Remembering a Guitar God on his Birthday

For a generation of players, Allan Holdsworth was the zenith of six-string achievement

This past Aug. 6th would’ve been the 78th birthday of legendary guitarist Allan Holdsworth, who elevated the state of guitar with his revolutionary approach to the instrument through the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

Another six-string hero of my youth (along with Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Harvey Mandel, Frank Zappa, Johnny Winter and John McLaughlin), Holdsworth came into my purview through French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty’s 1977 album, Enigmatic Ocean. I was familiar with Ponty through a string of sideman appearances he made on Frank Zappa albums (1969’s Hot Rats, 1973’s Over-Nite Sensation and 1974’s Apostrophe) and also as a member of the second iteration of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (appearing on 1974’s Apocalypseand 1975’s Visions of the Emerald Beyond). As a leader, Ponty had already recorded Upon the Wings of Music in 1975 and two superb albums in 1976 — Aurora and Imaginary Voyage (both featuring hometown Milwaukee guitar hero Daryl Stuermer, whom I had caught on countless occasions leading the local fusion band Sweetbottom at the Bull Ring Ltd., a naugahyde lounge with dubious connections). Stuermer would go on to join the mega-arena rock band Genesis and later became an invaluable member of the Phil Collins’ group. But as a touring member of the Jean-Luc Ponty band, Daryl was the quintessential hometown boy who had made good, and I picked up Imaginary Voyage to chart his progress. Little did I know then, when I purchased my copy of that Ponty album (at a Peaches Records store on the Northwest side of Milwaukee that had formerly been a Red Owl grocery on Silver Spring Dr.), that lurking on three tracks of Enigmatic Ocean was the enigmatic British guitarist Allan Holdsworth.

While Stuermer utilized an aggressive pick-every-note approach on that album, emulating his personal guitar hero, John McLaughlin, Holdsworth unveiled an unprecedented liquid legato approach (on the frantic “Enigmatic Ocean, Pt. II,” “Nostalgia Lady” and “The Struggle of the Turtle to the Sea, Pt. III”) that was simply mind-boggling. Coming from those celebrated rock guitar players I had grown up with, along with the great jazz guitarists I had come to highly regard (from fusioneers like McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, John Scofield and Al Di Meola to more straight ahead players like Pat Martino, George Benson, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis), Holdsworth’s six-string concept was completely alien to me. As Coryell would later tell me, “I watched Holdsworth from the wings at a concert on night…his fingers were going down the neck, but the notes were going up!” Again, the term ‘mind-boggling’ is really appropriate here (catch his entry point below at the 2:38 mark).

Of course, by the time I had first heard Holdsworth on that Ponty album in 1977, he had already racked up tons of recording credits (unbeknownst to me). At that time, I was unaware of his impressive output with prog-rock bands like Soft Machine, U.K. and Pierre Moerlen’s Gong. And I was familiar with Allan’s contributions to The New Tony Williams’ Believe It only because Daryl Stuermer and Sweetbottom had regularly played his tune “Fred” from that 1975 album on their regular sets at the Bull Ring.

In short time, I got hip to Bill Bruford’s 1978 album Feels Good to Me and 1979’s One of a Kind, both of which featured incredible guitar playing by Holdsworth. And while Allan was merely a hired gun on those outings, he stepped forward as a composer and leader on his 1983 Warner Bros. album Road Games, which combined almost surreal melodies and impossible-to-play guitar lines on tunes like “Three Sheets to the Wind” and “Water on the Brain” as well as chops-busting anthems like “Tokyo Dream” and the title track and the hauntingly ethereal “Material Real.” [Somehow I had missed 1982’s independently-produced I.O.U., only catching up with it some years later]. This was guitar music unlike anything I had heard up to that point in time. And a major cheerleader for this project was none other than guitar superstar Eddie Van Halen, who had brought Holdsworth to the attention of Warner Bros. executive Mo Ostin; the intention being to expose Holdsworth’s mind-blowing talents to a larger audience.

Turns out, not only was Allan an idiosyncratic genius, he was an erratic one as well. Tales abound of Allan’s fondness (some would later say addiction) for quaffing down a pint at a pub. And, of course, it was seemingly all in good fun, in keeping with the British spirit of pounding ale…until he starts falling off stools in pubs (a fairly common occurrence with Holdsworth, reportedly going back to his Soft Machine days) or failing to show up for gigs (as he did on tour in ’77 with Ponty). As his creative genius continued to blossom through the ‘80s — as evidenced by such forward-thinking albums as 1985’s Metal Fatigue and a subsequent string of SyntheAxe showcases in 1986’s Atavachron (featuring a cover illustration depicting the guitarist in a Starfleet uniform alongside an alien time travel device from the Star Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays”), 1987’s innovative and texturally beautiful Sand and 1989’s Secrets — so did Allan’s drinking problem.

He followed with brilliant albums through the ‘90s — 1992’s Wardenclyffe Tower, 1993’s Hard Hat Area and 1996’s None Too Soon (featuring Holdsworthian adaptations of John Coltrane’s “Countdown,” Django Reinhardt’s “Nuages,” Joe Henderson’s “Isotope” and “Inner Urge,” Bill Evans’ “Very Early,” Irving Berlin’s “How Deep Is the Ocean” and the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood”). There were some exhilarating moments on 2000’s The Sixteen Men of Tain, which Holdsworth described as “actually pretty aggressive…for an old geezer.” His 11th and final studio album was 2001’s Flat Tire: Music for a Non-Existent Movie, done at his home in San Juan Capistrano, California and recorded entirely by Holdsworth himself using the SynthAxe. And while Allan’s perfectionist tendencies had previously never allowed him to release any live albums, he nonetheless agreed to put out 2002’s All Night Wrong [note the hilariously self-deprecating title], recorded in May that year at Tokyo’s Roppongi Pit Inn, and 2003’s Then!, documenting a 1990 gig at that same club.

Holdsworth continued to tour, regularly dropping into Iridium near Times Square on his swings through NYC, though the reports of his erratic, drunken behavior while on the road became increasingly more disturbing. The last time I saw him was at an afternoon clinic he gave at The Cutting Room in New York on Sept. 13, 2014. The packed audience for this afternoon Q&A session was comprised primarily of curious guitar players of all levels.

