Mike Stern Interview

by Ben Tyree.

For three decades, guitarist Mike Stern has astonished jazz audiences the world over with his quest to push the envelope of what is possible on his instrument, the electric guitar. Now, more than ever, Stern is busy working on a variety of projects that further fuel his insatiable and often child-like curiosity and creativity.

In addition to working with a wide array of cutting-edge jazz musicians within the context of his own Mike Stern Group, he has found time to record with the Jaco Pastorius Big Band and the talened Four Generations of Miles. Stern is also in the process of producing a live DVD and continues to teach clinics and workshops worldwide.

Mike Stern was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Washington, D.C. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston making important and life-long connections and friendships with Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, and others. He landed his first big break at the age of 22 playing with Blood, Sweat and Tears, which he followed up with a spot in drummer Billy Cobham’s powerhouse fusion group in 1979. In 1981, Miles Davis recruited him for Davis's much anticipated comeback group that also featured Al Foster, Bill Evans, and Marcus Miller. After leaving Davis, Stern formed his first of many Mike Stern Groups.

Mike Stern’s playing is often glibly categorized as fusion despite the fact that his palate is much wider, encompassing the beauty and lyricism of traditional jazz, blues, rock, funk, world and folk music. While his music is often labeled fusion by default, the fluidity and intensity of Stern’s playing continue to impress listeners from both sides of the, "Is fusion real jazz?" debate.

Stern and I spoke during his August, 2006, Mike Stern Group European tour. They're on the road gearing up for the release of Stern's latest studio effort, Who Let The Cats Out?, the result of a newly signed record deal with Heads Up International and his thirteenth release as a leader. Mike took time out of his busy schedule while in Croatia to talk about his unique free-flow approach and other career developments, prospects and aspirations.

How’s the current European tour going?

Mike Stern: Good. Good. Everything’s going really good.

How do jazz audiences in Europe compare to those in the United States?

MS: I would say that audiences are great in both places, you know? It seems that people are just more for the arts in general in Europe and in a bunch of other countries, but especially in Europe. The arts are more stressed, in general. It’s not just jazz, it’s all music and it’s all painting and writing and all that stuff. Culturally, it’s just more stressed in its importance in the schools and there’s more of a budget for festivals and stuff like that and for supporting the arts, in general.

It’s not only taught more but it’s also prioritized more and the budget is there because, basically, they don’t have the kind of military that the United States has. It’s a little simplistic to say that but, basically, all our bread goes to the military. With whatever we got left over we’re paying for infrastructure and, hopefully, social security and Medicare. It’s all going to the military so it puts a serious damper on whatever else you wanna spend money on. So, there are just more opportunities in terms of festivals and stuff like that here [Europe].

But the audience is definitely there, in the States, without a doubt. There's people that are totally into the music so that’s really not a question. But I think there would be even more of an audience if there were more possibilities for education in music, but that’s the last priority of George W. Bush.

Maybe jazz isn’t marketed in the States maybe like it should be.

MS: It’s marketed, but it’s a little bit of the "grass is always greener", you know? Sometimes what seems like a European phenomenon may actually be appreciated more in the United States. Like, say you’re living in New York City, which I do. How many times do you want to go to the Empire State Building? But a lot of tourists will go there because it’s there. So, sometimes people take jazz for granted because it’s a U.S. thing. But actually, I don’t even think that’s true. I’m saying it, but I don’t think it’s really true. I think, basically, it’s what I said before. I think, more than anything, it’s just there’s more opportunity here [Europe] because there’s more prioritizing for the arts in general. And it’s too bad.

I don’t think there’s more here or too much here, I think there’s too little in the States. There’s a lot of interest, for sure, here for jazz and the more people get educated to it, the more people love it. There’s not a whole lot of that going around in schools the States. It’s not just jazz but all music. There’re cuts all the time and the budgets weren't that great to begin with because of where we’ve always put our bread, and, of course, with the current administration, the shit ain’t getin’ any better, that’s for damn sure!

I hear you.

MS: So that’s the thing. But the audience is there, believe me. There’s a fuckin’ strong ass music audience in the States and amazing players. I’ve had the chance to play with a lot of really great players who are from the States and I continuously teach and you come up against some amazing, really amazing players. So, there’s definitely a lot of interest despite the fact that there’s not a lot of help in that regard in the States, but that’s the way it is.

You’ve been touring and recording with a lot of younger, up-and-coming musicians. Do you feel this enhances and compliments your music and improvisations?

