Emmett Chapman Interview

Emmett Chapman talks about his trip to the
5th Stick and Tap Guitar Festival in Allaire, France, Nov. 11-12, 2005

Jim Reilly: Let's start with some history. Before this trip, when was the last time you were over in Europe?

Emmett Chapman: I did a seminar in Lille in northeast France sometime in the late '80s following a seminar in Germany. Yuta was with me, and the first thing we noticed was that all the French students simply wanted to play their Sticks and perform their songs. We were also amazed at the joyful life style in Lille, the general merriment and happiness of the people in restaurants, stores and everywhere we went on the street. I noticed that robust cultural spirit again in Allaire at the November 2005 Tap Guitar Festival and Stick Seminar.

JR: What prompted you to make this trip? Your time to travel is scarce, why did you decide to go to this event?

EC: This was the fifth year of the Tap Guitar Festival, which has been sponsored by CLAC and the French Association of Stick and Tap Guitar (AFSTG). I'd been corresponding with Alain Launay, Youenn Landreau, Yannick Lepetit, Pascal Gutman and Thierry Carpentier, all CLAC or AFSTG members, also with Greg (Howard), who was probably the most instrumental in persuading me to travel there this year, but who because of family plans couldn't himself participate this year. They and several other Frenchmen all made me realize the significance of my being there this year.

My brother Dan ended up coming too and was constantly active with his digital video camera, recording all concerts, classes, ceremonies, impromptu jam sessions, and conducting one-on-one interviews with various artists and organizers. He was introduced as my brother doing a Stick documentary but by Saturday night he was part of the act, an essential element in the overall program with his videocam everywhere, on stage, at the audience, peering through smoke and lights - a bonanza of sights and sounds for his documentary.

JR: Is CLAC a cultural organization?

EC: Yes, it's an extension of the French government's sponsorship of associations of artists and hobbyists of all kinds, right down through the districts like Brittany in the northwest of France, and down to the departments, which are like our counties, the one for Allaire being named after a nearby lake. Funding gets disseminated through all these government agencies down to any group that forms itself around a hobby, or as they call it, a leisure or an entertainment. It seems like a great way to support the arts.

JR: What did you find when you arrived in Allaire? What was going on? What was the atmosphere like on this trip to France?

EC: We landed at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris then drove about six hours through beautiful countryside in a light, drizzling rain. The Versailles museum in Paris was our only tourist stop along the way. When we arrived in Allaire it was like a mythical town, a Brigadoon, something Celtic from parts further north. The atmosphere seemed to be a mixture of the French lust for life (joie de vivre) and something more austere and Celtic that came through in the preservation of centuries old buildings, homes like art museums, and park like backyards. It was November but it looked like spring, everything glowing green. Families and relatives seem often to live on adjacent properties separated by huge yards.

Dan and I and Jim Lampi stayed at the home of Dr. Gil Collin, a homeopathic doctor in the community, and his gracious wife Odile. Wonderful food, pinot noir at one or two in the morning with French bread, salami and camembert, strong coffee in the morning - just first class quality, all comforts firing up nicely. Dr. Gil is an art and cultural aficionado, speaks English well, and acted as a real friend throughout the week to make all logistics and plans go well for us.

There were little roundabouts where six or eight roads would all come together in a circle and you work your way to the exits. It was a five-minute drive from Dr. Gil's house to the concert hall and the CLAC building and there were three of those roundabouts to navigate, kind of like driving through a pinball machine. The Celtic atmosphere of Allaire in the middle of Brittany is different than the rest of France and something special. It reminded me of a film I saw a long time ago with Gene Kelly and Van Johnson and the theme song "Brigadoon" kept running through my head.

JR: I hear the Stick Seminar was larger than ever this year.

EC: Yes, there were close to 50 Stick students and five teachers. All classes were held in the centuries old and restored CLAC building. I was invited into Guillermo's and Ron's classes for Q&A sessions and taught my own master class on Saturday. My subject was Stick sub-techniques and I started with the simplest thing - how to tap a single note with a single finger on a single string on a single fret. Then I described my tapping discovery of 1969 with hands parallel to each other, hands perpendicular to the strings, hands coming from opposite sides, and the musical advantages this orientation of hands provides.

