out that I bought back the Master Tapes and the rights to it. The percussion had been poorly recorded so I had that rerecorded, we also did some guitar over-dubs. We dropped a couple of tracks and re-recorded 4 other songs.
JJ. How has it been received?
Nick: Sales have been good and radio for the most part has played it. A couple of stations thought it was a bit too rootsy and others thought the double bass two guitar approach was great.
JJ. How do you plan your projects? Do you consciously try to keep your sound or do you just go with what you have written at the time?
Nick: It wasn't until "Blue Chip" that we realized we had a sound. We just thought we were two guitar players writing tunes and playing them as well as we could. People used to talk about the "Acoustic Alchemy" sound and we didn't know what they were talking about: now we are aware--but we stress the compositions.
Greg: The guitar is just our tool to express our compositional ideas.
Nick: I think an important fact about our group is that Greg and I spend a lot of time caring, in a tremendous amount of detail, what the writing is, what the chord is, what the actual structure of the music is and how it's written. I hear a lot of much better players in this format playing stuff which is artistically dubious and I think that is the big tragedy of this format and that's where I think that all the criticisms are fair of this format. I will stand and defend why we wrote a track in a certain way.
JJ. What is your composing process for duets?
Nick: We are genuine co-writers and that's our strength.
Greg: I find it easier to write together.
Nick: It seems logical to us but it has occurred lately that there are few people that actually do it this way.
Greg: I think it's an extension of what we're doing, we're not solo performers, we are partners. It would be bloody boring without the feedback we give each other.
Nick: I remember the early days I'd do a lot of the writing but Greg's song writing really sparked our relationship.
Greg: I think we work well together on a lot of levels as writers, players and partners.
Nick: We've gotten past the "me me me" stage of a partnership. The funny thing is we get so locked in together mentally that we've forgotten the same section together. Some really weird things happen telepathically, you make a mistake you've never made in this part of a tune and you both fluff the note! We end up laughing at each other, it's great to get that mentally close.
Greg: We would like to tour as a duo or trio.
JJ. When you record is it together or separate?
Greg / Nick: Separately.
Nick: We'd like to record more together but one of the problems recording acoustic guitar is spillage. When you are sitting in a studio with an acoustic guitar and somebody drops a pin in the far corner you know it. It's very difficult to record acoustic guitar unless you're isolated. If you want to equalize the sound of the steel string and the nylon coming into each others mics is a real nightmare. Unfortunately this goes against the sort of artistic expression of playing together.
Greg: It's a shame that it's so difficult. If one of us makes a mistake and the other plays great it would mean recording both parts over again.
JJ. The musicians that back you up on tour also play on your albums, is there pressure on you to use hired studio guns for your recordings?
Nick: Conceptually we are different from other bands in that way and that's why we got the blokes in the studio, we want to record with them as well as play live.
JJ. How is your time divided up?
Greg: Recording and touring keep us on the road 6 months out of the year and the rest is spent writing. We don't write a lot on the road.
Nick: We're always doing interviews and radio promotions so there's not a lot of time.
JJ. Do you enjoy touring?
Nick: There are special moments during a show when you've really got them in the palm of your hand and you know that's why you do it. Music is about sound and the moment, and it's worth it when that happens. I like the traveling, not the physical traveling, but going different places and meeting different people, the cultures. Meeting fellow artists on the road is actually a thrill. When you're on the tour bus after a horrendous flight from Pittsburgh to San Francisco and your manager says "step out side there is someone out here I'd like you to meet" and James Taylor wants to shake your hand!
Greg: I've got to mention how horrid it is living in hotels for months at a time. The best part of touring is the shows and other than hotels the worst part is two minutes before the show, and then you wonder......why am I doing this, why didn't I do something normal, why do I put myself through this hell. Once you get on stage and into the first number it becomes the best time, I am happiest on stage doing it, the rest of the time is just hanging around.
Nick: One of the eeriest experiences is when you go back into the venue after all has been loaded up and walk on an empty stage to the sound of only your footsteps and you realize the complete and utter transientness of live music. What was a hall absolutely crammed with atmosphere and people making music and an audience appreciating it is gone forever, it's finished. Sometimes that can be a calming feeling and sometimes it's utterly depressing if it catches you at the wrong moment. You feel totally given out.
