The Musical Journey of Bill Frisell: From Cleaning Company to International Fame

When a New Yorker ordered a cleaning service in the late 1970s, Bill Frisell could have called his house. One of the most famous jazz guitarists, who will perform this Thursday at the Jazz Dock club in Prague, was in his thirties and did not make a living playing after weddings or airport bars. The wife, a painter, made extra money as an accountant or in a dry cleaner. Nevertheless, they did not put together a single average salary in the two.

In America’s most populous city, player competition was high and rent was expensive, so Frisell joined a cleaning company. “They ordered us either for apartments or shops,” he recalls in the almost six hundred-page biographical book Beautiful Dreamer, which was published about him this year issued journalist Philip Watson and which highlights a lesser-known episode. “Once, for example, we went to clean a chocolate factory. At first I felt like I was in paradise. I ate what I found. After about twenty minutes, I couldn’t even see the chocolate anymore. I spent the rest of the day scraping off the caramel stuck to the machines,” he describes .

At that time he lived quite adventurously. After graduating from Boston’s Berklee College of Music, he sold his car to buy a one-way ticket to Europe. He headed to Belgium, where, at the invitation of a classmate, he taught guitar for a year and gave concerts in a small spa town called Spa. He slept in an under-construction apartment above the only local club.

Czechs have even more reason to be interested in the young Frisell: in June 1979, on the threshold of fame, he crossed the Iron Curtain. Another classmate from Berklee, the pianist Emil Viklický, brought him to Prague with two other Americans. They recorded fourteen songs later in the supraphonic studio issued on Viklické’s Okno and Dvere albums. “He was shocked by construction banners and notice boards. He asked me if he could take a photo of one,” the pianist recalled for Mladá fronta Dnes. One of their recording frequencies was canceled by officials who were privately screening the horror film The Devil’s Exorcist in the studio, otherwise unavailable in communist Czechoslovakia.

Since then, Frisell’s life has been dramatic only musically. In the early 1980s, he recorded his debut album for the prestigious Munich label ECM, soon began to live only on jazz, and in 1989 he appeared for the first time on the cover of the music magazine Down Beat, whose poll for instrumentalist of the year he won fifteen times since then. In 2005, he won a Grammy Award for the album Unspeakable.

Today, the 72-year-old Frisell is considered one of the most important living jazz guitarists, alongside Pat Metheny and John Scofield. In recent years, he has published books about him arose documentary film. In addition to jazz musicians, he is admired by singer-songwriter Paul Simon, singer Marianne Faithfull or Justin Vernon, frontman of the Bon Iver band. He has the title of Frisell’s composition tattooed on the back of his neck That Was Then. “No one has had a bigger influence on our band,” Vernon says in the book.

Bill Frisell will play his 12th concert in the Czech Republic this Thursday. | Photo: Monica Jane Frisell

Frisell is not a showman. He doesn’t have rocker mannerisms, he doesn’t play fast scale runs or dazzle with volume. A modest, shy man of a mild nature, he speaks quietly, slowly and little. On stage wearing glasses, he sometimes looks as if he just woke up with a guitar in his hand. He has a childlike wonder on his face as he plays. He is more of a seeker type, and for him jazz does not mean a style in which he would hold himself, but a way of thinking and a synonym for freedom.

On an electric guitar, most often a Telecaster, he has a soft, slightly disjointed, lyrical, dreamy sound, as befits the songwriter Dream On, There In a Dream or Like Dreamers Do. Sometimes he plays long notes with a distinct echo. He improvises slowly and patiently. He follows modern jazz guitarists Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall, but compared to them, Frisell’s music is more moody. It stimulates the imagination, evokes associations, expresses emotions.

The listener will recognize it after a few seconds thanks to the phrasing and vibrato. For example, saxophonist Dave Douglas hears in it an echo of the fact that Frisell first learned to bend notes not on the guitar, but on the clarinet. Also, according to guitarist Marc Ribot, “as a rule, Frisell’s notes tend to amplify and build up in volume, a bit like violinists or wind players, instead of slowly fading away like regular guitarists”.

Overcome shyness

His music is characterized by an almost cinematic mood thanks to the effects. Already in the 1980s, he was one of the pioneers of using boxes as a looper, where by pressing the pedal he creates echoes and plays the sound backwards. Sometimes this creates a second voice, sometimes a counterpoint, sometimes just a texture in the background.

After the pandemic, he uses the box less. For example, on last year’s album Four, he only included the looper in the final track Dog on a Roof. “In recent months, I’ve even gone completely without effects except for reverb,” he said Guitarplayer.com this year.

Bill Frisell has been happily married to painter Carole D’Inverno for almost 40 years. | Photo: Monica Jane Frisell

Frisell’s compositions tend to have a typical, not obvious, yet well-thought-out structure, and especially strong melodies. The breadth of his repertoire was covered by the album Have a Little Faith from 1992, where he ranged from the author of modern classical music Aaron Copland after a hit cover Live to Tell from Madonna.

