By Ryan Sparks
Self confessed “Touch Guitar” freak Trey Gunn is probably best
known for his work in the reformed double trio incarnation of
progressive rock band King Crimson in the mid 90’s. During his
time in the band which ended in 2003 the American born musician,
along with drummer Pat Mastelotto, significantly helped to
further expand Crimson’s already diverse musical canvas. In the
late 90’s Crimson would split into smaller working groups which
came to be known as the ProjeKcts. All four of these offshoots
featured Trey’s unique talents on the Warr Guitar and Chapman
Stick. During all of this he also found time to begin a solo
career with his own band as well as branching out into composing
music for television and film.
While Trey officially left King Crimson at the conclusion of
their Power to Believe tour he has continued to work with
Mastelotto on various different projects. The most recent being
KTU which is a trio comprised of both Trey and Pat along with
Finnish accordion player Kimmo Pohjonen from the band Kluster.
While the seeds of this project go back about ten years, their
first record, a live disc entitled 8 Armed Monkey only
arrived in 2005. Their second album Quiver has just been
released and the music is a diverse and eclectic sounding mix of
muscular modern progressive rock with tinges of electronic,
along with well…. accordion based folk, is really the best way
to put it. However, poor attempts at both trying to categorize
or putting a label on the music won’t prepare you for the
challenging and thought provoking music awaiting you on this
eleven song collection.
In this in depth exclusive interview Trey reveals how KTU and
Quiver came together as well as sharing his thoughts on how
world music has influenced him, the challenging undertaking of
helping redesign the Warr Guitar, and his involvement in the
super group UKZ with Eddie Jobson.
Ryan: KTU first came together about ten years ago when you and
Pat first met Kimmo. Yet due to busy schedules you would only
collaborate five years later. I’m curious as to why the first
KTU release was a live one and not a typical studio release, was
it again a question of timing?
Trey: Yeah because we all lived on different continents.
Basically the first thing we did was shows. Pat made a live
recording out of those shows, which were mostly improvised. Not
being ones for convention we got a record and we put it out.
Also I’d have to say that the writing process is pretty slow for
us, so it took us awhile to get to the second one [laughs].
Ryan: Samuli Kosminen was involved in the initial live shows but
on Quiver KTU is centered on yourself, Pat and Kimmo,
will this be the lineup going forward for future live shows or
do you think he will join up with you at some point?
Trey: It doesn’t seem like he’s going to be joining us this
year, we’ve got some shows this summer and fall. I don’t know.
He joined us for about half a show when we played in Helsinki
last year, and that could happen again but I really don’t know.
He’s got two babies and another successful band, and it’s tricky
to bring him in on the new material because it’s a lot looser,
there’s a lot more structure to it. I don’t know if he’ll join
us occasionally or if we’ll write new material as a four piece
for performing.
Ryan: If people haven’t seen Kimmo live he’s a very expressive
and energetic performer onstage isn’t he?
Trey: He’s pretty over the top it’s true.
Ryan: Prior to meeting him or seeing him play did you think it
was possible to get those kinds of sounds out of the accordion?
I think many people might have preconceived notions about what
the accordion can do and the sounds you can get from it.
Trey: Clearly people have preconceived ideas and I’m one of
those people [laughs]. There’s an old Oscar Wilde quote “A
gentleman is a man who has an accordion but does not play it”.
I’ve grown to love the accordion having known Kimmo. Of course
he does a lot of crazy stuff with it. It’s an amazing instrument
and it’s just kind of known for… I don’t know, French cabaret or
whatever you want to call it.
Ryan: Polka’s.
Trey: Polka’s I guess yeah, and Polka isn’t a dodgy art form. Of
course the tango is still the accordion family but Kimmo goes
off the deep end with it, with Midi and also just his
performance style. The great thing about the instrument for me
is that it’s a full range instrument so he can play bass and I
can solo or vice versa. And for me that’s a great coup to have
another instrument person who can cover the whole range because
I can pick and choose where I go.
Ryan: I don’t know if it was just my impression of Quiver
but when I first listened to the record and I heard all these
different sounds, at times I found it hard to figure out who was
making what sound, especially between yourself and Kimmo.