Allan gave clear, lucid answers to all questions thrown his way while demonstrating specific examples on his guitar along the way. After engaging with the attendees, Allan announced that there would a break before he would come back and sign albums and paraphernalia at a merch table. And then he disappeared into the basement of The Cutting Room for a break. Maybe 15 minutes later, he emerged from the basement, completely bombed. It was a syndrome I had seen before in Jaco Pastorius, who could transform from a clear-eyed, sober individual to a raving lunatic after pounding one bottle of beer. Was Allan bi-polar like Jaco?

I waited on a long line to have Allan autograph a photo for my longtime friend, journalistic colleague and Holdsworth devotee Matt Resnicoff, who wasn’t able to attend this clinic. And when I got to the front of the line, Allan saw me, got up from his chair, rushed around the table to give me a hug…and it felt like he was a drowning man lost at sea hanging on to a life preserver.

I had witnessed this scenario the year before when I attended Eric Clapton’s 2013 Crossroads Festival at Madison Square Garden. Allan was appearing as a special guest with Kurt Rosenwinkel, whom Clapton had apparently taken a shine to after catching a set with his quartet at the Village Vanguard. And Kurt, having worshipped Allan for much of his adult life, had invited Holdsworth to sit in with his band on a couple of tunes at this Crossroads event. Let’s just say, it didn’t go exactly as planned. Allan showed up smashed and played uncharacteristically sloppily on two songs, though his diminished/augmented scales and odd intervallic permutations stood out in a sea of pentatonic players. After their brief set, he seemed disoriented before reaching over to hug the pianist in Rosenwinkel’s band in what felt like an uncomfortably long period of time. It was a sad display of sheer desperation. And here I was experiencing another sad display firsthand. Allan was actually tearing up as he hugged me (too long). I didn’t quite know what to do in that moment but in retrospect, after his passing, it may have been a plea for help. But none was forthcoming.

On April 7, 2017, Manifesto Records had released a 12-CD box set entitled The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever!, which included all his re-mastered full-length solo albums from 1982 through 2003. The self-deprecating Holdsworth was quick to disavow the title of that legacy boxed set. As he told Downbeat in a March 29, 2017 interview: “That wasn’t my idea! It’s not my personality to brag in any way or be pretentious. It’s just not my nature. They took that from a Guitar Playermagazine interview that I did. It was their words, not mine! I was distressed by it at first, but Evan at Manifesto Records had put so much time into it I didn’t feel it was appropriate of me to have them change the whole thing at the last minute because they had already begun the manufacturing of it. But they’re lovely people and I’ve been working with the family for many, many years.”

Allan continued gigging right up until the end. On April 10, he played a surprise set at the 10 Twenty Prime restaurant in San Marcos, CA, just 10 minutes away from his home in Vista, California. The gig was reportedly in exchange for paying off his bar tab there. His sidemen were drummer Virgil Donati, bassist Evan Marien and keyboardist Mahesh Balasooriya. Five days later, on April 15, 2017, Holdsworth died from heart failure at his home in Vista, California at the age of 70.

I learned about Allan’s passing the following day in a phone call from Matt Resnicoff, who interrupted my Easter Sunday dinner with relatives in Milwaukee to deliver the sad news. I subsequently attended a three-night tribute to Allan at Iridium on July 5-7, the nights he was scheduled to play at the New York club. Such Holdsworth bandmates and acolytes as guitarists Nir Felder, Alex Machacek, Alex Skolnick, Jamie Glaser and Tim Miller, keyboardist Steve Hunt, bassists Jimmy Johnson and Evan Marien, and drummers Virgil Donati. On the final night, Allan’s three daughters (Lynne, Louise and Emily) were in attendance. It was a warm and fitting send-off to a legend.

I interviewed Holdsworth several times over the years, beginning with a November 1985 story I did for Downbeat magazine. There followed a June 1987 feature for Guitar World, then stories in August 2000 and January 2010 for Jazz Times. Below are excerpts from that first Downbeatstory in ‘85 along with a particularly revealing Q&A interview I did with Allan in October 2006 for the Abstract Logix website:

Downbeat, November 1985

Allan Holdsworth’s New Horizons

Does he play jazz? Does he play rock? One of today's most respected, least categorizable guitarists, Holdsworth’s embracing the new technology while looking for a new audience. Bill Milkowski believes he'll find it any day now.

“There’s a guy named Allan Holdsworth that probably won’t get the recognition he deserves because he’s too good. If you play guitar and think you’re good, just listen to that guy. — Neil Schon (Journey)

“When it comes to putting all the elements together Allan Holdsworth has got it. I give him more credit than anyone for just pure expression in soloing. He has something totally beautiful.” — Carlos Santana

“He plays so much, he covers everything. A totally comprehensive player. He’s one of those revolutionary guitarists.” — Larry Coryell

“Holdsworth is the best in my book, He’s fantastic.” — Eddie Van Halen

JUST WHO IS THIS GUY ALLAN HOLDSWORTH, and why are they saying such wonderful things about him? A pioneer in the fusion movement of the ‘70s with such legendary instrumental groups as Soft Machine, Gong, U.K., Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Bill Bruford’s band, and Jean-Luc Ponty, Holdsworth stands today as one of the most distinctive and innovative guitarists in the world. His incredibly fluid technique and his unique scalar approach to soloing (“I tend to hear flurries of notes as a whole, from beginning to end, rather than hearing one note after the other”) have made him the envy of countless aspiring guitarists looking to break away from rock and blues cliches.

His seamless style of playing melody lines or improvising over a myriad of chord changes more closely resembles the legato approach of a saxophone player than the normally percussive attack of a guitarist. You rarely hear any picking sound or blunt attack when Holdsworth wails. Instead you get flowing lines that whoosh by so quickly and flawlessly that you simply can’t begin to imagine what his right and left hands are doing.

But that’s only the beginning. As if Holdsworth's astonishing technique weren’t enough to digest on its own, now the guy has gone out and acquired a new piece of technology that adds a whole other befuddling aspect to his already awesome arsenal of effects. On his latest Enigma album, Atavachron, the revolutionary guitarist takes one step further toward Mars with a new and revolutionary piece of hardware, the SynthAxe. The product of several years of painstaking research, the SynthAxe is England’s answer to the guitar synthesizer. But unlike that popular Roland product, the SynthAxe makes no sound of its own. What it is, basically, is a controller for synthesizers, capable of interfacing with Fairlights, Synclaviers, or any MIDI-equipped synths. This thing is strictly high-tech to the max, and Holdsworth feels it positively renders all other guitar synthesizers obsolete.