Greg: You mean they have taken it all away with them?
Nick: Yeah, it's a feeling of emotional exhaustion, very lonely.
JJ. Because of your radio airplay you seem forced to play a greatest hits show at your concerts...
Nick: Let me interrupt, it just happens that we are playing our favorite cuts, the fact that they were played on the radio wasn't our doing, so it only seems like we're doing the "hits". On a tour to support a new album we always try to play four or five tracks that are new.
JJ. A criticism of your shows is that you don't take a lot of chances or solo/improvise but stick to almost note for note recreation of your recordings.
Nick: The band is getting better and we are starting to open up....
Greg: We are giving each other more room to improvise a little bit, however, when you have a tune you have to play it right you can't get up and play different notes than were on the tune. That's one of the hard things about music, you can't put in a funny note.
JJ. I would agree with respecting the main theme note for note but live I think an audience expects some stepping out or solo sections...
Nick: I think you're right, our initial tours we were just trying to hold together the arrangements. But with several tours behind the band our presentation is stronger and those criticisms I don't think are currently valid. We have two recorded versions of "Casino" and neither one is as good as our current live version! Several of our tracks have improved dramatically over the years. "Reference Point" is a tune I feel we are playing much better than when we recorded it.
Greg: I want to say that its bloody difficult to play something that's been written note for note up on that stage, under pressure.
Nick: Oh yeah, note for note with feeling! We do "Take Five" as a kind of seat of the pants duet and sometimes it comes off great but it's dangerous to have such a loose idea what each other is going to do.
JJ. I'm surprised because live Greg seems to get the solos and the crowd pleasing moments and you tend to be a support player which belies your leadership of the group on record and as a composer.
Nick: That's an interesting point, technically Greg does some things I can't play and they are things that have an intensity like the flamenco that he's developed live that are eye catching and very good. I am more laid back and I bolster up the rhythm section, I don't have a problem with it. One of the strengths of our group is we don't worry about who is upstaging who or anything like that.
Greg: I would love to see someone get up and dance at one of our gigs.
Nick: We get the odd person doing that.
Greg: I'd like to mention that it's very difficult to play acoustic guitar with a band. During a sound check we get some absolutely fabulous sounds but when you add the band some of those frequencies just disappear and you have to play totally differently when you're playing with drums and bass and keyboards. When you play as a duo you can hear a note and get expression out of it. Quite often when you're playing with a band you're trying to hear what you're doing and you're just playing notes, you can't get expression out of a nice low note because you can't even hear it.
Nick: We work on this problem all the time, one of the reasons our duets work well in the show is we get to play with dynamics and other subtleties. There's certainly a side of me that would like to do more duo work in the set.
JJ. Is a duo tour in the offing?
Nick: If your going to do "unplugged" why not have acoustic guitarists play it? I love it when rock stars unplug but I often watch and think "stick with the electric mate".
Greg: I think it would be beneficial to us as players to do a duo tour.
Nick: We are considering a live album in the future but we are also considering a release that involves principally two acoustic guitars and a little percussion and double bass. We cut our teeth as a duo so I'm absolutely convinced we can do it and pull it off musically and artistically.
Greg: An album of duets presents a great challenge to keep peoples attention.
Nick: On our current release "The New Edge" we turned over production to our guitar tech and road manager Steve Jones and we feature a flamenco piece that people are going to say sounds like other people but if you go back to "Early Alchemy" and "Siras Song" you'll notice we did our version of flamenco while they were still in diapers.
JJ. How is GRP to work with?
Nick: We are one of their major acts and they have been great to us. I'd like to stress that at no point in any of the albums we've made has anybody told us what to play, we have always just played what we want to, if people want to feel we're an A&R creation they're wrong. No one has ever said drop that one and give us one more like this one and I think that's true for this genre. In the Pop market even the top artists are redoing every track every which way to suit the "experts".
JJ. Anything else you want to add ?
Nick: Nothing, other than I'm replacing Greg in February.