By James Jensen - 1994
Leo Kottke wanders onto the stage, Jim Olson 6-string in one hand and Taylor's "Leo Kottke signature model" 12-string in the other. Casually attired in a dress shirt (open collar, no tie) and sport coat he is following the tuxedo clad Pepe Romero who was preceded by Flamenco's great Paco Pena and legendary Jazz virtuoso Joe Pass. As the evening's final performer on the "Guitar Summit" tour Kottke settles into his chair, scrunches his face towards the spotlight, and mumbles in his trademark monotonic baritone, "I didn't really know what I'd do when they asked me to take part in this thing..... but I figured that Joe, Paco, and Pepe probably wouldn't be playing a lot of slide." The audience roars with laughter and Kottke removes a bottleneck from his jacket pocket and launches into a medley of his 12-string slide classics. This is a typical example of Kottke's attitude, proud to be included with these giants of the instrument, but relaxed and not taking it or himself too seriously.
Kottke exploded onto the music scene in the late sixties when John Fahey's Takoma Records label released his ground breaking "6 and 12 string Guitar" album. The seventies found Kottke enjoying the status of a near pop-star, touring the world, and producing ten records for the Capitol and Chrysalis labels. Around 1983 Kottke developed a debilitating sort of tendonitis in his arm. The cause of this ailment seemed to be the very technique he had used to such great effect for the past twenty years! Unwilling to give up his instrument Kottke undertook a complete revamping of his playing style, and resurfaced on the Private Music label three years later. The next major surprise in Kottke's career was his stunning development as a lyricist of not only great wit , but weight with "Jack Gets Up" on his "My Father's Face" record. Two years later, inspired by the reception to that song , Kottke released "Great Big Boy", an album devoid of instrumentals (a first in his twenty five year recording career).
Nearly thirty years into his career the ever youthful looking Kottke is showing no signs of slowing down. He is on tour with the before mentioned "Guitar Summit" show and has just released the Rickie Lee Jones produced "Peculiaroso".
JJ: I believe you've said that finding the guitar saved your life, is that true?
Kottke: Yeah , I think it is true. I was taking a nose dive somewhere between eleven and twelve because my sister had died and I was practicing something that siblings do which is follow in their footsteps and die as well. It actually does happen, and whether I would have croaked or not is one thing but I had been in bed for a couple of months and I needed something or that's probably where I'd have stayed , and the guitar was it. I had been playing on other instruments since I was five but there was something special about the guitar , and still is.
JJ: Who were the first guitarists you heard or influenced you?
Kottke: The first music I was exposed to was Stravinsky and I loved it but I don't remember it. I was two and a half and my folks would put it on the record player and I would run around the house screaming , but I haven't been that hip since. I really didn't hear any guitar for a long time after I started playing and when I did the first thing I heard was Laurindo Almeida playing some Villa Lobos . The second thing I heard was Sabicas (Flamenco great) so I was pretty thoroughly intimidated by it.
JJ: When you first began to play was it something that you were compelled to do in all your free time?
Kottke: Absolutely , and it still is. We had a day off here yesterday and I just sat in my room and played. I really can't think of a better way to spend my time and that's kind of stunted the rest of my life but it's unbeatable.
JJ: Were you writing songs or instrumentals right from the very start?
Kottke: Yes and for two reasons: one , I couldn't find anything to imitate at the time, and secondly because what I heard on the radio didn't bear any resemblance to what I wanted to hear on the guitar. I had been playing single note instruments and I wanted to hear a guitar played as a piano.
JJ: What compelled you to start performing for other people, and when was that?
Kottke: The compulsion was free beer and I was still in High School . I played a set in a place called Bassin's Lounge in Washington D.C. , ordered my free pitcher of Beer and they charged me for it so I learned a lot in that first performance.
JJ: You had previously released a vocal album when you recorded the legendary "6 and 12 string guitar" instrumental album for John Fahey's Takoma records,whose idea was it for you to not sing on that record?
Kottke: I had discovered the slide guitar through John's playing of a Bukka White tune called "Poor Boy" which is on my current record (Peculiaroso) and I went out and got a wine bottle and smashed it on the sidewalk and took off! I don't come up with that much slide stuff anymore but I did in the beginning and all of a sudden I was dying to write instrumentals. I don't know why that was such a trigger because up to that point at least half of the set was vocal. When I sent the audition tape to Fahey he said " Don't sing, but I like your guitar playing" . I had been trying to solve some of the rhythm problems you have in the right hand in terms of trying to avoid repetition and I finally started getting a handle on that specifically with the tune "Ojo".