From that basis I went on to explain and demo sub-techniques, starting with the simplest but possibly most rewarding one of all, that is, left-hand, three note, open voiced, bass/chord patterns, while playing a simple right-hand melody. Then I covered some of the more complicated left-hand motors - jazz, rock, Latin, the downbeat sometimes carried in the first finger ("uphand") and sometimes anywhere in the rest of the hand ("downhand"), a conceptual separation between first and second fingers.

JR: Tell me about the festival itself.

EC:The best part, the most sensational part, was the music. It started Thursday night and continued Friday and Saturday at the Centre du Leisure, an ornate concert building that looks like a huge Viking ship upside down with a skeletal beam structure and a large stages at each end. Thursday night we discovered the phenomenal local drummer, Stefan. He played with Jim Lampi, then with Ron Baggerman, then with his own group with Youenn Landreau. Landreau is quite a dynamo, as musician, band leader and organizer of events.

Later Thursday night from the darkened stage at the other end of the hall appeared soloist looper Guillermo Cides in silhouette, playing his newest techno-pop, danceable, looped rhythm games. Each piece was a brand new sound experience, pop yet personal and original at the same time. This black presence captured his audience, an unexpected highlight of the evening.

Friday was my night as featured artist and opening for me were some amazing Stick stylists, including André Pilat in duo with a violinist, soloist Stefen Huth of Germany, Pascal Thebault with his touring band, soloist Olivier Chabasse, and Guy Mauffait in duo with vocalist Jackie.

I played ten songs, four of them in duo with friends. My brother Dan and I worked up the first duo, which I announced as "Blues Brothers in Brittany" (pronounced with a flair, "Brrrutawnye"). We played a slow blues and Dan kept switching harmonicas and I'd switch keys, C major to A major. I think we rocked the audience.

Then Guillermo and I played a song that we earlier recorded remotely by way of mp3s. He had asked if I'd collaborate on a recording, and I asked in return for one of his "SoundScape" orchestrations. He then sent a looped Stick work that sounded like a classical orchestral composition and I created chordal interpretations with improvised melody on top of that.

JR: So he was able to re-create it live on Saturday night?

EC: Yes, and I played my unique chordal interpretation while remaining faithful to his original harmonic structure, but with some novel twists from my "Offset Modal System", as usual.

Then Ron joined me on stage with his Alto Stick and I played my blue BassLabs 10-string prototype tuned in Matched Reciprocal. That came off well because once again I avoided two normal Sticks confronting each other especially in the bass register, which is apparently what I need to do.

JR: The Alto Stick is a natural choice for that.

EC: Yes, and Ron was, let's say, sensitive to my needs and kept his Alto in the high registers during our improvs on "Eleanor Rigby", almost bluegrass style. Later I played a duo with the local drummer Stefan, one of the most talented, diverse and tireless drummers I've ever encountered. I played some solos too, including my new re-harmonized arrangement of the "Titanic" theme, and thanks to Youenn Landreau's advance mp3, a Celtic folk song well known in Brittany, "Three Sailors" or "Tri Martelod." I played it at its full tempo but at half the meter so that the melody passed by more slowly and I could savour the chords changes, something I like to do in song arrangements.

So at the very end of my set, Youenn marched on stage with about 30 CLAC Stickists and organizers and asked me to play it again. This time I played it at its real tempo and Youenn, troops and audience sang several rousing choruses of "Tri Martelod." Like many folk songs, it had interrupted bars with voices flying in off meter. Luckily, I had rehearsed with Youenn's trusty mp3 of Alan Stivell's beloved band of Brittany. This was the unexpected climax of my set.

Saturday night was spectacular - creative art combined with unabashed entertainment. Youenn's band had a triple horn section and a triple Stick section, Youenn, Jo Ruffier des Aimes and Jim Lampi as front men all playing Stick in a program of Brazilian and funk rhythms and themes, including songs from Brittany with intense tribal rhythms, which is Youenn's speciality since his Dad was a renowned band leader who reintroduced the old musical folklore to the northwest Celtic French in Brittany.

Watching them, it dawned on me that the French seem to combine in the most spontaneous way those qualities I always thought were mutually exclusive - entertainment versus art. They were expressive and joyful, clowning around on stage, and had the audience on its feet and dancing in the packed concert hall. Yet it was creative, original music, and of course The Stick was front and center.

I was also surprised by Pascal Gutman's solo set. He is one of the more experienced players from the '80s but I didn't expect such a youthful, spirited, up-tempo Latin approach to The Stick.