Trey: Even Pat. Yeah I’ve been living in that world for the past
twenty years. When Crimson first got together in 1994 we
couldn’t even tell who was doing what between the six of us.
Everybody has got these synths so anybody can swell their sound,
and the drummers have samples. It can be slightly frustrating
for the audience, but for us we finally just gave up and figured
who cares who’s making the sounds. So obviously with the
Quiver record we added some sweetening overdubs that we
can’t do live, but a lot of it we can do live and it’s pretty
cool. I think seeing us live you wouldn’t even ask that question
because you don’t really care at that point. Either it’s clear
or the sound is just so overwhelmingly cool that it doesn’t
bother you, but I can appreciate that perspective.
Ryan: How much time was spent on the principal recording of
Quiver?
Trey: I think at the end of the day it wasn’t very much. It took
a long time because we would meet maybe three or four times, for
maybe four or five days, so the whole thing was probably
recorded in three or four weeks. We all did a little bit of
recording at home; I don’t know if Kimmo did that much and I
didn’t do as much as I would have thought. Mostly what happened
was, because we had these huge gaps of months in between these
little sessions, we were able to go back home and do a lot more
writing to figure out what was missing. Actually even on the
final sessions we thought we’d just be doing a couple of
overdubs, but we ended up really tearing a couple of pieces
apart and kind of re-writing them. It was one of those things
where it probably took five weeks, but over the course of a
year, so you can’t really say that it didn’t take a year,
because you’re thinking about it and working on it. If we had
sat and done four weeks straight through it wouldn’t be nearly
the same record, or nearly as good in my opinion.
Ryan: Steven Wilson mixed three tracks. How did he become
involved, did you guys approach him? Were you specifically
looking for a different set of ears on those songs?
Trey: It was slightly auspicious. I think he had seen us first,
but he and Pat were in touch quite a bit because his Porcupine
Tree drummer (Gavin Harrison) worked with Pat. And Steven was a
fan. We were originally looking for someone to mix the record
other than ourselves. We talked to a few different people, and
had a few different ideas of going to Iceland to work with this
one particular person, but it was all just getting complicated
and we kind of just wanted to get the record done. We thought
“Let’s just ask Steven” and he said he’d give it a shot. He
tried one and we liked it so we sent him another, and as his
goodwill was still flowing we just kept sending him stuff. I
think we ended up using everything that he did or maybe three
out of the four I can’t remember.
Ryan: Over the course of your career you have worked with some
very diverse musicians from different cultures. Through these
different collaborations have you seen music as way to help
break down any particular pre-conceived notions or musical
barriers?
Trey: You mean cultural?
Ryan: I was thinking more musical.
Trey: I have no perception of musical barriers at all, except
for maybe country music, and like real American pop or even
European pop. Everybody else seems so completely mixed up these
days that I don’t even know what that would mean to say “I’m
this kind of musician I don’t work with that kind of musician”.
Even when I was younger it was becoming like that, but when I
was a kid it definitely wasn’t like that, it wasn’t that
categorized. I think I’m pretty diverse but when I meet
people in their twenties or early thirties, the diversity there
is crazy [laughing]. You have everything from super crazy
electronica to heavy real world musicians.
Ryan: I asked Pat how he would classify this type of music and
he wasn’t really sure what you’d call it. Not that you really
need to give it a label but we were discussing it from a selling
standpoint. Who does this record sell to, you know what I mean?
Trey: I guess it kind of depends on the track, but yeah it’s
true. It’s part Finnish prog rock and part Balkan world music
almost.
Ryan: Has any of the different cultural music that you’ve
discovered taught you something that maybe Western music
couldn’t?
Trey: Yeah it’s a totally different attitude about existence,
listening to Indian or Arabic music. I think Arabic music is the
closest to my own voice for improvisation. And musically it’s a
little bit harmonic but not much so, it bridges this fantastic
gap for me between the Far East and the West. Every culture when
you get inside of it is certainly a learning experience.
Ryan: An instrument like the Warr guitar has really allowed
you to get some dynamic and expressive sounds that you might not
be able to get otherwise would you agree?