“It’s really in a field of its own. It’s an amazing machine. I’m so in awe of the whole thing. I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would’ve gone through that amount of trouble; and believe me, they did go through an awful lot of trouble to do this. They’re totally pioneering something in a certain direction that no one has ever done before. There isn’t anything even close to it. There probably will be in a few years time when other companies start copying them, but they’ve laid the groundwork and therefore I think they deserve credit for that.”

“They” are British inventors Bill Aitken, Mike Dixon and Tony Sedivy, who began developing this revolutionary machine around 1980. Along the way they were aided in the design of the SynthAxe by Ian Dampney and Ken Steel. Take a bow, gentlemen.

Perhaps the most significant feature of the SynthAxe is the fact that it doesn’t work on the pitch-to-voltage principle, as do most of the other guitar synthesizers currently available. Though many guitar synth users have waxed enthusiastic about the sounds available on their instruments, they sometimes express reservations about the tracking problems inherent in the system. That is, there is a 10th-of-a-second or so delay from the time a note is struck to when the sound is actually produced. This inevitably forces guitar players to alter their own techniques to suit the demands of the instrument. Some, like Pat Metheny and John McLaughlin, don’t mind this too much, considering the synthesized guitar’s other advantages.

According to Holdsworth, “The pitch-to-voltage principle has some inherent problems that you can never really surmount. When I first played a guitar synthesizer it kind of opened up one door and closed another one immediately. Like, all of a sudden I had all these sounds I could get, which was great, except I couldn’t really use them in a way that I wanted to because I was limited by the way you have to use the machine. And I hate that. I hate being dictated to by a machine. It’s just a very disobedient machine, if you will. It takes a long time to decide what note you played, and also the wave length of a low note is bigger than a high note, so all the low notes come out slower than the high notes. But when I played the SynthAxe for the first time, I knew it was definitely going to be the way to go. I felt like it was made for me. Now I have a controller of synthesis that is an obedient machine, at last.”

The SynthAxe has a highly sophisticated series of sensors under the surface of the fingerboard to relay information to the synthesizers. These sensors detect such subtleties as string-bending, damping or muting with left and right hands, dynamics, and just about every normal function of a guitar except for harmonics. Other features of this incredible new instrument include automatic hold, which creates drone notes to play on top of, and an automatic trigger-mode which allows the player to sound notes by tapping the fingerboard with left hand only (a la Stanley Jordan or the Chapman Stick.)

“There’s so many functions of the instrument that I haven’t actually gotten into yet,” says the British-born guitarist. “There’s so much to learn, and I guess one of the interesting things about it is that everybody is going to find something different to do with it. As for me, I don’t want it to sound like a keyboard or anything. I just want an instrument that I can play in such a way that my personality is still visible through it all. And now I’ve got a machine that will do that.”

One drawback with the SynthAxe is the fact that the fret spacing is fairly even as you go up the neck, rather than getting narrow as you approach the bridge. This makes chording fairly difficult at that high end of the neck. “There are certain chords that I can’t play on it. I just can’t reach that far. Chords that I had been used to playing on the top third of the regular guitar neck were suddenly impossible for me to play on the SynthAxe. That was the only single problem I’ve had with it, and I understand that they’re going to be offering a few more neck options as they begin marketing them to the general public. But there’s such a lot of work involved in the circuitry of the neck itself that it would be a very expensive proposition at this point in time to make a different neck for me.”

The SynthAxe has not completely taken over Holdsworth’s music. He uses the machine about half the time both in concert and on his latest recordings. As he says, “I don’t want it to completely wipe out everything else I’ve done on the guitar up to this point.”

Originally an aspiring reed player, Holdsworth didn't pick up the guitar until he was 17 years old. “I played saxophone and clarinet and I wanted to play oboe, but I had problems with my ear. I kept popping it from blowing and getting ear infections, so I had to stop. It was some kind of peculiar physical thing where all the pressure would build up in one place. I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t supposed to play a wind instrument.”

When he switched over to guitar he was still interested in getting a saxophone kind of sound, which led to all kinds of early experimenting with amplifiers and sustain. “I guess consciously since I’ve started on the instrument I’ve been trying to get the guitar to sound more like I was blowing it than plucking it, as such. I remember having this little 15-watt amplifier that my parents had bought me, and there’d be a certain volume I’d play at with this thing where it would feedback and sound really great, a more hornlike quality than anything I had heard before. Then I’d plug my guitar into somebody else’s amplifier and it would sound completely different. That interested me very much, so I’d try and figure out how the whole electronics thing worked. My father had a friend who built amplifiers and I’d get some lessons with him, so I gradually became aware of what was happening with the sound once you’d pluck a note. From there I’d try to hone in on it — make an amplifier that did exactly what I wanted it to do!”

Today Holdsworth’s rack of electronic gear does everything he wants it to do. His onstage setup consists of four amplifiers — a pair of amps for his rhythm guitar sound and another pair for his lead sound with a lot of different delay lines on each. “Basically, on the lead sound I use the regular guitar sound and add a bit of digital reverb and a long delay. And for the rhythm I use a lot of delay lines set up for multi-chorusing. I like to create a real random kind of situation so that you know it’s stereo but you can’t actually pinpoint at any time what’s happening to it. It’s all just kind of moving.”

After a longstanding relationship with Charvel guitars, he’s switched over to Ibanez. “They designed a guitar for me, the Ibanez AH-10, which we worked on together for over a year. They almost gave up on me in the end because I kept demanding so many changes. But I’m really pleased with what they eventually got. The guitars I’ve got now are the best instruments I’ve ever owned. It’s very light wood for maximum sustain. It’s more expressive than anything I’ve ever played before!”

Holdsworth credits much of his astounding technique to the fact that his first teacher, his father, the late Sam Holdsworth, was a piano player and not a guitar player. “He used to help me with chords and scales, and since he wasn’t a guitar player he couldn’t tell me how it was to be done on the guitar. But he could tell me about the music. So while I did learn the music from him, I had to apply my own logic to everything. For example, I remember seeing other guitarists who were a lot better than me at the time, and I’d notice how they’d be using only two or three fingers on their left hand,” he continued. “They all had their pinkies curled up in a little knot there. And this was an incredible waste of energy to me. I thought I should use all the limbs I’ve got, so I started practicing seriously with all the fingers on my left hand!” He adds, “People who have heard me think that I have very long fingers since I’m able to reach and stretch to all these odd chord voicings. But my hands are not big at all. I just acquired this dexterity through repetition and practice. I didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be done. It just seemed perfectly logical to me at the time!”

