Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Bill Amatneek has been playing string bass since 10th grade in folk, 
bluegrass, big band, and new acoustic music groups. He has recorded with 
Mark O'Connor, Kate Wolf, the Chambers Brothers, Tiny Moore and Eldin
Shamblin, the Rowan Brothers, and on the first David Grisman Quintet
album. He has gigged with Peter Rowan and Tony Rice, Frank Wakefield,
Bill Keith, Peter, Paul & Mary, and the Full Faith and Credit Big Band.

His stories and essays have been printed in Rolling Stone, Bluegrass
Unlimited, Yoga Journal, Musician, Acoustic News, Down Beat, the
Dickens, First Leaves, the Pacific Sun, and other publications.

His book, "Acoustic Stories," was published by Vineyards Press, LLC, in
August, 2003.

Our moderator for this conversation is Kurt Ribak (pronounced REE-bok, like 
the shoes). Kurt grew up in Berkeley, California. He studied music at UC 
Berkeley and later earned a scholarship to Berklee College of Music, where 
he graduated with top honors with a diploma in jazz performance on bass.

After graduation Kurt returned to the San Francisco Bay area. There he
played a variety of gigs, ranging from playing bass in a tutu for a
circus gig to backing transsexual torch singers to church gigs. Other
gigs include jazz/blues vocalist Faye Carol and JC Hopkins, songwriter
for multiple Grammy winner Norah Jones. Kurt's also played with
guitarist Adam Levy, (Tracy Chapman and Nora Jones) and with Ralph
Carney, best known for his work with Tom Waits.

Since 2000 Kurt has been leading his own jazz group, Kurt Ribak. The
group features his own compositions and plays venues throughout the Bay
Area.

Welcome, Bill and Kurt!
  

    
Thanks Cynthia, very much. I'm looking forward to this experience.
Best,
BA
  

    
Also looking forward to it.  Bill, what prompted you to have the book 
published?  Do you see it as a collection of separate stories or do you 
see it as having a thread running through the different stories?
  

    
The book was something I wanted to get off my chest, to get out there.
I had accumulated a number of stories I had written, most of them
about music, and I thought they would hang together as a book. 

I think the thread is my acoustic music experiences, plus that they
are all, I believe, with one exception, stories, with beginnings,
middles and ends. 

I have three other books I'll be publishing next, two of them about
music.
  

    
(non-members can email their comments or questions to
 <inkwell-hosts@well.com>  )
  

    
Welcome, Bill!

I really enjoyed the stories in this book.  Thank you for joining us!
  

    
Bill, I am curious about your experiences in the jazz vs. bluegrass / 
folk worlds.  Most working musicians I know playin more than onestyle, but 
most of the bassists I know that play jazz don't play bluegrass and vice 
versa.  I saw in your description of your childhood lots of exposure to 
both classical and folk music, but I didn't notice exposure to jazz.  

How did you get into jazz?  Do you find yourself having to "change gears" 
when playing in say a jazz big band versus a bluegrass band?
  

    
Jazz came into my life in junior high or high school where I was in
jazz groups with friends. In 10th grade I joined the high school big
band, and have been with big bands ever since. There's nothing like it
for me, and I would imagine for most bassists. You are the bottom-most
note for the entire 20-piece ensemble, a position of palpable and
pivotal power. There's a local big band up in Santa Rosa: if the leader
can't get his number one or number two bassist to play, he cancels the
whole rehearsal. So, bass is very important to the big band sound.

Is it a gear change to go from one to the other? Well, not so much.
Practicing or playing string bass for one genre benefits practicing or
playing any other genre. The string bass is such a physically demanding
instrument. You've got to put time into it every day just to keep your
strength up, to say nothing of agility, accuracy, and tone.

I remember one day I rehearsed with the David Grisman Quintet, with
Tony Rice on guitar, Darol Anger on fiddle, and Todd Philips on bass,
and then in the evening I went to a big band rehearsal. Now that was a
fulfilling day.
  