Trey: Yeah that’s why I play it, because I want to hear
something that I haven’t heard before. I just want a diverse
palate. I’m in the process of evolving the instrument yet again
to be played horizontally flat.
Ryan: Is this due to it being a bit of a beast to shoulder? I
had read something where you mentioned the physical effects of
playing this instrument.
Trey: You mean on my body?
Ryan: Yeah.
Trey: It’s true that is an issue, but we’ve also found that –
well it’s hard to divorce the body from the instrument, but
we’ve found that when it’s played horizontally the dynamic range
is at least four or five times greater than when it’s played
like a guitar. I don’t know completely if that’s because of how
you use your body, I’m sure it has something to do with it. It
also has something to do with gravity being your asset as
opposed to being your deficit, or other things that we just
don’t know yet. We haven’t built this thing yet but we have a
feeling that the resonance will actually be more suited to it.
What you have to do with a guitar is you have to put all this
mass on one end and a skinny neck on the other end. When you go
horizontally we’re going to be able to spread that mass out
equally. We don’t know what’s going to happen but both Mark Warr
and I have done enough experiments to realize that it’s a
completely different instrument, so much so that it’s very
terrifying. It’s like going back to kindergarten because once
you turn it horizontally you can tell you’ve been faking it
before. There’s a whole other level of refining the technique
that is a bit daunting I have to say.
Ryan: Daunting but I imagine exciting at the same time.
Trey: It is exciting. You know rock musicians don’t even think
about shaping a phrase dynamically, it’s just not in the
vocabulary whatsoever. However, with a violinist, saxophonist or
flautist that’s one of the prime musical variables. But rock
musicians don’t do that, so playing an instrument that has very
limited dynamic range wouldn’t occur to you. It’s daunting but I
don’t feel like I have much choice.
Ryan: One composition that I never tire of hearing is “The
Deception of The Thrush” in all it’s different live versions.
Trey: Did you get to see that live?
Ryan: I did.
Trey: Which show were you at?
Ryan: I saw the band do it here in Montreal back in 2000 I think
it was.
Trey: I can tell you that you saw a good one. That was a pretty
special night and I remember a lot of our shows in Montreal
because often we would end the tour there. There was a crazy
silence after we finished that piece.
Ryan: Can I tell you the hair on my arms and on the back of my
neck were standing up. When you would step forward and take the
solo it’s as if everything just opened up. That’s what I was
referring to when I mentioned the amazing sounds you’re able to
get out of the Warr guitar.
Trey: That’s what I’m shooting for. Sometimes you get there and
sometimes you don’t.
Ryan: Your Quodia project saw you enter into the multi-media
performance arena. Is this something you’d like to continue to
pursue?
Trey: I would love to, and to be honest with you if I could get
a big enough yes from the world I would turn my back on
everything else and just do that, but it’s a hard sell at least
in this culture. It seems to fit better over in Europe because
the story was based in English, which was a bit of a struggle.
I’m still working on it and I have a new release coming in the
next eight months, without video, which is a really interesting
piece about the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. I’m just trying
to kind of move it along with everything else, but you can’t
take on too many pro bono projects at once. It’s a double CD and
the story is taken from a poet named Gregory Orr who teaches at
the University of Virginia. There’s no such thing as a
successful poet but he’s up there. The text is from his version
it’s phenomenal. I scored all sorts of music around it and my
plan is to have a version with the text. I’ve also done another
version where I’ve kind of re-written the music as an
instrumental CD as well. I hope it will be out in the fall but
we’re in such a financial crush that it’s not so viable to
actually press CD’s right now, there’s only so many you can put
out.
Ryan: With CD’s slowly fading out and things heading more and
more towards the digital realm how do you see that affecting
yourself and projects such as this?
Trey: I don’t know we’re still kind of sorting it out. To make
it still feel legitimate, and to at least make part of the money
you have to press it into CD form. Let me ask you the question,
what if we just sent you a link to Quiver?
Ryan: I would hate it.
Trey: You would hate it? Well there you go [laughing]. That’s
the problem though because that makes two thirds of my projects
unviable.
Ryan: I hate it but maybe I’m in the minority. I could be just
this old school guy who likes to hold something tangible in my
hands.
