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You use some interesting instrumentation
on Give in Kind, like the didgeridoo on "Layla, Layla."
When did you have occasion to learn that instrument?
About four years ago I went to Australia.
It took me a week to find an Aboriginal person, period, never
mind one who could show me how to play it. The first time I saw
two black men in Perth, way at the end of a block, I ran to them:
"Hey, brothers, how are you doing?" And they said [forces
accent], "We are from India."
It wasn't until I got to Adelaide and the
Tandanya Cultural Center that I found Aboriginal folks, and lots
of art, and rows and rows of didgeridoos. And anybody could blow
on them, which is why I had a cold the whole time I was there,
because people would blow on them and spread their cold. One
guy showed me how to make the noise - he showed me "city
slicker" style, out of the side of your mouth, since I couldn't
get it out of the front of my mouth - and another guy showed
me how to do the breathing.
Since then, I've run into players in the U.S.
and Canada and Europe, and I've stolen from them. And every time
I stole I got a little bit better. Now I can play it for 20 minutes;
it's almost like meditation. I added the didgeridoo at the beginning
of "Layla, Layla" to the part where the slide guitar
is making the woman's voice, thinking it would make it into a
dialogue. The didgeridoo becomes the aggressive guy, kind of
that "barking dog" sound. Then the rest of the song
just took shape around that.
You've also recorded an innovative
version of Big Bill Broonzy's "Good Liquor," with a
really cool guitar figure compacted into the seventh bar. When
you cover someone else's song, how do you make it your own?
On "Good Liquor," I got the idea,
"Wouldn't it be interesting if Muddy Waters was doing this
song?" I'm not trying to be scientific about it. It's all
pretty subjective. I just fool around because it's fun and it
sounds fun. It's spontaneous; it's in the present moment.
I know guys who can play the transcriptions
of the masters note for note. I've never had the desire to do
that. I'd like to know the licks and be able to use them, but
I'd rather mix and match them in my own way. It's like recombinant
DNA. It's saying the same old thing in a new way.
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to part 3)
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