Part 2

What are specific challenges in terms of playing the guitar?

The biggest things for me are physical. From an early age I wasn’t very teachable. I had a lot of enthusiasm, but not a lot of patience or body-awareness, so I developed a lot of bad physical habits.

Playing guitar has always felt great in my heart and mind, but horrible in my body. It was only within the last few years that I even realized this was the case and could begin working on it.

I practice so much more now than I did when I was younger, just because I can sometimes manage to make it not feel quite so physically awful. I spent so many years trying harder … it’s only relatively recently that I’ve learned the power of trying easier.

What interests you about the guitar in terms of it contributing to your creative ideals? How do you see the relationship between your instrument and the music you make?

To be honest, I think it’s barely more than incidental. It’s the instrument with which I’ve spent the most time, and that sets up a kind of feedback loop where it’s in my hands even more.

I do love the guitar deeply, but that’s just a result of one of those coin flips—if I’d have seen Horowitz or Clara Rockmore on television at age 3 instead of Chuck Berry, I like to imagine that my creative core would still be substantially the same.

The guitar makes a pretty convenient divining rod for me, but I suspect (and hope) its impact on what flows through is only superficial.

Some see instruments merely as tools towards creativity, others feel they go hand in hand. What's your take on that?

Anything in a creative person’s environment can inform the work. I use a lot of very old instruments that are a bit cranky, and I kind of relish working with those quirks and limitations.

But I’d hope my ability to be creative isn’t reliant on any external material object. If I’m feeling restless, I generally find it more productive to dig deeper into the essence—who do I want to reach? What can I learn about the self?

How would you describe your personal style of playing the guitar?

I’m not even sure I could!

I can tell you what motivates me and what I value. I love the extremes—the tenderest beauty and the most chaotic disruption.

I admire players who always sound like themselves, but manage to make that identity applicable in a staggering array of superficially-disparate contexts. I really aspire to that.

I try to put the music first, even when that means doing very little (or nothing at all).

Finally, I’m always seeking a new lens through which to view an old thing; one little twist that feels unexpected. It’s a touch of contrarianism, or maybe that alternate-futures thing—I’m slightly allergic to fulfilling expectations too literally.

What does playing your instrument feel like, what do you enjoy about it, what are your own physical limits and strengths?

I touched on this above, but I’ll also add that I’m a left-handed person who plays right-handed instruments.

There are some things that come way more-easily to me as a result, and some things that feel way harder than they appear for others.

But I feel like these strengths and limitations give me a perspective that’s my own. The biggest challenge is when I’m asked to cop someone else’s parts and they’ve got an insane right hand.

Could you describe working with the guitar on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

Well this new album, œconomy, was pretty fun to make in that I was entirely free to center some things that don’t always apply when working on others’ music.

In particular, we used very few guitar amps on this record—there was a lot of plugging guitars into Moog synthesizers, outboard rack gear via direct boxes and mic preamps, etc. I was really free to—actually I was encouraged to - reimagine the concept of “electric guitar sound,” which appealed to my contrarian streak.

Even stompbox pedals were used only occasionally, and reluctantly.

How, would you say, does the guitar interact with other instruments from ensembles/groups you're part of?

My absolute favorite thing is forming an interlocking, symbiotic fabric with the other rhythm section players—particularly other guitarists and keyboardists. In Brittany Howard’s band, there are three guitarists and two keyboardists. We all probably have to listen harder and play less than in some other groups, but it creates this texture that’s not replicable any other way.



This comes more-naturally in some contexts than others, but I strongly believe that sympathetic listening across the group makes it possible anywhere.

It can be a challenge sometimes, particularly if a collaborator is unaccustomed to working with that set of priorities. If a pianist is used to playing in a trio and filling up a lot of space, it might take them a second to welcome me in—especially if they’ve internalized an idea that piano and guitar should “take turns comping.”

I think this is one area where some institutional models have done a bit of a disservice.

If you’re the director of a college big band and you’ve got a concert coming up at the end of the semester, telling the guitarist to “lay out and let the piano comp for this solo” is probably the shortest path to something that sounds like music. But it’s certainly not always the richest path—and a young player might never reëvaluate that as “the way it’s done.”

In Nate Smith’s group, Jon Cowherd and I will frequently let the other have it, but other times we’ll comp together behind a solo. He’ll throw out some harmonic idea, I’ll wait for a space and reach for something in response. Sometimes I misidentify what he’d played, so my response is a little further left, and then he’ll pick up that baton and extend it … all the while the soloist is buoyed and pushed by our interaction.



We’ve developed this rapport over years of touring, and it’s a really satisfying dynamic for me.

Are there other guitar players whose work with their instrument you find inspiring? What do you appreciate about their take on it?

If we can talk about players that are no longer with us, I’d love to shout out one that doesn’t get mentioned enough: Jessie Mae Hemphill. She could make anyone love the blues. The effortless delivery, the sound, the supremely relaxed time feel … I hope I’ll manage to sound that confident and loose one day.



In the realm of the living: I mentioned Cecil Alexander earlier. He’s extending this lineage in an effortless, beautiful way, and it really underscores the timelessness of language pioneered by Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian and Dizzy Gillespie. His playing doesn’t at all sound like a pastiche or throwback—it’s just expressive and beautiful. He’s finding his own answers to some eternal questions.



Rafiq Bhatia is another player I like—I admire what I’d characterize as a creative restlessness, or maybe curiosity; a tendency to push toward new techniques and contexts with artistic purpose.



But this is a question that would take lifetimes to answer thoroughly!