Photo courtesy of Mephisto
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Joe Morris has
been slowly and steadily building a body of work that is as formidable and
impressive as any guitarist who has come before him. His approach to the instrument is nothing
short of revolutionary. The sheer
velocity of his improvisations compares more easily to saxophonists in the
tradition of Eric Dolphy than with any other
guitarist in the history of the instrument’s existence. If that sounds exaggerated, go listen to
his trio steamroll through vamps, grooves, and bluesy melodies and you will
be one of the converted. Since the
re-emergence of his own label Riti Records in 2002, Joe has built up an impressive
discography on the label, including new trios with pianist Steve Lantner, drummer Whit Dickey, and drummer Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker. Brian Carpenter spoke with Joe
Morris in this interview about his approach to the instrument, his
discography, and his working trio with bassist Timo
Shanko and drummer Luther Gray. I don’t think
I’ve ever changed direction Hendrix and the
big loud electric guitar trilogy The
guitar’s role in free jazz ------------------------------------------------------------------ BC:
Since we just heard some of the new record, I wanted to talk about
this new trio. We were just listening
and sort of in awe of
Timo Shanko and Luther
Gray. Timo’s
playing on the acoustic bass seems almost inhuman at times. It must be such a great well to draw from
playing with these guys. JM:
It is. They’re phenomenal
musicians and they’re a ball to play with.
Every period in jazz has always been built off of the platform of the
rhythm section. Charlie Parker had his
rhythm section. If the rhythm section
didn’t operate the way they operated, it wouldn’t sound like Charlie
Parker. Ornette
Coleman wouldn’t sound like Ornette Coleman
playing with Charlie Parker’s rhythm section.
He had to have his own rhythm section.
And Timo and Luther. And also Timo
and Django Carranza
of the Fully Celebrated Orchestra, sets up a rhythm section
situation that no one else can do that I’ve heard. Anywhere.
And it has every component of precision and dynamic excitement of the
greatest bebop lineage. Compared to
the sort of more expressionistic aspect of free jazz, this is...free bop. BC:
I see… JM:
And I’ve always played free bop.
I always love free bop. I love
the expressionistic area of free jazz too, and I’ve done as much of that as I
could. But because I play the guitar and
it sort of requires that you articulate, I like to be in an environment where
I get to articulate rhythmically and melodically. And I want that to be as spectacular as I
can get it. [laughing] And I want it to be as
expressionistic as I can get it. And
without a doubt Timo is like the other side of my
brain. I know anyone that plays with
him and can keep up with him...obviously the main person that you’d associate
with Timo is Jim Hobbs, who is also a
genius. And anyone who’s ever played
with him or heard him knows that.
They’re just going to lean on Shanko and
just try not to fall over. He gives
you the cushiest platform to just let it go...and as long as you can hang
there and keep up, it’s really like bouncing on a trampoline,
it’s the easiest thing in the world.
And with Luther there holding the whole thing up...it’s just a riot to
play with them. We turn to each other
in the middle of some incredibly fast swinging thing and just laugh. It’s just so much fun. BC:
Yes, I’ve seen that happen before [laughing]... JM:
You know, after all of the things that have happened in the last ten
or twelve years in the music scene and the things I was associated with which
were more expressionistic and more and more elaborate in the explanations of
what it was, I really wanted to just get back to playing and trying to be
spectacular...trying to make people in the audience just sort of pulled down
by the tension and the release of playing.
And really make it more like the kind of environment like the early Anthony
Braxton ensemble, Jimmy Lyons, Eric Dolphy,
and Ornette, and those kinds of musics,
where things are just rhythmically bouncing along in a way that is
just...superhuman. BC:
As a listener, I mean, going back and hearing Dolphy
for instance, and then actually seeing the film footage of him playing with Mingus, it’s just overwhelming, you get carried away with
it... JM: Yeah, it’s just a different kind of
experience. It’s almost more physical
than it is psychological or mental or spiritual, in a way. But again, because Timo
and Luther are so good, they have that depth in their playing and they have
so much knowledge of what’s happened and so much respect for the aesthetic
content of the music, and they’re such honest people.... So I think what we’re doing is not
at all...I think it annoys some people.