MS: Well, I always do that. I’ve been doing that for awhile, trying to play with a lot of different people. It definitely helps me, big time. I’ve had the opportunity, most recently, to play on my new record with some different younger players that I’ve always wanted to play with and some who are kind of more well known, like Roy Hargrove, who’s not that young but young compared to me. [Laughs] He hasn’t been on the scene as long as I have but he’s been amazingly successful.

He’s killin’, you know? Everybody knows who Roy Hargrove is in jazz and he’s an incredible trumpet player; somebody that I really wanted to play with in any setting. So I sounded him for this record, Who Let The Cats Out?

And then I’ve got a lot of other great musicians like Bob Franceschini, who’s very underrated as a saxophone player. He's been playing with me for about six years and is well known among musicians, but not well known enough. Bob's an amazing talent. And there’s some others on this tour like Chris Minh Doky. I’ve been playing with him off and on for twenty years and he’s a great bass player, a great upright and electric player from Denmark, actually, though he’s been living in the States for years. He played some with Mike Brecker and he’s played with a whole bunch of different people and he does his own records and stuff.

And then Kim Thompson is on the new record and she’s an amazing drummer. She’s young, but she’s already played with Kenny Barron and Wallace Roney. She’s already has a bunch of gigs and she’s almost right out of school. She recently she got a gig with Beyoncè. I don’t know how much that’s going to help musically, all in all, but whatever it is, it’s kind of cool, and certainly bread-wise it’s going to be really good for her and in other ways too. So, I’m happy for her.

Your new album, Who Let The Cats Out?, will be released on August 15, 2006. What can listeners expect from this new CD - any new directions?

MS: Well, yeah, it’s different from the last two records. The last two records that I did featured a lot of voices, especially the one called Voices, and that was the first time that I ever had vocals on a record of mine. Richard Bona, a great bass player and great singer, encouraged me to do that. He said that some of the tunes that I write are very, um, kind of...

...lyrical?

MS: Lyrical! And would be great with voices. I heard him sing when I met him twelve or thirteen years ago at a festival overseas, not in the States because he wasn’t living in the States at that time. I had heard about him so we played a bunch. I like to play all the time, so I grabbed him and we played in my hotel room and he said that he knew some of my music. He had heard Upside Downside and he started singing one of my tunes from that and I thought that one of these days I’m going to work up the nerve to do something with voices and, hopefully, I can get this guy to sing on one of my records.

A bunch of years passed and he was in New York so I kind of figured it was time to ask him about it, “Do you think this will work for a record with voices?” I asked him about some new tunes and he said, “Definitely! I’ll sing the shit out of ‘em!” And he was right! He sang some of the tracks on Voices and that was a different thing for me. Then the next record, These Times, was more of a return to instrumental stuff but it still has kind of a world music flavor. The Voices record also kind of had a world music vibe, you know, just because I’m inspired by a lot of Richard Bona’s stuff.

This new record still has some of that, you know, a couple of tunes with voices, because I didn’t want to give that up completely. So Voices and These Times have more by way of voice than Who Let the Cats Out? but this one is more of what I do, which is play.

There’s a lot of playing on both those records but on this there’s more playing, more blowing, you know? The idea on this record was to feature other players that I haven’t played with that I really dig. So, I kind of wrote around them after I found out whether they could do the stuff or not. I had some tunes I chose for each player. So I thought, “Well, Meshell Ndegeocello, the bass player, she’s going to sound great on this tune and then that tune." And I tried to mix and match. There’s two drummers on the record. There’s Dave Weckl and Kim Thompson and I wanted Meshell, for instance, to play with both of them.

She was going to play on two tunes, so I wanted one with Meshell and Dave Weckl and one with Meshell and Kim Thompson, you know, that kind of thing. And then Richard did some voice stuff with Kim in both cases. I tried to kind of mix and match. The idea was to get a whole bunch of great players like Roy Hargrove, Richard, Anthony Jackson, and Victor Wooten and just go for it as that was kind of the basic concept of the record.

I wanted to see if I could make that work but it was kind of a shot in the dark in a way because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get too much variety to use on the same record. But it seems like it really worked well. It’s got a lot of playing on it. More playing than on the last two records which also have a lot of playing. There’s a lot of variety, a lot of different colors, a couple of things with voices but there’s a lot of straight-ahead blowing too. I am really happy with the way it came out.

You also have a new DVD out of a gig you played in Paris a couple of years ago with Richard Bona, Bob Fraceschini, and Dennis Chambers, a fusion dream team of sorts. What’s it like playing with those guys?

MS: Well, I love playing with them. They’re like cats I’ve been playing with a lot. This is kind of different from the record because there’s some people I’ve never played any gigs with like Meshell Ndegeocello. Except, she came to the 55 Bar once and sat in. And she’s badass, too man! She’s a special musician!

