By James Jensen
The inevitable collisions between art and business in the music industry rarely yield recordings of depth and beauty; Michael Hedges' recent release, "Oracle" is the happy exception to that rule. The new owners of Windham Hill Records, BMG Music, approached Hedges with the idea of trying to recreate the success of his best selling release, "Aerial Boundaries", now over a decade old. Hedges had demonstrated with his ensuing releases over the years to be an artist more interested in following his muse than sales projections, however, unbeknown to the record company fate was on their side. In a remarkable turn of events the guitar which had inspired much of Hedges first recordings and had been stolen thereafter had been returned, and new instrumental pieces had already begun flowing out of this reunion.
"Oracle" may disappoint fans of Hedges more technically flashy work, but it is a recording rich with melody, and compositions which are both harmonically complex and accessible. Hedges innovative reworking of The Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" is the lone vocal performance on "Oracle" , but even more impressive is his solo guitar arrangement of Frank Zappa's "Sofa", which Hedges worked out for a guitar tribute to the late composer. In another stunning turn of events Hedges actually had the opportunity to perform his arrangement for Zappa shortly before his death, and while he admits to "being a wreck" while playing the piece, will never forget Zappa's positive reaction and the time they spent together.
I met with Hedges on the morning after the first of what would be 40 tour dates in roughly 50 days to support the release of "Oracle". The night before he had entertained a large and very supportive crowd with his unique one man show which involves a surprising amount of theater, humor, singing, and oh yes...acoustic guitar.
JJ: Your latest release "Oracle" was inspired by the return of a long lost or stolen guitar?
MH: It was about 1982 , and I had just made "Breakfast In The Field", my first record. That album was recorded with a Somogyi guitar and another guitar made by Kenneth Dubourg from Baltimore. It was a nice guitar because it was the first real handmade instrument I had seen when I was at the Peabody Institute. The music stores in town carried nice Martin's and Gurian's but this Dubourg was a one of a kind, and in fact it was experimental in design with less bracing. It was kind of the classic story where the guy keeps returning to the guitar store to play the same instrument. I had no money because I was in school, but finally I got enough bucks to get it and when I went to the music store it wasn't there! I talked to the owner of the store who put me in touch with the luthier who helped me track down the woman who had purchased it. It turns out she wasn't that particular, she just liked the guitar . Kenneth Dubourg offered her another one of his instruments which she didn't mind trading for so I could have the guitar she had bought. I had played several of his guitars and there was definitely something about that one that was ringing like a bell for me, inside.
I wrote several tunes from my first record on that instrument as well as some others that got lost when that guitar was stolen. I had made "Breakfast In The Field" and was on tour when it was stolen at a Jerry Garcia show at the Stone Club in Palo Alto. I was pretty heartbroken because I had written my wedding song, "Woman Of The World" on that guitar. We move to 1995 , and I got a note backstage at a show from someone who thought they had my guitar. It had changed hands several times, it was broken where the headstock meets the neck, and someone had been repaired it by wrapping dental floss around it. There were cracks as well, so I was glad to see it , but on the other hand I was heartbroken and I didn't want to look at the thing. A friend of mine was at that show in Ashland and he was on his way to Palo Alto , so I gave it to him and asked him to take it to Grypheon Guitars in Palo Alto figuring they would know what to do with it. I eventually got it back just like new! It rang , and everything was so nice that I even began remembering a few tunes I had written on it but had never recorded, as well as writing a few new things which gave me the tunes to fill out the "Oracle" record.
JJ: I had read several months ago about your new album and It was being presented as more of a mix of songs and instrumentals , did finding the Dubourg help this evolve into a primarily instrumental recording?
MH: It evolved that way due to business as well, I got more instrumentals because the guitar came back, and I lost vocals because the label has a strong instrumental identity and had just changed owners. The new owners were looking at my sales figures and automatically record companies will say, "give us volume two of your best seller!" especially when they are wanting to re-establish me in that area, and luckily I could go along with them. I think that it was a stroke of luck too, because I had the vocals ready but they were written and arranged but not produced yet, and it would have taken me so long to produce them that I still wouldn't have a record, and I needed a record to get back out in the marketplace. "Visible in the marketplace!" you have to pay attention to that even though you'd like to be blissfully ignorant about the business, but pretty soon it'll come and check in so I figured it was time to do another all instrumental album again, I hadn't made one since "Taproot".
