A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE KIMOCK (continued)

PM: I've always known you to be a relentless practicer. Is that still true?

SK: Well, nowhere near what it was when we were younger and working less. When there's nothing going on, I'm a relentless practicer. And any minute that I get, you know, I'll sit with my instrument, because I enjoy that. I'm so busy these days that there's not a lot of time to practice. And then when I do start working on things, a lot of times, the stuff that I'm working on, I don't find immediate application for, it's just kind of too far out.

PM: Too theoretical.

SK: Yeah, because it takes a while to bring it in. I mean, stuff that, you know, that I was working on ten years ago, and working hard on, now that's the stuff that just sort of comes out. So it's internal. It takes a long time to internalize some of that stuff. I don't know if that's true of everybody, but it's certainly true for me.

PM: Well, yeah. It's no wonder. When you're a relentless practicer and have the time, you're frequently working on these musical constructs, concepts, or ideas. Are there any such constructs or concepts you're working with lately, or is life just too busy for that kind of thinking?

SK: Well, there's more odd time signature stuff these days, that I enjoy playing. I mean, being a self-taught player, and playing basically in rock and blues bands as a kid, where everything is in 4/4, you sort of get to a point where you're not really conscious of the time, you know, you're sort of just in it.

PM: Yeah.

SK: And that's cool. Now there's more stuff in 5, and some stuff in 11, and stuff will happen in 9 or 7, or whatever. And you just need to be conscious of the time more. And it feels good for me to play like that. So there's more of that. Harmonically there's more stuff that I'm working on that's...I'm working more with harmony that's not based on the diatonic scale, and that's not based on thirds. So I'm working with harmonies from synthetic scales, and harmonic major and minor scales and fourths and stuff like that, just bigger chords, chords that would take a while to get to if you were trying to stack them up from thirds, and then you wouldn't be able to name them, and stuff like that, so just working in some other tonalities.

Melodically, you know...melody is melody, and you'll have influences on that. This will be more bluesy, this will be more South Indian, or this will be a little more jazz, or whatever. But melody is melody, pretty much.

PM: Are there any other guitar players, or any other improvisers of any kind that are turning you on out there presently?

SK: There are so many good guitar players, man, I wouldn't even know where to start.

PM: But anybody that personally really turns you on?

SK: I've done some shows with and played with Derek Trucks occasionally, the bottleneck player. And boy, he's a great slide player, just great. I always have had, you know, a fondness for the non-pedal steel guitar and bottleneck guitar sounds.

PM: Right.

SK: Of course, I'm a huge Billy Goodman fan.

PM: Oh, yeah, one of our favorite bottleneck players.

SK: One of my favorite bottleneck players. And there's that whole Sacred Steel thing, that sort of popped up recently.

PM: What is that? I know the term, but I'm not sure what it refers to.

SK: Oh, there were some churches in Florida that were using the steel for the service instead of the organ. Imitating the voice, the gospel stuff on the steel. Some great players there.

PM: Right. I saw that down at Folk Alliance, right. That was interesting.

SK: If you haven't checked that out, you got to hear that. That's happening right now. It's great, great stuff. Sacred Steel. I think how it first showed up is as a compilation of steel guitarists in the church. Robert Randolph now is playing pedal steel and plays in that style. He's got a band. He's out there working. He's real good. You know, I kind of like the steel players.

PM: So maybe this question is hard, but I'm one of the many people who think you should be very well known. What are some of the steps to make that possible, and are any of them in process?

SK: Yeah, that's a hard question. I don't know. I mean, it's probably as much my own responsibility, or fault, as anybody else's. I mean, I started out as a kid, a young teen, deciding that, "Oh, I really want to do this. I want to play the guitar. I just want to be a good guitar player. I just want to, you know, figure out some way to play the guitar. That's what I want to do." And so that's what I did. I never said, "Oh, I want to get rich playing guitar." I never thought I wanted to get famous playing the guitar. I just wanted to play the guitar. So I think at every juncture, so far, where I've had a choice between just doing some more playing, or just trying to make some more money from it, trying to do something to pump myself up in terms of visibility in the public, I just sort of went back in my room and played. So I guess it's my own damn fault, as they say.

PM: Hmm, yeah. And like all great artists, it's really up to other people in the chain to make one more visible. And that considered, I wonder, well, what does it take to make Steve as famous as he really should be? So it's certainly dependent on future records, for one thing.

SK: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the key to the thing would be making a great record, which I have failed to do so far. I've made some interesting records.

PM: Yeah.

SK: And I've played on some interesting records. And I certainly have fun in the studio. But I've not yet had the opportunity, and don't feel like I'm going to have the opportunity any time in the near future, to organize the time or the investment to put something like that together. It's difficult. And I'm working. You know, I work real hard, but I basically work from gig to gig, month to month. So it's not like I can say, "Okay. I can set aside three months to do this." There are mouths to feed.

PM: Yeah. But I wonder. You know, you've already got a great band that's worked together for a pretty good long time now, and there's a bunch of good tunes. What would happen if you took that unit, locked out a Nashville studio, or somewhere, for a week, pretty affordably, and just went at it? Didn't go at it like you had a $100,000 budget or a $50,000 budget, just locked out a studio for a week. I mean, would you not come up with something pretty good?

SK: Yeah. Actually, I have plans to really try and start that, like on a one or two song at a time basis. There's some stuff that I'm just desperate to get onto tape in a professional way. People tape all the shows. People put every show on tape. And you listen to the tapes, and some of the tapes are good. But it's just a microphone at the front of the stage or something like that. How do you...?

PM: Right. All the instruments need to be miked separately in a real controlled environment, and good renditions go down.

SK: Yeah.

PM: But I mean, all that would happen in the course of a week, you know, if you had good mics, and a nice room, and a good engineer. I'm going to pause here. Let's go up to the room.

[Steve's playing the baritone ukulele.]

SK: It's got a cool sound.

PM: Lovely.

SK: Okay. So where were we before? Oh, we were talking about what we have to do to like get a record made.

PM: Yeah. And we were talking about locking out a studio, a Nashville studio or something, for a week, and just having all these amps miked separately. And would that not be sufficient to capture a record?  
continue

print (PDF)     listen to clips       archives        puremusic home