Latest Release: Echoes And Other Songs
Label: Mack Avenue Music Group/Artistry Music
Tour: https://gerrardallmanevents.com.au/
Artist Website: www.mikestern.org
Award winning and many Grammy Awards nominated American Jazz guitarist Mike Stern has seen it all and lived to tell the tale. Musically daring, and with a mastery of guitar technique honed from years of live performance alongside the best in the business, his upcoming tour promises to be a mesmerising musical experience. His recuperation from serious injury reinforces his dedication to music, persevering with an enduring will power, and a deep-seated love for guitar and performance. It’s not the first time he’s conquered demons either, and done so with absolute certainty.
Stern’s ability to continue on in the face of such hurdles and return triumphant, with new music, and a backing band with superb credentials, should be inspirational to all. Having first learned of the depth and influence of his guitar prowess via the once mighty Guitar Player magazine cover story, back in the mid-eighties, we jumped at the chance to chat to the one of the most notable names in fusion and jazz-based guitar.
Hello, sir. You’re returning to Australia, and I believe the most recent tour was here had you playing at Bird’s Basement in 2023?
Mike Stern: Yeah, it’s a great place to play, but this time we’re doing more. After the pandemic, we took a couple of years off, and then I think I’ve been there for the 2023 shows, and the year before.
Your latest album is great, and there’s clearly a lot going on. How much is improvised?
MS: A lot is improvised, especially because we recorded all together in a studio. So, it’s not like you’re playing an overdub over something that’s already kind of tracked together. You’re all doing it spontaneously. So, everybody’s playing together, off of each other. Some of it is written down, certainly the forms of the songs, and the melody and the bass, you know, the key that it’s in, and a certain bass line sometimes at first, and then it’s open because I know to play with structure.
Some of the playing tends to weave its way between the piano and sax lines, kind of following it.
MS: Yeah, sometimes that’s happening, and that’s especially so with Chris Potter, who is amazing at that. There’s one point I keep hearing, maybe it’s on the first track “Connections”,
where Jim Beard [late long-time producer and keyboardist] plays something on piano, and Chris just follows it with a line. It’s kind of a diminished line that worked over it. I don’t know how he does it. He’s amazing, but I’m always focusing on the drums, bass and piano, of course. The drummer was Antonio Sanchez on most of the record, and he’s phenomenal, and the other cat is who we’re bringing to Australia; Dennis Chambers [influential funk drummer], the other drummer on the record. It’s really phenomenal. Also, you know, they’re both amazing, but Dennis, I’ve been working with for years, so that was really fun.
There are some excellent bass solos on there as well, which I believe is Richard Bona?
MS: Richard Bona, yeah, he plays great, and there’s Christian McBride, you know, he’s phenomenal, and that’s pretty much him doing all the solos. Richard sang two tunes on the record, which are gorgeous, and I was so glad to get him to sing. Plus the way he plays, it’s so open, and he’s holding down the fort, but he’s also soloing at the same time.
It’s great. Actually, you mentioned the vocals. There’s a song on the album titled “Curtis” which very much reminded me of the sort of Steely Dan type, seventies sounds.
MS: I guess, something like that. I certainly have been influenced by them, I’m sure, and Jim Beard was playing with them. He was playing with them for years, but that was more like Curtis Mayfield directly, the way I kind of got inspired by his music. But it had a different feel and went a different way. So, it’s not really a Curtis Mayfield thing, could be closer to or something like that, but it’s something that I grew up with a lot of soul music in Washington, DC, listening to that stuff all the time. So that’s some of the stuff that I love, and it comes about in my playing and writing.
So, when it comes to putting together set lists, is it strictly following what’s with the song structures on the album, or do you just do what you like?
MS: A set list will be probably a couple of new tunes from the album, maybe three or four. The rest of them will be from different tunes that I’ve written, and maybe one will just be us soloing individually on stage. You know, it’s loose and fun, and I really like to keep it that way.
You mentioned the lineup including Dennis Chambers, who is a renowned funk drummer. How did that come about?
MS: Oh, he’s just great. I’ve been playing with him for around 40 years, and he can play everything. He’s a great jazz drummer. He’s a great funk drummer. He’s a great everything. He can rock too. He played with Santana for 15 years, and, yeah, he can do everything, and played with John McLaughlin, but, you know, I’ve been playing with him before then. So, we’ve been playing together for 40 something years, and it’s been an awesome experience. Playing with him; he never gets old. It’s really great, and he’s a great cat.
So, do you find that with your experiences in the Berkeley, College of Music, that in your scene, you find you’re constantly coming into contact with people who went through at the same time as you?