    
What's your take on the sense of community in the jazz and bluegrass 
scenes?  My experience has been that bass players are pretty supportive of 
each other - which makes sense given the role of the instrument.  

On the other hand, I've been struck by a sense of community in the folk and 
bluegrass scene that I'm not aware of in the jazz scene in general - I've 
had friends in the bluegrass scene casually mention potluck get-togethers and 
the like, which is something I haven't experienced in the jazz scene.  
  

    
Yes, I think the folk scene is pretty tight. Everyone knows everyone,
everyone picks (99% of folks attending a bluegrass festival are
themselves pickers research has shown), everyone is "down home" even if
that's not where they're from. And all gatherings are "pot luck."

But folks at a jazz festival are by and large not players themselves.
The audience is listeners, not participants in jazz. Likewise at a jam
session: there will be players and listeners. The two do not cross.

Truth to tell, when folks ask me if I play jazz, I say that I play
"at" jazz. Jazz is a repertoire that is thousands of tunes long. A jazz
player knows most of those compositions by heart. I know MANY jazz
tunes by heart, but not thousands. And of course, a jazz player is a
master improviser, and I am not that. That's one of the reasons I play
and enjoy big band jazz. In big band, either my notes are written, or
if not, the changes are written. And the solos are few and far between.
  

    
Really enjoying the book Bill. I have been sharing snippets with
friends and will be circulating it amongst my acoustic friends. Thanks
for joining us to talk about it.

Especially enjoyed your account of unrequited love with Mary and the
account of the Parisian tortoise shell plectrums. It is obvious from
your stories that you have been fortunate enough to follow your bliss
and that it has led you to some terrific experiences transcending the
musical journey.
  

    

Speaking of David Grisman, you were in the first edition of his
groundbreaking band, the David Grisman Quintet.

That was a pretty exciting sound to my bluegrass- and jazz-illiterate ears.
Was it fun for you to be in on the creation of a new style?
  

    
And did you have any idea just how much new ground you'd be breaking?   I
bought that first Grisman album without even hearing it.   I bought it
because I loved the cover.   When I put it on, I couldn't believe what I was
hearing
  

    
As a working musician, Bill, I enjoyed the book, but found it a bit
fuzzy of focus. It seemed to me you sold yourself short a bit. Bass
player low self-esteem? ("Ugh! Bad when drums stop! Bass solo next!")
:-)

That is, I was a good deal less interested in "name dropping" chapters
like "Mary ... Peter & Paul" (A consumate performer used you as a prop
for her stage act? What a surprise!) compared to vastly more
interesting chapters about *you*, Bill and what you learned about
music from other musicians, chapters like "I Love the Bass" and (the
best chapter) "Linger on the Halftones".
  

    
"Linger on the Halftones" was the story that stuck in my mind.  I thought 
it was a fine example of the seemingly random encounters one has as a 
musician, and how some of them that start out seeming just annoying can 
turn out to be profound.

I really enjoy your comment on the joy of playing the bass.  I agree with 
you that there is a special pleasure from feeling your body vibrate to the 
low E string.  When kids show curiousity about the instrument and they 
demonstrate that they can respect somebody's equipment I often let them 
try playing the bass a little bit - I feel a bit like a bass pusher when I 
do that.

The tortoise shell pick story was very sweet.
  

    
Your explanation of why you play big band music made sense to me - I was 
curious how you came to play two such different styles as bluegrass and 
big band.  

It also explained to me why I hadn't heard about you as a locally based 
jazz bassist.  Bass in a big band is a very differnet animal than playing 
bass in, say a trio like I did tonight - where everybody has to solo and 
improvise, or there won't be enought music for three sets!
  

    
Count me among those who especially enjoyed your guitar pick story,
Bill.  As a guitarist with a rather recent interest in the fine points
of picks and as someone who's seen a hawkbill sea turtle close up in
its own house, I could dig it.
  