JJ: Aren't you the only guitarist from the original lineup of players on Windham Hill still on the label?
MH: I am the veteran I guess now.
JJ: Everytime word comes around the guitar/music scene that Michael Hedges is working on an instrumental record everybody wonders, "will this be the follow up to Aerial Boundaries?" - do you feel that ?
MH: There are lots of people who just want vocals, there are also lots of people who just want instrumentals , me ... ever since I started writing it would be a mix of vocals and instrumentals, you can't please all the people ever, really.
JJ: Speaking of songwriting and instrumentals being mixed , Bruce Cockburn used to throw a couple of guitar pieces on each of his early recordings, and in fact his "Islands In A Black Sky" reminds me a lot of some of your work.
MH: I copped all kinds of stuff from Bruce Cockburn! I just love Bruce Cockburn and John Martyn, I borrowed all kinds of stuff from him in the beginning as well. I will claim to be my own person now, but who doesn't listen to other people and try to emulate them. I was all over John Martyn , who also does instrumentals, and this is why I understand how people feel about me. When was the last time you heard John Martyn play acoustic guitar? I want John Martyn to go back and record acoustically! The same goes for Bruce Cockburn, "make a record Bruce!", and this is why I know people like solo acoustic guitar from me, and maybe they'll like this new record because there is a lot of it on there, but I can't let that dictate what turns me on. I am very happy to write acoustic guitar music, but only when it moves me and that way the record will move somebody.
JJ: Great players like Phil Keaggy, and Preston Reed were greatly influenced by "Aerial Boundaries" which opened up new doors for them and the way they approach the instrument, but I think your audience forgets that it wasn't a revelation to you because you were the one doing it, the next phase for you wasn't "Aerial Boundaries II" but the vocal offering, "Watching My Life Go By" which was not the expected follow up.
MH: That's a very interesting way of looking at it. To me "Aerial Boundaries" was just more guitar that grew out of the stuff I was doing on "Breakfast In The Field" ; more of the same. It (Aerial Boundaries) was just better produced, with better sound and effects from Steve Miller, who added some real heavy reverb on the title tune that was important for the smoothness of it; it was a slick record. It was "Breakfast In The Field" more developed and slightly slicker.
JJ: Many guitarists will still pick "Breakfast In The Field" if they only had one choice.
MH: Yeah, that record is just no frills, straight guitar, two mics that was it, no pickups, and I like that. I was ready to experiment , and "Spare Change" has that electronic thing in it which makes it interesting , as well as a couple of other players on "Menage a Trois", it's just a very balanced and artful record, and I do feel slightly the same about "Oracle" because it's got solo guitar and some ensemble in it. The thing I like about "Oracle" is it seems to be less guitaristic and more musical, not that those terms can't co-exist, but it's less pyrotechnics and more melody, I think. I am trying to pay attention to melody, and song, and less attention to how fast can I play, or what wierd tuning can I devise. I will never admitt to doing a piece of music because it has a wierd tuning or because I want to be innovative, I have always claimed that I've let the music be my guide, but this record seems to be coming more from my heart than from my hands.
JJ: That's a good point; the mark of a bad Michael Hedges impersonator , and there are many, is developing all the technique with none of the emotion or musicality.
MH: You may impress a guitar player with that , but your not going to win your girlfriend's heart with that (laughing).
JJ: You say that you haven't pursued pyrotechics on this release, but last night you literally rocked the house with your playing of "Jitterboogie" from the new record.
