LiveDaily.com - August 29, 2001

Jazz guitarist Mike Stern will release Voices, his tenth solo album for Atlantic Jazz, in September. Unlike the searing Hendrix-to-Metheny sensibilities of the Grammy-nominated guitarist's past efforts, Voices delves into more piquant African and Middle-Eastern worldly flavors.

That change is primarily due to the experiment-prone guitarist's collaborations with Cameroonian bassist-vocalist Richard Bona of the Zawinul Syndicate, and vocalists Elizabeth Kontomanou, Arto Tuncboyaciyan and Philip Hamilton.

"I've always wanted to do a record with voices", Stern explained. "Some of the tunes I've written in the past, with tricky kind of bebop-ish heads [i.e., musical themes], are just unsingable. But then there are some tunes of mine that singers have always mentioned to me that they liked very much. ... And so I always thought it would be cool to hook up with singers and explore that further".

Stern's storied past includes stints with Miles Davis, bassist Jaco Pastorious, fusion pioneers Steps Ahead, the Brecker Brothers, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. A Washington, D.C., native, Stern spent his first musical years singing in church choirs. At the age of 9, he landed a bit part in a Washington Opera Society production of Puccini's "Tosca".

Everything changed a few years later when he discovered the guitar, Hendrix, Clapton, and the Berklee School of Music.

Stern spoke with LiveDaily about Voices, accompanying vocalists and "Fat Time".

LiveDaily: Tell me about the inspiration for Voices". What's with the left turn?

Mike Stern: That's something I've wanted to do for a while - there's a bunch of things I've always wanted to do, you know what I mean? And now it's getting to the point where I'm just going for it. The last two CDs I made for Atlantic were a little bit adventurous for me. Give and Take was with John Patitucci and Jack DeJohnette, cats I always wanted to record with. And the last one [Play] was with John Scofield and Bill Frisell, who are good friends of mine.

But this was a big departure for me. I always felt that some of the tunes, I conceptualize them by writing on guitar and singing the melody a little bit. So the melodies a lot of times are singable, and a lot of times I'm hearing a saxophone or trumpet, a horn sound, doubled with the melody - to give it a more vocal approach. I always liked that vocal sound on my guitar, also, I kind of go for that anyway. I always thought it would be nice to do this with singers, seeing as some of these tunes are really conceived that way.

Richard Bona, from the Zawinul Syndicate, is a big influence on the album. You met him at a jazz festival in Israel?

Yeah, we were playing at different times. He was there with Zawinul, and I was there with my band and Bob Berg. This was years ago. I thought he was a great player, and told him he ought to move to New York. And I think some other people were telling him that, so he took the plunge and moved, and he's doing really great. We play together sometimes at this little place I play at, the 55 Bar. We're good friends now.

And I got together with Philip Hamilton - my wife Leni has played some with him. She said he's got a great voice, real high male voice, he can do that falsetto thing that's amazing. We got together at Jim Beard's loft, who produced the CD. I told Philip up front, "I don't really know what I'm looking for". [laughs] Everybody that came in was, "No problem," and trying everything out. We tried out a lot of vocalists, and the four that made it were Richard, Philip, Elizabeth Kontomanou and Arto Tuncboyaciyan. These guys really have some special qualities.

Did you adjust your guitar playing, since you were accompanying vocalists? What are you thinking when you're not just playing the lead line, you're mixing with a singer?

Well, I do that a lot on other CDs. I accompany [other instrumentalists], somebody like Mike Brecker. Especially when I'm playing the melodies, I like that sound, when you bring in a horn or something with a vocal kind of sound. So to cut right to the chase and actually bring in a vocalist, it's a cool sonority. And I was really happy with how my guitar - and I try to go for a vocal sound - sonically worked with all the voices. It really blends in. Sometimes, if you go for a more percussive tone, it doesn't blend in as well, I don't think. And then the solos, we all stretched. It was kind of a normal concept for me, really.

You're just reacting to a different instrument, somebody's voice instead of a sax.

Exactly. The playing was the playing, we just let go. There are a lot of times when I do doubling stuff with a horn player. Instead, this was how I originally conceived the music, with a voice. So it wasn't a problem for me. I'm really happy with how this turned out.

The vocals on "One World" are beautiful. How did this one come together? Elizabeth Kontomanou did some overdubs over the live recording, right?

There were some overdubs from Elizabeth. And Richard, he overdubbed some harmony parts. Jim Beard is great at knowing how to do that, making it sound fuller. And it still sounds very organic. Not over-producing everything. It's natural.

I originally conceived that with saxophone doubling the melody. I'd had the idea, and was playing the melody during soundchecks, I don't know, a year ago or something like that. Then, when I started thinking about adapting the voice to this tune, I had to change the key [for Richard and Elizabeth]. And Richard just comes in, and it was incredible. He was telling me I should sing. But, you know, when I sing in the shower, everything breaks. [laughs]

Of all the gigs you've had, how did Miles Davis come to recruit you in the early '80s?

I was playing with Billy Cobham at [the New York club] the Bottom Line. And Bill Evans called me - I had played with him at this little place in Boston called Michael's on Gainesboro Street - and said, "I'm playing with Miles, he's getting ready to go on the road again. And the guitar player, it doesn't look like that's working out personally". I knew the guitar player was Barry Finnerty, who is great, but it just didn't work out for whatever reason. So Bill said, "Look, if anything changes, and Miles is looking for somebody, I'm going to recommend you". Then one night, when I was at the Bottom Line with Billy, he called me after the first set intermission and said, "Guess who I'm bringin' down?"

No pressure.

And I went, "Oh s---". Then I figured, oh f--- it, I'm going to play the best I can, like I always try to do, and see if he likes it. So Miles came to the second set, and I was playing with Tim Landers, Gil Goldstein and Michael Urbaniak on violin - and I turned around and noticed Billy wasn't playing with us. Miles had called him off the stage and said [imitating Davis' gravelly voice], "Tell your guitar player to be at Studio B at Columbia Studios at 6:00 tomorrow". You know, that kind of thing. So Billy told me, and I went over to the studio the next day and recorded some stuff. He heard me play and just said, you know, "We're going to go on the road".

The first thing I asked him was, "Who is gonna play keyboards?" [gravelly] "Just you. No keys". And I thought, "What the - oh, s---. Now I'm going to be playing with Miles, just me, how am I going to be able to do that?" But he knew what he was after - a real kind of lean sound for that band. And that's what he got, raw and funky. And it really worked.

The first time Miles asked me to go by the studio, that was something he just had me try to overdub, something that didn't really need guitar. I tried it and told him, "I don't really hear it". Then he brought me back a week later, and we did that "Fat Time" tune which is on The Man with the Horn record. He wanted a really long guitar solo on it, and he liked it so much that he called the tune after my nickname - he used to call me "Fat Time". He liked my time feel, thought I had a good groove, but also, I was fat. [laughs] I was really weighin' in. I weighed like 70 pounds more than I do now. So he used to call me [gravelly] "Fat Time!"

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