October 9, 2005
Interviewed by: Mary Bentley
Over the nearly 20 years they’ve been making music,
Acoustic Alchemy has undergone many changes, but the constant,
great music driven by the sound of two acoustic guitars has
remained the same. On the eve of the last night
of the American English tour, SmoothViews
sat down to chat with band leaders Greg Carmichael and Miles
Gilderdale.
SmoothViews (SV): The first question is for Greg. How
difficult was it to go on with the band after Nick’s
death?
Greg Carmichael (GC): As it happened, the
transition was smoother than anticipated. The day he
actually died, we were just about to record Positive
Thinking. Everything was set up in this
sort of English country manor house, which was near where he
lived, simply because he was very, very ill. It would
be a lot easier for him rather than to travel up to London
to record and rehearse if we got it as near to him as possible. We
were quite tired. We were kind of rehearsing the album
because the idea was that we record it, not live, but as more
of an ensemble thing. And literally, the day that we
were due to actually start recording for real, he died. That
was very difficult. It was very emotional and a terrible
thing, but we were kind of committed, if you like, to doing
this album. And he would have wanted us to carry on,
not just sort of pack up and go home.
Miles Gilderdale (MG): Yes, it’s like
seeing it through, the whole process.
GC: Yes, that is what you do, isn’t
it? Miles, at the time, was not doing the acoustic [guitar],
Nick was doing it. I remember getting a phone call from
Tommy LiPuma, who was the head of the record company at the
time. He sent his condolences and sort of asked us what
we were going to do. I remember him saying, “If
you want to not do this, then I would understand perfectly.” But
we all felt that we should carry on. We got in John Parsons,
who has a long association with Acoustic Alchemy. He’s
written a lot of stuff, and he’s a fantastic guitarist. He
seemed to be the obvious choice to play Nick’s part on
the CD, so we did that. We finished the CD, and then
came the next step. We could’ve actually stopped
there because we kind of fulfilled our commitment, but the
next step, or the next question was, are we going to tour? That
was probably the most difficult decision because we were all
very nervous about that. Nick was quite a charismatic
character. That was the biggest thing as to whether or
not we tour, but we decided to do that. It was really
the response of the fans as well because they were very upset. They
were quite devastated by it, but they were actually quite glad
that we were continuing because they liked the music. The
first tour was a bit wary, but John Parsons came out and did
it with us.
MG: I guess we kind of started that tour not
knowing really… but by the end, although no one had
said anything, we all sort of knew it was going to go on, just
because of the feedback… sort of… the validation.
SV: The next question is for you Miles. You
took over the empty stool next to Greg. How hard a
decision was that for you?
MG: It was a scary one actually. I mean,
it was scary because I had stood behind him and seen what happened. He
was a big personality and a great player. But Greg was
very generous. He just said, “Look, let’s
give it a go and see how it works out. Just do what you
do.” So, I sort of locked myself away with a guitar
for six months, did some wood shedding, as you chaps say, and
then gave it a go. I wasn’t particularly great
at first. I’m still learning now, really, about
the acoustic.
GC: A lot of people can’t appreciate
that. They just think that a guitar is a guitar. They
forget that the electric guitar and the acoustic are…
MG: ...very different animals. They
are. [It’s] the difference between a piano and
a church organ. The notes are in the same place, but
you just approach it very differently.
GC: I think what Miles has done is fantastic,
because I wouldn’t dream of picking up the electric guitar. I
mean, I’d be embarrassed. And I wouldn’t
really like to play the steel string guitar. I know I
do what I do. They are so different; the difference not
only between the electric and the steel string, but between
the steel string and the nylon. They’re all different. So,
it was quite something for him to do.
MG: I like a challenge! (laughs) And I sort
of wanted to see if I could do it myself. I was prepared
for the knockdown if it wasn’t good enough, but Greg’s
just been super generous about it really. And it just
sort of worked out in the long run.
SV: I think it worked out fine. Acoustic Alchemy
fans seem to be divided between the sound of the music during
the Webb/Carmichael years and the sound of the music today
with the full band. What do you say to both groups
of fans regarding your music?
GC: I think what happens is that initially
people would come along and say they haven’t seen Acoustic
Alchemy for a number of years. Say they saw the old Acoustic
Alchemy and then they come back as they do, five years later. Suddenly
they’ve got the saxophone and just this whole much louder,
funkier band. They probably think, what on earth has
happened? And they might be slightly taken aback. Having
said that, I think we’ve won a lot of people over who
perhaps initially had not been quite sure. They’ve
been drawn in, because it’s still about the music, about
what we’re writing, and what has been written before.