MH: That's not pyrotechnics, its gut! Something like "Ritual Dance" and "Jitterboogie" come from energy that is third chakra; you start with root chakra which is close to your sphincter, then up to your sex chakra, then there's the place where all your energy comes from , the third chakra in the gut or solorplexes which is where "Jitterboogie" is coming from now, then you go up to the heart chakra where everything is balanced, then your throat chakra which represents communication and singing, then you move to the third eye which represents the intellectual center, and up to the crown on the top of your head where your spirit is. I think that a balanced musician is balanced in all these areas, but you hear the Rolling Stones and you hear guts and sex, and you hear The Beatles, and you go up a little bit towards the heart, listen to some classical music with a lot of organization and you start hearing things from the throat and head. I am not putting down any concentration, I love concentrating on the sex part, I love concentrating on the third eye but to me my weak point has been really strong groove, and that to me is coming from the gut , so I have been concentrating, and working on it. I have always worn my guitar in front of it , I have hidden it, I have a little extra weight there so look out my gut is strarting to break open, that is where the Indians say that the coiled serpent is ready to uncoil, the Chinese call it the stove.
JJ: One of the things I noticed last night at your show was the way you color your playing by strumming with a pick sometimes, and at other times tucking the pick between your fingers and strumming with your thumb for a quieter tone. I also noticed that some notes you pick with your fingers and then play the same note later with the pick for dynamics. Are these conscious decisions based on the way you wrote the tunes?
MH: I don't ever think about stuff like that when I am writing , I only think about it when the writings done and I want to communicate the tune. You play a phrase one way long enough and it gets boring so I'll do it with my thumb for a more delicate feel and then I come back and wack it! later. If you're playing hard all the way it doesn't mean anything, so I go to the level of hardness, and I love to take it to a distorted level and as loud as it will go, but I also love the soft moments like last night on "Dirge" where I am beginning to lighten up my touch a little bit. The general tendency among musicians is to get excited and put it all out, and the adrenaline is going , and you realize you have nowhere to go, so you back off and you realize the strength in dynamics and the strength involved in being able to hold back. I am a solo artist who plays a lot of tunes which have been highly produced like the Peter Gabriel song "Talk To Me" which takes a little work to do as a solo.
JJ: The songs which you have covered over the years has been very diverse, what draws you to the songs you eventually record or perform ?
MH: It is just songs that I like. The last two; "Yesterday", and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" were inspired by watching the Beatles Anthology on video. I was at the end of one of the tapes and George Harrison was playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on acoustic guitar and I thought , how can I develope this ? By changing the time signature I could make it into a flowing sort of dirge. I heard the Beatles playing their songs in different time signatures while they were recording them so obviously it is not sacred ground and I felt that gave me a license to change it around. "Yesterday" is a song known by everybody on the planet, so I thought maybe I could make it a sad ballad, but you have to learn it and then forget how the Beatles did it, because if you even hint at trying to be The Beatles it's all over, it will never work, and "Yesterday" is the hardest one for me. Last night was my first performance of it by the way, but the reason it is so hard for me is that it is one of the first songs I ever learned. Paul McCartney does it in the key of F but the fingering is a G because his guitar was tuned down , so I was struggling all my life as a beginning guitarist with that F chord, and recently when I saw him playing it on the Anthology , I just thought that darned Paul!
JJ: It would seem that when you are working with a melody like that it would be hard to not slip back into singing it like you've heard it a million times.
MH: Well I anticipated it, and that's where I go to John Martyn and he does all the frailing and anticipating the beat, so I play "Yesterday" John Martyn style , anticipating the beat which lets the melody behave differently and I think allows the audience to hear the words in a different light.
JJ: On "Tomorrow Never Knows" you play it fingerstyle but never use your index finger.
MH: Beats me, I think I used to have a thing about my nail always getting worn down on my index finger so I use my little finger a lot. I think that's a thumb and pinky tune, with the opposing motion.
JJ: Do you pick a lot with your pinky, and can you get enough attack with it?
MH: Sure, for some reason I always use it as an auxilliary for playing certain parts.
JJ: I am only aware of Gordon Giltrap from England who uses a pick and his pinky for double stops.
MH: "World Pacific Records Contemporary Acoustic Guitar"; I dug Gordon Giltrap from 1975 , all those English guys were on that record, I was also hip to Martin Carthy who along with Leo Kottke are my rythmic gurus. On "Swaggering Boney" , when you hear Martin Carthy play you can see a guy who has a couple of pints in him just ambling along and you can feel him start to sober up, he is that precise rythmically.
