"The weird but nice combination of country and jazz has always fascinated me,"
says Finnish multi-instrumentalist Ville Leppänen.
After touring his native country as a singer-songwriter for many years, Leppänen was toying with the idea of a power trio in 2010 while working with the country-rock group Commotion Band, led by the singer and guitarist Kari Huovinen. One evening Leppänen found himself in a rehearsal room with the group's bassist, J.P. Mönkkönen, and drummer, Tero Mikkonen. Leppänen led his cohorts in a few of his original compositions, and the sound instantly gelled.
Since then the group, Southpaw Steel 'n' Twang, has played Finland's club and festival circuit, and held an informal residency at a Helsinki bar. Their recent debut album, Hale's Pleasure Railway, is a mostly instrumental Americana survey—and a pleasurable listen for guitarists and non-musicians alike.
somehow surprise me."
We chatted with Leppänen about his affinity for American music and were surprised to learn that he conjures so many different sounds with a relatively modest collection of gear.
Tell us a little about your formative musical experiences.
I'm 48 years old now and was 13 or so when rock 'n' roll hit me. I'd been playing clarinet and classical guitar in a music school from age 9, but that had been more like something my parents wished me to do. My musical awakening happened at the end of the '70s. Punk rock and new wave were going strong in Finland, and then there was a huge '50s rock 'n' roll revival. Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran were my heroes. That naturally led me to country and blues, especially Robert Johnson.
Then there was my Austin, Texas, period. A lot of great American blues-roots guys played in Helsinki: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, Ry Cooder. Winter and Rory Gallagher were my main slide heroes. At the same time, the hot jazz bug bit me in the form of Hawaiian steel guitar—first Bob Brozman, then Sol Hoopii, and finally Leon McAuliffe, Herb Remington, and Buddy Emmons. And there were jazzmen like Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery. I still love to listen to Wes's The Incredible Jazz Guitar. I've mentioned just a few names. In general, my main influence has been American rhythm music.
What kind of gear did you use early on?
Prior to my awakening I'd been playing my father's old Landola, a Finnish-made nylon-string acoustic. When I wanted to go electric my dad was a bit skeptical, but he eventually bought me a pickup, knobs, and tuners, and I built my own, trying to shape it to look like the Gibson ES-355 Chuck Berry had in all those pictures. It was horrible, barely playable—but I loved it!
As a lefty, I had difficulty finding a proper guitar. In high school I tried to play a right-handed electric Hendrix-style, but the knobs always felt like they were in the way. So I got a summer job, got the dough together, and a guitar workshop in Helsinki made me a butterscotch early-'50s-style Tele from ESP parts. I still play it.
Have you spent much time in the States?
I've been to California a couple of times, and to Memphis, where my group was a semi-finalist in the 2012 International Blues Challenge. That same year we recorded in New Orleans. It's been a great experience to visit those places so crucial to this music, but I already had a firm musical identity before I visited the States.
Living in Finland, do you feel any kinship with composers like Jean Sibelius?
Sibelius composed beautiful, timeless music. I've sometimes toyed with the idea of adapting one of his pieces for steel, just as Buddy Emmons did with Pachelbel's Canon.
You have an impressive command of jazz harmony—the minor-major seventh chords and unusual chord progression of “Open Field," for example. How did you develop your harmonic language?
By listening to and studying jazz. I'm not exactly a jazz player, but I like to throw in interesting harmony and diminished ideas. The jazz players I mentioned had such big, luxurious chords and interesting notes in their bluesy playing. I wanted to do something like that.
Did you study jazz formally?
My studying has mostly been sitting on my butt and sorting things out by myself. I finally did get a musician's degree at a pop-jazz conservatory a few years back, and that helped me to update my theory knowledge.
Ville Leppänen uses his 1980 ESP T-style to guide Southpaw Steel 'n' Twang through an original instrumental.
Your melodic voice is also sophisticated—for instance, the way you draw from the diminished scale on “Dark C."