MS: Yeah, definitely a lot of people that have gone to Berkeley. It’s a big crowd that’s a big influence at that school, and a lot of jazz players and a lot of rock players are, you know, different. Different kinds of music. It’s a really good music school; very open, very eclectic and now I think they own Boston Conservatory, so that’s a lot of classical stuff, too. But it’s a good place, really. Their hearts are in the right place. I really feel that for sure, and it’s a good school. I certainly learned a lot there. I just did what they told me to do. I didn’t second guess it. I just said, ‘okay, this week we do this, next week we do that,’ you know, and one thing led to another, and I was already into jazz when I went there. My mother used to play a lot of it around the house, so I was really into learning more about that music.
How did you find, once you’d been educated in that level, to then be working with someone like Miles Davis? What there a difference in approaching music?
MS: That was amazing to play with him, and Bill Evans, the saxophone player in that band; great saxophone player. We were in the same band with Miles, and he was the one that got me on the gig. Miles already had a great guitar player, but somehow it didn’t work out, I guess, personality wise. So, Miles was looking for somebody else, and I was playing with the great drummer, Billy Cobham, in New York City. Bill Evans brought Miles down to hear me, and Miles liked it. So, he told Billy, he said, ‘tell your guitar player, be in studio B tomorrow.’ So, I was there, and we tried to do a recording. He wanted me to play over something that he’d already done, and I said, ‘I don’t really hear it. It sounds like it’s complete.’ He said, ‘okay, okay’. The next week, we did a brand-new tune called “Fat Time”, he hadn’t titled it, but then he really liked the guitar solo. So, my nickname at that point was ‘fat time’, and that’s what he called me, because I was heavier at that point, and he liked my time feel, so he named it “Fat Time”, which is, well, that’s Miles. He had a great sense of humour.
I’m wondering if he was a similar kind of level of taskmaster, to say Frank Zappa?
MS: Different. He was very different. Miles was way more open, I think, in some ways. Although obviously, Frank Zappa was incredibly open. But he used to write out everything. We didn’t even have charts. Yeah, it was a totally different experience. It was just a concept. Miles left it very open for everybody to jam, really, especially that band. I thought he was kind of crazy and then II realised, ‘wow, it’s really happening.’ You know, I thought, ‘it’s really loose,’ at first, and
it was – it had loose moments, but it has some great moments, and that’s all he was looking for at it.
So, did that inform how you’ve worked with people on your own solo albums?
MS: Oh, sure, definitely. Ever since then, he’s such a big influence. Even before I played with him, he was always an influence. His music and the way he played, the way he conceived stuff was always going to be a big part of everybody’s music. I think he touched everybody since his life.
I still have a copy of the March 1987 issue of Guitar Player, with your cover story. What’s your recollection of those days? You’d gone through rehabilitation to promoting your first solo album, which was quite well received. Was it a daunting to do that?
MS: Yes, absolutely. In those days, for sure, and I still get that way. But it was a little daunting. I didn’t go on the road. It was that I was kind of wanting to just stay home and take it easy and make sure I could stay chill, you know? So, the record went out and did well, so then I started going on the road more with Bob Berg [fellow Mile Davis band member, late American jazz saxophonist]. We had a quartet with Dennis Chambers. This is years ago with Dennis Chambers, and it was the end of the eighties. So, into the nineties, and Dennis Chambers and Lincoln Goines was playing bass at first, then Jeff Andrews [late fusion bassist] was playing bass. So, then I did trio stuff. I was on the road a lot with different combinations after that. I did a bunch of trio stuff with Dave Weckel who is a great drummer, we played in Australia a bunch. It must have been 15 or 20 years ago now that I was there with him, with Frank Corniola. He’s got a drum shop in Melbourne [Drumtek]. He used to bring cats over, so he brought us over for
a tour and we loved Australia, and we still do. So, I’m really glad to be coming back.
I remember the issue of Guitar Player, and there was a transcription, for “Goodbye Again.” Are there particular tracks that stand out for you still today?
MS: I don’t know. I think I like the way their record came out, that’s for sure. I was really happy with it and just the whole vibe. One that I really liked was “Mood Swings”, because [late, great jazz bassist] Jaco Pastorius was on it and Steve Jordan [Rolling Stones] was playing drums, and they were tearing it up. Once again, it was a very live kind of concept. I would be fixing solos, sometimes a little bit, but there was mostly live in the studio, and that’s when the most you can feel that on the tracks, and that’s the best for me, is that everybody’s there at the same time, recording. Then you can fix up afterwards, but you got the essence of the music right there.
What’s amazing now is how technology has changed. So, if you look at the way even guitars have changed, everything’s gone digital and so on. Have you embraced the digital age now?
MS: No, I’m still old school. I’m still old school. I mean, I am kind of being dragged, you know, dragged through it, kind of into it, unfortunately. But it’s good, you know, there’s a lot of good stuff about it, a lot of not so good stuff. But I’m still old school. I still write with this thing called a pencil right here.
So, you’re still using pedals. Those Boss pedals are still pretty decent. But everyone wants to tour with Kempers and similar devices.
MS: Totally different. Right, it’s totally digital. It’s got so much stuff. I like to keep it analogue for some reason. It just seems like it works. So, I mean, basically the same thing. It probably takes more room because the digital stuff has so many different sounds you can get from those little computers, but somehow the regular old pedals are it.
