Django Reinhardt, live in New York.
Our Last Call columnist considers his dream Rig Rundown subject.
“Django was music made into a man.” —Emmanuel Soudieux, Django’s bassist
My friend and colleague Chris Kies recently filmed a Pantera Rig Rundown. One could argue that Pantera is the reason that Rig Rundowns exist. Pantera, more specifically Pantera’s guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell, got Kies into guitar, and he eventually—along with former PG editorial director Joe Coffey—came up with the idea of filming guitarists with their rigs. So you have Hell’s own cowboy, Dimebag, via Kies to thank for the Rundown brand of infotainment.
When the Rundown team got together to yak about Kies’ white-whale interview during a Gig Rundown, I began to wonder what my dream Rig Rundown would be. The choice is easy, though filming it would require a DeLorean, a flux capacitor, and 1.21 gigawatts of power to take us back to 1946 when Django Reinhardt toured the U.S. with Duke Ellington.
Django Reinhardt remains my personal guitar hero. You’ll never hear a player who is more in command of the instrument. Django’s playing was creative and fearless, lighting fast, but never rushed, fiery but relaxed, showy but subtle and sweet. And as brilliant as Django’s playing was, the man was as remarkable as his music. Django seemed to embody everything beautiful and terrible about musicians, incarnating the bad luck, immense talent, shifty business practices, hubris, and laziness. He’d show up for scheduled concerts without a guitar or skip sold-out concerts to take a walk on the beach or whatever he felt inspired to do. Some days he’d refuse to get out of bed at all.
”Django seemed to embody everything beautiful and terrible about musicians, incarnating the bad luck, immense talent, shifty business practices, hubris, and laziness.“
Django Reinhardt was born in a Roma encampment near Belgium in 1910. As a child, the nomadic camp moved outside of Paris, where Django excelled at playing violin, banjo, and guitar, as well as stealing chickens. When he was 18, a fire engulfed his trailer one night, which paralyzed the third and fourth fingers on his left hand. During his 18-month convalescence, Django reinvented his guitar playing. In doing so, he created a new style of music dubbed "gypsy jazz," making him the first great European jazz musician.
During World War II, Nazis exterminated over a million people of Roma heritage and Hitler decreed that listening to jazz could get you sent to a concentration camp. Paradoxically, Django enjoyed the most lucrative period of his career, living and playing openly among Nazi soldiers, who used Paris as a party town during the war.
After the war, while on tour in Zürich, Django lost most of his money gambling in a casino. But in a quick reversal of fortune, he was contacted by a William Morris agent who told him that Duke Ellington would like Django and his musical partner Stéphane Grappelli to join him on tour in the U.S. Django selfishly chose not to tell Grappelli about the tour and went alone.
According to Reinhardt biographer Charles Delaunay, Django was accustomed to his brother Joseph carrying and tuning his guitar, so he arrived in the U.S. without luggage or a guitar. Django believed American companies would be throwing guitars and money at him when he arrived. He was wrong. An agent rounded up a high-action Gibson ES-300 that felt nothing like his sleek, low-action Selmer strung with light ”silk-&-steel” strings (.010–.046). He plugged into an amp he didn’t know how to operate, and oscillated between too loud and inaudible. Accounts say it took him five minutes to tune his guitar. At their Carnegie Hall concert, according to Delaunay, Django ran into boxer Marcel Cerdan on the street, and the two headed to a cafe. Consequently, the guitarist was two hours late. Django went back to Paris not long after the ill-fated show because, as Duke put it, “Somebody at the William Morris Agency had beat him playing billiards, and he got mad and left.”Childish, selfish, brilliant, joyous, jealous, and vain, with little common sense, Django was a Zen-gangsta with an indomitable human spirit, laughing his way through life with no real goals, carefree, spending money as fast as he made it. He embodies everything I’d hope to be as well as everything I fear I might be
A positive attitude won’t fix your problems, but accepting things as they are is a good start.