At home, Holdsworth continues to practice “unusual scales or anything that I feel I’m really bad at. I practice playing over chord sequences, for example. I want to be able to reach a point where I can improvise without falling back on anything. Because sometimes when you play and you’re in a gig situation, you kind of dry up and you fall back on the things that you've learned — all the things that you’ve practiced. And that’s really when I feel bad, because then I’m just doing the parrot thing, I’m not really playing. I live for those few moments when I’m really playing and coming up with new things.”

“Some guys practice certain things so that they’'l be able to play them on a gig,” he continues. “I never do that because I would feel that I only got good at practicing. That way, I really didn’t learn anything new at all. So when I practice, I try and improvise and play something different on the same theme each time, as many variations as I can think of without ever repeating myself!”

Sounds like jazz to me. And yet, Holdsworth has always had trouble getting airplay on jazz radio stations. Rock stations too, for that matter. “A jazz station will be reluctant to play any tracks on an album like Metal Fatigue, even though there might be a few cuts that could legitimately fit into their programming. Because there are also some tracks that swing more toward the rock direction they think, ‘Ohmigod! This is a rock record!’ And conversely, the other thing that happens is the rock stations won’t play it because it’s not commercial enough and they think it’s kind of jazzy. So we don’t get either!”

He’s hoping that unfortunate thinking will change with the release of Atavachron, his second album for Enigma Records. “I guess some people think that I play the rock thing just because it’s more commercial and that it will help sell records. And that’s actually not the reason at all. It’s just that I love certain things about rock music and I want my music to be a combination of both things — rock and jazz. But instead of it being liked by both camps it scares people from both sides away from it, which leaves me in this no-man's land in the middle. So I’m trying to get away from that with this new album and see if we can get over with a jazz audience!”

Allan Holdsworth Interview

October 5, 2006/Abstract Logix

Considered by his legion of rabid fans worldwide to be the greatest guitarist on the planet, Allan Holdsworth is also highly regarded as a major innovator by a wide variety of six-string heroes from Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani and Carlos Santana to John Scofield and John McLaughlin.

In a recent interview, the up-and-coming jazz guitar star Kurt Rosenwinkel paid this tribute to the 59-year-old British guitar god: “To me, one of the most important guitarists in jazz guitar is definitely Allan Holdsworth. His chordal vocabulary and his linear vocabulary are major parts of the jazz guitar lexicon, although he’s often overlooked when speaking about jazz guitar because stylistically his music would be placed in another genre, maybe fusion or electric jazz. But in terms of innovation on the instrument in jazz, the language that he’s dealing with on the guitar is the closest to the language that Coltrane was dealing with on the saxophone. As a deep fan of Coltrane’s music and his playing, to see that there is a way to that sheets-of-sound kind of language, that Slonimsky kind of approach to linearity, I think that Holdsworth is a very, very significant guitarist.”

Born on August 6, 1946 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, Holdsworth was originally taught music by his father, who was a pianist. Originally a saxophone player, he gravitated to the guitar at the age of 17 and caught on quickly. He began working professionally as a musician in his early 20s, inspired by the likes of Django Reinhardt, Jimmy Raney, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass and John Coltrane. After playing in local outfits, he relocated to London, where he was taken under the wing of saxophonist Ray Warleigh. By 1972, Holdsworth had joined progressive rockers Tempest, appearing on the group’s self-titled debut a year later. There followed an association with Soft Machine (check out 1974’s Bundles) before he joined Tony Williams Lifetime in 1975, appearing on the recordings Believe It and Million Dollar Legs. Through the ‘70s, Holdsworth appeared on recordings by Gong (Expresso and Gazeuse! in 1976 and Expresso II in 1978), Soft Machine (1977’s Triple Echo, 1979’s Time Is The Key), Jean-Luc Ponty (1977’s Enigmatic Ocean), U.K. (1978’s self-titled debut) and Bruford (1978’s Feels Good To Me and 1979’s One of a Kind) while also launching his solo career with 1977’s Velvet Darkness. There followed a spate of recordings a leader over the next decades, including 1983’s Road Games, 1985’s Metal Fatigue, 1986’s Atavachron, 1987’s Sand, 1989’s Secrets, 1992’s Wardenclyfe Tower, 1994’s Hard Hat Area and 1996’s None Too Soon. His most recent releases are 2000’s The Sixteen Men of Tain, 2002’s All Night Wrong, 2004’s Then! and 2005’s career retrospective, Against The Clock.

In 2003, he also toured and recorded as a member of Softworks, which featured alumnae from different eras of the English experimental band, Soft Machine, including saxophonist Elton Dean, bassist Hugh Hopper and drummer John Marshall. An inductee of Guitar Player magazine’s Hall of Fame, Holdsworth is a five-time winner in their readers’ poll. His unconventional chord voicings, searing solos, and passionate melodic phrases also helped place Holdsworth near the top of Musician magazine’s ‘100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.’ The reluctant, enigmatic guitar hero continues to invert, push and transform the boundaries of rock, fusion, and jazz every time he hits the bandstand. I caught up with Holdsworth following a gig with this current trio (Joel Taylor on drums, Ernest Tibbs on six-string bass) at B.B. King’s Bar & Grill in Manhattan. The interview took place on a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon in July on a grassy knoll in Central Park.

BM: It was great hearing you play older tunes like “Funnels” and “Protocosmos” at B.B. King’s last night. It reminded me of seeing Wayne Shorter in concert recently readdressing his older compositions like “Footprints” and “Masqualero.” These tunes are your standards, part of your legacy.

AH: Yeah, well, that’s because I haven’t written much lately. I had a dry spell for the last five years. But I think it’s OK to play a couple of old tunes. And also, the different musicians interpret them all very differently. So when you play the same tune with new guys, it’s always new in a way, and I really like that. I did some gigs with Jimmy (Johnson) and Chad (Wackerman) recently and we played some of the same pieces of music that you heard last night, and it was so different.

BM: This particular rhythm section of Joel Taylor and Ernest Tibbs seems more interactive than others you’ve played with. Joel in particular has a real loose swing feel that seems to open the music up a bit more than usual.

AH: Yeah, I really like playing with Joel. I started liking that more open approach after working with (bassist) Dave Carpenter and (drummer) Gary Novak. And then I carried on working with Dave and Joel, which was great too. And when I found Ernest, I was lucky. We needed a bass player for a few gigs and Dave Carpenter wasn’t available, and it was like the last minute deal. Gary Willis was in town so he ended up doing two of the three gigs and then Ernest came in and did the last one. He got the music from Joel, came to the gig and played really great, and we’ve been working together since then. I love working with Joel and Ernest. The vibe that they give as a rhythm section is totally different from other rhythm sections that I’ve played with. Like you say, it’s loose. And I like that. What they do together as a rhythm section also really affects what I play as a soloist, which is cool.