Richard I’ve been playing with a lot. I’ve been gigging with him and, as I said, he’s on the last two of my CDs before this one, and so we’ve been doing some gigs. And there's Dennis [Chambers]. I can’t get those guys all the time. Dennis I’ve been playing with for 15 years, maybe more, off and on, you know? And, of course, he’s been playing with Santana and all that stuff. So, it’s hard to get him sometimes, but we still have a hook up. And then Bob Fraceschini who’s been, I’m grateful to say, my saxophone player for the past six years now.

First of all, let me just say that, obviously, I’m really fortunate to play with all these people that I’m talking about because they’re all great players. They all kick my ass on a regular basis even if we’re playing some of the same tunes. They interject new stuff every night. I always hear some new stuff; more than I can learn!

There’s so many great ideas and so much creativity with those kind of players always. But I try to grab what I can from all of them. With that DVD, that was kind of a really cool thing just to have Richard and Dennis play together. We’ve done some gigs off and on for a couple of years and then we had this tour in Europe. So, they just filmed that one performance for a cable show in Paris. Then afterwards, it came out so good that they wanted to make a DVD out of it. They sent it to me and I sent it to Dennis, Richard and Bob because I can’t tell. If I’m on it, if I have to listen to myself, I do not have a good sense of whether or not it’s happening. You know what I mean?

I have to have other people’s opinions. I get too self-critical or whatever and it’s been a good thing in a way because it kind of keeps you growing all the time. There’s so much room for improvement with stuff anyway. It's always like that with music - it’s endless, you know what I mean?

I sent it to them and they said, “Man, that shit sounds great! It’s a good DVD, so you should use it.” So, we used it and I’m getting a lot of good feedback from people. And I know those guys played their asses off and now I like the way I played on it, too! And people are telling me they really like that thing where we stretch the tunes. Sometimes you can’t put a twenty minute tune on a CD. I mean, it’s more difficult than on a live DVD where that’s kind of what you expect, you know? You play fewer tunes and there’s more time to play them and you stretch out. That’s what’s happening on the DVD.

You recently played on the Jaco Pastorius Big Band record The Word Is Out. What’s the vibe like in a situation where musicians come together to pay tribute to a common influence or former creative partner who has passed away?

MS: I think it’s cool. You know, Jaco and I were really, really, good friends. So, whenever I get a chance to do anything that features him or his music I'll go for it, even if it’s music that he used to play which, in this case, for me it was. It was a big band chart for this tune, "Sirabhorn", which is a Pat Metheny tune. I used to hear Pat and Jaco when they were first getting together in Boston. Pat knew him from Miami and he brought him up to Boston when Pat was teaching at Berklee and he began to do gigs with Jaco for his first record.

They were doing gigs with Pat, Bob Moses, the drummer, and Jaco - just a trio - and they used to play that tune all the time so that’s why it was included on the tribute record. Jaco played on that cut on Pat’s first record. They did it, of course, as a trio and this was a big band version of it that I got a chance to play on. The tune is beautiful - it’s challenging and it’s got a lot of harmony in it.

It’s always a good feeling to play the music or to remember the history through the music that Jaco either played or that he wrote, music from somebody that you love and that was Jaco for me. I knew him as a friend; very much as a friend. We were really tight and we used to play together all the time. So, I always jump at the chance if anybody wants to do anything honoring his music and his musical contributions. It was really fun.

Plus, for me, I don’t do a lot of big band stuff, so this was kind of a cool situation to be in. I’m going to be doing some more of it in the future. I’m doing something with a Danish radio big band in January and some stuff in the States with some college big bands and that kind of thing. It’s kind of interesting because there’s not a lot of that for guitar, especially the way I play, but I’m getting a lot of calls to do it because I’ve done some recently that came off really good.

The other tribute project you’ve been doing for a couple of years is the Four Generations of Miles thing. Do you feel that the musicians working in this project work well together despite the generation differences?

MS: Definitely! Maybe it works even better because it’s really fresh, you know? I mean, basically, I’m the more modern sound in a way because, first of all, it’s electric guitar and, second, it’s my sound with that kind of stereo thing, a little bit of chorus, and a little bit of delay. I use that no matter what. I use it in a straight-ahead context and I use it if I’m rockin’ more. Basically, they were totally cool with it.

We have a ball doing that. I think it sounded good on the record. It’s a live record and it keeps it sounding kind of fresh because you’d normally expect a piano to play in that context, or maybe a guitar but more straight with one amplifier, you know, a fat jazz guitar. I love all that stuff too, of course. I’m way into it no matter what.

