Frank Vignola Interview

by Rick Landers

Nestled in the foothills of the Shenandoahs is a little known haven of East Coast culture. The Theatre at Washington, Virginia is small, intimate and remote, yet, its walls reverberate with legendary sounds of jazz.

Recently, patrons of the Theater enjoyed the diverse mix of music of the Frank and Joe Show, with jazz guitarist Frank Vignola and crew who venturied in and out of jazz with a playful complexity that had audience members murmuring, "Did he just play some Zappa?" or "A bit of Django there!"

In the world of jazz Frank Vignola is already a legend. But, that's really not all there is to this guy. Vignola lives in a music world without boundaries. He and his group dial into rock, Latin, the blues, R&B, classical, western, gypsy swing and international music from all over the planet and wrestle, cajole, and seduce it into a harmonious and sometimes quirky melting pot.

Born on Long Island, New York, Frank was not only surrounded by a family of musicians, but immersed in a city where the influences of generations of multi-cultural musicians would help propel him into becoming a modern day music blender and innovator.

While still in his teen years, Vignola was named as one of the top musicians in New York.

Later, he would start his own hot jazz group, tour the smokey clubs of Europe, and earn an exclusive recording contract with the Concord Jazz label.

Vignola has recorded alongside Chet Atkins, Madonna, Ringo Starr, Manhattan Transfer, Elvin Jones, Lionel Hampton, Woody Allen, Bucky Pizzarelli and other name artists.

Frank earned his wings when he was invited to join the "Les Paul Trio," sharing the stage at the Iridium Jazz Club with master guitarist Les Paul.

Frank Vignola teamed up with talented percussionist Joe Ascione as the Frank and Joe Show offering fans a great first tour and a new CD called 33 1/3. In 2005, they released their second CD, 66 2/3 on Hyena Records.

Ascione (ASH-ee-oh-nee) plays a West African drum called a djembe, bongos, cymbal and a hodge-podge of other percussion instruments. Frank plays lead guitar accompanied by another superb guitarist, Ken Smith. Bass lines are pulled together by Gary Mazzaroppi with Rich Zucker and Chuck Feruggia showing off their skills on a panapoly of noisemakers (djembe, tambourine, triangle, hands clapping, a bell tree and a train whistle).

The Frank and Joe Show is not the work of some staid, feet planted, jazz ensemble. These guys move around the stage as much as they move around the musical block. And they seque from sincere romantic tunes to cleverly devised idiosynchratic romps. All with an entertaining mix of humorous bantering and good fun between the audience and band members.

Frank has teamed up the Tmedia Group and recently developed his new on-line guitar instruction that offers modules for learning improvization, arpeggios, vibrato and other techniques. StudywithFrank.com includes tablature, video clips, audio downloads, and play-alongs that nearly add up to a personal guitar lesson with Frank sitting at your side.

I understand you're from a musical family?

Frank Vignola: Yes, my father played, father's cousins played, my brother played, my mother played.

They played jazz?

FV: Well, kind of but not really jazz. They were into banjo music. But when I told them I wanted to play guitar at the age of six my Dad went out and bought me a Joe Pass record, a Bucky Pizzarelli record, a Wes Montgomery record, Les Paul and Tony Mottola records.

Did they like rock 'n' roll?

FV: Well, they listened to a little bit of '50s rock 'n roll. When I got into my teens I began to listen to Jimi Hendrix, Van Halen, Carlos Santana and Steve Morse.

Your parents bought your first guitar?

FV: Like I said, I was six years old. They gave me a D'Angelico New Yorker made in 1958. [Laughs] It was my grandma's. What an amazing guitar!

What else do you play?

FV: I dabble with the banjo a little bit and with other stringed instruments, mandolins and a little electric bass, but not seriously. Guitar is my main instrument. I do have a Steinberger bass and I actually have Bucky Pizzarelli's uncle's banjo.

Tell us about the Frank and Joe show.