I know I’ve been trying to book things in BC:
It is a different aesthetic, though. What I’m hearing in the group that is very
unique is the fact that it is in fact very executed
and precise but at the same time it’s still a very free music, and somehow it
works in both worlds. And I can’t
think of any other ensemble in new music now that is the juxtaposition of
those two aesthetics that is as effective. JM:
Well, part of it is the way the tunes are written. My tunes are pretty thin. But they’re very specific. They describe the area that you go to play,
and because of that I can have a wide variety in the kinds of pieces that we
play without writing in a more elaborate manner. I keep it simple and I put it together the
right way and edit out the parts that don’t need to be there. I edit out the parts that don’t drive us
right to that spot that we’re trying to get to so that we can play
differently. If we do it well and
we’re on point when we play, then each piece has a different projection and
each piece allows us to explore different kinds of things. So because I’ve
always worked as a free improviser and as a free jazz player, and that’s all
I’ve ever wanted to do, I know a lot about how to put things together to
create environments to play in. And
I’ve always had to do that because otherwise the guitar gets put into a sort
of subservient role in the ensemble, it’s just the nature of the instrument
and the way everyone plays. So anyone
who’s played with me over the years can tell you that I’m really exact about
what we’re going to use so that my instrument doesn’t get put into the rhythm
guitar part. Part of my role in doing
this is to put the guitar up front and let it articulate those ideas that I
hear being expressed by the sort of alto voice lineage -- Bird and Ornette and Braxton -- which is the sort of high language
in the music. The alto voice, to me,
holds that better than any other, and as you follow through the theoretical
aspects of the music, the alto voice leads that along. So I want the guitar to speak like the alto
voice. And if you listen to my discography,
you’ll hear that each record brings that out in a different way
intentionally. I can describe what
each one of them is about, and each piece on each record has a specific role
that it plays to bring out a part of the guitar that would otherwise be a
bunch of notes. Some of them might be
less distinguishable to people than others, but I think that they’re pretty
clear. That’s really the nature of the
body of my work is to give the guitar a very specific environment to
articulate in. And to function like a
string instrument! Almost like a
violin or a fiddle...get up there and play the damn thing and don’t worry
about comping for the horn players except
sometimes, you know? And just let
other people worry about that. I have
the thing I wanted to do, I’ve been working on it since the early 70s, and...I
survived the thinnest part of it so far. BC:
This free bop aesthetic...the guitar is a very discrete instrument in
the sense that it perhaps is more difficult to be expressionistic than it would be on a saxophone. I’m wondering if this aesthetic was
something you worked to, did you change direction at some point...? JM:
I don’t think I’ve ever changed direction. I think I’ve been doing the exact same
thing since 1974, which is when I really started doing this. What I’ve tried to do is bring out as many
characteristics of it as I can pertaining to what’s happened in the music
before me, what’s happened in the music while I was doing it, things that I
thought were interesting that I like to explore, things that pertain to
completely free improvisation, things that pertain to structured free
improvisation, to tunes, and to tunes that work in various ways within the
realm of improvising. Certain tunes
may suggest a harmony that I play over the top of, they might have ostinato patterns that I play over, that might be
templates that carve out melodic statements, different rhythmic things...just
as many things as I could think of that are distinctive from one another or a
combination of something. So when the
possibility was there for me to make modules of different components, I made
recordings off of those. When I wanted
to work on the idea of arranging my band so that certain subsets of the band
were displayed in certain ways, I did that.
When I wanted to play behind other instruments, I added other
instruments. So I’ve just sort of done that and
ignored what anyone else said I was supposed to do. And I’m totally thrilled that I managed to
accomplish what I’ve accomplished musically.