I did not enjoy the transition from childhood to adulthood. Going from a loving, nurturing home to an indifferent and, at times, seemingly cruel real world was not a good fit for me. My freshman year in college, I was adrift, scared, and, occasionally, what I now recognize as clinically depressed. Out of desperation, I took a philosophy course to get some answers. There, I read Nietzsche’s book, The Gay Science (perhaps the greatest title ever), and learned the phrase amor fati, which is Latin for “love of one’s fate.”
Nietzsche wrote:
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity…
“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly, I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse.”
I’ve tried to embrace amor fati as my personal battle cry ever since. When applied, that philosophy has gotten me through a lifetime of catastrophes, beautiful moments, and the mundane. It’s also been a valuable tool to make me a better and happier musician. Here’s how:
Collaboration
When playing with a band, the goal is to serve the song, to make the music feel good. Sometimes my idea of where the song should go does not align with other players’ visions. If we stopped and talked it through, we could try a few ideas and see what works best. But in a live jam, that’s not an option. When ideas clash live, that can become a battle of wills. When I try to force it by playing louder and leaning harder into my idea of what it should be, it almost never works. Embracing what the other player is doing rather than forcing what I imagined is usually the quickest and most practical way to make the music feel right. It doesn’t matter how great your idea is if it rubs the wrong way against another player. Let go of your plan and try making what is happening work. The song will go where it was supposed to go.
Envy
There’s an old musician saying: “Whenever a friend succeeds … part of me dies inside.”
Success doesn’t only visit the most talented, or go to the most deserving, so it’s easy to compare yourself to others and feel like you are shortchanged. There’s always somebody else doing something bigger and better, and that’s when it’s hard to love where you are. Yesterday, I was playing the CMT Awards. The show’s big finale was a Skynyrd tribute with an all-star lineup (Slash, Billy Gibbons, Warren Haynes, Chuck Leavell, Paul Rodgers, etc.). During rehearsal, I watched my friends Rich Redmond and Ethan Pilzer playing drums and bass with these legends and caught myself feeling the bitter sting of envy, even though I’m a terrible drummer, a mediocre bassist, and I was literally booked on the same show. That’s like a greedy child in a room full of toys wanting somebody else’s. Count your blessings.
Career
Currently, I’m not touring. I get four to eight cool TV gigs a year and a few monthly sessions, but most of my present work is on Nashville’s very non-glamorous Lower Broadway. Two to six times a week, I haul my gear down and play four-hour slots. At times, it’s grueling, frustrating, embarrassing, too loud, and there’s a physical toll. You either get better or bitter. Your choice.
Singer checks into rehab and a gig is same-day canceled? Amor fati. Carpal tunnel is making the fingers flow like Elmer’s glue from a clogged tube? Amor fati. Your bandmate plays horribly? Amor fati. Amp dies, strings break, back aches? Amor fati. If you can laugh about it later, you can laugh about it now. It’s been a wildly entertaining chapter that’s made me a better musician and a better person. Not what I planned, but right where I’m supposed to be.
You either get better or bitter. Your choice.
Nietzsche gleaned amor fati from Epictetus, a Greek philosopher (c. A.D. 50), who was born into slavery, crippled by his master, and later exiled from his homeland after gaining his freedom. Epi knew a bit about things not going as planned.
Epictetus said:
“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.”
Loving your fate doesn’t mean you plaster on a smile and ignore the hard truth. A positive attitude does not fix issues. But getting depressed and dwelling on your problems won’t fix them either. Once you accept it is what it is, then you can focus on a solution rather than the problem. You stop wishing and start doing.
Life is one big improv jam. What’s happening to you is happening for you. Amor fati.Jared James Nichols performs with John Bohlinger at the “Rock to Remember” concert live at Nashville’s Gibson Garage in February 2023.
I was hired to lead the house band for a benefit to raise funds for veterans battling PTSD. Jared James Nichols, Kirk Fletcher, Dave Mustaine, and others joined the cause, and here’s how it went.
