Playing in a group, I’m tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That’s just me getting older. I’m not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.
Each person makes their own decision about what it is that is happening, whether they like it or don’t like it, whether they want to lend their energy to it or not or what, you know.
To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.
You have to be ready, and also you have to discard notions that are fondly held by a lot of musicians, about sequences and notes and about scales and musical systems as a whole. If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.
We’re not thinking about any kind of power. We’re not thinking about any kind of struggles. We’re not thinking about revolution or war or any of that. That’s not what we want.
People may need something to celebrate. They need a context in which to celebrate things. They need something that fills the void that’s left by the bankruptcy of religion and so forth.