I’m really happy about how it’s turned out and the people I’ve managed
to play with. I’m sitting here and I
know my band is incredible and they don’t even need me there. If I had a heart attack on stage they could
cover for it. And there are just a
whole bunch of things open for the future which are
not dependent upon any kind of trend or conceptual clap-trap. I just have to try to play and when it’s
time to stop, stop. BC:
How did you meet Timo, did you meet him
through JM:
Man, I saw them play on the street in 1989. Andrew Neumann and I saw Jim Hobbs with Ray
Anthony and Timo playing on the street in And so I introduced myself to them
and they started playing on gigs. I
just always loved them, I always thought they were
amazing. I talk about Jim Hobbs
all the time because I think he’s as good as anyone who’s ever played that
instrument. And he’s so good that he
has to experience what everyone good has had to experience, which is that he
doesn’t get anywhere near the attention he deserves, because the world of
this music is all focused on silly tiny minutia and looking to find some
summation of all these things that have happened, instead of saying “It just
sounds good, let’s listen to it”.
They’re so bogged down with the theoretical and the paper being
delivered next week by some conceptualist that they forget that this is soul
music. And if you want to hear some
soul music, go and listen to Jim Hobbs and get that chill up your spine. I made a record with him called “Racket
Club” in 1993 and there’s one piece on there called “Revolve” and he takes a
solo on it and every time I hear it I get a chill up my spine, it’s
blood-curdling. We did a quartet gig
at the Vision Festival this year with him and I walked through the room and
every musician I knew there said, “Who is that
guy?” If anybody wonders what’s
happened with the music go and listen to these guys, they’ve figured it
out. BC:
Can you talk about the two electric ensembles you
put together, Racket Club and Sweat Shop and what the concept
was behind those records? JM:
Sweat Shop is 1989. Racket
Club is ’93. Years ago I made a
record called Human Rites and it was a really successful record. It was sold through the old new music
distribution service and it got a lot of airplay and it made top ten lists
all over the country. I produced it
myself; it’s a double LP. And I got
one review in Op Magazine (laughs)…one of the old places you could get
a review… BC:
Never heard of it… JM:
It was a precursor to Option Magazine, kind of a newsprint
thing. And they said the record was good
but as a power trio it was weak. And I
just thought, power trio? I wrote the
guy a letter and I said there’s an acoustic bass on here. If I wanted to have a power trio, man,
you’d hear a power trio. So I thought,
okay, that’s another thing I’ve had to endure: I didn’t play like Derek
Bailey like everyone told me. And
I didn’t play like Blood Ulmer.
Even though both of those guys are my friends and we all respect each
other because we’re all different. So
I said well, the hell with it. And
with Sweat Shop I just did what I had been doing before I started the
free jazz stuff, which was to play a kind of blues style in the open
tonality. And I thought
about – you know, because I’m always thinking too much – let’s see, what’s Blood’s take on Hendrix. Because Hendrix, if you’re a guitar
player, is like The Pyramids.
Civilization goes up to a certain point and they built The Pyramids
and that’s Hendrix. If you’re an
electric guitar player, now there’s actually an icon that we can all view and
it gives us reference to everything that preceded it. So you have to deal with Hendrix. But I don’t want to be one of those guys
that (laughs) puts on my headband and does my fake Hendrix thing; I think
that’s nonsense. It’s already been
done, leave him alone. Let’s draw
material out of it. Well obviously
he’s a blues guitarist who put it in another environment by using different
sounds, but he’s a blues guitarist. So
Blood’s thing was to deal with Hendrix’s songs. Blood really comes out of Wes Montgomery. He’s an organ trio guitar player. He plays with his thumb, he plays in the
same fingering position that Wes did and all of the organ trio guys did. He’s an organ trio Wes Montgomery guitar
player through Hendrix through Ornette. He’s a genius, by the way… I was always one of those guys who
loved Band Of Gypsies. When
everyone else was talking, “Oh, I hate Band Of Gypsies because Buddy
Miles is on it…”, to me, that’s Hendrix playing the
guitar like a real improviser. So I
took my Band Of Gypsies knowledge and put it through my Prime Time
knowledge and my open tonality knowledge and wrote some tunes and did Sweat
Shop. I still think it’s one of
the best records I ever made. It gets
no credit in the sort of lineage of big loud electric guitar, which is fine
with me, because when people finally figure out what’s happening on it, it
will get its due. Sweat Shop
was really about blues lines and playing the guitar almost like a blues
musician. The bass is open on most of
it, and the drums lay down a steady beat.
