the hum / By Bob Doran

Following the Stream

Leo Kottke’s American Primitive Guitar, Jackie’s back

(April 3, 2008)  When you hear Leo Kottke play guitar, you know the instrument is something like his soul mate — playing guitar is what he’s meant to do. As he explained in a recent interview on Minnesota Public Radio, he did not find the guitar initially. When he was a boy, he’d actually taken up trombone and was dedicated to that. Then when he was around 11 he fell seriously ill, to the point where he was bedridden and had to remain flat on his back. He couldn’t play trombone. His mother bought him a toy guitar so he’d have something to do. As he noted in the liner notes for his breakthrough album, 6- and 12-String Guitar, it had a cowboy stenciled on the front.

He figures that guitar saved his life, that it gave him something to live for. “I knew what I’d be doing for the rest of my life — not for a living — that didn’t concern me,” he said. “I knew this is what I’m doing. It’s what happens when we find the instrument we’re supposed to play. I’m pretty sure we’re all tuned for a particular instrument.”

Leo Kotke. Submitted photo.

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When he hit his stride on guitar at the end of the ‘60s, the music he was playing had little to do with cowboys. Although there were what you might call folk elements in his style, he also drew on jazz, blues, classical and on something else, something hypnotic. The 1969 album 6- and 12-String Guitarwas recorded for John Fahey’s very independent label, Takoma. On it Kottke utilized open tunings and a polyphonic fingerpicking method to create music along the lines of what Fahey had been doing, a style that came to be known as American Primitive guitar.

For Kottke, crafting a tune is a matter of finding something in a note pattern and giving in to it. “It’ll catch you if you’re there for it,” he told the Minnesota interviewer. “Then it’s got you and you follow it. You just keep playing and wait for something else to happen. You wait until it tells you it’s done with you… There’s a famous line, something some jazz musicians said, after a show someone approached him and said, ‘I’d give me life if I could play like that.’ And he said, ‘I did.’ I think that’s probably true. This thing comes along, and you’re delighted to have it, when the stream starts, it doesn’t let go until it’s done.”

Kottke is about to begin crisscrossing the U.S., seeing where the music stream takes him. His tour starts here in Arcata, where he plays his guitars at the Van Duzer, Friday, April 4.

A couple of years ago Humboldt was introduced to the up-and-coming young, bluesy songwriter Jackie Greene at that year’s Redwood Coast Jazz Festival. Jackie has been pretty busy since, playing all sorts of much bigger festivals (Bonnaroo, for example), opening for all sorts of big name artists (B.B. King, Taj Mahal, etc.) and, last summer, becoming one of the “friends” in Phil and Friends, the post-Dead project of G.D. bassist Phil Lesh. Tuesday, April 8, Jackie returns to the Eureka Theater (he played there for the Jazz Fest) for an all-ages show with a band that includes John Molo, Larry Campbell and Steve Molitz. As an added bonus, former Mother Hips frontman Tim Bluhm opens with some of his literate songs. Ready to stay up late on a Tuesday? The show’s producers, Passion Presents, invite you to an after-party at the Red Fox with Joanne Rand, who I’m sure will be up past her bedtime.

It’s a pretty good weekend for reggae. Friday at the Mateel it’s an evening of “indigenous reggae” featuring Katchafire, a Maori reggae band from New Zealand on its first American tour, plus Tchiya Amet and the Lighthouse Band from Mendocino, whose lead singer has First Nations roots, specifically Cherokee Moor and Blackfoot.

Sunday, April 6, at the Arcata Community Center, it’s an all day affair called the Irie Aloha Jam with “The Messenger” Luciano (this time with JahMessenjah Band) and Mikey General, plus Humble Soul (from Hawaii, thus the aloha), Stevie Culture and Jah Sun.

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