By Debra Devi
Guitar International wishes Robben a speedy recovery from the wrist injury he suffered in October. Check his tour schedule for rescheduled performances.
Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival & Workshop brings the greatest guitarists in the world (Pat Metheny and Joe Bonamassa to name just two) to Bigfork, Montana for its annual end-of-summer guitar camp and concert series. This year they snagged someone really special, five-time Grammy nominee and one of Musician’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of the 20th Century,” Robben Ford.
Guitar International caught up with Ford for an insightful chat at Flathead Lake Lodge, the ranch that hosts Crown Guitar Fest. We talked about his beautiful new album, Bringing It Back Home, his deep love for the blues, daring to suck and, of course, gear!
Ford was an Artist-In-Residence, along with Metheny, Lee Ritenour, Darryl Stuermer, Scott Tennant, and singer/songwriters Livingston Taylor and Mac McAnally. They gave afternoon clinics, private lessons and tremendous sold-out evening concerts. Students also took three-hour workshops every morning with world-class faculty from the now-defunct National Guitar Workshop: Andrew Leonard (classical), Doug Smith (acoustic), Jody Fisher and Mark Dziuba (jazz), Tobias Hurwitz (rock), Jeff McErlain (rock and blues), Matt Smith (performance), James Hogan and Dennis McCumber (jamming), Bret Boyer (singer/songwriter) and Susan Mazer (beginner).
Sixty-eight students, aged fourteen to sixty-plus, supercharged their playing with the workshops, clinics and late-night jams at local watering holes. Smith’s Performing Musician class recorded eight songs at SnowGhost Music in nearby Whitefish, which they performed live opening for Taylor and McAnally. Hogan’s Jam Class got to shine, as well, as the pit band for the nightly sold-out public concerts. (Zappa’s “Montana” was a crowd pleaser.)
The Artists-in-Residence also popped into the morning workshops to answer questions and demonstrate signature licks. There’s nothing quite like having Robben Ford show you his favorite blues turnaround!
The good news is 1) you can always go to Crown Guitar Festival & Workshop next year (rumor has it the lineup will be just as spectacular), and 2) Ford has just completed a six-hour, interactive TrueFire Master Class called Blues Revolution. In it, Ford explains his lead and rhythm techniques, providing a thorough grounding in how to play the blues with fresh, contemporary ideas.
Although Ford has played fusion with the Yellowjackets and jazz with Miles Davis, his passion for the blues has been his musical compass since his first paying gig as a teen with blues harpist Charlie Musselwhite. As he told Guitar Player recently, “What I love best about blues and jazz is how great players — like Miles Davis or Jim Hall or Paul Desmond — allow a lot of space in their music. That’s where the beauty happens.”
In the late ‘70s, Ford joined jazz-fusion group L.A. Express, which supported George Harrison on his American tour and played on Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, Hissing of Summer Lawns and Miles of Aisles. Next, he founded the Yellowjackets. Then Miles Davis came calling. Ford has also played with Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, John Mayall, Gregg Allman, Phil Lesh, John Scofield and even KISS (that’s Ford on “Rock And Roll Hell” and “I Still Love You”).
Ford released his first solo album, The Inside Storyin 1976. Between blowing minds with his lead-guitar prowess at Montreux with Miles and on other plum gigs, he made killer blues-rock discs like Talk to Your Daughter, with Roscoe Beck on bass and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, Handful of Blues, Discovering the Blues, Blue Moon, Robben Ford and the Blue Line and Tribute to Paul Butterfield, which also features his drummer brother Patrick Ford.
Lee Ritenour, Robben Ford, Abraham Laboriel (photo by Steven PIckel)
In the late ‘60s, Robben and his older brother Patrick moved from Ukiah, CA to the Bay Area and formed the Charles Ford Blues Band, named for their dad. Charlie Musselwhite replaced his drummer with Patrick the first night the boys opened for him—but after three months, the Charles Ford Band still hadn’t found a new drummer. Patrick told Charlie he had to quit and go back for his brother’s sake. Not wanting to lose a solid drummer, Musselwhite hired 18-year-old Robben, inadvertently launching a brilliant career.
“Charlie hated my guitar playing,” Robben Ford says with a grin, “but he liked my sax playing, so I managed to stay in the band.”
The night before our interview, Ford played for over three hours to around a thousand people under the big white tent set up in the horses’ paddock. Ford burned up the stage, backed by a powerful, legendary rhythm section: bassist Abraham Laboriel, drummer Sonny Emory and keyboardist John Beasley. They earned several standing ovations as Ford brought the crowd to its feet with great tunes, soaring singing, and one spiraling guitar solo after another. Lee Ritenour joined him onstage for a couple songs, and the two guitar masters clearly delighted in egging each other on.