So Sebastian Steinberg, Jerome Deupree
and I worked that. Jerome had to stop
because he got sick so Curt Newton and I and Sebastian continued. So then I started writing all of
these complicated vamps and the drums were basically free and the bass held
down the vamps. So I wrote all of
these complicated vamps with overlaid melodies, and I expanded it to a double
group with Jim Hobbs playing alto, Steve Norton playing baritone, Curt
and Jerome on drums, and Nate McBride
on electric bass. And did Racket
Club. I consider that the big loud
electric guitar lineage is made up of the blues, it’s made up of vamps, and
it’s made up of sound. So the next
part destined to be called Mess Hall is still in the works and it’s
the scariest part because I actually have to deal with the sound aspect, the
Hendrix pyramid of sound, I have to deal with that part. So I’m working on that now. That’s Mess Hall. And that’s going to be keyboards, drums,
electric guitar, and possibly some other tape loops…I’m working on that. So that’s my big loud electric
guitar trilogy. Playing big loud
electric guitar can either be a rip-off of someone else who did it or you can
be very methodical about it and really think it out like you were doing if
you were playing alto saxophone. You
don’t want to sound like Ornette, you don’t want to
sound like Julius Hemphill, you don’t want to sound
like Charlie Parker. You have to
really apply yourself. It’s harder now
to enter the arena as an original alto voice… BC:
Sure! All of that history
behind you… JM:
Because you have all that material you have to understand and you have
to filter through to your own expression, for a very compound experience to
present that and a platform – a rhythm section or some kind of environment
where you get to use the alto differently.
Dealing with the electric guitar and the big loud electric guitar is
also complicated because there’s such a huge glut of stuff that you have to
sift through and it’s inherently limited.
It’s limited by its very nature so you have to go to the limitations
and turn it into something. So that’s
what I’ve chosen to do. So far it’s
the longest, sort of most secret part of what I do. I have a bunch of things like that. I have trio records, I have quartets, and I
have solo music that I’ve worked on.
And I have extended technique things that I’ve added on a whole bunch
of my records. I have a series of
parallel activities that I do, I just don’t announce them all. BC:
Right. There seemed to be at least
two paths in your work, there was the “big loud electric” path and this path
you’re working on with the new trio… JM:
Really it’s all just about playing the guitar. I kind of have a love/hate relationship
with the guitar. I hate the damn thing
because it’s so….sort of American old-class, it’s shiny, it has knobs on it,
it’s like the pickup truck driven onto the polo field (laughing). The realm of jazz and free jazz has gotten
to be so pretentious and so full of itself and so arty for the sake of itself,
that if you show up with electric guitar and say “I can play this thing and I
have fun really digging in”, they give you that like “Oh really? Is that right? Well isn’t that wonderful?” BC: (laughs) JM:
So part of me is just a totally rude, punk,
I’ll-show-you-get-the-hell-out-of-my-way guy and the guitar fits me perfectly
like that because it’s just inherently rude.
It will never be classy. And
the other part of me says, well then damnit, let’s
train it and bring it up a couple of notches so that once we get rid of all
those people who don’t want to hear it, we can play to the audience that does
want to hear it and bring something out that maybe they’re not prepared
for. And I think that’s exactly what Wes
Montgomery did and Bern Nix and Blood Ulmer does and Jimmy
Rainey did and all those guys… You get this thing, it’s like a box
of strings plugged into a radio and you’re supposed to make it sound like
music. So in that sense it’s the
ultimate ------------------------------------------------------------------ © Free Association 2002 |