BM: I was also interested to hear that medley of tunes that you put together last night. Is that something that you’ve been doing for a while now?

AH: We started doing that not too long ago, actually. It was just something that came out of one of the pieces of music that ends while I’m doing a volume pedal swell thing, and I thought, ‘This would be a nice way to go into “Above And Below,” the ballad from The Sixteen Men of Tain, then from there go into the solo section from “The Things You See” (from 1982’s I.O.U.). And then we end with that little cycle of fourths at the end of Road Games (1983), which is a little drum feature at the end. Yeah, it works pretty good.

BM: You mentioned that you went through a period of writers block.

AH: Yeah, what happened was I kind of…When my wife and I split up it kind of threw me into a…I ended up in a different place. You know, we’d been together for 26 years. So I ended up in a house of my own. I lost my studio, which was in my other house, and it just got kind of crazy trying to keep everything together. And I never really got back to a point where I was feeling creative. Sometimes I wouldn’t even want to play the guitar. I’d just look at it and go, “Jeez…not today.” And I think it was just because of all the other stuff that was in my head…you know, it got in the way. I feel better now. About a year ago I met a girl…she’s really, really great. She’s really helping me to where I actually feel good about music again. I was getting into this “I don’t want to do this anymore” kind of attitude, where I kind of got fed up and it was really bugging me. Mind you, I love music. It’s just that I didn’t want to participate in it myself. I just felt like I was bored. I couldn’t seem to come up with anything that I hadn’t heard or played before myself. And I started to get into enjoying listening to other people play, and I was like, “Oh man, I don’t want to do this anymore.” But I feel a bit better now.

BM: Other great artists have walked away from their careers. Tal Farlow did that. He quit playing guitar and became a sign painter. Johnny Smith did that. He walked away from the New York scene at the height of his career, moved to Colorado and became a flight operator, then started a flight school and never played his guitar again in public. So people have walked away from it, but some inevitably come back with a renewed attitude toward playing.

AH: That’s what I felt like I wanted to do; like, if I had some money in the bank I’d say, “OK, I’m just not gonna do anything for a while.” And then just wait for it to come back, if it comes back, rather than trying to push it or just do it so that you can survive. I didn’t like that idea. It doesn’t feel good to do that, to me. When I started music I never thought of it as a job. And when it becomes a job, it might as well be another job; you might as well work at McDonald’s. Because it doesn’t have the same thing as just doing something because you really love it or you really want to do that. I was losing that feeling but I’m feeling a lot better now. Couple of years ago I wasn’t too good with it, though.

BM: Do you ever write on the road while you’re touring? Or do you need to be in a certain environment with specific material around you to be able to create?

AH: I don’t really do very well on the road. Back when I worked with Tony (Williams), I remember I used to do a lot of stuff in hotel rooms. That was years ago. Now I like to be at home and just sit down with a guitar and try and come up with a few ideas. If it feels OK then I’ll make notes and just keep going back until I can make it grow into something. But on the road I get panicked, I get really nervous about playing. I’m terrified about playing in front of people. I kind of lose it and then I’m always anxious. And if something’s going on at home then I’m always waiting for it to be the right time to call back there. So I just don’t seem to be able to focus enough to write music when I’m on the road. I can’t get my head empty and free enough to sit down and try to write. I mean, there’s always something going on…some chaos of some kind.

BM: You say that you’re terrified of playing in front of people? Is that something new?

AH: No, I’ve always had that, but I think it’s gotten worse. It’s almost immobilizing, to a point. And if it wasn’t for the fact that I know that most of the people…especially now when I’ve been doing it for so many years…really like the music, then I don’t know. And it’s not like I think, “Oh God, now I have to impress people.” It’s not like that. I know that there are people in the audience who really like what I do, and so there’s no real reason for me to be afraid of that because nobody’s really looking for anything. But at the same time, it doesn’t help me from not being scared to death. I just kind of freeze up, clam up…and if I start thinking two or three chords ahead, I’m dead. In my mind, where I get to this one chord where I can’t remember what it is…as soon as I catch that up in real time, it’s the big screw up. As soon as I start finding myself thinking too much, I try and distract myself somehow. I don’t know…I don’t know if I was cut out for performing, actually. It’s like really scary to me.

BM: I read somewhere that Barbara Streisand actually has crippling stage fright.

AH: Yeah. I wish I didn’t. It’s easier in the studio because there’s no real audience. It’s easier for me to relax in that situation than at a gig.

BM: That must be why you’ve had this anxiety over the years about live recording.

AH: Yeah, I can’t seem to be able to do it. There’s always something wrong with it and it drives me crazy. In fact, the only reason that any live stuff has come out at all is because there’s so many bootlegs out there that it’s like, “Oh well! Who cares? Everybody’s heard them all. They’re all kinda lame.”

BM: What about that live in Tokyo recording, All Night Wrong (2002)?

AH: Oh yeah. It was only supposed to come out in Japan and Sony did it. And they have that new super Audio CD player with a ridiculously high sample frequency. So they did it live to two-track but at the same time they had another guy in another room who was doing a 5.1 mix of the same show. And that one actually sounded good. I just think when you’ve got that much space and it’s a live gig in a club, it just seems to be more forgiving to the music. It’s almost like you were really there, as opposed to a sterile two-track, where they always sound so…like a really bad studio recording with no vibe. You wouldn’t know that it was live, really, from the sound of it. But the 5.1 thing is pretty awesome for live music. You really kind of feel like you’re there.

BM: Speaking of bootlegs, I saw a CD the other day at a store here in town…it’s a live I.O.U. gig being marketed by (I.O.U. singer) Paul Williams.

AH: Oh yeah, it’s a bootleg. Yeah, I have a little bit of a problem with that guy.

BM: I would think so. There’s a big picture of him on the inside and none of you. It’s like the Paul Williams Show.

AH: Yeah, except that he’s ripping everybody else off. It was from a tape of a gig we did in Japan in 1985. He took the audio portion of what was a video and made his own album cover. Pretty sad.

BM: So he obviously didn’t get any permission from you to do this.

