Gary Schwartz is a busy and well respected player and educator in Montreal. In this 2 part interview Gary shares with us the early years back in the day as well as his informative thoughts on teaching and life as a musician. A definite must read indeed.

JazzGuitarLife.com Interview with Gary Schwartz: This interview was conducted at his home in June, 2004. This is the first of a two part interview. You can reach Gary Schwartz via email by clicking here.

JGL: How old are you?

GS: I’m 53.

JGL: And you reside in Montreal?

GS: Yes.

JGL: Were you born in Montreal?

GS: Yeah…I was born and raised here.

JGL: Let’s talk a bit about the early years. What got you into guitar, and were you involved in Jazz right away or were there other forms of musical interest before jazz?

GS: Actually, I’m not sure why it was guitar. I know there was music on both sides of my family. My mother played violin in high school and I had an uncle who was singing in musical theatre productions… Music Man, South Pacific. There was a scene for that here. We’re talking about the mid to late 50’s. ..

JGL: You mean like the Pit Musicians…?

GS: Well yeah, I was interested in the musicians but I didn’t relate to it like that. It was more like “Oh look, there’s my uncle”.

JGL: Was there a guitar in the house at that time?

GS: No, there was no guitar in the house. I started on classical guitar when I was 10 years old with a woman named Florence Brown. She played folk style guitar (Odetta, Pete Seeger), had performed at Carnegie Hall and gave classical lessons. Within the first six months she told my parents that she wanted to refer me to someone she knew in Spain who was running the Segovia summer guitar camp. Remember… we are in 1960 so being involved in music was not a desirable career choice. We don’t realize how much things have changed. Now you can’t imagine people not having some kind of musical instrument or listening device in their homes. You know that joke about how you know that your students grew up in another era… when they have never even seen a vinyl record. Now everybody listens to music. More people are involved in making music because it’s fun. Amateur players get together on a Friday night or Sunday afternoon and have their houses fixed up with recording studios and complete sets of equipment. Well that’s a result of what I just mentioned. The attitude has changed enormously but it was very different when I was a kid. My teacher’s recommendation for Spain was out of the question. I lost interest and my practicing went down hill but that didn’t mean I stopped playing. When I was around 11 or 12, the Beatles came out and I was pretty impressed with that.

JGL: Did you see that famous Ed Sullivan show…

GS: Yeah, sure…I bought the first Beatles record that I ever had out of the back of a car …it was a 45… “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” with the picture of them on the sleeve.

JGL: Sure…

GS: That was prior to them coming over to North America. I never owned my own electric guitar until much later but I did my first gig when I was 12, and my first gig in a club when I was 13.

JGL: Wow…

GS: Those were the days when they had music starting in the afternoon and had bands playing throughout the day. There were so many people getting into music… there were gigs everywhere. I actually made more money playing in bands during the time I was in high school than I did sometimes playing professionally early on in my career. I played at my elementary school graduation. Here I am, 12 years old …it was a big deal. I just wanted to play. Of course, somebody else always had the guitar and I borrowed it. Then when I was 13 or 14 I found Jazz. I was relatively young, but I had an uncle who was into Oscar Peterson. He was a piano player and he had all of Oscar’s recordings. I would listen to them and I didn’t know what to think. I was blown away. One of the first jazz records I bought when I was around 15 was “Let’s Cook” with Barney Kessel and Leroy Vinegar (bass) and I started getting into them…I was in a band and we were playing arrangements from the back pages of DownBeat. I had taken 6 months of classical lessons and here I was trying to read jazz charts. The band had a piano player who doubled on clarinet, a drummer who doubled on bass, a bass player who doubled on trumpet and I played guitar and baritone horn. The drummer’s father was an old style drummer who liked Gene Krupa and he would turn us on to all of the modern records like Coltrane, Miles, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and even some Ornette. Everybody was playing music…everybody. Throughout high school, I really wanted to go to music school but there was no way that that was going to happen…

JGL: Did you have a particular music school in mind?

GS: Oh yeah. I wanted to go to Berklee, but it was proportionately as expensive as it is today… too much for my means. I was playing clubs and my orientation started to change because I wound up playing solo guitar gigs. Right around that period I discovered Leo Kotke, who had just become popular, Peter Lange and John Fahey. This was the New American folk music in the tradition of Doc Watson and it included the twelve string guitar. I had all that finger style technique down from my classical lessons and I still have it. I was never really a rocker. I didn’t have the feel for it. Actually, I was even a singer in a band for a while (which is why I don’t sing anymore.)