Trey: Yeah but you’re a journalist, you’re our link to the
public. If you say no then there are all these people that don’t
get to hear us.
Ryan: Another recent release of yours that I enjoyed was your
Music For Pictures album. When did you first become
interested in composing scores for film?
Trey: I’ve been doing it kind of on the fly for about twelve
years, mostly for television. I’m actually working on some stuff
for television right at the moment. It’s been kind of a thing on
the side and I haven’t super pursued it. Every once and I while
I do try to get- not being in L.A. makes it a little trickier,
but I like it a lot and I think what I do works really well with
imagery.
Ryan: I had read one review of the album where the reviewer
criticized the fact that the twenty nine tracks on the album
were too short, and just as he was getting into each one the
track would end and the next one would start.
Trey: I can tell you the story about that, and in general I’ve
gotten some really good feedback on that album although there
have been some funny complaints where I’ve thought “What the
fuck? Give me a break”. Some people complained that the films
weren’t included, which they couldn’t because I don’t own them
[laughing]. The thing about the tracks being short was that
originally they weren’t short. Much of that record, maybe two
thirds of it, was stuff that was written for television. The
particular projects that I was working on they would ask for an
audio toolbox, so you send them a lot of tracks. You actually
don’t write to the image at all. I might have had the images but
I’m not actually scoring to the final cut which is the
traditional film and T.V. way. So I would kind of send them
these vibes, then we’d talk about them and I’d alter them and
send them other ones. The particular vibes would be five or six
minutes long and they would lay them into the program as needed.
The problem was I was building up gigs and gigs of music, and I
couldn’t put any of this music out because it just goes into
this vibe and just sits there for six minutes. It doesn’t
develop; it doesn’t do anything because it’s just supposed to be
an augmentation to the story that’s being told. At one point as
an experiment I started cutting them up into short bits and I
realized that this was actually the way to do it, because you
get one and before its sitting there too long to become boring,
you get another one. That’s really where the form came from. All
of those things are longer and I did flush out many of them.
Some of the short ones, they are longer but they don’t work on a
record.
Ryan: That’s interesting, so that was the plan to cut them up
before they could get boring.
Trey: I had no way of putting it out on record because it didn’t
work until I figured out that was the way to do it, to make a
larger structure out of a bunch of smaller ones.
Ryan: When you stepped down from King Crimson in 2003 what made
you decide that was that was the right time?
Trey: We had finished a big period of work and with Crimson it’s
always hard to know what your life is going to be like. You
never know if you’re actually going to work or not, or what’s
going to happen next. It’s like living this completely
indeterminate kind of life. When we finished that up it just
felt done for me. This morning I was actually thinking its super
done, it might even be dead. I was wondering if perhaps the time
period for it has past.
Ryan: What do you consider your musical highpoint during your
time with the band?
Trey: I could give you a couple across the last twenty years.
The Sylvian/ Fripp live album Damage, that tour was
pretty special. Some of the ProjeKct stuff, the ProjeKct 4 was
pretty highpoint. Not to pander you because you’re in Montréal
but that last one was a pretty special show. We had a gig in
Berlin around 2000 that was pretty special, and also the gigs
with Tool. The last Crimson tour The Power To Believe
tour was pretty great, we were really in our stride and everyone
was playing really well. The material we had to draw on was so
great that it was a really special tour.
Ryan: What’s the rest of the year shaping up like for you?
Trey: I’m flying to Los Angeles tomorrow to rehearse with UKZ.
Then next weekend we go to Japan for four or five dates. Eddie
(Jobson) has committed to delivering a full record sometime in
the next 8 months. I don’t know what will happen with that. When
Eddie first asked me two years ago I said “You know Eddie I
don’t want to be in a band, I’m really tired of being in a band.
If we can make this work where I’m not in a band, it sounds
great”. We’re all really busy so we’re just trying it to see how
it goes. We’ve done one show and it was pretty good. And I
really love the guys, the musicians are really great. We have
KTU shows in Europe in July and October. Pat and I are doing two
duo shows out here in July. I’m working on this Marco Minnemann
Normalizer record and that’s as far as I can see at the
moment.
www.treygunn.com
