Interview with Michael Messer for Guitar magazine -
December 2002
by Patrick Jennings
Whether you like your blues trad or rad,
lauded UK slidist Michael Messer will meet your needs - and more
Patrick Jennings finds out why, and how.....
Michael Messer's reputation as one of the best acoustic slide
guitar players on the planet is
cast in iron, and backed up by a mantle-piece
worrying amount of awards. He's seen as a
resonator guitar guru, both in terms
of his musicianship as well as his knowledge of the history
of the instrument -
and his status within the National steel world is cemented by the strings that
bear his name, the pre-eminent brand for steel players worldwide.
For all these achievements, however, Messer hasn't forgotten that musicians
should be judged
solely by the quality of music they produce. His latest record,
Second Mind, continues his
longstanding collaboration with Terry Clarke
and boasts a kick-ass band including guitarist and
duo partner Ed Genis,
long-time rhythm section stalwarts Simon Price & Andy Crowdy and diva
Ruby
Turner. Slap the album on and you'll discover a vital concoction of blues
styles. The loops
& samples on Locomotive Skin provide an ambient back-drop
for cranked up, almost hysterical
slide stylings; the rolling folk blues strains
of Hummingbirds In My Soul provides sharp contrast
to the haunting of Big
Wind;
even more diversity is supplied on Riverboat. Perhaps the most
surprising
track, however, is Love - a warm, shambolic honky-tonk rocker that brings to
mind
prime-era Rolling Stones. And while blues connoisseurs can wallow in shades
of Muddy Waters,
Howlin' Wolf & Robert Johnson, people who may have only
heard this kind of thing on a Beck
or John Spencer Blues Explosion track will
still get off on it. Heck, even lovers of good pop music
can just dive right on
in.
"I think people are a lot more open now," Messer
enthuses. "Take King Guitar, which was a
compilation of some of my old
blues material I released last year: it was really well received,
whereas back
in 1990 people thought some of those same tracks a bit too strange. As for
Second Mind, yes, I have spent the last twenty five years playing blues music,
and essentially
coming at it from a pre-war perspective. But I've also spent a
lifetime listening to great,
accessible pop music. I grew up playing Led Zeppelin & Deep Purple & hanging out at
Ian
Dury & The Blockheads gigs. Then, in my early twenties, I became obsessed
with slide guitar,
and that took me off in a whole new other direction - but I
took the rest of it with me. Actually,
records by Jimmy Reed & Howlin' Wolf were pop records, and
they were produced to be as
accessible as possible. On Second Mind I tried to
bring together the elements of Rock'n'Roll and
this more rootsier music. To me,
they've got a lot in common."
Messer is aware of the praise he gets for his technical
skills, but he was at great pains to make
sure his playing didn't over-shadow
the record, so when you hear Second Mind, expect the likes
of keyboard man
Richard Causon, harp blower West Weston & saxophonist Alan Whetton to
step
up to enrich the tunes in places where you know Messer could shine. "That was intentional,"
reveals Messer. "I am
aware that my records have been bought by people who are really into the
instrumentation and I am proud of that, but I don't make music for guitar
players to listen to. I just
make music for people to listen to. As a slide
guitar player I don't want that to be at the forefront
of everything you hear.
Otherwise, you end up with a Jerry Douglas record.....and I don't see myself
like that."
"I really like blues that sits on one chord,
with no melodramatic changes.
It's a structure with great power."
So here's the question: how can you push traditional forms of music
into the 21st century while hanging
on to the all important "real" tag
that consumes music lovers' minds these days? Messer starts to chuckle.
"You can't blame people - I'm like that myself," he grins. "I
find it almost impossible to define what 'real' is,
but I definitely know it
when I hear it. So when people come up to me after shows and say they like my
playing because it's real, I sort of understand....and I sort of
don't."
Messer was certain, however, that he wanted to make Second
Mind. Firstly, whenever possible, he and the
band put the songs down live,
in one take. "Too many records these days are put together in studios, with
the
band playing the song and then everything being replaced. The only times we
put parts on later was when it was
the only practical thing to do - like the
vocals on Locomotive Skin, because you couldn't record the vocal right
with everything else going on in the room - or we would add something afterwards
because the idea came later,
like the saxophone on Blue Letters.
"And we didn't really rehearse things in advance. I would
make a tape of me playing the songs on my own the
night before & play it to
the band in the morning. Then we'd work through it, decide on an arrangement,
and
go for it. Even when I had to do guitar overdubs because I was playing most
of the guitars on the track, like
that crazy electric guitar on Big Wind,
I tried to do it all in one take. I try not to patch things over, but just
leave
any little imperfections on it. That way you can incorporate the benefits of
production & mixing, while
still giving people something unique. We could
play the songs just as well on a different day, but it wouldn't
be exactly the
same."