JGL: Was that more of a rock thing?

GS: More like a blues thing. John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon…all that stuff. That was the only time I played in a band and didn’t play guitar. I also loved R & B and I love playing that style to this day. That’s why it was so much fun to see the success of “Standing in the Shadows of Motown”…seeing three guitar players on those sessions playing really simple parts. It’s the perfect description of playing in the pocket. I have always been into jazz though. There was something that really hooked me.

JGL: Was it the obvious improvisational aspect of it or was it the music as a whole…?

GS: It was the sound of the music and everything that went into that. When I started in my mid teens, 14 or 15, I started to look at it more seriously. The song forms were different than I was used to. The Beatles were sophisticated but they were far from the Tin Pan Alley guys who came from a whole other generation and wrote music for shows. This is where a lot of the standard repertoire for jazz came from. Now, there is a new set of American pop song standards. Herbie Hancock released “New Standards” and listen to what’s happening on that record. The Beatles never played Norwegian Wood like that. I did a version of the song in one of my combos. Great reharmonization…just to think, a pop tune could be changed that way and work so well within the Jazz style.
I got into Jazz guitar a little more seriously in my late teens. My first book was the Mickey Baker Method which demonstrated lots of progressions and lines. I never studied with anyone for a long period of time. I would take the occasional lesson from some of the guys in town but I just wanted to work out the changes. Besides, I was working all the time. I always loved harmony. My education in Jazz was much more street than school and even a little left of center because I tried to find my focus using the language I could get to as compared to copying all kinds of solos. I did eventually go back and work on transcriptions and vocabulary. One of the biggest compliments I have ever received was from a famous piano player here in Montreal who told me that whenever I played, he knew it was me. At the time, I didn’t get what he was saying because I was very insecure about my playing. I eventually understood that he was talking about the development of a musical identity. I try and project that kind of thinking when I am teaching in school and talking to my classes or to my students because it’s real. It is fine to draw on someone else’s playing because we all need models but none of the people whom we admire would be who they were/ are if they didn’t work on sounding like themselves. It’s unfortunate because we are in the carbon-copy era. There are so many killer technical players around and it almost gets to the point where it’s overwhelming but then you realize that it’s smoke and mirrors a lot of the time

JGL: It’s expectations right? People go to see a show or to see a particular guitar player and especially in Jazz, that’s the most impressive thing, generally speaking….

GS: Yeah, it’s always impressive but the really great thing is that there are players on the scene who are going the other way. The best example is Jim Hall. I remember reading something in the New Yorker club listings like, “Jim Hall, the slowest guitar player on earth.’

JGL: Yeah…you read interviews today by the players who are out there now, who are “guitar-slingers”, but they all say, Jim Hall is their main influence.

GS: You know, he changed the things that were the easiest to alter. Remember that Jim’s initial important contributions were melodic. It was a matter of articulation, the development of vocabulary and not being afraid to play the guitar the way that you play it. Man, just listen to the “Bridge”! How can you get two instruments, approaches, that are so completely opposite. I mean, there’s Sonny Rollins who is playing his ass off coming out of the bebop/hardbop thing sounding so comfortable, and there’s Jim, playing what he can and it changed everything. All of a sudden you have this angular, kind of intervallic stuff, and it’s very legato instead of the machine gun thing that the Bebop players, generally speaking, subscribe to. Everything changed after that. So Jim was one of the guys who really influenced me.

JGL: Who were the others?