MG: I guess the people who have come in the
last five years and don’t like it have just stayed away
and so we wouldn’t really know anyway. Realistically,
I suppose there have been people who just don’t like
the sound of the band currently, but hopefully I don’t
think it’s that many. Certainly it’s not
like the numbers have gone down. We’re not playing
to small houses by any means.
GC: When we sign, a lot of people come and
say, “Oh! I saw you in blah, blah, blah 15 years
ago. It sounds great now.”
SV: That kind of leads me to another question. I’m
going to read you something –
GC: Did someone say [it]?
SV: Yeah, someone did…I said it. (laughs) This
is from the Blues Alley show last year, the Trio show. “AA
fans are sometimes divided between the music from the original
AA era and the music from the AA of today. I came on
board with the new AA, but this trio concept proved to be
a great experience. The Trio tour is a way of presenting
the material in its original context. It is a gift
to long-time AA fans and an opportunity for newer fans like
me to experience something musically unique.” Would
you say that’s a fair assessment?
MG: That’s a very nice one… a
beautiful assessment.
GC: Yeah, I’d say that, beautiful. They
are very different things. The Trio tour, although we
call it the Trio plus One… it’s a quartet, can’t
be quite as dynamic as the big band. It works best in
small places. You‘d be hard-pressed to put it in
a noisy place, where as a band, you can. We like both. The
trio affords more room for the guitars because it’s not
as loud. You can hear more of the dynamic range of the
guitars because not all the frequencies are taken up by the
bass drums, and the keyboards. Terry [Disley], our keyboard
player, does a very different thing. He’s sort of playing
bass with his left hand. In fact, what it’s really
like is playing keyboard with one arm tied behind his back,
because the other arm is doing the bass. It’s very
much like they’re both different animals.
MG: We did both guises as it were. They’re
just nice for what they are. It’s nice to get up
there and have this kickin’ rhythm section behind you. That’s
a nice thing to sit back on. Equally well, it’s
nice to have lots of air and room around what you’re
doing. You’re playing with a different dynamic.
GC: Subtleties can be heard. At the
end of the day, they are just acoustic guitars turned up loud. The
subtleties of what we’re doing can sometimes get a little
bit lost. You approach it differently. You have
to think differently.
SV: When I was at Blues Alley, you played “Ariane” and
then you played it the other night at the Rams Head, too,
and it sounded great both times in both formats.
GC: Well, you just kind of adapt. I
really like both formats.
MG: And, in a way, it’s also a test
of the material. We spend a lot hours and days and weeks
over the writing. We absolutely agonize over it. Greg’s
been doing it longer than I have, but it’s always something
we take a lot of pride in… the actual songwriting. And
I think if you can’t play it, the melodies and the harmonies,
with a small combo, then it’s just not a good piece of
music really. (laughs) If you’ve written a groove,
then it’s different. If it’s an exclusively
groove track, then you couldn’t apply those rules to
it. But I would say 85% of the Alchemy material is melodies
and harmonies, so it should survive in both formats. If
it doesn’t, then it’s a failure! (laughs)
SV: That’s a good point. This is the
very last stop on the tour. You can go home and rest
up a bit. How has this tour been?
GC: Time is a very strange thing when you’re
on tour because you’re traveling around. You can
lose track of days, lose the feel of what happened last week
because your brain goes.
MG: You can be hundreds of miles from where
you were a couple of days ago. And also time zones. I
mean, we come from England.
GC: It’s like when you go on vacation. The
first week seems long. Your holiday seems very long,
but the second week, though, it speeds up. But it’s
been a great tour.
MG: It has been. It’s been quite
a lot of work. It’s been very intensive. A
lot of double shows as well. A lot of nights we’ve
had to start early and do two shows.
SV: Yeah, that must be hard.
GC: It’s hard because of what we do. I
think in some of the places where we do two shows, [like] the
jazz clubs, it might well be the regular guys… the musicians
who play at that club… approach it a different way doing
two shows or three sets. They’d be a lot more
laid-back perhaps, where as we try to give as much energy to
the first show as the second.
SV: Any favorite places on the tour?