Often with multi-act shows, limited budget, space, and inputs on the mix necessitate that some acts share a house band. Because I’ve been slugging it out for 30-plus years in Nashville, I occasionally get hired to lead it. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get the call to lead for “Rock to Remember,” a concert/live auction collab between Guitars for Vets (an organization that provides guitars to veterans struggling with PTSD) and Gibson Gives.
We had a killer lineup, including Jared James Nichols, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, Kirk Fletcher, and Tonic frontman Emerson Hart. In addition to supporting those acts, I was asked to do one of my songs. There was only room for a three-piece band, and I needed a rhythm section who were intuitive enough to nail a pressure gig with limited or no rehearsal, diverse enough to cover pop, blues, rock, and metal, and could sing harmony. I called drummer Duran Crone and bassist Logan Hatcher, with whom I’ve played enough jam-type gigs that I knew they could hit the curve. As an added bonus, Hatcher served six years in the Marines, which might inspire some vets to see one of their own making it in the music industry.
It’s a bit unnerving playing with talented celebrity musicians you don’t know. But when you’re performing in front of a live audience, it's filmed for broadcast, and it's a no-rehearsal-plug-and-pray, that takes it up a notch. I wasn’t worried about Jared James Nichols and Kirk Fletcher. I knew they would both do something blues-based. Put four good to great players who haven’t played together onstage and tell them to play blues: it’s going to be interesting.
"The idea of trying to cover Marty Friedman’s solo on “Symphony of Destruction” in front of a very intimidating Dave Mustaine was terrifying. Although the internet is full of children who can nail that solo, I cannot."
Nichols walked into the crowded greenroom at the Gibson Garage with just his ’52 Les Paul. I introduced him to Crone and Hatcher, who hadn’t heard Nichols’ song yet. We walked to the only quiet place we could find—a large, tiled bathroom. Nichols played “Baby Can You Feel It”on his phone while I wrote a chart and the guys tried to discern their parts. Then we went onstage, Nichols told us about the form, and we ran it once during soundcheck. Nichols gave us a little more direction, then we went back about an hour later and nailed it live. Nichols is such a driving force that you really can’t get lost playing with him.
Kirk Fletcher was even easier. It was a hectic day, so the details are fuzzy, but I don’t think Fletcher made it to soundcheck. He just texted me saying something like, “Let’s do a blues shuffle in A.” Fletcher met Crone and Hatcher as we walked onstage to perform. Fletcher plugged in, turned up, counted it off, and played his ass off. It couldn’t have been less stressful nor more fun.
Tonic’s Emerson Hart was like dessert. He was playing “If You Could Only See” and “You Wanted More,” two songs I genuinely loved back when there was music on MTV. In gigs like this, I rarely learn a solo note for note. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m not a particularly good mimic. Even if I get the notes right, it usually feels stiff and inauthentic. I usually start where the recording started but let it go where it goes. Some artists don’t like that, some do. Hart seemed cool with my improv and the performance went well. He has an iconic voice that has grown richer with time. He played and sang great, was fun, funny, and all about helping the cause.
The idea of trying to cover Marty Friedman’s solo on “Symphony of Destruction” in front of a very intimidating Dave Mustaine was terrifying. Although the internet is full of children who can nail that solo, I cannot. Maybe if I dedicated the next 10,000 hours of my life to it, I could get close, but it would still be like bad karaoke. So, I was hugely relieved when Gibson’s brand president Cesar Gueikian volunteered to cover it. He only had a weekend to prep but covered it with ease. Thanks Cesar.
The best part of this gig is that it raised funds for veterans battling PTSD. Studies prove what guitarists already know: playing music is a powerful therapy tool.
Two of my beloved nephews, Joe and John Bohlinger, were teenagers when they joined the Marines and went from hunting and fishing in Wyoming and Montana to heavy combat in Afghanistan. They voluntarily put themselves through years of a truly hellish, life-changing war because they wanted to keep us safe. That kind of trauma leaves an indelible mark. I’m grateful to be part of an organization that does something to try and help them.