GS: Kenny Burrell was always a big influence because of his sound. It didn’t matter what he played. He always sounded like he was just dripping… you know…he was so bluesy. And then…I loved Benson to death…he was so soulful. I had a hard time with all the guys who were dissin’ him about his commercial stuff. Listen to what he’s playing. “Weekend In LA” still has to rate as one of the most kick-ass records, and that band…just amazing. George can play changes anytime he wants, sings great and he can get down and funk you out of your pants too! I was into Martino for a while and Wes and Joe Pass. I liked all those guys and they are the reason why I started doing transcriptions because I needed and was ready to learn some more language. I seriously got into Clifford Brown. I love the trumpet and I think the language of the instrument is much closer to the guitar than the saxophone. Even though the saxophone is such a legato instrument, I think the way lines are played on a trumpet are closer structurally, to the guitar. In the mid-seventies I found Jim and Ed Bickert. Ed was a huge influence on me. I went a little deeper and I discovered Lenny Breau. His complete concept of playing is hard to believe. I got to know Ed a little bit when he started doing gigs in town in the mid-80’s and 90’s. I would talk to him every so often. He doesn’t come here any more and I don’t know how much playing he’s doing in Toronto. I heard that he’s semi retired.
I have always been attracted to the guys in another corner. I don’t really care if they are popular or not and John Abercrombie was one of those guys. I eventually met him when he came here to record an album. We hung out and talked and he told me that living in New York was no picnic. I mean he didn’t start making a living until 10 or 12 years after he got there. Peter Leitch, who is a killer player said the same thing. I was interested in Abercrombie because he was a fusion guy, but more from jazz than rock. He would use a jazz mentality but change the sound of the guitar to fit other situations. As a result of meeting John, I started checking out Mick Goodrich and found out that he taught John Scofield, Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell. It took me a while to appreciate Metheny and it was “Rejoicing” that did it for me. That was a seminal record.

JGL: Which some people put on the shelf as being one of the lesser impacting Metheny albums…

GS: Perhaps as far as his career is concerned but it shows artistic development from another side of his playing.

JGL: Also the way in which it was recorded. His sound was very dark in contrast to his previous albums where his sound was “happier” and brighter…

GS: Well it wasn’t the Pat Metheny group. In fact, right around that time he came to town and did ten days at Club Soda…

JGL: Yeah I know…I was at all ten shows…

GS: Then you know what I’m talking about. That’s what happened…that’s where “Rejoicing” came from. Billy Higgins’ and Charlie Haden… man, come on! This is the real deal. It showed me a side of Pat’s approach which really appealed to me. I remember talking to Abercrombie about that and about the whole idea of releasing and playing free. That conversation really helped me deal with open forms in a more confident way.
Then after that you have Scofield who basically just blew me away. Here was a guy who was so unlike what my choices had been in guitar players. I mean the sound, the line, the harmonic concept, but the attack was all Jim, totally legato but playing a 335 chorused and Ratted? …and what I loved about him was that he was like loud and proud. He didn’t mind saying “I love Rock n Roll”. Later, Bill Frisell solidified textural playing for me with influences which seemed to come from another world. By the way, just let me mention another guy that I like very much is Brad Shepik, He’s with Dave Douglas and the Tiny Bell trio. I really like the way he plays… very “earthy” to me.

JGL: I’ll be sure to check him out. Now, we have gone from roughly the early fifties to present day, yet you haven’t brought up any of the Fusion cats like Larry Coryell in his Eleventh House days or DiMeola and Return to forever. What was your reaction to that form of music at the time and was it something you got into?

GS: In fact, if we can just take it back a little bit, one of the major influences in my musical life was Miles. You know…look what he did. First of all, it’s his “fault” that there’s fusion…every band, minus Larry Coryell, came out of a “Silent Way”… the Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Return to Forever, (Chick Corea), Weather Report, (Joe Zawinul/Wayne Shorter), Headhunters, (Herbie Hancock) which is the extremely funky part of fusion which is what I got into. I might be missing somebody here…

JGL: John McLaughlin…

GS: Right. Mahavisnu. And that was another thing…but you see, I didn’t get into Mahvisnu,. I didn’t get into Return to Forever. To a point, I got into Weather Report but not so much. I got into Lifetime especially because it was organ, guitar and drums. There was that one live record that I remember…I was playing with a piano player and I we just came back from a gig and I remember putting that album on and…oh man…and then of course there was the very strong R&B period that came out parallel to that. That was the thing about the mid 70’s, Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power and Sly, a little before that…all this was exploding in the 70’s and I was very, very drawn to that because I was very connected to R&B and James Brown, . Man oh man there were all kinds of things happening at the same time. But as far as fusion goes…no…for me, the sound that I was looking for was not so much pyrotechnics, which was in fact what some of that sounded like to me, as compared to a band like Headhunters which was just grooving and very organic. And an album like Return to Forever’s “Light as a Feather”, well that album is in the history books. Beautiful record, but that isn’t Return to Forever…