FV: Joe [Ascione] and I have been working together for twenty years in different configurations. Joel Dorn, the legendary record producer read a review of a Django Rheinhardt sound-a-like group that we had and was intrigued that we had a djembe in the group.

So, he called up and said, "Why don't you come see me?" and "I want to hear you." We set up an audition. After one of the tunes, Joe and I were fooling around with some things and Joel asked, "What's that?"

Well, we told him that's what we really do. And he said, "I want to do a record like that!" And that was the birth of the Frank and Joe Show. So when we finished the record, that was basically Joe and me and a bunch of overdubs and guests. We later said we needed a band to tour the CD.

That was in May 2003. We played our first gig with this same band. So, we hand picked the musicians and the instrumentation. Then we worked a club in downtown New York City for a year in Greenwich Village every Sunday and took them on the road. This is seventy concerts later! We have the same members. Ken Smith (Rhythm Guitar) on his Gibson ES-335, Gary Mazzaroppi (Bass), Chuck Ferruggia (Percussion) and Rich Zukor (Percussion).

What are you playing?

FV: I have a Benedetto La Venezia. Tonight, I'm playing a Frank Vignola model. I have a Benedetto Benny. I also have a Strat from the 70s with some Seymour Duncan pickups. That's a great guitar!

I have a Favillo acoustic. That's it. I don't have that many instruments. I'm not really a collector. If I don't use it I usually discard it. I use the Strat in the studio for play-along tracks for my music instruction books.

What amp are you hooked up to tonight?

FV: That's an Allesandro amp and cables that have been tweaked. It's just a single twelve. A thirty watt amp.

Jimmy Bruno uses one of those.

FV: Jimmy uses a lot of amps. He's always experimenting. We did one album together. We did the Concord album with Howard Alden. Great record!

Nice Benedetto you're playing tonight.

FV: Thanks. Bob (Benedetto) called me one day when his shop was in Pennsylvania. He's in Florida now. I was playing my Venezia model and my Favilla. Anyway, one day he called me after I'd known him for four years and him getting to know my playing. He said he had a great idea for a guitar for me and he told me what it was and I said, "Okay, sounds good!" About two years later he calls me up and says, "Okay, your guitar's ready!" and sent it.

Two years later?

FV: Yes! Out of the blue he calls! And it was beautiful! The guitar was stunningly beautiful! I wasn't going to call him every two weeks asking "How's my guitar? How's my guitar?" I just waited.

Did you describe to him the sound you wanted?

FV: He's a genius guitar maker, one of the top three great living guitar makers. You know, I'm gonna tell him how to build a guitar? [Laughs] But, he nailed it. I'm very very happy with that guitar! The registers are all even. All the notes sound great and it's got a nice even tone.

The guitar has a German spruce top, curly maple sides and back and I believe it's got a mahogany neck with an ebony fret board. Ebony everything else and a Seymour Duncan pickup designed for that guitar by Seymour.

Can people buy that model?

FV: Yes. Well I had the pickup put on it. The guitars by Guild have a pickup in it I believe. I haven't seen them yet.

The Frank and Joe Show's isn't what most people would expect. You're not really a jazz ensemble, but run around the musical block playing an eclectic mix of styles.

FV: We take, you know, elements of jazz and improvisation. We take elements of rock, of Latin, of soul. It's all the influences we have. We're not just jazz heads. We listen to Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix. Frank Zappa was the best! I don't think we're a jazz band to be honest. Some people only like Django Rheinhardt.

It all gets mixed in by accident and it's interesting. We try to see what we can make new. Everything's been done. I'm not saying what we do is new, but the instrumentation is new and has never been done before. We try not to hold ourselves back or box ourselves in but to go with our feelings. Do what feels honest. We've also added the African djembe and bongos to the band's instrumentation.

You went off on a bit of improvisation a few times tonight.

FV: Yes, there is a lot of arrangement and a little improvisation. Things do happen when you play night after night. And we have fun with it. If you can't have fun with the music you might as well not be in it.