MG: Yes, there are a lot of places we like
coming back to. Places that you see on your tour sheet
and you always think – ohh! It’s all different. It’s
the variation of this as well, the fact that it’s a theatre
one day, or a funky little club the next.
GC: And you get to know the town if you’ve
played there year-after-year.
MG: You know where to go.
SV: Absolutely. Acoustic Alchemy is celebrating
20 years as a group. Twenty years since your first
recording and you’re more popular than ever. Does
this surprise you?
GC: It’s very nice. It’s
great. You never really know quite what’s going
to happen when you make your first album or CD. That’s
a landmark in itself, to go from being an unknown musician/musicians
to actually getting a deal. That’s a huge step. Then
you make your first record and you think, “Oh! That’s
it! Great!” You’ve achieved something. And
then, if that one goes, they want another one. There’s
always a thing where they say… the difficult second
album. The first one is kind of a bit easier because
you’ve had years and years of stuff, ideas.
MG: In a way, it’s your life’s
work, up to that point, isn’t it?
GC: Yeah. Up to that point and you just release
it and it’s all there. But then you have to do
it again, and it gets hard. They’re never easy. You
worry about the next one you’re going to have to write. And
it can all end at any time. The record company could
say, sorry, we don’t want anymore, and you might not
get re-signed.
SV: Did you think you’d still be doing this
20 years down the road?
GC: I wouldn’t know what else to do.
MG: I think if anyone had said to you when
you first signed, you’re going to be doing this in 20
years, you would have thought, wow! But at the same
time, you’d have hoped you would be. Neither of
us have really done proper jobs. This is sort of what
we’ve always done. The thought of getting a proper
job is terrifying, but it might come yet. (laughs) But
you keep hoping that you’re going to hang in there. It’s
one of the difficulties that I think we have. When
you meet the crowds, there are people who come from all walks
of life who’ve been following the band long before the
term “smooth jazz” existed. One of the great
things is at the end of the show all of these happy people
come and tell us how much they enjoyed it. And in a way,
your job’s done. Great, that’s what we set
out to do.
SV: How difficult is it to get airplay?
GC: We used to get a lot, an awful lot. It
becomes more difficult, although this year’s record,
one of the tracks, “Say Yeah”, is doing quite well. Radio
stations vary in different parts of the country. What
sounds good in Seattle may not sound good everywhere. Because
of the way the format’s structured, they’re still
thinking about singles, where as they used to think about what
suited their audiences. They’d pick one cut or
a couple of cuts from a new CD, be playing that, and somewhere
else in another part of the country may be doing something
different. I still think the music
could reach more people, given the opportunity.
MG: People like to put you in boxes. We’re
put in the smooth jazz box.
SV: Does it surprise you, in areas where they didn’t
pick up your music for a long time, that you still have such
a great following?
MG: It’s also surprising if there’s
no radio and you get the people down to your gig, then that’s
a great thing. That’s actually a grassroots following. If
you’ve got that sort of grass roots thing, then that’s
a real plus. In these days, especially when stuff
is just thrown out – get a bunch of guys together, throw
a record out, and see if it works. But when you have
a real following of people who want to hear it, it’s
almost like an investment
GC: That shows that we’ve got a really
good fan base.
SV: I’ve read that you’re more popular
here than you are at home. Is that still true? If
so, why is that?
MG: Better known, is what it is.
GC: The people that know us in England are
as passionate as the people here. It’s just that
there are fewer of them.
SV: But it’s changing though, isn’t
it, as far as your popularity at home? The word is getting
out. The music is getting out. You sell out Pizza
[Express] every December.
GC: That is because we had a good run with
the radio station there. Jazz FM played us a lot, for
a certain amount of time, and we just built up a following. It’s
more difficult for us when we venture outside of London. Initially
you need the radio, which is what we had in the early days,
a lot of radio airplay. And that’s why we’re
able to come over and play all these places across America,
because all of those radio stations were playing us. In
England, well, we hardly get any [airplay].
MG: The radio station used to play us, but
it got sold.
GC: But when they did play us, that kept us
going, as well as the word of mouth.
SV: I want to go back a little bit and talk about
The Beautiful Game. That was the first CD done with
the new incarnation of the band. Was the songwriting
process any different when writing for the whole touring
band versus the original AA two guitar concept? Are
there different thought processes involved?
