Artist Notes…

My hope here was to create a recording of my guitar works, just me and my guitar.

And I hope you like the music, my expressions.

I believe, like my dear friend Tuck Andress noted, that “lyrical playing” is coming from the heart of the player. And I think imagination and emotion is what makes our music matter. These recorded songs I’m workin got here are approached with what I call, “solo voiced guitar” to emphasize this sound, my sincere voice.

I’m excited to share my take on our traditions as guitarists. I wanted this to sound like a guy sitting in front of you just playing his songs on his guitar.

“… I keep being reminded how utterly compelling the unaccompanied single line is when it comes out of the heart and mouth of a great singer. The challenge on instruments is to breathe enough life and humanity into the unaccompanied line to move in this direction, and it is by all means a challenge. Different instruments have different idiomatic devices available for this, as the needs of rhythmic playing and lyrical playing are different, but it is well worth taking seriously, because of course we all want to effect people viscerally, emotionally and/or spiritually as well as intellectually. To do so requires some digging in!…” - Tuck Andress, on Bill Banfield’s solo voiced guitar projects

My mentor Kenny Burrell, told me a few years ago in approaching my solo guitar, to try not to compete with what pianists do. The very weight and mechanics of a piano hammer and the thickness of piano strings and number of them, make this incomparable. But he suggested I think of guitar as guitar, let it speak as it speaks, in other words how I experience the instrument. There is a difference I’m learning between playing the guitar, and speaking through the guitar.

While that may seem as a given, I was always envious of the free terrain of expressive-ness a pianist had. Two hands allowed solo and accompaniment simultaneously. That really got me thinking. I thought about a number of my own song arrangements and originals that I would learn and play more deeply, being able to clearly play the melody and accompany with sonorities as I could fit them in.

And I’d hope this ideal would allow me to drop my inhibitions and be free of approach formulas and conventions of any kind and, just play.

As a solo jazz soloist I wanted my music to more freely create the spaces that allow me to feel like an explorer in music, a poet of notes who is interested in telling a narrative in a compelling new way.

I discovered in this way of thinking about this, that once the chord was introduced in the air and the rhythm of the song was introduced, you already “started the on-button” for the playing what’s in your head/ears with an auto-rhythm section.

So if you drop in a bass note/line every few bars, you don’t really have to continue that rhythmic/chord counter-point, ump-pah, ump-pah pattern, because your own ear and the audience’s ear had already been prepared with the accompanying materials. Players rarely try that with guitar because an upper solo line might appear naked, exposed. In the traditional classical guitar approaches, normally it is approached with western counterpoint accompaniment where the lead top line is always supported with functional regulated lines (bass, chord).

Here’s my own continuation from classical guitar and jazz guitar ie., Joe Pass. Once the solo improvisatory free sections begin, I more than occasionally completely drop the chords/bass motion function regulating support parts, and blow solo voice freely now on top leaving the only thing the audience is hearing is pure solo line, “the unaccompanied single line”.

Joe Pass was my model forward here.

He said, “… you don’t need a chord on every melody note that you play. You’re killing yourself for no reason. ‘Cause when you play a chord, the sound is there, …it’s heard by the audience. It’s all heard, and the harmonies stay. The object of solo guitar is to make music, not hard work. You want to be free to be able to play, not to make hard work. Colorful motion is what you want… create an illusion in the texture through motion.”

My living here was Earl Klugh from Detroit, who was the first “star” I met who encouraged me to become a professional in my music goals as a guitarist. I was 18 headed off to Boston to study with Mick Goodrick at the New England Conservatory.

Klugh’s mastery, his sincerity of soul and his friendship has shaped me.

Here are some of the most influential guitarists of our times and several were teachers, all have mentored or encouraged me over the years, or I’ve played with them and whom I consult with on music:

Jack Wilkins ~ John Scofield ~ Kevin Eubanks ~ George Benson ~ Emily Remler ~ BB King ~ Pat Martino ~ Lee Ritenour ~ Lionel Louke ~ Pat Metheny ~ Ernie Isley

Following Kenny Burrell and Earl Klugh, I am after and of them, from Detroit in that known line of players from our city soil. This has been a kind of way for me to see and figure out my own paths as a guitarist, and again, Kenny shaped specifically the development of this recording. Early on, Earl came over to my home to play duets, and more recently Kenny commissioned me to write an orchestral work for his 80th birthday. Lee Ritenour accompanied me to its LA premiere. Recently I interviewed and have published, “Living Rock and Roll” about my dear friend, big brother Ernie Isley on Smithsonian Press. So this is honestly for me about real relationships among living guitarists.

Equally important to me as all is the rich well of songs from the era I grew up being soaked in great music. so in this collection I have; You’ve Got a Friend (C.King), Closer I Get to You (Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack), Your Song (Elton John), This Time and, Mirabella (Earl Klugh), Fragile (Sting).

I as well wanted to bring to these songs my sense as a composer, and arranger in terms of orchestration again blended with my improvising voice locked in a groove pocket where possible. Most of these are one take, “solo voiced” non punched guitar performances, and in some cases we decided to blend myself playing duet with myself.

As a collection of music-song works, the “solo voiced” guitar model takes its example from Thelonious Monk’s solo piano pieces, clearly his “compositional and piano identity voice” is unmistakably him at once.

The recording as I approach it is a little bit of Earl Klugh, threaded jazz traditions, concert guitar, Blues, Detroit R&B funky, Mexican/Cuban/Flamingo, Caribbean influences, popular songs, pour in a whole lot of me, put it in an arts blender = my guitar approach in a way I hope is appreciated here.

I hope I have created a market radio ready and creatively attractive recording, that is unique, distinctive and palatable. In my mind, it draws from jazz, popular, classical and folk repertoire and approaches.

Dedicated to Earl Klugh, Kenny Burrel, this homage lifts up these jazz guitar icons who greatly inspired and coached me as an early teen aspiring to be like my heroes.

I also hoped that the recording sounded close to what I pictured in my head, sounding natural, with all the imperfections, heavy breathing, hands missing and slapping the side of the instrument and all in my own voice trying to keep time and tune the best way I can. It’s never a safe or settled territory yet. Maybe that’s the “next grown up record”. It’s tender, vulnerable yet demanding we listen out with it. It’s bluesy, funky, sonorous and abstract, it’s jazzy and classically woven, it sings, cries, and proclaims its time to be whatever it wants to be while asking us to just sit and listen so we can hopefully like it.

That’s my hope any way, the core idea of it is a “solo voiced” guitar album to share my sincere soul, my songs and a music that I hope people can love. That’s my goal. I’m seeing these guitar pieces more as a conversation, a natural extension of my brain speaking through my hands…flowing as my thoughts, speech, free expression. Trying in my own way to contribute to a definable guitar song repertoire.

Hope you enjoy…

- Bill