You know, a lot of students I've had say they'll never be able to play "like that," and not have fun. Having fun playing is what music's all about. Whether you're going to do it professionally or not!

Is improvisation the hard part?

FV: The hard part is the traveling! We drove from Louisville today! That's the hard part! But the playing, that's a ball! We had a great audience tonight.

Everywhere we go the reaction has been the same. They liked us. And that just proves to me that we have something special. We started out doing the Django sound a like record, because they thought they could go with the flow, the big Django craze. But, Joel Dorn's an amazing producer and has great vision. He gave us time to develop this and, you know, that's very rare in the music business. And within a year we're working on the third one already and they're with us in the trenches.

And we're lucky. We're lucky that we have that and we appreciate it. And we just saw them down in Nashville with all the record people and they were more enthusiastic than we are about it!

And we walked away feeling so good to have a good team. Because that's what you need. You can't do it all yourself. It's all about having a good team. And we have it. Just fantastic!

You have a road manager?

FV: We don't! We're booking everything ourselves, which is a tremendous amount of work. We have a couple different major agencies interested in us because we're out there touring, opening doors in each of the cities. We're very active. And that's what they want to see before they take you on.

A start up group getting management or a booking agent just doesn't happen, because you're not making any money. They're not going to take you on if you're not making any money. It's not like the old days, not that I'm that old, where people hear you and believe in you. Like, yeah we'll develop a plan for you. Today it's an immediate satisfaction thing.

Your musical resume extends well beyond jazz.

FV: Well, Madonna has a record that she and Jennifer Grey did, along with a film by Damien Runyon called Bloodhounds of Broadway. They did old time music from the thirties and the forties with guitarists and banjoists. It was a lot of fun.

Did that lead to other things?

FV: Wow. No. But, I have been really fortunate! First of all, I've been able to work with all of my jazz heroes from Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, Bucky Pizzarelli, Les Paul, and Lionel Hampton. The list goes on. I feel really fortunate because that's how you learn to play jazz, from the masters. Not from books, not in the classroom. You learn from the masters!

Who else have you worked with?

I did some recordings with Ringo Starr. I've done some jamming with Keith Richards, Les Paul, Slash and all the guys who play Les Paul guitars. I've been really lucky! And Larry Carlton who, for me to hear Larry Carlton, is just amazing! And another guy is Tuck Andress from Tuck and Patti (Cathcart). The guy can play guitar! They play at a whole other level!

You mentioned students.

FV: I teach a little bit. My lessons consist of looking horizontal at the fret board. Most people look at the scale vertically. I like to look at it one string at a time, from the first fret down to the last fret. Play all the major scales, all the arpeggios and go from there. I feel it helps people attach their fingers to their ears.

What about Frank Vignola teaching DVDs?

FV: I've thought about it. I do have some on-line lessons at my website that have video and play-a-longs. But I don't have any teaching DVDs. I don't really consider myself a teacher. I don't have a system.

When somebody comes to me, I tell them how I look at the fingerboard and that opens up a lot of ideas for them. With students I play a song together with them and then I can tell, within a chorus, where they're at and no matter what the level, I always teach what I teach and it's a real eye opener.

On my on-line teaching there are some tips on how to go about that. But I get all my teaching stuff from Gene Bertoncini. Because, when I went to his clinic and played with him, I went through his book. That was a real eye opener for me!

Tell us about your latest CD 66 2/3.

FV: That's our second disk and includes the full band, not just Joe and me and some guests like our earlier 33 1/3 CD. 66 2/3 is the whole package, the full band. It's a great disk! We do a whole different kind of material, from Bach to Gilbert O'Sullivan. His song has a beautiful melody.

We do some Doobie Brothers and Cream. And it's a great disk. We're really proud of it. The packaging is fabulous, the liner notes spectacular and we're anticipating that it will do well.

How did you get be one of the Les Paul Trio?