MG: Greg used to write with Nick and then
you just started writing with members of the band. That’s
sort of how it starts off.
GC: The big difference for me was we used
to write with one of these things [tape recorder], before being
introduced to the computer. (laughs)
MG: The wonders of the computer. That’s
right. I had a computer set-up which I did all my recording
on, and so we were putting ideas down, and making things sound
a lot more like records straight away.
GC: And that influences you actually more
than one thinks, because when you started with the two guitars,
you imagine the drums, what it might sound like with the whole
thing. Doing it with the computer, you get the ideas
for the guitars but then you can put the drums straight away.
MG: Which is good and bad. There are
definitely pluses and negatives with both ways. One is
with the computer, you can say… I wonder what this would
sound like with drums. Let’s try it. Bang – I
like it, I don’t like it. Let’s move on. It
takes me five minutes, where as in old school, it would have
taken a week to organize a studio and get it all right. And
it would cost a lot to try it out as well. But the other
side is that maybe a song can’t be allowed to develop
or grow in an exciting or different way – a way you never
imagined. That’s the nice thing about working with
other people; the pleasure after when we’ve been writing
a song, we’ve sort of mapped it out on our demo, we’ll
go to the studio and add in some real people. Say we’ve
programmed a drum part and we’ve programmed a double
bass part. Let’s get a drummer and a double bass
player. It’s just so different. You think
you’ve put drums and double bass in, you think you’ve
covered that, but it’s nothing like…it’s
so exciting getting a person in who’s got their own interpretation,
and they’ll hear something else and then you’ll
get chemistry and it’s all good. But maybe you
might do the wrong thing. You might get, “My God! It’s
ruined! What are you doing with this song?” (laughs) But
hopefully, if you go the other way and think, “By God! We
would have never thought of that in a million years. It
sounds great!” So, it’s certainly a two pronged
thing – a double edged sword.
SV: And AArt. There was a strong use of horns
and brass on that CD. What led to the inclusion of
the strong horn section on that one?
GC: Well, Miles is actually the brilliant
arranger of the horn section.
MG: That was my background when I was at music
college. Orchestration and arrangement was sort of my
thing, as it turned out. And then, after I was at college,
I was in a soul band, a big soul band like Tower of Power. Not
as funky. Had it been Tower of Power, it’d be
different (laughs), but it was that size of band. I always
loved the sound of brass. I love James Brown and the
Motown stuff – soul and funk. So, we just tried
it out, wondering what it would sound like against the guitars,
- acoustic guitars and brass. We thought…had anyone
ever done that? No, not that we really know of, so let’s
give it a go.
GC: And it was very successful. Grammy-nominated. It
is so funny at those Grammies because it’s over in a
split second. They say, “And the nominees are…” and
they read them out, and the winner is so-and-so, then they
move straight on to the next category. You’re
sitting there thinking, wait! Are you sure you’re
right? Because you’re so geared up for this. You’re
so prepared with what you’re going to say and it’s
over. And they’ve moved on. (laughs)
SV: And Radio Contact. You used Chuck Loeb
as a producer on that one. How did it happen that you
ended up working with Chuck Loeb?
GC: Radio Contact was kind of, almost
a move against AArt. We’d done a horn section,
but we kind of went more guitars and keyboards. We thought
it would be interesting to get an American pair of ears. He
produced four tracks on the project, but that was the idea – to
get an American interpretation of these tracks.
MG: Just to see what it sounds like, but not
just any American. (laughs) We wanted a killer muse-o
in to see what he’d bring to it.
GC: He was great, actually. He’s
a very, very amazing professional in the studio. He’s
kind of what you want with a producer. Chuck came in
and said, you do this, and you do that, and that’s exactly
what you want, what you expect in a producer – [to have]
direction, and have an angle.
MG: He’s a great guitarist as well. It
was a pleasure to do.
GC: And he likes to work. He just arrived
in Germany (because we did it in Germany), just got off the
plane. We were about to sort of pack-up.
MG: We were all set to go to the pub, weren’t
we? (laughs) We were putting the guitars up.
SV: And American English. You have some really
great liner notes on that... very extensive… and it’s
obvious that you’re influenced by a lot of different
things. Places seem to be a big influence in a lot
of your songs. What other things influence your songwriting?
GC: I suppose also, American English was
a deliberate move from Radio Contact to
be a bit more like AArt was, with
the horns, and a bit more up-beat and in your face, which I
think it is. We went back to Richard Bull, who produced AArt,
to record this one.