JGL: Not as we think of them today…

GS: Right. That was a side project. The playing and compositions are wonderful but it is not fusion as we know it. If you are talking about fusiony stuff, and here I go again with the trumpets, Freddie Hubbard, and Benson, and all the CTI stuff (White Rabbit - Benson, Mr. Clean and Red Clay - Hubbard). When the real onslaught, if you’ll pardon the expression, of fusion came about, that’s where I went with the R&B albums. I would wait for a new Stevie record, I would wait for a new Earth Wind and Fire record, I would wait for a Headhunters record. I looked for “Thrust” and it took me forever to find it CD format. In fact, I play one of those arrangements in my band at school. So you know…this is some serious music. Those are the things I was attracted to and I guess you can pick up on the fact that they are hard edge but not hard edge in a rock way. It’s not Al Di Meola. It’s different… One of the fusion guys that I really like is Scott Henderson, who is a deadly player. He’s actually made something happen with that, with that kind of guitar playing.

JGL: Definitely…let’s talk a bit about your early gigs. Did you devote yourself to strictly jazz gigs?

GS: I never devoted myself completely to that. I always had commercial gigs. I played hotel gigs, shows like “tits-and-ass” reviews which were Montreal’s version of Las Vegas or the Can-Can. After the gig, I would go sit in at clubs, things like that. I played Biddles, and L’air Du Temps, all those clubs. Over the years clubs have come and gone and I’ve played pretty much played all of them, but I never truly devoted myself to become a Jazz player because I was too afraid.

JGL: Really?

GS: Yeah. And these are of course my own personal hesitations but the thing that really put me overboard was going to see Bill Evans in the early 80’s at the Rising Sun and walking in on a Thursday night…and you know…this is Bill Evans…my hero…I mean there are seminal guys in everybody’s life. Bill is one, Miles is one, Jim is one and Ed is one…you know…these people really change you …I go in there after having played two shows, because at that time I was playing thirteen shows a week on a hotel gig. Bill’s trio, with Eliot Zigmund and Marc Johnson is playing and there are only six people in the club. I see Bill Evans get into an argument with the club owner because the piano was supposed to be tuned and it sounds like shit. This is Bill Evans! The man who forever changed the jazz piano trio…this is THE guy…and I’m watching this and I realized that I wanted a life. It got to the point with me that I was so fed up meeting people who validated other people because of the fact that they played well instead of the fact that they were really good people who played music. I just couldn’t believe it and I have a hard time getting into the jive…you know...the elbow nudging and all that. To tell you the truth I don’t even like going out to clubs which became a heavy blow to my career…

JGL: And your paycheck…?

GS: Well no…not my paycheck…and that’s my whole point…it has nothing to do with paychecks because I was always working. I was the one who always took the gigs that my jazz friends didn’t want. In fact it was always those gigs that allowed me to be where I am now, and I love music even more and I like to think that my playing is better now than it has ever been because I am more into it, I practice differently and I cut the crap with myself…I give myself a break. I’m not constantly downing myself or anything of that nature. You’ve got to give yourself a chance otherwise you’ll never allow yourself to go forward. It’s too easy to only hear the bad stuff…

JGL: So it was a positive move to distance yourself from the scene…

GS: It wasn’t even a matter of distancing myself, it’s just the way it was….

JGL: For survival…?

GS: No…because that’s the way I was…I mean I have been playing in clubs since I was thirteen years old so I’m definitely not going to hang out at a club unless there is someone I really want to see. I just don’t go to the clubs to shoot the shit…it’s not my idea of a good time. It’s weird…I’ve been a musician for forty years and I’ve never really hung out at clubs for any length of time. People tell me that I should hang out more but it’s my choice and now I can play with people that I want to play with who want to play with me. When I want to get a gig I go and hussle one. It runs in cycles. Now it’s getting harder to find work but I’ve never had a problem with gigs when I had a project to present.

JGL: Do you think that this way of thinking has isolated you?

GS: Yeah…for sure it has, but I’m trying to live my life in a way that I’m ok with. Plus, I’ve been teaching at the University (Concordia) for a long time. So in a way I have had the luxury to live my life with greater control so I wouldn’t be stuck in a corner and forced to take shitty work. For me a bad rock gig, or a bad blues gig, or a bad funk gig, or a bad jazz gig are the same thing…I mean when it starts to take your taste away from playing, then you know it’s time for reorientation and I want to be playing when I’m eighty…

Click here for part 2 of Gary Schwartz's interview