    
Thanks, Steve, very much. Yes, I was very fortunate to play with PP&M.


The story about the tortoiseshell picks, Paris Remembers, was the
first I wrote for this book. When the old man said that the picks were
free because we Americans had liberated Paris and never changed a sou,
I was stunned, slack-jawed. Hearing that from him was a great gift.
  

    
Wow.  That is great.
  

    
Well, Jacques, the stories were written on their own, in their own
time, for their own individual purposes. Joined in a book, I see that
they are not all necessarily in the same focal plane. For many folks,
the PP&M tale is the favorite, but not for you apparently. 

I don't believe I suffer from "bass player low self-esteem" however.
Like most bassists, I tend to be a tad humble (or so I'm told) unlike
lead guitarists, say, who, generally, tend to be not so humble.

I tried not to "drop" names, and I was very gratified about what
Milbre Burch said on this issue: "Although his stories are set in a
world populated with famous names, his work is emphatically not about
name-dropping." Most people give me high marks on this score, but not
all I guess.

Thanks for your kind words about "I Love the Bass." Are you a bassist
yourself? Folks who single out that piece usually are bassists. And
thank you VERY much for mentioning "Linger on the Halftones," the piece
about a big band rehearsal. Only a few folks mention that as a
favorite, and they tend to be writers.
  

    
Well, I just finished an 8-month gig playing dinner jazz (you'll
excuse the expression) two nights a week (piano/vocals, sax/flute,
bass). As you said, that makes for much improvising from all three
chairs. I love it, I love jazz, and always have. I just don't call
myself primarily a jazz bassist.

Kurt, do you have a steady gig where we could catch you?
  

    
Thanks Tim. I was at a bluegrass fester a few years back, '95 or '96.
There was a guy selling one tortoiseshell pick. It was big and fat,
like an Eisenhower dollar, and the guy was asking $50 for it. I'll bet
he got it too.

I've read up on the procedure for harvesting tortoise from a hawksbill
turtle. Pretty gruesome stuff, involving putting the live animal
upside down in a vat of boiling water. If it doesn't kill the turtle
(it usually does) he grows another shell, but distinctly different from
the first, and unusable for tortoiseshell paraphernalia.
  

    

I loved the PP&M story.  And I loved the story about the rehearsal band.  I
loved 'em all, for that matter.  It's great to see good writing from a
musician's perspective.  It's not that easy to find.

I'm interstested in how you became a bass player, Bill.  I think what you
said up there --

>  Like most bassists, I tend to be a tad humble (or so I'm told) unlike lead
>  guitarists, say, who, generally, tend to be not so humble.

-- is so true as to be almost a cliche.

In "The real Frank Zappa Book," Frank said something about how most bass
players got started in a band meeting in a garage in high school -- meaning
the band had three guitar players and one of them had to become the bass
player.

It's not just "humility" that makes a great bass player.  I think the best
musicians have a deep understanding of every instrument's role in the
ensemble, and works to make his contribution appropriate to the moment.

Can I get you to talk about the characteristics of a great player, regardless
of the genre?
  

    

Slippage with an alarming bit of information!
  

    
"Lingering on the Half-Tones" was indeed an affecting piece. Rather
darker than most the stories in the book, I thought. I was getting a
'there but for the grace of god' hit from it.
  

    
It's interesting, but during the many rehearsals and gigs that lead up
to the making of that album, no one mentioned that it was new music,
or ground-breaking music. We just rehearsed our butts off, 5 days a
week. That was our rule. We played together five days a week. If we had
four gigs that week, we had one full rehearsal. If we had one gig that
week, we had four full rehearsals. Rehearsals were long and intense.
Coffee breaks were short. We were all anxious to play that music as
much as we could.

As it turned out that album created a new genre of music, called "new
acoustic music." Some say it spun off "unplugged" music and "acoustic"
music. I dunno. But in any event, the genre is alive and well, and
highly productive I think.