JJ: At the time of your instrumental release it was proported that your singing voice sounded like "Geese farts on a muggy day" where did that come from?
Kottke: That's a quote from a guy long dead now named Frank Miller who was a poet who made his living selling sticks with anatomically correct eyeballs mounted on one end. Somehow he could get medically graded glass eyes and if you ever saw one of those sticks looking at you , you'd jump out of your skin. It was one of the spookiest things I'd ever seen. He was an interesting guy who had a full head of red hair which he covered with a wig of red hair and it was quite a look!
JJ: After the huge success of that Takoma release you signed with Capital and then Chrysalis and toured as an opening act for some major rock artists of the time as a soloist was that a performance nightmare or a welcome challenge?
Kottke: I opened for Humble Pie , the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Procol Harum who took me to Europe for the first time . I never had any problems , and it was always a surprise to those audiences when they heard how much sound was available on a flat top guitar. I also played on a bill with The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Frank Zappa at the Nassau Coliseum which at the time was the largest indoor facility in the United States.
JJ: With Capital and Chrysalis you went through ten years where you put out at least that many albums, are you that prolific or was it hard to write that much and tour?
Kottke: It was demanding but I didn't notice it at the time because I hadn't taken the time to add it all up. I think that all of the records I made at that time suffered because of the time schedule but I managed to get them out. I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn't want to do covers . I went to Chrysalis to get away from the deadlines and I got a little more room. It was almost two years after I left Capital that I put out the first one on Chrysalis and that was really instructive because it was no better in particular than any other record I'd done.
JJ: Around the time of your last release for Chrysalis in 1983 "Time Step" you faced a possible career ending injury or ailment?
Kottke: Yeah I would feel it in my forearm and wrist and it would radiate into my fingers and it wasn't pain as much as it was a feeling of shutting down or paralysis. It was a kind of paralysis you would get from tendonitis and I would last about five to ten minutes into the set and it would set in and I really couldn't play. I would flounder. It lasted a long time and it was a horrible situation because I would go out to play knowing I would be awful and there was nothing I could do about it.
JJ: Did you have fears that your career was over?
Kottke: Oh yeah ! and I couldn't sit up on stage and say "I know this sucks and I don't like it any more than you do but my arms all screwed up." You have to pretend that you like it which makes you feel and probably look like a real moron.
JJ: What did you do to come out of that?
Kottke: I had to throw away my picks. A few years before this happened a guy named Stanley Watson told me if I didn't stop using the fingerpicks I was going to hurt something and not just because of the picks but because of how hard I was playing with them and he was right. There isn't really a treatment and most people solve their problems by changing their technique which is what I did but it takes a long time and it's really , really, tough. You turn into an instant wimp as far as tone and volume are concerned.
JJ: After that period of rehabilitation you resurfaced on Private Music with the all instrumental "A Shout Toward Noon" but you had a new tone and I think caught even your most loyal fans by surprise.
Kottke: I have always been a tone freak and that's what hooked me on the guitar to begin with, and I think it's the primary thrill before the music . We spent a lot of time on that record with the sound and recorded it on the Paramount sound stage which is this huge room where the sound is reflected but the reflection is so late and comes from so far away that it doesn't blur the music but gives you a room nonetheless.
JJ: Your record "My Father's Face" featured the song "Jack Gets Up" which really elicited a strong response from your audience and even got a surprising amount of FM airplay , did the success of that song catch you off guard?
Kottke: Yeah it dead, and it seems silly now but I thought I was revealing way too much of myself in that song.
JJ: What prompted it?
Kottke: Mainly a cigar. Joe Pass put me onto cigars while we did a short tour of Australia several years ago and by the time I left I was so sick of them that I gave them up. I woke up one morning in a Howard Johnson's and one of these cigars had made it back from Australia and I just lit it before I got out of bed and started writing the lyric. I already had a music track, and as I started the cigar I had one mood which was kind of delighted but the lyric is real sour at that point and then the cigar took hold which means the nausea started creeping in and right about then the character in the song finds the lint in his pocket but the tune takes an optimistic turn there. Once I had finished it I felt I might have exposed myself too much . It was an important song for me because it told me I could write lyrics a little bit differently than I had been.
