Interview excerpt with Matt Richards for CD release One In

Mind

Your recorded work thus far has featured your acoustic playing, either
unaccompanied or with overdubs. One In Mind may surprise some listeners
who aren’t long-term fans.

In terms of years, I actually have more experience in straight-ahead jazz and fusion than as a solo
player. My formal musical training is in jazz techniques and theory; acoustic fingerstyle playing
is a relatively recent chapter of my musical life.

You have an interesting mix of material on this CD. The guitar / bass duets
are jazz standards while the Language of 3 tracks are originals and
improvisations. There’s also an original Indian piece and a solo version of
George Harrison’s Something. While this is quite an array of material you
seem to retain a characteristically identifiable approach to your playing.

That’s the comment I’ve always hoped to hear – I must be getting close to my own musical style
regardless of the setting I’m in. Those duets with my good friend Bill Zola go back to the 1990s
when we were doing a lot of work as a duo. In a duet the players need to create something
unique in the pairing, not just play ‘trio minus the drums’. Bill and I get into conversational
exchanges and even come up with the same spontaneous ideas.

The duo tracks floated around for a while; I recorded them on a Tascam Portastudio and did the
original mixes. A few years later Otto Capobianco at Nebula Zone Studios re-mastered them.
This is the first time they are ‘officially’ released. I was still playing acoustic with a flatpick then
– during our most recent duo gig I played everything fingerstyle.

It’s a different approach in terms of phrasing and ideas, isn’t it? Ralph Towner
made a comment about being more pianistic when you play with the fingers.

Absolutely – the real challenge for me is to phrase in a swinging way when I’m playing
fingerstyle. I’m programmed into getting the phrasing down with a pick in terms of feel and
dynamics when I play in a straight-ahead setting. I do use a pick with the glissentar, though, and
play in a more linear fashion with it.

That’s the fretless guitar which you use on The Howl and In To The Woods.

Yes. It’s a cross between a classical guitar and an oud with courses of strings tuned to guitar
pitch. I got it from Godin shortly after they brought it out. Richard Leo Johnson actually let me
play his and I decided I needed to have one of my own. On both of those pieces I play in less of a
jazzy style and try to get more ethnic. The fretless factor isn’t just for sliding notes around; in
fact, if you do that a lot it will sound gimmicky.

Do you need to shift your mental gears when you play the glissentar?

Yes and no – it’s not like an off/on thing, but it has it’s own identity. I have been using the
glissentar in my trio for a while now. It isn’t suited to chord melodies, but it’s great on a blues or
a blowing tune. Actually, Jim Goodin suggested it for The Howl, which is his composition.
Likewise, Bill made the same suggestion for his piece In To The Woods. That piece was a real
challenge for me – I had never played Indian music seriously and when I heard the basic rhythm
track from Bill’s CD I asked him if I could work something up with it. Bill has studied eastern
One In Mind Matt Richards p.2

Indian rhythms and theory and offered me advice. The call and response arrangement was based
on a recording by Anoushka Shankar and her father Ravi – of course, they use two sitars. I was
after a different guitar sound and ended up using my little travel guitar.

What about the whole introduction? You do feel as though you’re walking into
the woods and finding the music in the midst of a wilderness.

It’s funny – Bill told me to try whatever I wanted so long as I included crickets in it; he may have
been joking but it conveyed an impression of exactly that whole scenario. It was actually a lot
longer at first, with traffic sounds and people talking. But it ended up feeling overwhelming and
unnecessary. I recorded and mixed that at home – I think my wife was contemplating my murder
by the time I finally finished.

The Language of 3 duets and group performances are unique unto

themselves.

L3, as it was called in short, was a loose grouping that was concocted by Jim Goodin and me. It
was inspired by International Guitar Night and, in fact, Richard Leo Johnson was our first guest
musician. It wasn’t envisioned as a group, per se, but more of a review with some loose
collaboration. These tracks were recorded during a live webcast hosted by keyboardist Don
Slepian. It featured a great deal of improvisation, especially in the things Don played on.

What about your cover of Something?

That’s the result of a request that I had on a private booking to include Beatles’ music. That
arrangement came together with a minimum amount of hassle. I had heard Larry Coryell do his
arrangement many times and I wanted to make sure my version sidestepped his influence. Larry
recently complimented me on my version. That was recorded live by my son during a Borders
bookstore gig that coincided with sever thunderstorms – the only people in the store were the
staff. It was the first time I used the Seagull guitar from Godin.

You improvise over the chord changes while keeping the progression going.
That isn’t something a lot of guitarists do.

Well, Ralph Towner and Pierre Bensusan do it very well, so well that you may not realize they’ve
gone off into an improvisation. Considering that pianistic approach, you want to use the guitar as
a multi-dimensional instrument rather than segregating single-note lines from chords. Getting the
mindset in place is half the battle.

A lot of the players that fall under the Fingerstyle/Acoustic Solo Guitar banner don’t do much
improvising except for embellishing an established piece – maybe that’s the jazz portion of my
musical nature always fighting to get free. Unlike other solo guitarists I rarely use alternate
tunings because I end up getting lost too easily. In a lot of ways I guess I’m kind of old-
fashioned.