AH: No. There’s this guy that he used to work with, a guy called Shawn Ahearn. If I see him, I’ll deck him. He runs a label called Pangaea Records. He put out this bootleg and he wouldn’t stop. Even after I said, “You can’t do that!” he went right ahead and did it. There are certain people all over the world who make bootlegs, but I don’t know these people. You know, they’re people just trying to make some money and they know that a person in my position can’t do anything — you can’t really stop them, you can’t sue them. It’s not like Madonna, where you teams of lawyers to get all this stuff stopped. But when it turns out to be guys that you know, that are supposed to be your friends, it’s kind of brutal. I mean, that’s happened to me a lot in the last few years. I was dealing with a lot of small record companies and they’re all wonky. It’s not good. They start out as your friend and then they end up like the enemy.

BM: I’ve lost track of all the labels that you’ve been with in the past 20 years.

AH: Gnarly Geezer put out The Sixteen Men of Tain album. That was the last studio album that I did. I just put out a compilation (Against The Clock) on another small label, which is Alternity. That’s the last album that I’ll be doing for those guys. I think I’m just going to do it myself from now on and put it out through my website. Because these other guys…they’ll just rip you off. They’ll give you an advance for a record and treat it like it was a loan. But I didn’t borrow money from anybody, I got paid for a project.

BM: More and more artists are gaining control of their own music now and putting out product on their own websites. They might be selling fewer copies, in some cases, but they’re making more money ultimately because they get to keep more money per CD than if they had the standard record company percentage, which is miniscule.

AH: Yeah, that’s definitely the way to go. But I must say, I was pretty lucky because almost all the albums I did were license deals and I got the licenses back for all of them last year. So I’ve got ten albums that I could reissue on my own label, if I wanted to. I haven’t really done anything about it yet because it’s kind of a really big expense if you want to reissue all of them. That would be like pressing up a thousand records times 10. And I would have to think about which one I would want to reissue first.

BM: Bill Bruford is doing that right now on his new label, Summerfold. He’s got control of all his masters from the Bruford band recordings that he did with you and Jeff Berlin, and he’s putting that stuff out now.

AH: Oh yeah? That’s great! If you have a website and people are going there, why not sell your own stuff on it? For the little label I did the last thing for, we’re using my website to sell the album. But when we had a fallout, I took their Buy button away, and they weren’t happy at all. And that made me think, “OK, if they were kind of happy with that Buy button, then maybe I should just start my own label and just sell my own stuff and not have to worry about being clobbered.”

BM: Now that you’re back in writing mode, you should document the new stuff and put it out yourself.

AH: Yeah, I’ve got some stuff that we’ve recorded. The tracks are down but I haven’t mixed them or finished them, really. I think we played two pieces of new music last night. But lately I haven’t had to time to address my own thing because I’ve been so busy playing on tracks for different people, sort of like friends…just pay-the-rent kind of things. Every time I wanted to get to it I’d think, “I’ve got to find a way to raise some money,” so I’ll go and play on somebody else’s stuff. And so I just never got to it. But I really want to get to it as soon as I can.

BM: Do you ever compose on keyboards?

AH: No, I can’t play piano at all. I like to work with the SynthAxe, though.

BM: That’s strictly a composing tool for you at this point?

AH: Yeah, I use it in studio. And it’s a great instrument, but it’s falling apart now.

BM: Not very road-worthy?

AH: No, all the cables look like hell, with the plastic peeling off and everything. I keep having to wrap them with duct tape. And you have these big 20-pin connectors for it. It’s not something you want to go and mess around with a soldiering iron. I can’t see well enough to do that. You know, I’ve always been fascinated by electronics but when I opened that thing when I first got it, it was confusing. I currently have two of them. One actually is in perfect working order, the other one works for about 20 minutes. So you gotta be quick with that one. I love the keys on it. I think that was the real genius about the instrument. The trigger strings have got a slight time lag but the keys are instantaneous, just like playing a keyboard. It’s so beautiful to go and play a chord while you hold the keys down, and there’s one key for each string. When you hold a chord down you can take your hand off and move it to the next chord so you can get this more seamless, piano-like thing, which would be very difficult to do with any other kind of MIDI guitar controller. So I’m really fond of that thing but it’s going to die eventually. I’ll have to get a Roland guitar synth or something else to replace it. I’d really miss having a guitar synthesizer if this other one died.

BM: Is there any direction that you’re currently thinking in these days, compositionally?

AH: I think some of the things that I’m hearing now are different than anything that I’ve ever done before. And the reason I know that is because I’m writing out chords for these pieces of music and I’m finding it a struggle to get them to fall under my hands. Whereas, sometimes if you write a tune after you played it a couple of times, you can get it. But I was having to really concentrate trying to play these new pieces. I think they’re pretty challenging and they sound a little different than anything I’ve done before. It’s hard for me to explain it. I guess I’ll have to wait until it comes out before I can do that.

BM: A very un-guitaristic approach.

AH: Yeah. I started trying to work on the pieces that have open strings because I never usually use open strings at all. But I tried to write one piece of music where almost every chord has one open string in it somewhere, so the voicings are stretched wide as opposed to being just close. It’s got low notes as well as the high notes. Because sometimes if you play four notes close together you’re not going to be able to put a nice big bottom on it…from the guitar, that is. But with these I was able to do some of that. I think it’s a cool piece of music. Not finished, but in progress.

BM: Does hearing other musicians have an impact on your own writing?

AH: Definitely, yeah. For example, I went to see John Scofield when he was playing at Musicians Institute in California about five or six years ago. Gary Willis was playing bass with him and it was beautiful and incredible. Then I went home and wrote this piece of music called “Above and Below," which took me a few days to complete. And that was a direct result of hearing Scofield play, although it sounds nothing like how he plays.

BM: It’s filtered through your own aesthetic.

AH: Yeah, I do that a lot. I get a lot from everybody. Even things that don’t have anything to do with music. Just seeing certain things…a plant, a tree, a mountain or a big building…where it kind of gives you a feeling. Or movies too. I always wanted to do that, put music to movies. I think it would be too complicated for me to do it, in terms of all the technical stuff that goes on…the way that it’s done. But I definitely hear it. I like to look at something and then imagine what I’m looking at as making a sound. That’s cool.

BM: It sounds like you’re on the verge of a creative explosion.

AH: I’d like to think so. I’ve just been trying to get all of the other things in my life kind of behind me so I can start feeling like I’m gonna stand at the starting gate again instead of struggling to get up to the line.

BM: Some creative people seem to thrive on turmoil. Others shut down and can’t really create in the face of turmoil.