Ford played selections from his new album, Bringing It Back Home, too. Unlike his more hard-charging blues-rock releases, Bringing It Back Home is spare, pure, soulful and sweet, featuring a cleaner guitar tone, sweet Hammond B3 organ and…trombone! There’s a Stax vibe emanating from Steve Baxter’s trombone and Larry Goldings’s keys, and a hint of NOLA second line in the grooves laid down by drummer Harvey Mason and bassist David Piltch.
It’s also an album of interesting covers. Ford selected Charley Patton’s “Bird s Nest Bound” and Earl King’s “Trick Bag” from the blues canon, Allen Toussaint chestnut “Fair Child,” and personal favorites such as Bob Dylan’s “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine).” The album includes just two originals: Ford’s gentle love song “Oh Virginia,” and the dreamy “Travelers Waltz,” written by his wife, Anne Kerry Ford, and Michael McDonald.
The day after his concert, Robben and I met for a lengthy chat in Flathead’s log cabin Main Lodge. Ford–who told Jeff McErlain’s Advanced Rock class that he practices Chinese Qi Gong to relieve tendonitis–is tall and lanky, with a serene, easygoing vibe. He radiates kindness, and is quick to laugh, yet is also clearly a very intelligent, disciplined musician.
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Guitar International: For someone who has played as much jazz and fusion as you have, I was surprised to hear you extol the virtues of the pentatonic scale in Jeff’s class this morning. Can you talk a bit about your approach to the guitar?
Robben Ford: As a guitarist, if all you play is the pentatonic scale–but you play the shit out of it—great! I still feel that way after all this time. I started with the blues, and when I decided to branch out a bit, I picked up Mickey Baker’s Complete Course in Jazz Guitar Vol. 1. I learned all the chords from the first page. I still use ‘em!
That became my thing: Loud electric guitar with a jazz sensibility.
If you want to expand your vocabulary, you have to jump in the water and try new things on stage, while the music is happening. I used to do that. I’d be on stage cursing and stomping my feet – you have to not be afraid to suck!
Robben Ford (photo by Brenda Ahearn)
Guitar International: You play the blues incredibly well, yet you don’t get stuck in a blues box. How do you play over changes and keep it melodic?
Robben Ford: I am a modal player for days, that’s what I do. That Emaj9 chord? It’s a G major scale.
I regard triads as melodies – and I look for the triads in a melody, and find the chords. I’m always thinking of a direct relationship to chords and triads. I have maybe four or five little diminished scale things that I use, whereas a guy like Mike Stern might have fifty.
My approach to the guitar is like finger painting, I find things I know and mush ‘em around. As for flashy guitar playing, I call it “The Northern Lights” – ooh, impressive!
I like to feel that I’m talking when I play – Speed, complexity–these things are for effect, for an impression. I don’t want to make that effect all night long. Live, my only impediment ever is sound – if I don’t have a good sound, my playing comes from resignation.
Guitar International: You started your musical life playing sax. How did you get turned on to the guitar?
Robben Ford: I still love sax players like Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Coltrane. I try to play guitar like a sax player or a singer—because, unlike guitarists, sax players and singers have to breathe, you know? They have to pause.
But when I heard Mike Bloomfield play lead guitar, in particular with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band – it was an integrated band, you know, with both black and white performers in it – the high energy of it blew me away.
When I compared it to what I was listening to at the time–the Rolling Stones and British invasion bands–it just kicked their asses completely! The level of musicianship plus that energy–it just creamed the entire British invasion for me. I still loved that stuff, but there was just no comparison. That combination of real passion, energy and abandon and yet–you could play your instrument! Those are the two things I’ve spent my whole life putting together.
Then I saw B.B. King live. I had no idea who he was or what to expect. I went to see Bloomfield’s band, The Electric Flag, in San Francisco. Mike came out and introduced B.B., saying “We’ve been trying to get him here for a long time now and, finally, we’ve got B.B. King!” B.B. started playing and it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard in my life!
Albert King – same thing – saw him open for John Mayall and Jimi Hendrix. That was a hell of a night. We came walking in and Albert King was already on. He was playing a slow blues and it was quiet as a church mouse. Band playing really soft. He was playing “Blues Power” –“Everybody understands the blues” — playing those little notes real quiet. It was a magical moment, walking into an atmosphere. Later, I got real into bringing the band way down like that, playing with dynamics.
But Albert King was always a little more badass than suited my temperament. And the humanity of B.B. King – With B.B. there is joy, beauty….
When I went to work for [blues singer] Jimmy Witherspoon, I learned about being cool. He was the epitome of cool. He always had this sly smile going on, like he had a secret that you wish you knew. You could feel some kind of vibration in the room, and you would go with his energy and his mood and pretty soon, man, the atmosphere would get thick.
When soloing I always start cool – I give myself time before ramping up. I love simmering. Simmering is righteous!
Guitar International:Your guitar sound on your new record is cleaner and less “electrified” than on some of your previous solo albums. What gear did you use on Bringing It Back Home?