In this regard, he was not the first: saxophonist Sonny Rollins already played country songs in the 1950s as Wagon Wheelswhile vibraphonist Gary Burton in the following decade filmed Bob Dylan cover. Rather, these were exceptions, which Frisell elevated to a rule: he does not recognize genre hierarchy, and for him jazz compositions are not automatically more valuable than campfire songs or pop. He can find depth in everything. And he doesn’t stop looking: he included a theme from a Bond movie on his 2017 album Goldfingertwo years later he added the song z You only live twice. He also played everything from traditional in the Czech Republic Red River Valley or Red Rivers to We Shall Overcome i.e. the protest song Once I’ll Be More, which he often ends his concerts with.

He doesn’t just repeat melodies that are pleasing to the listener. Sometimes he takes part of them, omits some notes and rearranges the rest on the spot. He is not afraid of simplicity. And he doesn’t feel the need to fill every crevice. “I’ve learned to leave a lot of space in the music. What you play then has more weight,” he told Jazztimes magazine, adding that “you have to give space to your teammates so that what’s in their heart can be heard.”

Which is related to the fact that for Frisell, music is the basis of communication with others. In the book, he recalls how he was already a silent introvert in school with funny glasses. He didn’t fit in and had a hard time talking to his classmates. “I had anxiety and I felt trapped. I had to fight a lot not to close myself off,” he admits, having been shy to talk about anything in front of people.

Music made social contact easier for him: when, as a boy in the city of Denver, he earned his first guitar by delivering newspapers, friends started coming to his house to practice. And “the power of the music, the feeling when you’re in it, completely overcame the shame of having to stand in front of strangers at a concert,” says Frisell, who still feels most natural on stage. “For me, music is a more meaningful way of communicating with people than words,” he sums up.

Bill Frisell recorded the protest song We Shall Overcome, i.e. One day I will continue for the last time, on the album Valentine from 2020. Photo: Monica Jane Frisell | Video: Blue Note Records

Every vote is important

He has released over forty albums as a leader, on another three hundred he acts as a sideman. He already left a major mark as a member of the trio in which he and saxophonist Joe Lovan accompanied drummer Paul Motian until his death in 2011. They recorded mutual interaction on twenty recordings, including the latest Time and Time Again.

Even today, his early albums Rambler or Lookout for Hope from the 80s are still impressive. The following decade he made an unprecedented turn to country music in 1997 filmed record Nashville right in the city associated with American country music. In addition to harmonica, mandolin or banjo, the famous Jerry Douglas plays the dobro, which is a type of resophonic guitar. And the drums are completely absent, not unusual for Frisell.

Drums are also missing from the Harmony record from 2019. Last year’s and so far the last Four, recorded already after the pandemic, again did without a double bass. The guitarist here, together with pianist Gerald Clayton, saxophonist Greg Tardy and drummer Jonathan Blake, develop a concept of music that is less anchored and does not distinguish between soloists and accompanists. Every vote matters equally.

This is also why it makes sense for Frisell to return to some songs: as he has recorded a folk song several times Shenandoah from the 19th century, placed older compositions again on the last album Good Dog, Happy Man or Monroe. It is not about perfecting one definitive version. Songs sound different with other bandmates. They are never the same. And every time what happens here and now matters.

For that reason, Frisell’s concerts tend to be unrepeatable, of which only Czechs have experienced eleven. Many without rhythm: for the first time in 1997, he was accompanied by a violin, trumpet and trombone in the Prague Congress Center. Eight years later, he played again at Prague Castle without drums or bass, radically only the Beatles repertoire for the entire evening.

Thousands of people heard him repeatedly thanks to the traveling Bohemia Jazzfest, where in 2018 a pair of his performances on the Freedom Square in Brno were interrupted by a local citizen who left his apartment to protest was letting go alarm-like sound. The incident was dealt with by the police, the band imitated the monotonous noise at the end.

The Pioneers song as played by Bill Frisell on last year’s Four album. He filmed it for the first time in 1999. Photo: Monica Jane Frisell | Video: Blue Note Records

He first came to the Jazz Dock club in 2011 with cellist Hank Roberts, violist Eyvind Kang and violinist Jenny Scheinman. They presented the compositions that Frisell composed as a response to Gerhard Richter’s abstract paintings: exceptionally, he had private access to the canvases, so he first sat in front of them for hours in silence, letting them work on his imagination. The result was somewhat close to chamber music.

When Frisell returned to the club on the Smíchov embankment the year before last, at the height of the pandemic had to have all three musicians on stage wearing masks. This Thursday they will perform without them, but with the same line-up: Thomas Morgan, with whom the guitarist has released two albums only as a duo, will play bass, and Rudy Royston, a collaborator since the 90s, will sit down on drums. Whether they decide for their own compositions, covers or traditionals, it will be unrepeatable as always.

Concert

Bill Frisell Trio
Jazz Dock, Prague, November 23.

2023-11-22 16:21:20
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