So then Sunday was the day for everybody to go home but Dan needed to fill in a couple of gaps in his "story" and do two more interviews. It turned out that about 35 of the organizers and Stick performers came to Dr. Gil's house to say goodbye to us and to be interviewed by Dan. For Dan it was out of control, as he had everything set up for two interviews in upstairs bedrooms, with room ambience pre-recorded. Instead, it became a big social event with everybody showing up to say goodbye to me and wanting to be interviewed by Dan. Even the Mayor of Allaire, Daniel Baron, paid a visit. It was a nice way to end the weekend.

JR: Did Mayor Baron take part in the Festival events?

EC: Yes, he officiated a Friday evening ceremony with town members of all ages in the audience, and he read a speech in French, then in English, welcoming me to Allaire and presenting me with a city medallion and a flag of Brittany. I expressed my gratitude and played a re-harmonized arrangement of Debussy's "Clair de Lune".

JR: I'm sure you expected to have a good time over there but it sounds like it exceeded your expectations.

EC: I didn't know what to expect. The main thing for me was to have good chops, play the gigs and meet French and European players but it went well beyond that.

JR: You worked up ten songs for Allaire. Are there any plans for more performances? Maybe making performance a larger aspect of your daily routine again?

EC: I would like to play more but I don't have any immediate plans now. I've been expanding my abilities by playing unprocessed and feeling at home with new techniques I've never played before, now dominating my music.

JR: What sort of new techniques?

EC: A left-hand jazz/rock rhythm with driving bass and chords integrated into the bass, expanding into a walking bass line of major and minor thirds, or seconds and fourths, to express all modal scales. Then the right hand is free to concentrate on musical expression. I've got these 32nd notes happening with a new four-fingered right-hand technique now. It's conceptually still a three-fingered technique but the fourth finger becomes a substitute for the third on many of the patterns along the strings, always avoiding any necessity of playing the third and fourth fingers consecutively.

JR: You're alternating between first-second-third finger patterns and first-second-fourth patterns with a scale step either between the second and third fingers or the second and fourth fingers, right?

EC: Exactly, and I've got it down. It's a going rhythm machine, melody driving the rhythm, in addition to the left-hand bass rhythm, leading to polyrhythms. I sustain certain melody notes adding various finger expressions so that the line doesn't become clichéd, and it gives me time to feel the trajectory of the next flurry.

Another new technique is "FingerSticking", a term recently invented in email correspondence by touring Stick artist Jeff Pearce. My song "Backyard" was the first "crystallization" of this technique in the early '80s, and David Lynch chose my early recording of that song for Patrick Stewart to fingersync in "Dune."

JR: That's the interwoven full finger technique across both sides of the board?

EC: Right, where any one of either four or six parts can be the moving line. Sometimes I can concentrate on two moving lines. The other parts are more stationary but they're juggled in rhythmically with the moving lines like fast banjo playing or bluegrass. And, any interior line can begin to move. Playing fast allows you to sketch, which can catapult you to unexplored creative terrain. People wonder why some musicians like to play fast. I feel that's the reason.

JR: You've had a couple of weeks since the seminar. Looking back, what have you taken away from the whole experience? What have you come back to North America with?

EC: One of the performers on stage Saturday night, Frank Leurs, a larger than life Dutch vocalist with a primal talent for aural connection with the audience, came up to me while Youenn was playing and said, "You just don't know what you've got here, do you?" Then he gave me this kind of quizzical and bemused look. I guess that's the feeling I came away with.

JR: Do you agree with that?

EC:Yes. That's why it hit home. A face in the audience, who had just earlier been such a large presence on stage, cut through at the right moment to change my perspective.

JR: What does that mean to you, that you "don't know what you have here?"

EC: That The Stick was a mainstream instrument on stage that Saturday night, that Stick artists and instruments could get very popular very fast.

JR: You didn't realize that was happening?

EC: Well, I'm preoccupied with all the details surrounding this growth - R&D, new models, new materials, better repair techniques, Stick concerts and seminars around the world, ads, publicity, interviews and lots of email correspondence. I think what came through for me in Allaire is that The Stick is on the verge of leaving it's orbit much like an electron struck by a photon speeds away from its nucleus, if I may apply the "quantum leap" metaphor.