JJ: When you write lyrics are you writing from your own experiences or do you like to approach it as fiction?
Kottke: What I used to do was to take a deliberate interest like you would if you were writing a poem or a story but with that song I found out that if I could be patient enough while it was going on that it would take care of itself, but it would be gibberish unless I felt I was scaring myself and putting too much of me in there. It is a little like a faux paus or having an enormous belch in the middle of somebodys funeral or something they can make me feel that way while I'm writing them and if I'm feeling that way I know I'm on the right track.
JJ: In a much lighter mood is "Why Can't You Fix My Car?" which sounds as if you wrote it in the parking lot of a Sears Auto Center?
Kottke: Well just about, that line popped out of nowhere and fit a tune I already had and at the same time reminded me of the car trouble I had in Germany. I used to build motors and I learned that it's one thing to build them and It's another thing entirely to diagnose a motor. Car trouble is a common experience and Tin Pan Alley tells us those are goldmines but the goldmine on that tune is the drumming of Jim Keltner.
JJ: Your next record "That's What " took a very Jazzy turn.
Kottke: "That's What" happened because I was really interfering with myself . I was trying very hard to use some of the harmony I had learned and make it happen on tape although there is a tune that works well off that record which is " Oddball" . I may have gotten a little shook by "Jack Gets Up" and to do it live is a little unnerving and makes me feel a little bit naked .
JJ: So you took a break between vocal records to explore the jazz harmony kind of guitar but also out of fear of these personal revelations in your lyrical content?
Kottke: Yeah I think I deliberately avoided it.
JJ: Your first all vocal album "Great Big Boy" was a big critical success and very well received by your fans are you going to try something like that again ?
Kottke: I'd like to do at least another record with Steve Berlin (the Producer) because he had a lot to do with that . He is a great arranger but more than anything else he remembers what the tune was the first time he heard it. I think it's about recognition , you know you have a tune when you recognize it as a tune not when you decide if it's good or bad , it just stands up and waves at you. When you go to record those things they can kind of change or disappear because of the time involved and Steve remembers.
JJ: That record featured the chilling song "The Driver" would you tell us about how that came about?
Kottke: That's one of the few tunes I've got where the geography got me. I almost never have something I can point to as a trigger , but I do have the cigar and in that song I have the geography. I was on highway 10 which runs along the South of the country and in this case runs the south of Texas and into New Mexico, and I was writing it on my knee while I was driving . I almost stopped writing it because in the first couple of verses, which came very fast , I thought it was kind of corny and I was writing just another "dead refugee song" which has been done a lot and it's been done in unforgettable ways, my favorite being the Woody Guthrie song about the plane load of refugees that crashed in Los Gatos. I started to think that there is enough of these songs and I generally don't like being that specific but it was giving me that feeling in a different way that I was exposing myself and giving myself the creeps and it wasn't in the way I usually get that feeling. It was like I was going against my own taste in songs and I didn't stop it , and let me interject something here since this is a songwriter interview, if you have an idea and you don't see it through to the end or to what it thinks the end is and you stop it, you won't get any ideas for a long time, you will be punished for snubbing it, whatever that process is.
So because of that and the creepy feeling I was getting I continued, and something happened where it took that turn that I really like and it is another refugee song in some fashion but it's sympathies are a little unexplored and I really like the thing.
I had a really tough time finding out what to do with that lyric musically, and that record is unique for me in that sense because most all of the lyrics preceded any melody or guitar which is maybe why some of them are spoken.
JJ: That brings up my next question which is where did you get the inspiration for the spoken word style you've really developed so well on several new songs?
Kottke: I'm probably unique in that when I was a little boy of five or six instead of having a ball-player or ninja-turtle as a hero it was an announcer, a guy named Martin Agronski. So at six years old I was listening to the radio to hear some guys voice , which is strange, and I still remember his sponsor which was Butternut Coffee and he read his own copy and I was mesmerized by his voice and I didn't know what coffee or butternuts were but I did know it involved cans.
JJ: Was the song "Pepe Hush " inspired by life on the road?