I like soulful, traditional playing, only sometimes it's too predictable. The players I love to listen to the most are the ones who somehow surprise me. For example, in the blues-rock field, take the great Jimi Hendrix. He sometimes drives off the road but it's so interesting! Or think of all the great jazz-rock/fusion players. So when improvising, I try to surprise myself with unpredictable note choices, hoping that the listeners will be surprised too.
Western swing is clearly a big influence.
Yes. The weird but nice combination of country and jazz has always fascinated me. When I was a kid we played—at the risk of sounding politically incorrect—cowboys and Indians. Now I had cowboys playing swing, hillbilly and jazz—those Charlie Christian-influenced guitar hotshots like Eldon Shamblin, etc. And that steel bunch! Eventually I bought myself a Japanese Fender Stringmaster D8 copy, a great guitar that I didn't have a clue how to tune. But then the pieces clicked together.
Ville Leppänen's Gear
Guitars
Fender Japan 1957 Stratocaster reissue with Kinman pickups
1980 ESP parts T-style with Texas Special pickups
1957 Fender Stringmaster D8 (22.5"-scale doubleneck 8-string lap steel)
1935 National Duolian
Pedalmaster S-10 Ranger (10-string pedal steel)
Amps
1969 or '70 Fender Vibrolux Reverb
Effects
Boss ME-70 multi-effects
Morley M2 Wah Volume
Strings and Picks
Various S.I.T. sets and singles
How so?
On conventional 6-string steel I use high-G tuning [G–B–D–G–B–D]. Meanwhile, the Stringmaster has two 8-string necks. It took me a while to figure out how to add those sixth notes to the basic triads, and then get used to having two strings tuned just a whole-step away from each other. It's pretty hard to play “Dust My Broom," for example, with that tuning, but the Western swing thing is right there!
What inspired you to take up steel guitar?
I heard Bob Brozman's playing in the late '90s, and I just had to make the same kinds of sounds. I found a 1930 National Triolian roundneck and played it both bottleneck and lap-style, with a flatpick and two fingerpicks. Slide guitar has always been my thing, so it wasn't a big step. I just had to get used to the lap playing position.
Do you think of yourself as more of a guitarist or pedal steel player?
They're both fascinating tools of expression. Of course I've logged more miles with the conventional 6-string, and that's probably my most natural thing, especially slide. But I think I'm catching up with lap and pedal steel. Those instruments are also just so much fun to play. Difficult, but fun!
Which is your favorite 6-string these days?
I've mostly been playing a Japanese Fender 1957 Strat reissue with Kinman noiseless vintage pickups. It's a good, reliable guitar—a real workhorse. And it's not terribly expensive, so I don't have to worry about it.
Is there any new gear that you've been coveting?
I'd love to get a 12-string pedal steel—maybe one of these days. A full-bodied jazz box would also be great. And I've never had a Les Paul. I could easily make a long list!
Talk a little about the Hawaiian influence evident on tracks like “Secret Sunset."
That's a 1957 Fender Stringmaster, short-scale, which I got via eBay from a seller in Arkansas. The tune is a vain attempt to bring the sun to the cold and dark Finnish winter. Hawaiian music made me feel happy when I first heard it, and it's always been a kind of “secret sunset" for me.
Why did you decide to set aside your instruments and do a mostly a cappella thing on “Steel 'n' Twang?"
There's so much guitar on the record, and I thought it needed a breathing break. In concert we usually play the piece and some other vocal numbers between the instrumentals. It works well, and it wakes up the audience.
YouTube It
Watch Ville Leppänen play Jimi Hendrix's “Little Wing" on pedal steel.
How would you describe your compositional process?
I can write a composition down—melody, rhythms, and harmony—but usually I just mess around on 6-string or steel, or even a keyboard, with a melody, chords, and rhythms in my mind. I might write down certain lines for a reminder, but more often I just record a rough version, no overdubs or anything, then we all arrange it together with chord charts. That way the music has a free-flowing feeling.
Talk about how the album was recorded.
The recording took place in the main hall of an old wooden house in Helsinki, and most of the stuff was recorded live. Everything leaked all over the place, because we were all in the same big room. The guys—J.P. Mönkkönen on bass and Tero Mikkonen on drums—played together for a long time before we started the group, and it worked pretty well. A bit rough, but very organic.
