ANNOUNCER:

[We're here with Leo Kottke, a] Minnesota guitarist of no little renown...Robert?

ROBERT

Yes, welcome Leo Kottke.  Very nice to see you here and your two guitars, nicely tuned.

LEO:

Thank you, it's good to be here.

ROBERT:

Leo, I've asked -- been around town asking all sorts of people why they live, or why they've come to live, in Minneapolis.  You're a musician who's moved here and who's lived here I think for about 20 years.  Why did you choose Minneapolis?

LEO:

It's no surprise to me that I've stayed here but I've never really been able to understand how I got here.  There's a chain of events:  I went to school here, got married here, and my wife grew up here so it's a likely place to stay.  But I'm still here because it sticks out -- it stands out.  I have to say I'm more familiar with but I'm more familiar with the other side here, with Minneapolis.  I got lost coming over here to St. Paul today.

ROBERT:

Well, yes, Michael Bark [?] and I got lost a few times coming back from the clubs, in which I'm afraid to say we didn't find you.  But we're going to make up for that now.  You're going to play us some -- a selection of songs on your acoustic 12- string guitar.  What is this first one called?

LEO:

It's called "Airproofing."

[Leo plays "Airproofing"]

ROBERT:

Leo, as someone whose tried to play the guitar myself, that was an absolutely terrifying display of technique.  I notice you look down and shut your eyes when you're playing. Is that something you do all the time or is that just a particularly --

LEO:

I think it happens all the time.  I know that there are moments when I wonder where I've been.  It's always risky to try and figure that out.  But most of the time, yeah, they're closed, probably.  For what reason, I have no idea.  Just sort of squinches up, I think.

ROBERT:

You chose to compose that on the 12-string guitar.  What made you chose the 12- string rather than the 6-string for that number?

LEO:

More noise.  If I had known what I know now about the instrument I may not have gone near it, because it's a real cranky piece of work.  this is a model that was designed by myself and the manufacturer [Taylor Guitars] so it behaves a little better but they tend to be a real can of worms once you get into them.

ROBERT:

For reasons of tuning?

LEO:

Harmonically.  If you're -- if you play [plays a bunch of chords in different voicing].  Actually, those don't sound bad, maybe I'm just complaining.  When you start to move your voicing around inside instead of keeping the root, for example, on the bottom all of the time, it sounds a little fishy on a 12- string.  You get an octave that's just not part of the chord you're looking for.  That, and it's hard to mike.  We happen to be working with an engineer here who's familiar with me and this guitar but they're cranky in that respect.  There's a lot of low-mid boom on them.

ROBERT:

They have a wonderfully resonant sound..

LEO:

Yeah.

ROBERT:

I think that it sounds marvellous.  So are you going to play us another song on that one or are you going to pick up you six-string which is poised so delicately on the floor there.

LEO:

Yeah, let me grab this six-string and...

ROBERT:

You have all your guitars custom-made, do you?

LEO:

No, this once I bought off the wall.  This one [12-string] is a production model but it was designed with me in mind so you can buy them.  I would appreciate it as a matter of fact.  This is a tune called -- what is this called?  William Powell.

[Leo plays "William Powell"]

ROBERT:

Sounds like almost an impertinent question, Leo, but are there any other guitarists you particularly admire?

LEO:

Oh, of course there are and what I like about the instrument is that people who've been playing for 10 minutes can come up with something that will, as you've said, scare you to death, that is original.  I was in Australia last summer on a stage with, among other people, Joe Pass.  The question had come up about improvisation and he pointed out that this [plays low E string] may be the only original thing you can do on a guitar cause it's the first thing you do when you pick one up for the first time.  But you get to hear something from anyone who plays it.  You almost immediately hear something unique.  But there are players locally -- or rather, in the country -- like Michael Hedges for example, or Joe Pass, that I admire greatly.  Pierre Bensusan who lives, I believe, in Paris.

ROBERT:

Are these people influences on your style?

LEO:

I'd like to think so, but I think it would be hard for me to really find out what those influences are.  I know who I've deliberately stolen things from --

ROBERT:

And who's that?

LEO:

Deliberately:  Kenny Burrell.  Without my knowledge:  Jim Hall.  As a matter of fact, I heard Jim Hall when I was still a trombone player and it was only until I went back and I found a record of Bob Brookmeir's that included him that I realized I'd absorbed some of Jim's stuff and had been playing it by then on the guitar.  There was a 20 year lag between hearing it and using it.  I've very proud of that by the way, because it seems to indicated I have some aptitude for either listening or playing.

ROBERT:

I'm sorry that you didn't bring the trombone in, that would have been an interesting development.

LEO:

[Laughs]  Yeah, we would have all -- it would have been transatlantic suffering.

ROBERT:

So are you staying on the six-string for the next one?

LEO:

Yeah, let me grab this E string.  [checks tuning]  Doc Watson walked up  behind me one day in North Carolina, sharped my E string and told me it was flat.  Ever since then I've been unable to determine when I'm in tune on my low E.  Let me play something.  This is more traditional and it includes [starts playing "Last Steam Engine Train"] a lot of the stuff that I have deliberately stolen from John Fahey or Doc Watson or Sam McGee.

[Leo plays medley of "Last Steam Engine Train" and "Stealing"]

ROBERT:

Leo, how improvised are these songs that you perform like that?  I mean, how much room do you leave yourself to let the spirit take you?

LEO:

There was probably about eight to 10 bars of improvisation in that.  And I do it when I've lost control of a crowd or I don't know where to go next or -- that's almost exclusively when I do it.  If everything's going great I just stick with what I know.  Because I'm a fan of composition.  And improvisation can be a little bit of the same thing.  The best of it happens though when you're in terrible trouble and don't know where you're going or how to get out of it once you're in it.