His other stipulation for Second Mind was that he
wanted it to sound like an old vinyl record - so even though
samples were used,
the album is a computer & digital equipment-free zone. His zeal to ensure to
avoid the soulless,
monotonous brightness of many modern records goes all the
way down to the drum-kit: "It was a 1947 Ludwig,"
grins Messer.
"I'd never really thought about vintage drum sounds until I met someone who
wanted to show me
the differences. I suppose it's the same as 1930s
Martins."
While fellow guitarist Ed Genis strapped on an early '60s Gibson ES330, a mid
'30s Gibson J45, a Fender Strat'
& a Martin 0001, Messer called upon two of
his favourite resonators, both made by the renowned Mike Lewis
of Fine
Resophonic Guitars. The first, a koa-bodied copy of a 1920s single-cone National
Triolian, can be heard
on the delta-lovin' Jinx Alright, Love
& Hummingbirds In My Soul, while the other - a wood-bodied,
square-neck
Tricone - was summoned for Shine On, Riverboat & Painting
The Blues.
"I also own the only 12-string National they ever made,
back in 1937," Messer states as nonchalantly as possible.
You can hear that one on Big Wind & Shine
On." As far as electrics go, Messer is a staunch player of Dave King's
guitars, although the ideas behind them have often come from elsewhere. "I
saw Ry Cooder when he came over here
in the 1980s with Get Rhythm, and he
had a Strat' fitted with a 'horseshoe' pick-up. I thought it was a great idea,
so
I've had a few of those over the years - and then I met Dave King."
Messer's current squeeze is a King-made Tele-style
electric fitted with a 40s
National lap-steel pick-up at the bridge & a lipstick pick-up by the neck.
"Rickenbacher &
National pick-ups made between the 1930s & the '50s
have an incredible response for slide, especially when put
through a lovely
valve amplifier like my 1950 National," he recommends.
Messer's other 'electric', which you'll hear on In The Pocket
& Bluer Than Blue, is in fact a Dave King 'Classic'
acoustic guitar fitted
with a Kent Armstrong humbucker in the sound hole. "I love the sound of
Elmore James &
Lightnin' Hopkins, people who were playing electric before
proper electric guitars, just acoustics with pick-ups
stuck in them. It's a
great sound for all types of playing."
When it comes to deciding whether to play slide guitar in the
upright position or on his lap, Messer goes with his
gut instincts. For blues he reckons the two methods offer different alternative
feels, but for Hawaiian, jazz or country
he says playing flat is essential for making certain chord shapes such as
sevenths & ninths: in the normal position you
are more limited to making barrés straight across the fretboard. "In fact,
for Tail Feather Blues I played lap steel
- my 1931 National - but I put it on a keyboard rather than on my lap," he
recalls. "I wanted the playing to really
go wild, and having it on the stand, rather than on my lap meant that I could
really dig in."
Second Mind is a testament to Messer's abhorrence of
the blues turnaround, but rather than make things more
complex as a way to avoid hoary manoeuvres, he would prefer to strip things to
the bone. Blue Letters, the
most hypnotic track on the record, finds Messer holding down a monstrous groove,
with only slight shifts of
dynamic and nuance used to develop the track. "The whole idea came out of
Robert Nighthawk's Maxwell
Street recordings. I really like blues that sits on one chord and doesn't have
these melodramatic changes.
I always loved Son House doing Preaching Blues, just vamping away. Once
you've got all the elements
together and everything is set in, the slightest change dramatically affects
things.
That kind of structure has great power."
How does the 21st century bluesnik avoid being crushed by the
legacy of the giants of blues?
Messer's method is to actually embrace the classics rather than run away from
them.
"On some parts of this record I really got into the classic acoustic slide
guitar songbook out," he laughs.
"Things like Walking Blues, or having Muddy Waters I Can't Be
Satisfied licks in Bluer Than Blue.
That track itself is a twist on Mannish Boy; the same set of notes
played to a different rhythm. I go straight
to the heart of things and take them on; that's what bands like Cream and Canned
Heat did, and that is why
I liked them. Jinx Alright is a collection of classic acoustic delta open
G riffs - Terraplane Blues, Crossroads
Blues, all that. The songs that Terry and myself write are personal, and
Terry can concoct a picture with lyrics,
often based on stories that I tell him, the way I can do with music."
"But never forget blues is a primitive form," Michael Messer
concludes.
"If it's done right, like Muddy Waters doing Mannish Boy, then it
becomes a force of nature."
Reproduced with permission from Guitar
Magazine©
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