JJ: Despite the superficiality of much of the popular music, there are still people who manage to slip through and achieve a fair degree of success producing songs that are intelligent and honest. A glance at your recent setlists reveals a bunch of these: Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Morphine, Nirvana, and others. Does your approach to playing contemporary songs differ greatly from that of your approach to playing traditional songs? Do you feel less freedom if you’re playing a tune that’s defined by a specific artist’s version rather than a folk number where there’s a lot of leeway built in?
MV: A song needs to move me or a have moved me at some point in my life in order to make it into my repertoire. I look at a song as being a pure entity. As long as the song sounds good to me, I don’t care who wrote it or when it was written. Lots of great music has been written in the past few decades. I really liked Kurt Cobain’s contribution to the world of contemporary music. I like Sheryl Crow and Liz Phair also. Sheryl is not as deep as Kurt or Liz, but she strikes a great mood with her voice and the texture of the music. Neil Young spanned the decades writing great material and staying true to himself and his integrity.
When I hear something that I like, I first try to see how I will approach performing the song without just spitting back what a great song writer has written, or what a great performer has presented. I like to put my own mark on the tune. If the version that I come up with sounds good to me, then it makes the cut. If it sounds like ass or I find myself struggling to make things happen, I can it. I do find more artistic freedom when approaching a traditional song than I do with a contemporary song. Reason being that there are so many different versions of traditional songs to choose from and usually only one version of a contemporary song to choose from, when learning how to play any given song. But it does make for a nice challenge to cut new ground on a song that hasn’t been performed in so many different ways.
JJ: Cover songs can function in a similar fashion to standard jazz charts and provide a good opportunity to open up. Does your approach for jamming on a cover song differ at all from your approach for jamming on an original? (Do you even have a conscious approach?)
MV: I’ve always liked the notion that you can do anything you want with any song. One of the classic examples is The Allman Brothers rendition of First There Is A Mountain by Donovan, which became just Mountain Jam on the “Eat A Peach” album. That was a beautiful. They just took a theme and ran with it.
I like to approach all of my jams with a fresh head. If having a one chord jam works over John Henry’s Hammer and Jump For Joy, or if soloing over the changes in Guardian Angels or Leaving London is what works, then that’s what it will be. When it comes to songs and jams, I try not to discriminate. Whether it’s my own song or a cover, I like to end product to sound good.
JJ: What are you conscious of when you’re improvising?
MV: Most of my consciousness about improvising is done behind the scenes. I think about concepts during idle time and practice integrating them into my playing in my living room. That way most of the formal thinking gets done ahead of time and I can be free or unconscious while I’m improvising. When I go hiking in the Adirondacks, I like to run down the mountain trails. Things are happening so quickly that there is no time to think. I already know how to run, turn and jump, so I don’t think about those things. I just focus on what is ahead of me. If I took a split second to think about anything else, I’d probably trip on a rock or smack into a tree. The same goes for improvising. I just focus on where I am and what’s ahead of me, and rely on what I know to get me through the way I want to get through.
JJ: How is it different playing and improvising with Box Of Rain in contrast with the ‘pods, where you had a ten year musical relationship built up?
MV: It’s very different. As far as the Seapods go, we sort of grew up together musically, so we always had a similar idea of where everyone else was coming from. They knew how I played I knew how they played. In Box of Rain we are still feeling each other out musically and discovering how each of us plays. The musicians in Box of Rain are incredible, so I’m learning a lot of new concepts and new ways to approach my playing. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to jam with the Seapods again, but if I do I would imagine it would be as Ozzy Osbourne described singing with Black Sabbath after a ten year hiatus. “It’s like putting on an old shoe… it just fits more comfortably than anything else you own.”
I’m sorry I can’t go into more depth, but playing in a cover band (Box of Rain) is very new for me. I’m absorbing as I go along and I haven’t had much time to think about it. Doing something new is always exciting, but it’s hard work.
JJ: After your stint with Box Of Rain is done, do you have any desire (or plans) to play music with a regular group of musicians on a steady basis?
MV: Yes, but not for awhile. I’m staying focused on learning, writing and recording music. I plan on doing a few gigs in NYC when I move down there, but I want to keep it light for now. This is a good time for me to breathe in and absorb everything I can.
JJ: What kinds of things do you pick up from watching other musicians play?
MV: Feel! Once in awhile I pick up a few technical tricks, but I’d rather watch Stevie Ray Vaughan drop his guitar on the stage than break out a pen and note pad at an Al Dimiola concert. I like to watch musicians that pull from their heart, not from their heads or out of their ass (although that has a charm all its own). So much has to do with tone. This applies to all musicians on all instruments. Tone is your voice and music is your language. If it sounds to me like someone’s tone is contrived, or just plain bad, I get a little aggravated. If their tone is happening, one note can say so much more than a nights worth of mediocre playing.
JJ: What kinds of things do you pick up from other mediums (literature, film, the visual arts)?
MV: Anything can be interrelated with music. In the haze of all the things that go on in my daily life, the few things that cut through and get my attention will have an effect on my music. It could come from the color of the tiles in my bathroom, the nonsense words of a babbling child, the silence of two a.m. in my living room, the smell of spring, a good story or a great spiritual connection with another artist. I never know where it’s going to come from. For example; I was watching a cheesy movie two years ago with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline called “A French Kiss”. There was this scene where Kevin’s character is teaching Meg’s character about the different flavors that exist in wine. That scene blew my mind, I couldn’t even focus on the rest of the movie after that (which was a saving grace). For the first time I realized that wine was not just the taste of fermented grape juices, it was so much more. Along with the obvious grape and alcohol flavors, there could be a cherry body with a hint of curry, currant or hickory, if fermented in a wood vat, with a light chocolate closing taste . The same is true about perfume as Tom Robbins explains so well in the book “Jitterbug Perfume”. In perfume you have an introduction, usually citrus, a body, perhaps jasmine, and a finish, perhaps rose all in a alcohol bass (my order and contents my be off, but the point is clear). At the same time that I was hit with the concept of wine and perfume, I was staying very focused on my guitar tone and I realized that the same could be true about guitar tone.
In an article on Jerry Garcia in Guitar Player Magazine the author described Jerry’s tone as being “horn influenced.” He was right, but there was so much more than that. I listened to a tape of him playing in the mid 80s and I heard horn, banjo, mandolin, electric and acoustic guitar, piano and a few other tones in his sound. I’m not talking about his MIDI stuff or his effects either, this is strictly guitar tone. I started to get chills with the realization about what he had accomplished with his tone. His tone was as multi textural as a good bottle of wine or a well balanced bottle of perfume and it had a lot to say about his history as a musician. It helped to know a little about Jerry’s background to be able to pick those tones out. All of that made me focus even harder on my guitar tone and what, in my life history, I wanted to get across.
So you see, anything can get my mind reeling if it comes to me at the right time, even if it comes disguised in a foreign context. I try not to close out anything because you never know when something is going to change the way you think.
JJ: How often do you completely surprise yourself while playing and end up picking up something entirely new by recognizing something you’ve been doing unconsciously?
MV: All the time. So many of my improvisation ideas have come out of that and so many songs have come from that too. That is the moment when you are being as true to your soul and spirit as you can.
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Does Jesse Jarnow know what rhetorical means?!? Yes, of course! Following the completion of a shload of papers, he gets to return home, at least for the summer.
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