What made it rough?
We used the takes that had the best feeling, even if there were some mistakes. I don't really mind a few wrong notes if I hear the band reaching for something we haven't done before, not just playing it safe. And, as we know, sometimes in the end the wrong note is exactly the right note!
Slide Away
A 7-band EQ lies at the heart of this little machine, occupying the middle third of the pedal’s face. The skinny frequency-band sliders are smartly spaced—you can adjust each one without errantly changing the position of its neighbors. The firm but smooth fader action also helps prevent accidental shifts and specify precise settings. A small black button switches between preset and bank modes (plus a link mode for connecting additional Flex Wave pedals). The EQ7 is well built: The jacks feel near-bulletproof, and even the enclosure’s interior is painted the same glossy white as the exterior.
Flexible Shape Shifter
Once you get the hang of the EQ7, it can become addictive. Whether you want to use profound tone shifts to define sections within a tune, or switch EQ profiles to accommodate multiple instruments, you may wonder how you lived without it.
Ratings
Pros:
Transparent, noise-free sound. Quality build. Serious tone-shaping potential.
Cons:
Single footswitch can make preset recall tricky onstage.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$309
FlexWaves Flex EQ7
flexwaves.com
I jumped in with a Fender Jaguar with Seymour Duncan Jaguar Hot pickups—a guitar I have a love/hate relationship with. It sounds great for bubbly, bluesy solos and crunchy rock, but it can be muddy on more traditional/trebly Jaguar applications. It didn’t take long to dial in an EQ setting that transformed the Jag: +10 to12 dB boosts at 1.6 kHz, 3.2 kHz, and 6.4 kHz, plus a 5 dB cut at 40 Hz. This setting recaptured the guitar’s sparkle, with a cool Gretsch/Rickenbacker character in the high-mids. Indeed, this setting introduced an almost semi-hollowbody “aura.” It was the first hint that the EQ7 can unlock the colors hiding in your guitar.
The EQ7 was similarly transformative on my somewhat thin-toned E Series Stratocaster, which sounded fuller and more resonant with a little extra level and 5dB bumps in the 100 Hz and 200hz bands. The pedal is also fantastically useful for fine-tuning fuzz or overdrive, and for such less obvious applications as emphasizing hard tremolo pulses. Adding a few dB at 1.6 kHz, 3.2 kHz, and 6.4 kHz made my Wattson FY-2 clone sound fat and lacerating on the top end. It also added midrange heaviness to my Fuzzrite. Meanwhile, the exceptionally quiet EQ7 added no perceptible noise to those already hissing and spitting fuzzes.
The keys to fully utilizing the EQ7 onstage are the eight presets and the banks to which you assign them. You switch between preset and bank modes via the small black mode button. If you only use a single preset per song, preset mode is an easy way to navigate using footswitch clicks. (It’s simple to save presets by holding down the footswitch.) If you require multiple presets per song, you’ll probably use bank mode. While assigning presets to a bank takes time, it makes it much easier to navigate a set of them on the fly.
But as easy as it is to load presets and banks in a controlled environment, doing so in the heat of a performance requires practice and attention. While the single-footswitch layout makes the EQ7 space-efficient, it presents real-world challenges when navigating in the adrenalized environs of the stage.
The Verdict
The EQ7 may be overkill for players who don’t switch between disparate-sounding pickups over the course of a performance or use radical EQ shifts as an expressive tool. But if you regularly move between hot humbuckers and thin single-coils, utilize tone contrasts as a compositional tool, or just want a solo to pop in a particular way, you’ll find the EQ7 to be a potent piece of hardware. Using presets and banks on the fly takes practice, and the process doesn’t always sound or feel perfectly seamless. But transparent, noise-free performance and sheer tone-shaping power make this pedal exceptionally useful and expressive.
Minneapolis-based Sparks currently plays a 2004 cutaway OM built from koa and spruce by
renowned luthier Charlie Hoffman.
