FOLIO MUSIC

Posted Wednesday, April 5, 2017 1:11 pm



FOLIO A + E



Shut The Folk Up & Listen:

LEO KOTTKE

& KELLER WILLIAMS,/b>

8 p.m. April 6

The Florida Theatre

Downtown

$37.50-$50

floridatheatre.com The Florida Theatre

128 E. Forsyth St.

Jacksonville, FL

View larger map 128 E. Forsyth St.Jacksonville, FL

Two years ago, in these esteemed pages, longtime Folio Weekly scribe Arvid Smith penned a piece, “What We Will Never Know About Leo Kottke.” After scrambling through the usual gantlet of promoters, publicists and PR hacks, our man Arvid was stonewalled at every turn, a feeling I know quite well. But in Kottke’s case, the despair was understandable: Here’s a man who helped create and cultivate the haunting American Primitive aesthetic alongside the mystical, magical John Fahey in the 1970s. A man who passed on a chance at rock ’n’ roll fame by declining a spot in Bob Dylan’s legendary mid-’70s Rolling Thunder Revue. A man who has overcome partial hearing loss and a debilitating bout of tendon damage in his right hand to discard his time-tested aggressive 12-string style and relearn a new jazz-influenced fingerpicking method that’s universally celebrated.

How celebrated? Many critics claim Kottke to be one of the top five most influential guitar players of all time—Arvid Smith even claimed that “he has inspired and placed the stringed instrument in more hands than anyone save Elvis.” So it is with great excitement and considerable fanfare that we are thrilled to announce we finally got through to Kottke in 2017. The interview may have been conducted via the impeccably impersonal email method, and Leo may have declined to answer any questions about his co-headlining tour with pedal-pushing, loop-reliant, barefoot guitar guru Keller Williams. But we did gain a little insight into what still captivates Kottke 50 years into his career, why the one-time king of alternative tunings is more than happy to work in a standardized lane again, and why, when it comes down to it, it’s all about playing.

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Folio Weekly: You began your musical career by mastering contemporary forms of American music: blues, jazz, folk. What was it about these genres that originally captivated you as a young man?



Leo Kottke: It’s what captivates me as an old man that interests me now. I play the whole room now, and I play with more awareness of the physical—what the pianist Bill Barber called the “digital pleasures of music,” as in digits. There’s no point in knocking myself out on stage just to be knocking myself out. It just wastes everything I’ve got, including the audience. So from the room to my little finger, everything widens out compared to what happened in the beginning. In the beginning, I just wanted to blow my mind—I couldn’t care less about my mind these days. It’s much more fun to play now.’

Because you released your legendary album 6- and 12-String Guitar on Takoma Records, and because of your similarly supernatural skills on guitar, you’re forever linked to John Fahey. Did the categorization feel fair or accurate to you in 1969, and does it feel fair or accurate to you now?



In one of my favorite reviews from the ’70s, I was compared to a bucket of warm spit. As a guy named Katagiri once said, “You have to say something.” I’m sure the reviewer would understand. I don’t think of John in any way except as a friend. The day before he died, John said something like, “It’s OK; I’ve written a few good tunes.”

When you had to change your playing style and learn a new fingerpicking technique in the 1980s to overcome tendonitis, was there ever a moment when you wanted to give up or were worried you might be forced to?



It’s that way for everybody who plays, every day. After a while, you’re dying and you have a few good tunes. All that means is, we shouldn’t take this shit too seriously. It’s always a privilege to play.

Have your listening tastes changed as you’ve gotten older, either in what kind of music you like to listen to or the way in which you listen to it?



Constantly.

How about the way you approach playing the guitar? Are you still doing detailed, deep-dive deconstructions of them, or can you grab a standard-tuned, standard-built guitar, play it, and derive the same kind of pleasure from it as playing one of your customized guitars?



The guitars aren’t customized—and they’re usually in standard tuning. If you spend your time in open tunings, you’re going to be miserable. Which is not to say that you can’t get some good stuff there, but such stuff becomes too much in a very short time. Standard tuning exists for a reason. And people much smarter than me figured this out hundreds of years ago.

The political and social climate in the United States is at a fever pitch these days. What role do you think artists and musicians can play in advocating for causes or speaking their minds? Do you see similarities between today’s activism and that of the ’60s you grew up in?



No one wants to hear me speaking my mind, especially me. I’ve heard my mind before, and it’s a mess. Meanwhile, I get to play. Imagine that!