Mike
Stern is All Over The Place
Mike
Stern is All Over The Place
Interview by Christopher McHale
Down
three steps from steamy Christopher Street, in the 55 Bar, Mike Stern has just
wrapped a set. He stands behind the bar hawking his latest CD,
All Over The Place. This joint is not
a fancy uptown concert hall, with hoi poloi seats and feathered patrons. Jazz
can be like that these days, a sort of refined swing to the evening, a rarified
attempt at legitimacy, as if white tie acceptance is some kind of required
validation.
Mike Stern
doesn’t really care about any of that.
He lives inside
the music. Wherever he plugs in and creates, that’s where the music is, and
finding it, shaping is his lifelong practice.
“I love music,
there’s just so many ways to go with music. There are so many different things
to get into and study. I check out a lot of horn players, a lot of saxophone
players and trumpet players, and Miles who I played with, I check his stuff out.
I write it out, I transcribe stuff like that. Piano players, like McCoy Tyner
and Herbie, I try to get some of those ideas on the guitar,” he says.
His latest CD
release, All Over The Place takes
this wide-ranging passion across many borders, genres, ideas, riffs, beats,
colors, melodies, harmonies, to forge a global fusion all boiled down and
presented with rare precision.
“This record has
a whole bunch of different, wonderful musicians on it and that’s why I called it
All Over The Place. The record has a
lot of different styles that are inspired by these different musicians. Richard
Bona, people like that, they inspire me to write in their genre, like Richard
could sing this. Esperanza Spalding, you know I love her voice and her bass
playing and I thought if I could write a piece on this record that she could
sing, she’s a real soprano and she sings so beautifully, real high, the range of
the piece could really show what she can do,” says Stern.
In the most
basic sense Mike Stern plays the guitar. Plays it, practices it, but never
perfects it, because perfection is not only out of reach, it’s not even the
goal.
“You can arrange
everything to a certain point and you can rehearse it to a certain point, but it
doesn’t all have to be “Pro Tooled” to death and everything lined up perfectly.
It’s got to have some rough edges and I think it’s important to get everybody
live on the record, which is what I was able to do in this case, everybody
played live in the studio on every session. That’s cool,” he says.
In our
everything tidy and compressed interweb world, a record like
All Over The Place is a warm bath for
the ears. Real, sweaty, punchy, riffy, actual melodies, ideas, challenges and
pure, unadulterated chops, like there is a sign over the live room door in the
recording studio that reads, If Ye Can’t Play, Do Not Enter Here.
“Everybody’s
sending these files, everything sounds so digital, it sounds too clean. My
favorite records are the old records, like the Stones and the Who and Jimi
Hendrix, the 60’s Jazz records, there was a lot of raw in that stuff,
especially, if it’s instrumental music. If it’s too clean, I don’t know, to me
it loses something. It’s amazing to do it live like I did it here, because you
come up with different ideas on the spot, things you wouldn’t have come up with
otherwise,” says Stern.
Mike Stern looks
like a pure bred rock star, but his guitar on
All Over The Place can be smooth,
tight, snaking down Groove Boulevard with a gorgeous, almost vocal style to his
playing.
“With Miles
there was an edge, but I’ve always liked a kind of a vocal sound, like a horn. I
use a little chorus and two amps to try and make it sound a little more vocal,
like Jimi Hendrix, because he sang, and the blues guys I grew up with, BB King,
Albert King, they bent the strings and sounded very vocal and I’ve always been a
fan of that style. I want the guitar to sound more legato and more singing like.
I want air in the sound.”
The vocal nuance
is right there on the tunes “Light,” the blues infused “Halfway Home,” featuring
a popping bass solo from Victor Wooten, and the beautiful ballad, “As Far As We
Know.”
The ballad is a
surprise, a nylon-stringed acoustic piece, subtle and evocative, set against
some pulsating pads, with an almost European film scoring and melodic setting, a
gentle love match of Stern’s guitar and Esperanza Spalding’s voice. The tune
suggests an emerging depth to Stern’s musicality.
Mike Stern has
always defined his style from a singular perspective. There is a quality to his
playing that is unique, almost gentle, and shaded in the most refined way, and
All Over The Place provides an
unfolding conversation between Mike and his guests.
Against a soft,
sure touch on the tune “AJ,” the bass pulse of Super-Funk maestro Anthony
Jackson works a solid foil for Stern’s guitar. Chris Potter’s agitated sax joins
in, as does Mike Stern’s wife Leni on rhythm guitar. Later Leni returns on the
Worldbeat “Out Of The Blue,” playing the n'goni, an entrancing energetic tune
rising whole cloth out of some distant azure sea.
Listening to
this record is like taking a mystery bus tour to the four corners of the jazz
world, surprising, unexpected and outright fun.
In Bar 55, the
line of fans getting Mike Stern to sign the cover of
All Over The Place, stretches back to
the door. He is smiling, open, chatting, wearing his heart on his sleeve,
answering every question. This is Mike Stern’s kind of place and his kind of
crowd, casual, intense, committed and honest. From a small bar in Greenwich
Village to the cornucopia of grooves on
All Over The Place, Mike Stern has one idea.
“Whatever
you’re playing, wherever the music takes you, the guiding force to me is play
your heart out.”
This interview is protected by copyright © and may not be reproduced in print or on the internet or through any other means without the written permission of Riveting Riffs Magazine, All Rights Reserved