AH: I have friends that think I thrive on turmoil because they see me in it so much. It’s not true. I keep saying, “I’m not doing this on purpose.” I kind of need everything to be more in order for my head to be free. Otherwise, I’ve got too much going on…too much chaos.

BM: Right. I can’t really begin writing a story, for instance, until my apartment is cleaned up. I need all those loose ends tied up before I can focus and concentrate on my work.

AH: Oh yeah! I’m like that in the studio. I’ve put one back together in the house that I’m living in now. And after a while, if you’ve been working on something, you get the cables going all over until it’s just a mess. So if I’m starting another project I have to really straighten things out before I even want to go in there. So I know what you mean. It’s like, you can’t really get serious with something if there’s chaos around you.

BM: You have to clear your mind before you can create, whether it’s music, painting, writing…

AH: Yeah, and it’s hard to work with people around, sometimes, for me. While I was married I had a studio in the house and it was like a real studio. You could go in there and nobody could hear me at all. They could all be in there watching tv and I wouldn’t annoy anybody, and they wouldn’t annoy me. And I would never feel like somebody was ear-wigging because they might not necessarily like the music at all. But the thing is, they didn’t have to hear it. But then there’s the other kind of situation. Like, I was staying with a friend of mine for about a year and it was difficult for me to work when he was around. He’s the sweetest guy and is a musician himself, but it was impossible for me to play around him, and I used to feel so bad because he would deliberately stay out of the house just to let me work. His job would bring him home fairly early, like 2:30 in the afternoon, but he started really early so his hours were completely opposite of mine. I’d be going to bed real late and getting up real late. And a couple of times he wouldn’t come back home from work right away. And once I saw him…he was outside the house and he wouldn’t come in because he knew that I was working on something and he also knew that it’s kind of hard for me to play with other people there. So as soon as he gets in the house, even if he’s in the bedroom, it’s all off. I have to turn it all off. It’s like I’m conscious of someone else, whether they’re looking or not.

BM: Because that brings into the picture things like judgment and expectation. That can be inhibiting to the creative flow.

AH: Yeah, it’s embarrassing.

BM: Do you currently own an acoustic guitar?

AH: No, I’ve been trying to get one from this guy in San Diego who makes replicas of the original Selmer Maccaferri, like the one Django Reinhardt played. It’s got an oval D-hole…absolutely beautiful. It’s called a Del’ Arte. It’s like a cross between an f-hole guitar and a flattop guitar. Flattops always sounded a little too nasal — lots of high end, lots of low end and nothing in the middle. And the Maccaferris are the opposite — really big in the mid-range. Plus, they’re comfortable to play because they have more of an electric setup. Instead of a pin bridge, the strings are pressing down much like they would on an archtop. It just feels more comfortable and it sounds so beautiful. I would definitely play one if I could get one. But the problem with me is every time I need to buy a piece of gear I always end buying a piece of gear that’s associated with either the studio or the electric guitar rather than the acoustic guitar, because I’m not sure how much I’d use it.

BM: I wonder how you would deal with the fact that your acoustic wouldn’t be giving you that sustain quality that is so much a signature of your electric sound.

AH: Yeah, well, that’s true. I love to hear other people play acoustic guitar. I’m not very fond of hearing myself play it. But I think when I really quit playing acoustic guitar was when I got the SynthAxe, because that just opened up this other door and I was like, ‘Well, I guess I can leave that other guitar behind completely.’ Because there was a period after I had been playing the SynthAxe for about a year, I was even getting frustrated with electric guitar. There was a point where I was actually close to making a decision to just play the SynthAxe and forget about the guitar.

BM: I remember that period when you were playing the SynthAxe almost exclusively. And you had that plastic tube that ran from the instrument to your mouth to help you shape the notes, like Peter Frampton or Stevie Wonder did in the ’70s with the Talking Box.

AH: Yeah, I always wanted to play a horn and I loved that way that you could shape the note with that gadget. And because it was an analog device, you couldn’t record it in MIDI or anything. It was made by Niles Steiner, before he made the EVI or the EWI. I think it was called The Mouth Destruction. Basically, you can set it so that there’s no sound at all and as you blow it raises the volume and opens the filter, so it’s pretty organic. I was really getting into it. It was really great to be able to play a note and then make it loud and make it soft, then make it loud again…all the things that you can’t do with a guitar that you can do with a horn or a violin. So I was loving that.

BM: Is that still a tool for you in the studio?

AH: Yeah, I don’t use the blower so much for composing. It’s more something that I did for coloring solos. But I still have it. I’ve got like three or four of them. If I see one anywhere at an old music store, I always try and buy it.

BM: …or in a museum.

AH: Yeah, along with the rest of my antiquated stuff!

BM: Well, you’ve gone through so many instruments through the years. Do you still have your long neck baritone guitars?

AH: No, those are gone. Although Bill DeLap, the guy who built those baritone guitars for me, has made me another baritone guitar with a 34 inch scale that goes down to a C. The other baritone guitar I had, which I named Boris, was 36 inches and went down to B flat. And then I also had Gonan, which was the biggest one of all — it was 38 inches long and went down to an A. And he made me a piccolo guitar too that was tuned up to a high A. I was trying to get a guitar orchestra going.

BM: But the one that you played last night was…

AH: Just a regular DeLap. You know, I designed a couple of guitars with Carvin and was on the road with those for a number of years, and I always had a few custom made headless guitars too. I was really fond of headless guitars. It’s such a struggle for me to jump and forth from a headless guitar to a regular guitar. If you get used to playing a (headless) Steinberger, it’s really hard to go back to a headstock. I can’t really describe it, it just feels awkward.

BM: I recently saw a photo of Les Paul playing a headless guitar back in 1948 at a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert. The tuning pegs were on the cutaway. It looked like a Klein guitar.

AH: Amazing! Well, he’s a brilliant guy. Way ahead of his time.

BM: Speaking of guitars, I remember being at Bill Laswell’s studio in Greenpoint, and he showed me a white Gibson SG that he said once belonged to you. What guitar was that?

AH: That would’ve been the guitar that I played in the Tony Williams days. The weird thing about that is I used to have two SGs, a white one and a black one, which was really rare. One of those SGs I had painted and it didn’t come out right, it came out pink. And I was like, “Oh, I can’t play a pink guitar.” So I had the guy paint it blue. I had a number of SGs but the last SG I owned was sold by the woman who tour managed Tony Williams Lifetime…while I was out in the country. He didn’t get paid so he took my guitar and sold it, and I couldn’t get it back. There was nothing I could do about it. It was sold and was just hanging up there in the shop. And I was like, “Jeez, I gotta buy back my own guitar.” That was a blue SG with two pickups.