So, with your guitar sound, for the rhythm sounds, have you gone out of your way to try and replicate another instrument, like a keyboard or something like that? Or is it purely just you want to be sounding like guitar?
MS: I just want to sound like guitar, you know, with the effects that I use to make it sound kind of more vocal. So, I have some delay, and some people think it’s a chorus. It’s not, it’s a pitch change kind of thing that I have on zero. There’s no pitch change, but it kind of fattens the sound because I’m using a Telecaster. I think it sounds like I play with the same kind of equipment with a straight-ahead jazz gig as if I’m rocking, you know. I’ll use the same guitar and a couple of amps and then the same effects, even if I’m just straight down the middle. Old standards, you know, and I like it. I mean, I think whatever makes you feel good when you play, because there’s so much music to get to, you know, you just try to get a sound that you can live with and then go from there.
How did you association with Yamaha guitars come about? I believe it was linked to when your treasured Telecaster from [late blues guitarist] Roy Buchanan got stolen.
MS: Yeah, it got stolen and then I had another guitar somebody made me for a while, and then Yamaha came up to me and wanted to do a signature guitar, so I jumped on, of course. I mean, I obviously wanted to see what they would come up with, but they came up with some really good guitars that sounded very similar to the guitar that I was using at the time. The one that got stolen, the Roy Buchanan one, that getting stolen was a drag. Somebody pulled a gun on me, and that was that. I had to give it up, but that was a special guitar. No, you couldn’t copy that. It was one of those amazing guitars, but they still did a great job, so they made some good guitars, and I’ve been using that ever since.
Have you found that your style has changed anyway, since you had an accident in 2016?
MS: Yes, some, but there’s a lot there that’s the same, so no one can really hear the difference, for which I’m grateful. It feels different, when you have nerve damage in your right hand. It can
throw you, and it was from that accident in New York, where I tripped over some construction. I wasn’t supposed to be there, and my hands were actually perfect at first, and then a few days later, nerve damage came. Unfortunately, the hospital didn’t send me to the right doctor because they sent me to a hand and arm specialist. Since the accident, I’ve found that some of those guys would have seen the extent of the break in my arm, my shoulder, and they would have done a surgery right away instead of waiting five days, which they like to do because the swelling goes down. But they might have been able to make this, so it didn’t happen at all. But anyway, there’s no guarantees and it’s too late now. What happened, happened, but I just live with it. I just make it work; you know? And I’m using glue to hold a pick, you know, I’m still using, this kind of glue, you know, to hold the guitar plectrum, on my hand. It works, and of course, I had all these weird rewiring kind of tendon transfers where they transfer healthy tendons to the ones that are messed up and to get some stuff happening. So, the guy that worked, that I finally worked with, Dr. Alton Barron, was amazing. So, he hooked me up, and I’ve been good since then.
That was fortunate. When you were coming up, as it were, Jeff Beck was obviously the guitar god. So, did you try fingerstyle much or was it always with the plectrum?
MS: Jeff was amazing. Yeah, I used some fingers more before this accident. That’s one thing that I did lose, and it’s a drag because I was thinking about doing some more classical guitar and that kind of stuff. I used to play around with that, but Beck used to do all kinds of stuff, a lot with a pick, but some finger stuff, right? Yeah, kind of both, you know. The other guy who was amazing was [late redneck jazz virtuoso guitarist] Danny Gatton. Danny was a friend of mine. He was just sitting in his home. No one had discovered him. He was playing his ass off in these little clubs in Washington, DC., and he was basically working on guitars, fixing guitars for people. One of them was me. I took a Telecaster over there, and he fixed it up and just changed it completely, made it sing, and then he got famous. Somebody discovered him and gave him a record deal, and that was that. He got well known, and now people all over the place know him, but I knew him just straight up. He sold me that guitar for like a few hundred dollars, the Roy Buchanan one, and said, ‘you know, I got this Roy and spare guitar, and I want to buy a used car.’ So, you know, that kind of thing. So, I bought it from him. Yeah, he was a great cat, too.
I remember “Notcho Blues”, all that kind of stuff, and it was just incredible. But that was obviously once he’d been discovered.
MS: Yeah, exactly.
Before Guitar Player magazine decided to stop its print run, you were given the Certified Legend Award. That’s pretty good.
MS: Yeah, man, that felt great. I mean, anybody that acknowledges anything that I’ve done, even if it’s a student that says, ‘thanks for the lesson’, you know, whatever, where somebody says, ‘I like the gig or that ballad really touched me’, or, you know, ‘that was cool what you played on that tune,’ or whatever, that means a lot to me. So, anything like that, of course, it’s the same feeling. You get recognition for some hard work. It’s a nice feeling.
Certainly. We’ve run out of time but thank you very much for having a chat.
MS: Thank you and hope to see you, indeed. Thank you, bro. All the best. Take care.