Sparks, who is 60, learned to play guitar through deciphering country blues and gospel songs by ear. At 14, he received a scholarship to the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he flourished as a guitarist, studying the nylon-string under Jesus Silva, a protégé of the great Andrés Segovia.
After graduating from the School of the Arts in 1973, Sparks had no trouble making a name for himself as a working musician. While touring with an R&B band, he discovered Minneapolis and soon made it his home base. In the Twin Cities, Sparks played in the jazz ensemble Rio Nido before exploring traditional music in Portugal and Eastern Europe through a series of grants—music he'd revisit in various world-music ensembles in the United States beginning in the late '80s.
In 1992, Sparks amazed fans of solo steel-string guitar with his inventive adaptation of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite. The following year he won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, and then, starting with One String Leads to Another (1999), began to explore both his American and world-music roots in a series of solo outings. At the same time, Sparks put a new spin on traditional Jewish music by releasing a quartet of albums—Neshamah (1999), Tanz (2000), At the Rebbe's Table (2002), and Little Princess (2009)—on composer John Zorn's Tzadik label.
Sparks' latest release, Chasin' the Boogie, is something of a homecoming. He conceived of the album during recent visits to his ailing mother in North Carolina, which, naturally, triggered memories of his early years spent learning music. On the album he reworks traditional numbers like “What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and “Wayfaring Stranger," and explores new territory in more contemporary songs like Paul McCartney's “Blackbird" and Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now."
We talked with Sparks about his formative experiences in North Carolina and the musical travels he's enjoyed along the path to becoming a fingerstyle great.
Tim Sparks' Gear
Guitars
2004 Charlie Hoffman OM cutaway
Strings and Picks
John Pearse 510L (.011–.049 silk-wound phosphor bronze)
What was the scene like at the North Carolina School of the Arts in the early 1970s?
My teachers were Javier Calderon and Jesus Silva. Javier taught me how to imagine the guitar sound projecting to the back of the concert hall. Jesus Silva was a disciple of Andrés Segovia, who came to the school to conduct master classes. Silva was also a protégé of Manuel Ponce. Silva emphasized creating expressive and beautiful music, and not getting tripped up by mistakes in performance. My exposure to Bach, Sor, Albeniz, and Latin American composers was crucial.
I also met Duck Baker when I was a student there. He introduced me to a postmodernist, omnivorous approach to music that could be played on guitar. And I discovered Fats Waller, who seemed to embody both the streams of blues and classical music, which would become an important blueprint for my style.
Tell us more about what you learned from Baker.
Through Duck I came to understand that I didn't need to be on a strictly determined path and only play classical or jazz. Duck played everything from Irish jigs to ragtime to swing to modern stream of consciousness. He really opened my eyes to what a modern player's repertoire could be like. Now we live in an eclectic world where people mix and match styles, but that was a big step back then.
How did you become immersed in the ethnic music scene, for lack of a better term, and what impact did this have on your playing?
My ensemble Rio Nido came to an end around 1987, and then my wife and I traveled for a few months in Europe. I had always been captivated by Béla Bartók and Eastern European folk music, so our trek included Budapest, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, where we encountered amazing Roma music and, of course, rhythms in meters like 7/8 and 9/8. This music sparked my interest in playing these crazy rhythms and mysterious scales.
How did you go about learning those crazy rhythms and mysterious scales?
When I was back in Minneapolis, I began working as an accompanist in all kinds of ethnic ensembles—Brazilian, klezmer, belly dancing, Persian. I got a chance to understand the music in more than just an intellectual way. I learned these meters by playing with drummers—who had a way of naturally accenting the beats in an odd measure so that I always knew when the downbeat was coming—and by watching dancers. Through playing with these groups, I also developed a melodic affinity for the music, and a connection on a lot of levels.
Tim Sparks' 10th solo album, Chasin' the Boogie, was produced by Peter Finger in Osnabrück, Germany. Finger also produced Sparks first solo record, Nutcracker Suite, in 1993.
Talk about being exposed to fado and the guitarra Portuguesa while you were in Lisbon.