Robben Ford: I’m playing a ‘66 Epiphone Riviera, with my same Dumble amp head Ive been playing for thirty years on every record I’ve ever done. But this time I used just a single twelve cabinet, open backed, rather than my standard open-backed two by twelve cabinet. The idea was to focus the sound, reduce it a little so it wasn’t such a big sound. I wanted a smaller more contained sound. I rented a matchless single twelve cabinet and I think there’s a thirty-watt Celestion in there. And no effects!
Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival and Workshop 2013 Class (photo by Steven Pickel)
Guitar International:When you sat in on Jeff McErlain’s Advanced Rock class the other morning, you mentioned that most of the solos on Bringing It Back Home were first takes, from your scratch tracks. How did that happen?
Robben Ford: I was very relaxed and not worried about my playing during the scratch tracks and, to my surprise, I wound up keeping a lot of my playing from that session.
What was important to me, having only three days with these guys, was to make sure their parts were right – so I wasn’t worrying at all about myself. There were times I didn’t play because I was reading the lyric or focused on guiding them. I figured for sure I’d go back and put some riffing in there, but when I listened back I decided – no, just left it out!
I guess that’s the lesson: Do not worry, at all! To cast your doubts to the wind is always a good idea, whatever you can do to be relaxed, just do it.
And it allowed all the other instruments to speak really well. It’s such an integrated record that way. You hear everybody as if you were in the same room with them and I just love that quality.
Guitar International: There are two original tunes on Bringing It Back Home, the rest are some very interesting covers. How did you choose the covers?
Robben Ford: Thank you. I went looking in places I never looked before. I asked Andy Hess [bassist for Steve Kimock, Gov’t Mule] to send me some music and he sent me like a hundred songs! [laughs] “Fair Child” came out of that, so did “Trick Bag.”
“Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”– that’s from Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. I’ve always liked that song and often thought of recording it. And once we brought trombone onto the album I thought, OK now I can do that Dylan song cause there’s a bone on it. There’s that hook!
Guitar International: How did you wind up with a trombone player?
Robben Ford: My original idea for instrumentation was drums, upright bass, electric guitar and two tenor saxes. It would’ve been an entirely different record! But then I decided to work with Larry Goldings on Hammond B3. I knew I could count on Larry – the keys he played on this record are beautiful. He’s my favorite musician, for real.
Once I settled on Larry, I didn’t want sax because we had the reedy thing in the organ already– and it’s also a cliché – so I thought “trombone!” ‘Cause with the two Allen Toussaint songs—“Everything I Do Gonna be Funky” and “Fair Child”–plus “Trick Bag,” we had this New Orleans vibe going.
I’ve always wanted to work with the trombone –I’m a fan!
Guitar International: You seem like someone who never stops growing as a guitar player, and yet you’re at a pretty high level on the instrument. Do you see your growth as paring things down, like you did on this record? Or do you want to do something completely different next?
Robben Ford: I’ve been paring down for a long time, and I’m about to ramp up! The way I’ve chosen to grow as an artist is as a songwriter and a singer. I haven’t been putting my attention on the guitar for a very long time. The combination of that and playing the blues has been a reductionist kind of thing.
There’s been less improvisation because there’s been more song. I care more about the song, and this has been a great journey, I’ve really enjoyed and appreciated it. And I’ve finally gotten to where I feel pretty good as a songwriter. So I think it’s time to move back into playing the guitar.
Guitar International: Any advice for guitarists who are also aspiring songwriters?
Robben Ford: As a teenager, I just wanted to be a bad-ass guitar player. I went through that phase. When I began to realize there was more to music, I began writing songs. I wrote a bunch of terrible songs!
I recommend Jimmy Webb’s book Tunesmith. He said in there “If you’re going to write a song, you need a title and an idea of what the song is about.” Give yourself a big open field to write in; give yourself time. Don’t worry about the rhymes. You can sort those out later.
Guitar International: As you ramp back up on the guitar, do you have any new inspirations?
Robben Ford: As far as my listening habits go, it’s no longer jazz. I’m listening to Indian music like crazy lately–I love it! It’s very natural. It’s folk music, it’s soul music. I’ve been listening every day to this Indian classical album Morning Ragas. I love the scales.
I could practically boil down my playing at this point in my life to a combination of B.B. King and Miles Davis. Those are probably my strongest influences, and that has everything to do with economy, tone and some singing quality. Rather than lots of notes I’d rather play something beautiful and spontaneous.
I like music to be fun, to be a joy – I’m into playing with good people.
Guitar International: Speaking of good people, how was your experience at the Crown Guitar Festival?
Robben Ford: It’s been great, the whole vibe is so chill and all the people are so nice. You can talk to anybody and anybody can talk to you. I’m kind of a private person so I appreciate when certain opportunities are so genuinely easy to step into like this.
It’s a little bit of a practice–you want to be approachable, so it’s a very soft place to land, you know? If it’s a challenge, well, it’s a pretty easy challenge.
Debra Devi is the author of The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu and the guitarist/singer for the rock band Devi