If it feels right and if it hits my heart, I dig it. I don’t care if it’s more straight-ahead jazz. Whether it's more of a straight-ahead approach or if it’s rockin’ like crazy, if it hits my heart, I dig it. I don’t care about labels. I really don’t.

But those guys all play their asses off, like Ron Carter and, more recently, Buster Williams. He’s just kind of more available, but we don’t do it that often. We’ve been doing it maybe once or twice a year, kind of a week here and a week there. But the CD was done just right away. No rehearsal - well, a twenty-minute rehearsal and then we just played standards that we all knew that Miles had played. We could almost pick any standard because he played all of them [Laughs] and there are some that are very much him on that CD.

We did "All Blues" and then we did "Blue In Green" and "My Funny Valentine" and that kind of stuff, but it came out great for a live record. And they used one microphone. It was actually the idea of the record company, Chesky Records. They used one microphone only and I said, “Wow! That’s some different shit!"

But that’s the way they record. They place the microphone in a good place and make it kind of move around so you’re all around the microphone and they go for it. So, that’s what happened. No mix, no nothing and it kind of came out cool. It’s very live sounding.

What's the most important lesson that you learned from working with Miles Davis?

MS: I’d say it’s the same lesson I learned from Mike Brecker, from Jaco Pastorius, from all those great players - Joe Henderson, Bob Berg, all those players with Steps Ahead, all the players I’ve been fortunate enough to play with: play from the heart. Miles used to do that like crazy and so have all the players that I’ve been really lucky to play with including all the different people in my bands. They all play from the heart.

When I hire musicians, I look for that first: every time they sit down do they go for it, you know? And do they try to learn the music and try to get inside the song whatever the tune is? Whether it's my originals or someone else's, it’s just whether or not they’re gonna play their hearts out, first and foremost.

That's one thing. The second thing is that Miles had a really open mind to music. He didn’t care about labels. He didn’t care about if it was straight-ahead jazz or it was Jimi Hendrix.

I used to hear him talk about playing with Charlie Parker and three hours after that he’d be talking about the first time he heard Jimi Hendrix and he was equally excited by both things, you know what I mean? So, he was just following his heart. It wasn’t like, “Oh, one has more chords in it so it’s better music." It was just like [imitates Miles],”That shit was on!” Didn't matter if he was talking about Bird or Hendrix and that’s what I learned from him. He was very open minded and he always let his heart guide him in terms of what he played and he came up with some incredibly creative mixtures of music which people call fusion, or whatever.

That’s a word that doesn’t mean much to me because it’s so wide. What the fuck does that mean? It’s really hard to talk about music with words because ultimately it’s a language in itself and it’s like trying to describe French in English. It’s just a different language.

You gotta listen to it, know it. And it’s really a language of the heart, though. Of course you can describe it to a certain point, but once you get the music, it becomes what it is. And it becomes a different thing because when you listen to it more and more you appreciate it on different levels, you know? But, from Miles it’s those two things: play from the heart and keep an incredibly open heart to all kinds of music.

What does the future hold for your music? Do you see yourself developing in directions that may surprise your listeners?

MS: I like to kind of keep it true to what I do, which is, basically, I try to write all the tunes on my record. There’s not like a philosophy that I have except to keep things as open as possible, you know, and basically to let out whatever comes. I’m always trying to learn and grow musically because I feel like the more I know, the less I know because music is huge!

The universe of music gets bigger the more you know and then you feel like you don’t know shit [Laughs]. But it’s great, I mean, that’s beautiful. I want to try whatever possibilities there are for me, you know, within being realistic.

And I also like to set up a record like this where I’m playing with different people and see what that does for me and my tunes. I thought the stuff with Roy Hargrove, for instance, was really fresh for me. He just inspired some things for me, personally. The way he played certain tunes made me play a certain way. So, I just want to keep kind of doing that, basically.

And trying different things like the Voices record, that was a new thing for me. I’d love to play with Herbie, you know, do some playing with Herbie Hancock or some recording. I don’t know how that’s going to be possible, but I’d love to do that at some point in the not too distant future. I’ve done a little with him on a Michael Brecker record. He's an amazing musician, so that would be really fun.

Or I'd love to do more with Bill Frisell or Sco [John Scofield]. I did a record called Play not too long ago and it was really fun to play with those guys. I’m always trying to do some things to keep it fresh for me while at the same time holding my own voice. I don’t want to do a concept record for the sake of doing something totally different. I don’t want to just do something different for difference's sake. So, it’s kind of a balance between keeping your own stuff but experimenting with the new.

Related Links
Mike Stern
Heads Up International

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