Part 2

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?

By nature, I am quite a shy and introverted person, so for better or worse I am most able to express myself in my solo work. I’m able to be fully relaxed.

With interacting with other musicians, it’s like more like sharing a canvas and there is a responsibility there. In a solo mode, I have the whole canvas to myself and it’s more work and perhaps more vulnerability, but also more satisfying.

Bats in the Lavender Sky is a solo work that recently came out on vinyl, CD, and digital on the Ramble Records label last July.



Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

I agree with Derek Bailey’s idea of a non-idiomatic approach to improvising, and I try to incorporate that in my own playing. For my own work, mantra strumming, fingerpicking, and alternate picking have completely changed the way I think about structure and scale.

It takes a lot of psychological endurance to play in a trance. It really isn’t all that different than meditation.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

I don’t really have any specific rules for improvisation. The key thing for me is to settle my mind and be present. When I play with others, I try to listen deeply.

It’s the same as a conversation with words, the back and forth, the acting and reacting, the sharing and inspiring.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

In a solo performance, it’s easier to make decisions about where to take a piece. There is no responsibility accept to the audience and myself to create something that is meaningful, and that comes together (in whatever the standard of how we want to judge that).

When I play with other musicians, I feel it’s best to get to know their music beforehand. I will listen and play along with their past recordings and get a sense of who they are and what I might be able to expect.

Of course, it can be completely different, but I have found this type of private rehearsing along helpful.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

Whether I am recording or playing a concert, I go into a concentrated space that’s a bit heightened, probably due to the adrenalin that floods my system.

There’s definitely a state of “flow” or whatever you want to call it, catching a muse. Through time, it’s easier and easier to get access to that portal. As I mentioned, it’s easier for that to happen in my solo work because I’m freed of any of any social dimensions.

As of the last many years, I really don’t bother with collaborating unless I intuitively feel that I’m going to be able to access that space somewhat effortlessly with the other musicians. For instance, I was introduced to the musician Lisa Cameron when I was invited to perform in Austin as part of the Kendra Steiner Editions 6th Anniversary Concert.

I didn’t know her at all, and we have gone on to release four albums together, most recently Ghosts of the JA on Loma Editions.



How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

Without a doubt, I play to the space that I in by adjusting my volume to the acoustics of the environment and other distractions. That would include the people.

I am sensitive to their emotions, and depending, sometimes I just have tune it all out.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?

I was with my father when he died. I saw him take his last breaths, and it really changed the whole way I saw my time on this earth.

For many years, I would conjure the image of him dying as I sat down to play and sort of sync my breath up to the memory of his last breaths as a reminder of how we are all in this transitory state, really just travelers in the here and now, and all going through the same gates in the end.

Music is highly spiritual to me, and maybe I did try to become the priest my father wanted me to be but just in a different ‘church” that has many different buildings and is full of freaks and eccentrics and good-hearted people of every race and religion.