Kottke: That one was unique because it was literally an experience that I had and I did embellish it a bit but I did kick the wall and I did fall down.
JJ: But you didn't fry your nose on a light bulb?
Kottke: No, and I wasn't unconscious but I wanted that dog to die! Actually I wanted her to die , she was the whole problem , if she'd just let the damn dog out. That was in a terrible motel some where in Tennessee and I'd been driving forever.
I wrote a lot of that record in the car or after stopping while driving. If you get really worn out that's frequently a good way to get an idea because your usual noise isn't happening and they can come through easier.
JJ: Is it easier for you to compose instrumentals or write songs?
Kottke: There is a difference between them but I don't think it lies in how difficult they are to do I think it's in where your attention is. I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.
JJ: Do a lot of your tunes just come out of noodling around on the instrument until something happens that you want to pursue?
Kottke: That's exactly what I do. I have written things on paper where I don't even pick up a guitar and I've only done that twice because it was really horrifying.
JJ: Something I find unusual about your playing is that a lot of guitarists get tired of the sameness of standard tuning after a while and look toward alternate tunings to develop new sounds while you started with a lot of alternate tunings and then moved to standard tuning and more of an academic approach to broaden your scope with the instrument.
Kottke: Yeah , and I'm glad you brought that up because it's important to me. I think that open tunings are a trap really because it's really hard not to sound like an open tuning when your using one and that gets old as well as what you learn in one open tuning is going to stay there. I've done a few concerts with Chet Atkins and I remember at a seminar in North Carolina where someone in the audience asked Chet what he thought of open tunings and he replied " I despise them" and he's not the kind of guy to use that word lightly.
JJ: With an instrumental or vocal composition , how do you know when you are finished?
Kottke: Sometimes it's obvious and the more obvious it is the better your chances are that it's a good tune. There is a line from "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" when the alcoholic is asked by his wife why he drinks and he says he "drinks for the click" it's both how you know when you've got something worth working on and when you're done , there's a "click" kind of like throwing a switch or something.
JJ: You've spent your entire career performing as a solo , which means you don't have other musicians to hide behind on a bad night or to play off of to keep things fresh, is it more pressure being a solo performer?
Kottke: Well I have almost nothing to compare it to so for me it is just the way it is. There are nights when you can feel stale because you've fallen into a pattern by touring too much, but it's easy to get out of it by deliberately getting in trouble and playing yourself into a corner to then see if you can get out of it. The principle element in a performance is risk, and if you're losing interest then by scaring yourself to death the audience will feel it and boy it'll wake them up. It is a lot easier to perform solo in the terms of "crowd control" as Steve Goodman used to put it. Steve toured with a band for about a year and a half and he was truly a great performer but he had to quit with the band because although there was more sound and company on the road and he got to amplify the experience socially on stage he couldn't work the crowd and it became the same show night after night.
JJ: Do you mix your show depending on how the audience is receiving the material and will you vary say how many vocals you do because of that reaction or do you have a set list that you stick to?
Kottke: What "in concert " is about is that you're in there together and the audience doesn't run things and neither does the performer . You all want to be "in concert" and when that happens you have a good night, and it can happen when the playing is awful or terrific . When the audience is awful you can still have a great night and people will walk out thinking they had a great time even though there was loads of loudmouths and the sound was terrible. It is not a mystical thing ,however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes. It is just your sense of where that "in concert" is and how to get more of it. In a sense you are just satisfying yourself but you are in the audience as much as they are but it's definitely not " I can tell they want more vocals or , I can tell they want me to shut-up". You can't really tell what the audience wants but you can tell what will keep everybodies attention in the same place.
JJ: Do you feel obliged to throw in a few of the old "hits" in each set and do you mind?
Kottke: Yeah I do and I don't mind , in fact that is one of the real encouraging things about this whole career of mine is that there are tunes I wrote almost thirty years ago that I will still play in front of an audience and I still like the old tunes.
JJ: Anybody that has seen you live would probably find it hard to believe that when you began as a performer you rarely if ever communicated to the audience verbally,what brought you out from behind your guitar?
