Bill Frisell: Keep Your Eyes Open

It's still kind of weird playing alone. Music for me is so much about what happens in the relationships with other people.

-Bill Frisell

You also have this ever-growing circle of likeminded players like Jenny Scheinman and Eyvind Kang who approach music in a similar way. Tell me a bit of what this community of compatriots is like.

Talk about being lucky! Now, it's like this full orchestra surrounding me. I have friends, really close friends, this group of people where I don't have to explain anything. There's a huge body of music that we've all played together, so it's like a live organism that keeps on growing. The circle of people just keeps growing, but there's maybe a core of a bunch of people that we put in different combinations together. We come together and then we go apart and do our own things, and when we come together again everybody just has more experiences that keep feeding this kind of giant plant.

I like that image, and it just keeps throwing out fresh tendrils the longer you all play together.

Bill Frisell by Jimmy Katz

That's what I feel, and that's where I feel just blessed. I'm just so lucky to have these people.

You have a pretty unique style, and finding players who can lock in with your particular style seems like another challenge. You're not up there whipping off Wes Montgomery licks generally and finding musicians, particularly other guitarists, isn't easy, yet you've found folks like Greg Leisz who vibrate on your frequency.

[Greg] is just awesome! That thing I was saying about not having to talk about it, I had that from the first moment with him, like he was the other half of my brain. He's left-handed and I'm right-handed and our birthdays are exactly six months apart. There's some weird sort of balance thing.

Have you found other guitarist with a similar crossover, even if not to the same degree?

There's sort of a brotherhood of guitar [laughs]. There's tons of guitar players I love to play with, and that's part of what attracted me to [the instrument] in the beginning, the whole idea of having a band and a bunch of guitars all banging away together. I don't do it that much on gigs but I've played recently with Russell Malone and Jim Hall, who was my teacher. I've done things with Marc Ribot.

Marc's a perfect example of the kind of guys you seem to lock up well with, fellow travelers who've carved their own way on an instrument that isn't easy to establish an individual identity on. It's hard to speak clearly on electric guitar in particular with so much history behind it now. I have a soft spot for the Bass Desires band with Marc Johnson and John Scofield.

Me, too! It was sort of our Allman Brothers Band [laughs]. Maybe two years ago we did a Bass Desires reunion in Europe, three or five concerts, and it was cool. We didn't try to recreate anything. We're where we're at now and we did that. Like a lot of my projects, it was a certain time where it was meant to happen. Same thing with things I've done with John Zorn. People still always ask about Naked City, and there was a time for that but we've all moved on. I'm not saying that I don't like these projects but you can't really go back, though some people wish we would. It doesn't feel right.

The first thing I ever heard by you was Eberhard Weber's Fluid Rustle [1979], which may be your first official studio recording. What's amazing in hindsight is how together your sound is out of the gate. Your future style in germinal form is already apparent.

Bill Frisell

That is [my first], though I'd done a couple homemade things. It's such a gradual, day-to-day thing chipping away at [one's personal style]. It's not really a matter of finding it. I think so much of it comes from your limitations. I'm hearing something in my head and I'm striving towards it but can't ever really get there. So, you just do what you can do in the moment. And so much of it is what you CAN'T do in what it really sounds like. It's a good thing. It's what makes each of us unique. If we could do whatever we wanted at any moment then there'd be no music [laughs]. Music just keeps on going and going and you never get to the end of it. You just keep trying and trying and trying. There's no finish line or anything.

On a technical level, I'm always struck by your use of volume. You're able to make people lean in and listen intently. I liken it to what The Band did with rock 'n' roll in the '60s.

I actually like to play at all kinds of volumes [laughs]. I like what happens when you play loud, unless it gets to the pain level; I'm not into that. Sometimes when you play soft it intensifies the communication between the musicians playing and hopefully that intensity can project out past the fact that it's soft and become powerful. I like when there's dynamics. They suck people in. I just don't want it to be the same thing all the time. I like when there's big surprises, big jumps in there, too.

With the people I'm playing with there's tunes we can play where it's not about the tune itself, which becomes a kind of framework where all kinds of new things can happen. I need to write new things and come up with new compositions and all that, but there's something great when people have this shared conversation that they've played for years and years.

Your approach to Bob Dylan's music in recent years shows off this dynamic, where a shared composition is approached in a way that's fresh and illuminating. What got you interested in bringing in what he does into what you do?

That just seemed like a cool thing for me because he's just been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I first heard him on his first records in the early '60s, right close to the same time I was being attracted to the guitar through surf music and all that. It's been a part of my life the whole time, so a lot of his songs are just in my blood. Those are my standard songs, where the generation before jazz guys would play George Gershwin songs – and I play those songs, too – but he's sort of George Gershwin for me.

You're helping expand the canon, changing the definition of what's deemed worthy of inclusion. It doesn't have to be just "My Funny Valentine," as fantastic as that song is.

Bill Frisell by Jimmy Katz

Aside from the simple structures of a Dylan song... no, 'simple' isn't the right word. The words themselves become part of what's generating what I'm playing. You can't separate the melody and chords from the words. That gives you this whole other emotional edge to draw from, even though it's instrumental music. There's all this stuff I use that goes beyond the notes and the scale and the chords.

I love playing with singers, or pretending I'm a singer [laughs]. Greg Leisz has played with many great singers and when we play together I get to pretend to be a singer and he always backs it up and knows just what to do. With a singer you're trying to find a place where you're supporting them but you're also being subversive and having an effect on the emotion of a song but coming more from the inside instead of blasting out all over the top of it.

I wanted to make sure we touched on how you incorporate country music into the instrumental work you do. You're one of the few guitarists that's ever reminded me of Merle Travis when you get cookin'.

He's awesome! That's a huge compliment because I'm not even close to him! Just yesterday, I was looking at footage of him on YouTube. [Country music] wasn't something I was drawn to consciously, and when I was younger growing up in Colorado I think I shunned it. It seemed corny when I was younger but as I got older I began to realize how music is all coming from the same place, the same root, and also realizing how much music I'd heard as a kid that'd come from [country music].

As a longtime attendee of your shows, I find it fascinating to watch the music manifest itself in your body, something Solos lets fans do in the comfort of their own home.

It's pretty uncomfortable to witness my body jerking around. It's kinda hard to watch, for me. The music is going out more from my head and what's going on with my body is just residual. The music just takes over and it's certainly the last thing I'm conscious of.

We've been talking a lot about collaboration so I wonder what it's like for you to be so exposed in these solo performances?

It's still kind of weird playing alone. Music for me is so much about what happens in the relationships with other people. There's this momentum when you or someone else puts something out into the air. It's like a conversation where things go back and forth and it generates into more and more and more. But, when you're alone you put an idea out into space and then it just keeps on floating out there and you're stuck! It doesn't come back to you, really, the way it works. First of all, I have to get really comfortable with the idea that there's going to be space. When I get uncomfortable I try to fill up that space. It's been a challenge. I first tried to play alone 30 years ago and it's a common guitar player thing, but for me it's always been a challenge.

Well, this setting makes one get down to some of their primal truths as a musician because there's no one else to play off of. And whether we need to see and interact with these truths or not, it's not always fun, per se. I think it's a brave thing to do. So, what is the reflection coming back at you in this solo experience?

I guess I'm just looking for progress or something. It's almost an emotional thing. Each time I hope I get a little more comfortable with being myself. All music is that anyway, whether there's other people or not. It's all an invitation to take the next step.