I spent a lot of time in a little quarter of Bairro Alto known as the Bica, and there was a fado joint in the area where a big congregation of fadistas would gather on weekends. A guitarra Portuguesa and a violão, which is what they call a guitar, sat in the corner to be played for all the singers. Everyone was welcome—amateurs and professionals. If the crowd liked you, they would show their approval by joining in on the chorus. I was also able to learn some things from Pedro Caldeira Cabral, an extraordinary master of the guitarra Portuguesa.
Like what?
I learned certain techniques that were new to me. For instance, I saw him take a walnut shell, put it on his thumb, and use it to tap on the soundboard while he played, adding a percussive element to what he was doing with his other fingers.
Also to embrace the new and the old: Pedro Cabral is sort of a Portuguese Ornette Coleman. He took traditional music into new and atonal places. Just as with Ornette, this was met with negativity in a lot of quarters, especially in the fado community. But at the same time, Cabral has a very deep understanding of Renaissance and medieval music, as well as the traditional music of his country. Portugal is a very small country, but with four or five different regions. He's very familiar with the distinct musical style of each.
What did you learn from adapting Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite to guitar in the late '80s?
It's not always possible to play everything that's in a full orchestration. I worked from a piano reduction in order to do my arrangement. Some of it was mechanical—reducing octave parts to single notes in the bass, for example. It's kind of like you want to get to the bones of a piece in order to do something that reflects its spirit in a meaningful way.
Another thing is that I learned the pieces in their original keys, transposing some of them to the best possible key on guitar. Now I use a capo for easy transposing, but then I did everything without the capo, which sometimes required going through different fingerings in order to find the best key to play a piece in.
What's it like to work with John Zorn?
It was through Duck Baker that I was introduced to Zorn, who produced Spinning Song, Duck's amazing recording of the music of Herbie Nichols. Zorn is very sincere. He has a contagious enthusiasm. All the musicians in his circle, like Cyro Baptista and Greg Cohen, are warm, totally down-to-earth people. The work I have done for Tzadik [Zorn's label] has been the best experience. Zorn has encouraged me to be eclectic in my repertoire and, more importantly, in my improvisational vocabulary.
YouTube It
Tim Sparks revisits his roots in this masterful fingerstyle arrangement of “I'll Fly Away."
How did the title track of Chasin' the Boogie come about?
I've done many arrangements of ragtime and jazz piano music for guitar, and a lot of this is on my album Sidewalk Blues. For “Chasin' the Boogie," I had the idea to play a piano boogie-woogie on guitar. I just started crafting and discovering riffs, and by tuning the 6th string to D, I found a basis to create the tune.
Some of the covers—“Blackbird," “Mr. Bojangles," and “Both Sides Now"—use dropped-D tuning for rich reharmonizations.
Yes. In drop D, the D chord is very big and rich. I find it so interesting to play in keys other than D in this tuning, like in A, on “Mr. Bojangles," where the rich D chord arrives as the IV chord, creating a special moment in the arrangement.
On “Both Sides Now," there are moments that recall the harmonies of John Coltrane's “After the Rain." Is this just a coincidence? And why did you quote “As Time Goes By" in that song?
“After the Rain" is one of my favorite Coltrane tunes. In my arrangement of “Both Sides Now," I play the reharmonization of the melody over a D pedal tone, which calls to mind the Coltrane tune. I added the quote of “As Time Goes By" because it's also a tune about acquiring wisdom.
What was the recording process like, and what gear did you use?
I recorded the album at Peter Finger's studio in Osnabrück, Germany, all in one day. The next day we did some edits and mixes. I played a spruce-and-koa cutaway OM made by Charlie Hoffman, a luthier in Minneapolis. I can't remember the mics Peter used, except that they were nice, and not the expected Sennheiser or Neumann models.
Your vocalizations and other transient noises add human warmth on the recording.
I like to joke that I spent years carefully studying the vocalisms of Keith Jarrett, Thelonious Monk, and Joseph Spence, but actually it's just an involuntary response. Perhaps it reflects the connection between the cognitive process and the motor process of playing music. I agree that it does convey a sense that music is happening in the moment.