JJ: Martin Carthy has that metal thumbpick going...
MH: Oh is that what he uses ?, a metal thumbpick, well that makes sense.
JJ: You use a flat pick often for your rythmic groove, do you use just the pointed end of the pick?
MH: All the time, a Fender Heavy, and I string from .013-.056, the string guages on the high strung I go from a .015 to .064.
JJ: Last night was the start of a 40 city tour in 50 days, is that something you enjoy, and what physical preparation goes into a gruelling schedule like that?
MH: I didn't in the past and it wore me down, but now that I do Yoga it flows better. Energy gets caught and Yoga helps you find the places where it gets caught and you stretch em out, I even do it during my show.
JJ: You have a lot in your show for
guitar fans but there is a lot of theatre as well.
MH: God bless guitar players , I'm one of them, but I am not going to go out and
play to guitar players, I play for the general public. I don't want a room full of guys
studying my fingers, that's intimidating, I would just as soon have somebody looking at my
face as well. I don't approach this as a guitarist , I have always approached the guitar
as a composer of music, and I have said that from the beginning. To me , that makes me a
better guitar player. If I approached it as a guitar player who composes , then I would
have a preconception as what it should be, and I would rather switch the guitar around to
fit the music, and that's why I change tunings. I admire Leo Kottke for never changing
tunings for the most part, and I think that's a strong point for him , but he still uses
his imagination. I am writing more and more in specific tunings and trying to develope my
left hand more rather than make the tuning fit so it can play easier, but lots of times
the things I am trying to get in a tune demands a certain voicing that is just not
possible.
JJ: Can you give us an idea of how you compose with the guitar?
MH: Most of the time it's fairly painstaking, because you get one lick and it works , but you get that tuning and one lick, and it's not going to work unless you sweat it out and make up all those other licks that will supplement that one idea. You get a tuning and if it doesn't work your gonna repeat and overdue it, I hear it time and time again; some kid finds a tuning and he heard me play, so he slaps the shit out of the guitar and I hear it and there is maybe one idea but it's undeveloped. I write back and say MORE MELODY!, if you don't have some sort of melodic movement you're just going to hear this one sonority, and it can be the greatest sonority in the world but it's not going to be music, it won't have the muse in the music. Find a great tuning and go to town on it but before you finish the tune you have got to figure somewhere to go so you can come back to it. You see you have got to introduce something which is a great idea and then you've got to develope it into a place where you can rest from that idea and have a nice floaty time or romp time and then come back to the original idea, which reinforces that. You don't have to have harmony, melody, and rythmn integrated all in the same piece , you can spill your guts out in the first piece, and then think it over in the next piece , and bring it together in the third piece. There is nothing wrong with listening to The Rolling Stones, I just don't want to do it all day, the song "Midnight Rambler" which is straight sex, you wouldn't want to listen to on repeat, and Mick Jagger knows this better than anybody, and that's why he sticks in the ballads.
JJ: Even though you have played for many years on electric, from your early Les Paul work to your more recent explorations with the Trans-Trem Steinberger, the acoustic instrument seems to be the most effective voice for you.
MH: I haven't really found my voice on electric guitar yet, It might come later on, the Trans-Trem was nice , I use it a little bit. I just haven't worked out my personality with amplifiers yet and acoustic guitars have a certain sound which is very distinguished from other acoustic guitars. You can line up acoustic guitars and each one seems to speak right off the bat , and you don't have to goof around with amplifiers to get all the sounds, it doesn't mean that I don't want to , maybe I'm just not a patient as Eric Johnson is , because that is what he does.
JJ: Are you interested in other guitar players?
MH: I'm interested in everything musical. I don't have much time lately, but I love listening and have a huge library. One of the guitar players and songwriters I dearly love is Willis Allan Ramsey, and I got many licks off him as well as learning some of the rythmic stuff. He only made one record , he is telling me that he will make another one but I haven't seen it yet.