FV: I played every Monday night for five years with Les. From Valentine's Day 2000 to Valentine's Day 2005!

I met him about twenty years ago at Fat Tuesdays in New York City and we talked on the phone every once in a while. One day a call came in from out of the blue and I was asked if I would sub for him one night because he was sick. I did that for three weeks.

He got better and he called me one night and he said he wanted me to stay on! It was wonderful! And the amount of what I learned from that man for five years you can't learn in a lifetime!

It was great sitting next to him, listening to his tone which is ridiculously great and clean. The way he plays a melody, the way he works an audience, everything! Just totally, Les Paul, he's the master even though he doesn't believe that himself.

I learned more from him than anywhere. I mean, he's Les Paul! His accomplishments go on and on. He's a very driven man, very eccentric and he's wonderful! I was really lucky.

Must have been intimidating.

FV: Sometimes I'd be playing with him and look over at him and it was almost like an out of body experience. It was like, "I can't believe it!"

And then one night Bucky Pizzarelli sat in and I looked to my right. At six years old he inspired me to play the guitar! Les taught me how to play a melody, how to put together an arrangement, how to rehearse a band and about tone.

You must have picked up a lot of licks from those two giants.

FV: You know, you can't learn that stuff in college. Sorry, you can't! I left him in February 2005 just because we're so busy with this and he likes someone there every night. He's ninety this year and he plays every Monday night at the Iridium. It just got to the point where we were so busy with this band. I was taking too much time off and we both knew it. We cried. And now I only see him once a month.

Where do you think your music is headed and what are you exploring?

FV: I don't know where it's headed but we're just trying to keep honest with what were doing, especially with the writing, we're trying to write more material. You know we're playing Bach and Cole Porter. [Laughs]

How do you do something to compare with those guys? We try to spend time writing and rehearsing to try to write this unique sound and see where this new sound goes naturally.

Any advice for young jazz musicians?

FV: Get gigs. Go out and get gigs. Because that's what you're going to do when you get out of school. When I taught college that's what I had my kids do. That was an assignment. To go out and find yourself a gig.

It's amazing what you learn! You can't play three songs and stop in the middle. You have to go out and play fifteen to twenty songs. Just go out and get work whether it's in old folks' homes, churches or coffee shops.

I went to music school and then on my own kind of figured things out by listening to records. I went to the Cultural Arts Center of Long Island. When I almost blew up the science class in eighth grade my father said, "Let's get him in music school!"

Who are your favorite guitarists?

FV: Les Paul, Joe Pass, Johnny Smith, Charlie Christian, George Barnes, Django, and Bucky Pizzarelli. That just about sums it up.

Any new guitarists?

FV: Yes. Ken Smith! He's unbelievable. He's going to be a star someday and he's in law school too! Kurt Rosenwinkel is something else, a little bit rock jazz. Actually, he's really amazing.

There's a kid out of Utah named Josh Payne. He's amazing. I don't know what's going to happen to him, but he's amazing. That's all I can think of right now.

What about rock?

FV: I don't know. Linkin' Park I think is a fabulous group.

What's the distinction between traditional jazz and smooth jazz?

FV: Smooth jazz is instrumental pop music. It's not jazz. Jazz is a period of time, swing music, bebop, that's jazz. Jazz is kind of a cool word, marketable and the name Smooth Jazz is very marketable. It's cool hip, yuppie. But it's instrumental pop music. It's wonderfull. I like it! I listen to it. But, it's not jazz. Charlie Christian is jazz. Wes Montgomery is jazz. Count Basie is jazz. Not Kenny G. That's not jazz. It's wonderful. I'm not saying they're bad musicians. It's just not jazz.

What other projects do you have ramping up besides the Frank and Joe Show?

FV: This is it, this is full time. I'm running with this and giving it a real shot. Givin' it a real shot!

Related links
Study With Frank
Frank and Joe Show
Michael G. Stewart Photography