BM: The one I saw was white with three pickups.

AH: Well, I actually owned two or three of them at different times. It would be interesting to see it.

BM: Have you listened to any of these CDs that are being reissued now to a whole new audience that didn’t get it the first time around — the Bill Bruford stuff, the Tony Williams Lifetime stuff, all the electric Miles stuff. Now, 20-year-old kids are hearing all of this stuff for the first time.

AH: And I’m starting to notice it in the audiences. Because it was like maybe 10 or 15 years ago you could see the audience getting older with the band. But now we play a lot of places in Europe — France, Germany, Sweden — as well as in Japan and in the States too where there’s a lot younger people in the audience. And sometimes I wonder how they found out about our music, because usually that doesn’t happen. So I guess the reissuing of all that stuff is a good thing.

BM: All that electric Miles stuff that has been reissued in the past 10 years has spawned new bands of young hotshot players from places like the Berklee College of Music who are forming bands to interpret the music from Bitches Brew or Jack Johnson or Live-Evil. They’re inspired by that sound because it’s fresh to them.

AH: That’s great. I’m glad to hear it

BM: These recent Bruford reissues sound great. Have you heard that stuff?

AH: I have a good friend who’s also a big fan of mine, and because I don’t really have any of my own recordings, I usually end up giving them away and then I try to get them a little later on. But he played me some of One Of A Kind, which I hadn’t heard it in 25 years. It was pretty good, I thought…for the time and everything.

BM: That must’ve been an interesting band to tour in.

AH: Yeah, it was. I think if it hadn’t been for the U.K. experience I might’ve stayed with Bill a little bit longer because I really enjoyed playing with him. But with U.K. it was kind of uncomfortable because we had such different tastes in music. All of the guys were great guys, it wasn’t like a personal issue at all. We got along really well. It’s just that (bassist) John (Wetton) and (keyboardist) Eddy (Jobson) were of one mind musically and Bill and I were of another. And then when I started working with Gary Husband. I had just been introduced to him and played with a couple of times and I thought, “Oh man! I wanna play with THIS guy.” So I decided to form my own band and that’s what cut short the Bill thing.

BM: What was Jeff Berlin like in those days?

AH: He was great; an incredible musician. I think he can be a little challenging to some people but I always really enjoyed working with him. Haven’t seen him for years.

BM: Do you have any thoughts on the closing of  The Bottom Line here in New York? That was a place where fans were able to see you play in a fairly intimate space for many years.

AH: Yeah, I was sorry to hear that it closed. The first time I played there was with Tony (Williams). I think that was right around the time that it opened. And he kept taking us back every time we came through. Yeah, I miss that place. It was a cool place to play.

BM: I recently saw an old picture of you playing violin. What was that about?

AH: When I was working in a Top 40 band in England, before I moved to London, I was out just walking around in the town in Sumberlin and I happened to walk past this pawn shop. And I don’t even know why I did it but I went in and said to the proprietor, "Do you have any old violins?” And he comes with one and says, "How about this one?” It had no strings on it but it had a bow that looked like it was in reasonable shape. So I bought it for ten bucks. I took it to a violin repair shop and they put a new sound post on it and the bridge and strung it up. I started playing around with it for a while…on and off for about a year.

BM: Any gigs?

AH: I think I did play it on a couple of gigs with Tempest. I think I might’ve also played it a couple of times with Soft Machine. But I always really liked violin. It felt natural to me. I often wish that I had been presented with a violin when I was young. It just seemed like it was comfortable for me to play right away, but I couldn’t play chords on it and by that time I was really getting into chords and stuff. And I started dedicating time to playing just one instrument, I didn’t have enough time to learn how to play two. All those guys who play multiple instruments amaze me. They must have split brains or something.

BM: Speaking of violin, I saw Jean-Luc Ponty recently. He was doing a trio gig at Carnegie Hall with Stanley Clarke and Bela Fleck.

AH: Awesome!

BM: It was really good, and it provided a vehicle for Jean-Luc to play more classically oriented than I had ever heard him play before. It was an electrified violin but he didn’t use effects and he was dealing more with virtuosic chamber kind of stuff.

AH: Yeah, I really love his playing. He’s an incredible musician.

BM: Have you been in touch with him?

AH: No I haven’t been, actually. Last time I spoke to him was about four years ago. We were supposed to hook up with him one time when I was in Paris but we never did. But yeah, I really like Jean-Luc as a guy as well as a musician. Pretty incredible player.

BM: I hadn’t seen him in a long time and he looked exactly the same as he did 20 years ago. Hadn’t gained a pound. I’m amazed by these people who remain eternally youthful looking.

AH: Huh, I’ve got a few jowls going myself. Ha-ha.

BM: That record you guys did together, Enigmatic Ocean (Atlantic, 1975) is a fusion classic. It was interesting to hear two guitars on that record, you and Daryl Stuermer (who later played with Genesis and for the past 20 years has been in the Phil Collins band). Two very different approaches to the instrument — you with that flowing hammer-on legato thing and Daryl machine gun-picking every note.

AH: Oh yeah, that was a nice contrast. I enjoyed that.

BM: Any other upcoming projects that you might want to talk about?

AH: I just want to get back to it. I’m starting to feel comfortable with the way things are going in the other parts of my life. So I’m getting that feeling back of wanting to actually create something instead not wanting to do anything. A couple of years ago I would get up in the morning and not want to do a thing. I’d go in the studio, look at everything and go, “Oh Jeez…not today.” But that’s not how it should be and it’s not how it was before. I was always pretty productive. I always worked really hard on projects and put in ridiculous amounts of hours in the studio. My daily routine was: Get up, go ride my bike, start in the studio at noon and then I’d be in there until two o’clock in the morning. And this would go on for months at a time. Now, I want to get that back. And I feel more like that now. I’m not sure that I’m going to have that amount of energy, as an old guy. But just so long as I don’t feel like I’ve been feeling the last few years, I’ll be OK. It feels like it’s kind of changing. So I’m really looking forward to getting back to finishing these new pieces of music and putting out another studio album with no old tunes on it. That’s what I’m shooting for, anyway.

BM: On your own label?

AH: Yeah, I’m starting my own little label called Concrete Balloon. So we’ll see how that flies.

photo by Glen LaFerman