Photo by Greg Aiello
“I have an unfair advantage,” says Charlie Hunter. “I was exposed to all of that blues stuff at a very early age. That was just the music that was on in my house all the time because of my mom.” Thanks to mama Hunter, that music has inspired and influenced one of the most progressive and unique guitarists to come out of the free-flowing Bay Area jazz scene of the early ’90s. And even though Hunter didn’t follow the musical path of the rural blues artists he was listening to, you can hear where his deep sense of rhythm came from.
That rhythm is what sets Hunter apart from every other 7-stringer around. His contrapuntal style has baffled guitarists (and bassists) for nearly two decades. Building on the vernacular of jazz guitarists Lenny Breau, Bucky Pizzarelli, and George Van Eps, Hunter has expanded the instrument by combining the lower three strings from a bass guitar with the middle four of a standard guitar to create something entirely new. “A guitar player could get on my instrument and get around on it after a couple of hours and figure out a few things,” says Hunter. “But if you are doing it ‘right,’ you aren’t really doing it like a bass or a guitar.”
Creating a singular bi-polar sound from one instrument is the centerpiece of Hunter’s latest album, Not Getting Behind is the New Getting Ahead. Along with longtime collaborator, drummer Scott Amendola, Hunter gets to the essence of his sound by stripping away extraneous elements. We spoke to Hunter just days before heading out on a lengthy fall tour to discuss touring in tough economic times, finding a drummer with a death-ray pocket, and why he loves to record in “mostly mono.”
You have played in several
different configurations.
What prompted you to
record a duo album?
I have been touring duo for
quite some time. I have done a
lot with Derrek Phillips, with
Eric Kalb, with Bobby Previte.
I’ve done duos with drummers
for years. Scott [Amendola] and
I have been playing together for
like 20 years.
Does that go back to before
the T.J. Kirk days?
Yeah, and a bunch of those Blue
Note records as well. We just
have a great rapport. I had been
working on music for a while
and we had played a lot of gigs
together and also it was obviously
a recessionary thing.
Was that because of the
expense of taking a band
on the road?
It got to the point where I
couldn’t go out with a trio.
It wasn’t the guys’ salaries so
much, although that was a big
part, it had to do with the travel
and hotels. At the end of the
year it was time to pay the bills
and I didn’t have any money.
Also, it created a situation where
I was like, “Wait a minute, I
really like playing in this format
for more reasons than just the
economic ones.” There’s a certain,
more intimate kind of vibe
when you’re playing this thing.
It brings the audience in. And
also, when you don’t have the
horn element in it, you don’t
have the overt jazz element in it.
That feeling must be really
liberating.
The sky’s the limit conceptually
because you can do treatments
of music you really can’t do with
the horn—for better or for worse.
The horn is the jazz instrument
and when you play drums or guitar
or even something crazy like
my instrument, you really have to
defer a lot to the horn player sonically.
It’s real easy to wipe them
out and generally that means
having to play to their strengths,
and not always your strengths.
Your palette widens in terms of
the stuff you can get to, so what
you lose with that third voice you
make up for in an ability to really
pick from so many vernaculars.
Charlie Hunter digs into his custom Jeff Traugott 7-string, which features a Bartolini bass pickup and a Lollar 4-pole guitar pickup. Photo courtesy of JP Cutler Media
When you compose, do you
have the group format in mind?
I wrote everything on this
album specifically for this format.
Of course there is some
jazz stuff through it in terms
of the improvisation and some
of the structures, but I wrote it
really with my instrument’s vernacular
in mind. I was thinking
a lot about players who are
the quintessential guitarists I
really admire, like Blind Blake,
Joseph Spence, and John Lee
Hooker—more open, rhythmic
kind of playing. I merged that
with whatever you want to
call that improvising sensibility.
With most of the guys I
play with I don’t even do a
rehearsal. Maybe, just maybe,
I will let them listen to the
record. But sometimes I don’t
want them to.
Were the arrangements done
in the studio?
We had played these tunes
for a while on the road. The
arrangements, you know, I hate
to say it, but we will change
the arrangement from night to
night just on the fly. Because
that is what you can do with
a duo. Mostly, I just explained
to Scott what the mood of the
tune was and we would take it
from there. The most important
aspect of this way of playing is
to really deal with space. And I
don’t mean dealing with space
in an abstract way, but really
using the rests between whatever
musical gestures you are making—
really feel those rests and
use them as a kind of gesture by
and of themselves. When you
are dealing with less sound, the
space becomes more dramatic.
Is there a way you can
practice that?
I have always been practicing
that and what that comes down
to is really being rhythmically
astute. I practice a lot of drums
and I don’t practice drums to
be like, “Oh man, check out
that guy. He has chops.” I get
on the drum set and I try to
get a half hour or hour in with
a metronome. Just really dealing
with a very simple beat, the
subdivisions, and the rests. I
really want to make that pocket
thing as deep as possible. When
you do that, it’s a great tool for
expression because if you are a
guy like me and your instrument
is kind of complex rhythmically
with the counterpoint,
your gestures become a lot
more powerful than if you are
just noodling all over the place
as much as you can.
Some music educators claim
that using a metronome can
make your time feel stale
and stiff. Are you adamant
about using a metronome
when you practice or do you
sometimes work on time
away from the click?
I do both. You should be able
to do both. I think everyone has
some kind of natural sense of
beat. A lot of the New Orleans
people I play with have a slightly
“behind” kind of thing. Where
I come from in the Bay Area,
every 16th-note is accounted
for and ahead of the beat, pushing
it. Some people, they really
spend a lot of time trying to get
on the beat—even guys around
today like Matt Chamberlain,
Shawn Pelton, or Steve Jordan,
guys who play more pop gigs.
Those guys are complete and
total masters of that.
“The most important aspect of this way of playing,” says Hunter, “is to really deal with space.” Photo courtesy of JP Cutler Media
That’s the kind of thing you always think of when you are playing with the metronome. You are trying to feel how big that beat is and explore as far back as you can go, as far forward as you can go, and then playing right on it. It also becomes a thing where you are playing with it. It’s your friend. That thing is your buddy and you are playing with it, and then you start to really feel and appreciate counterpoint and where the beats are actually supposed to feel interdependent. I don’t feel stale ever. It always feels good to me.
What do you look for in
a drummer?
Generally, there are a couple
of things. It’s great to have a
fantastic death-ray pocket. But
then again, everyone has their
own. For instance, if you listen
to someone like Tony Mason,
who is a guy I play with a lot
in New York, he has one of the
deepest, straight-groove pockets
I have ever played with. It’s
very obvious when you hear
him play. He gets very creative
with it. Then you can hear a
guy like Paul Motian and you
think, “It’s all over the place,
this is crazy. I don’t get it.” But
when you really listen, you
realize that although he may be
playing in an abstract fashion,
what you are hearing is an
incredible pocket.