MG: I remember before we started this one,
we decided that when we wrote the tunes, we wanted to be able
to play every tune just on the two guitars. I remember
saying, “let’s make sure that the arrangements
are around the guitars.” We didn’t want to
have a tune written for full band with the guitars floating
on top. We wanted to write the guitars right in the middle
of it and have everything else sort of surround. It’s
a slightly off way to describe a slightly abstract thing, but
that’s why it is different from AArt. A
few of the tunes in AArt where the
melody lines are floating… and we wanted actually to
engineer the guitars right back into the middle of the sound.
GC: I’m really pleased with American
English. We really worked hard on
this one. This is a lot of work. It took
quite a long time. And it’s always daunting. We
put our heart and soul into it. When we go back tomorrow,
we’re going to start thinking about the next one. You
can’t just knock out a CD. Also, our fans… they’ll
say, “I really love your CDs. You’re so
consistent. You make such good CDs.” So you
just feel like you have to make every single one as good as
possible. And that’s hard. It’s a lot
easier, actually, for the gigging than the writing because
writing is thought.
MG: It’s just a wrestling thing, continually. Not
only do you have to get that gem of an idea… well, it’s
raising a child, all in six months. You get this little
idea and you think, “is it worthwhile working on this?”,
and you work on this for awhile. It could take the wrong
way, and then you bring it back.
GC: We get very involved in that. Then
you have to play it for someone else.
MG: That’s right. You present
it to somebody and in a split second they go, “Yeah. I
don’t like that one. How about this one?” It’s
ruthless! You sort of put these things out there and
either they survive or they don’t.
GC: The funny thing is that it’s very
different when we’re listening to something that we’d
just written, say, and we’re playing it to someone else.
MG: You suddenly listen to it with very different
ears.
SV: How much do the other band members contribute
to the music?
GC: Writing wise, they have done quite a lot. On
this last one, not so much.
MG: All the guys sort of come up with ideas. They’ve
come up with some great ideas, but they’re not really
guitar ideas, so that’s hard for them. Fred will
often give us six or seven tunes and say how about those for
starters. We think these are some really good tunes,
and they sound great on the piano, but it’s very hard
to translate it. The translation may not work. It’s
a tough one. Very often we’ll think, “That’s
not really going to happen on guitar.” It sounds
fine as it is. I’d use that one myself, do something
else with that. It’s probably the same with Frank
and GG.
GC: Some of the ideas are like a vibe when
you listen to it. Frank might come up with a bass line
and you listen to it and you like it. It’s got
a feel and a vibe and that spurs you on to tunes, harmonies,
and other sections. That’s also the hard thing
about writing. Your first [step], then get all the rest – the
middle and the end. Sometimes it’s quite easy
to get the first section, but then to get the next two.
SV: What does the future hold for Acoustic Alchemy?
MG: Dim the lights and get the crystal ball
out. (laughs)
GC: I guess, more of the same.
MG: The nice thing about, in a way, doing
what we do… being at sort of the jazzier end of the
market… is there’s no credibility lost in doing
it ‘til you fall down, if you can make it last and work
that long.
GC: I suppose it’s also up to the fans,
as long as they keep coming, isn’t it?
MG: We just do what we do, and keep trying
to do it as best we can. We always want to keep trying
fresh and interesting things, otherwise there’s no point
there, is there? I can’t understand people
who do that in this sort of genre because there’s no
more money in it. You can make steady money in all sorts
of jobs, so unless you actually do anything worthwhile, create
something valid, then you might as well do something else.
SV: I have one more question. At the end of
the day, when the show is over or the CD has finished, what
do you want people to take away? What do you want them
to get from your music?
GC: That they’ve had a good time and
that they go away feeling elated, so they come back again.
MG: Just that it touched them in some way. People
have all got their own favorite tunes from all the CDs, and
they’ll say [a particular song] is their favorite. The
people who come and say, we played this at our wedding. Key
moments of their lives and they’re playing our stuff.
GC: We have those moments, too.
MG: Yeah, it’s powerful stuff going
on.
SV: Okay. Thank you very much. It’s
been a pleasure talking with both of you tonight.
GC: Thank you.
MG: Thanks a lot.
Visit Acoustic Alchemy's website: www.acoustic-alchemy.net
top of page
|