JJ: Your book , "Rhythm Sonority Silence", features some fascinating comments by you in the introduction. Your statement, "Musical composition is the organization of sound", would you elaborate?
MH: Musical compositon is the organization of sound is like literature being the organization of words; a very basic statement. If you take things down to their basics you'll remove some of the blockages that have been put up, just like energy gets blocked in your body if you are sitting around on a computer terminal, and on the phone, then your neck gets blocked up. If you are playing guitar all day, and in a certain way, it's going to get blocked up in your shoulders and your neck. Many classical guitar players start to develop problems in their lower back because they are sitting all the time with one foot propped up. How do you solve that? Well I do Yoga to remove those physical blockages. If you are sitting around composing all the time, you will get the same kind of blockages; not in your body, but in your concept of what composition is. I am mentioning the physical blockages as a metaphor; say I am sitting around, and I have done Aerial Boundaries 1 thru 10 , well there are going to be blockages in the shoulder of my composition. When I refer to the basic concept that composition is the organization of sound I may realize I don't even need a guitar to finish a composition , lets see what I can do with a whistle. I opened the concert last night with the song "Oracle" which originally was a kind of Bossa Nova guitar tune that when I recorded it I was able to remove that Bossa Nova "shoulder" thing by bringing in other instruments. Since I removed the blockage I am now able to play it as a guitar solo without the "shoulder thing" blocking the performance. The most important advice I usually give, which is the afterthought to this discussion, is to stay open minded to new compositional methods.
Discography:
Oracle WH -10934
The Road To Return HS- 10329
Taproot WH-1093
Live On The Double Planet WH-1066
Aerial Boundaries WH-1032
Breakfast In The Field WH-1017
Watching My Life Go By OA-0303
"Rhythm Sonority Silence" published by Stropes Editions
LTD and only available by mail at PH 414 636-9910, FX 414 636-9911 and US orders (800)
733-2520
The Second Law: Tuning AADGBD
MH: "A very easy tune, just be prepared to stop your strings when they interfere.
When you let stuff ring on especially with open tunings it's gonna clash, and get in the
way of the sonorities you want to hear. Nothing is going to stop that string from
continueing unless you stop it. If you are going to strike the string take responsibility
for its decay, or karma, to ring until you stop it! " The Second Law" was a case
of pure discovery and that is one of the first things I wrote when the Dubourg was
returned to me. I just sat down with no preconcieved ideas, it was just the joy of hearing
the sound of the instrument. The joy of that song and why it works is just that wood, the
mystery of wood. In China , wood is one of the elements, and an energy force which
represents growth, and that's what this wood was doing when I wrote "The Second
Law". I just hit this one little chord: BRRRing! and the way those chords resolved
made me write this piece all coming out of that one cadence. I figured out three different
ways to play it, and I figured that was enough (laughing). I think a lot of that piece
reminds me of Alex De Grassi with the changes I used. "
GEAR BOX:
Michael Hedges is touring with three guitars. Hedges goes back and forth between his
trusty and very well worn Martin D-28 and a Lowdon, as well as his Dyer Harp guitar. He
uses string guages from .013 to .056 and a Fender Heavy plectrum. The fingernails on
Hedge's right hand are not particularly long with the exception of his little finger which
he uses quite a bit. He is unhappy that they are worn down but doesn't like to apply
anything to them unless it is an emergency. To avoid hand and arm problems Hedges
constantly stretches his hands, arms, back and shoulders to try and offset the effects of
the repetetive motions involved in playing. Hedges secret of his warm and powerful live
guitar sound is his use of two pickups on each guitar, he uses a FRAP piezo pickup in
conjunction with a Sunrise magnetic pickup. Hedges feels the secret to his sound is the
placement of his FRAP, "I do not use it on the bridge, I won't use a pickup in the
bridge, I put it inside on the body, that's why you can hear it when I hit it! It is
because it is real, not on the bridge, when you listen to an acoustic guitar you're not
feeling the bridge we are listening to the wood, so let's listen to the wood."
The placement of the FRAP, which is three piezos in one, is placed in different
spots depending on which guitar it's in and Hedges lets his guitar tech decide the exact
location.