Kottke: That's an interesting question ; I was sitting on a stage and I had two gooseneck mic stands, one for the vocal and one for the guitar, and everytime I started playing they would start to move . Now I hadn't looked up for three years at that point and I'd said almost nothing but one of the goosenecks took off and I'd been yanking these things around and getting really pissed, and I had remembered trying to kill a chicken as a kid in Oklahoma so I said "Has anybody ever tried to kill a chicken?" and the audience laughed. That was a new experience for me and I just kind of recalled that event while cracking myself up, and I was falling apart remembering this debacle with the chicken and they were right there with me. That was when I found out that you could talk to them and it was a whole other way to blow your stack , and it's so much fun to perform that you want to do it again and the more you get out of it the better. The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.
JJ: The humorous stories that you tell, are they a choreographed part of the show?
Kottke: It's an important part of what I do now and sometimes I wish it wasn't because there are nights when I would rather not open my mouth. I would say that if you don't feel like talking to the crowd something is wrong and if you force yourself to talk to them things will happen and to that extent things aren't choreographed. I will literally open my mouth not knowing what is coming out. I do have a library of events I can talk about and I always expect to find a different point of view on it so even if I talk about the same event in the same town it's fresh. I seem to find different material every four to six months and I frequently forget it which is a shame because it would be nice to have a bigger library.
JJ: Your newest release "Peculiaroso" is produced by Rickie Lee Jones and you seem to change producers regularly is this an attempt to make things different or does it just happen?
Kottke: The later is true, it really just happens. It depends on the time of the year and who I've been talking to , I try to put people in the studio I like. I don't spend a lot of time thinking of what they'll do musically , I try to imagine being locked into a windowless room with this person for twelve hours at a time. If you can look at that and think it might be fun then maybe you've got the right musician.
JJ: Was the song "Parade" on the new record inspired by an actual event?
Kottke: It was but I didn't know it until long after I had written it , in fact until after it was on tape. Rickie had asked if I could demo any ideas I had lying around and I played that tune as if it were finished and she had the tape running so we were done! I stopped to look at it so I could give it a title and I realized it was Cheyenne , Wyoming when I was a kid and the kind of miserable fix I was in. Myself and everybody else were just a little bunch of hoodlums and I kind of figured I'd end up in prison and a couple of us did. There was a parade involving Roy Rodgers or Gene Autry and we tried to disturb his horse.
JJ: I have heard you reference authors a lot, does reading inspire your songwriting?
Kottke: I think it makes it feel more at home , I read like a pig but I don't think it directly inspires it or effects it though.
JJ: Do you have any performance tips for people who are going to be performing as a solo?
Kottke: Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is not to try too hard. A lot of people from seasoned professionals to beginners just try too hard and it's embarrassing for them and the audience. It can work, which is the insidious thing about it , but I try to relax , which is also the best way to play. Another piece of advice is to pay attention and not think of it as a set that is going to end in another hour or something but as a note or a verb or breath that you're in the middle of because it's important to stop the clock in that sense and really narrow your perspective and that way everything happens in it's own time and things tend to have their own values notewise and you have variety and an automatic depth to the set and none of it has to do with producing anything dramatic it just has to do with paying attention. That's what Steve Goodman was a genius at , he had all the larger stuff like how to structure a set but he was a real genius at being so attentive that the audience was just riveted, I always hated following him it was just miserable.
JJ: For a kid who figured he'd end up in prison one day you've had a career that's survived everything from Disco to New Age , what do you attribute your longevity to?
Kottke: Well I think part of it is my drawbacks or limitations. When a record company looks at me I'm very hard to market, I don't really fit anywhere, It's hard to get me on the air, and I'm hard to demography, but! because of that I'm not subject to trends like you pointed out. I'm not subject to their rise and fall because I'm not accepted by them, so I have my own little curve going on. A lot of it is because of how much I play , I think I connect like when all you had was Vaudeville , I think I have an audience by performing a lot! I am evidence that you don't have to sell a lot of records or succeed in the usual way to have a big audience and a job. I have always thought of myself as a performer first and way down the line as a recording artist.
JJ: How much of it do you think has to do with the fact that some thirty odd years later on your day off you spend the whole day playing guitar?
Kottke: Yeah... you're right on the money, I enjoy it more than I did when I started and I thought the opposite would happen. It's true that the more you put in the more you get out and that has to be there I think, If you aren't really hooked on your instrument this job would be a hell on earth but if you are, it's the best.