robben Ford
Robben Ford is, for many, the finest guitarist working today. His poised and soulful playing style is enriched by jazz but deeply rooted in the blues. We joined Robben to talk about Dumble tone, Tele pickups and to receive a personal masterclass in how t
How did you get involved with this meeting of blues minds? “I met Fabrizio for the first time a little over three years ago. He connected me with Mascot Records and I wound up signing with them so that was very nice. He sort of asked me out of the blue if I would be interested in that. Steve Lukather I have known since he was 19 and I don’t even remember how old I was at the time when we first met. I think the only time we have ever played together was just a few years ago. We went to Japan with Bill Evans and Randy Brecker, Soul Bop, and did some shows in Japan. That is the only time we have ever really played together. We are not even playing together here – we are on the same stage for a minute. And Billy Gibbons I met once, a long time ago. He actually came to one of my shows. He came backstage and said, ‘Hello, I don’t know if you know this, but you and I are born about three and a half hours apart…’” Really? “Yes, we are born on the same day. Same year, same day. He said he was born around 8:00am. I was born like 11:30am [laughs].” You’re known as a player who straddles the divide between jazz and blues. Is there a meaningful boundary between the two styles on guitar for you? “In a way, there is a real difference. In a sense, jazz guitar is probably the least expressive instrument of them all, if you think about the way that it was initially approached: big body guitar, rhythm pickup… it was a rhythm instrument. When people started soloing, there was that kind of monotone that exists in jazz guitar, which is one of the reasons why I didn’t listen to it. Actually, I listened to some – but really the only recorded jazz guitar I listened to a lot of was Wes Montgomery’s A Day In The Life. You probably know it. That record is unique. If you listen to the records he did before that with Riverside and the organ trio, they were very different. But even him… I hear one or two things and I lose interest. I do. I start wanting to hear something else. But that is not the case for me with tenor saxophone, for instance.” It’s hard to think of blues guitar without bending. Exaggerated bends can be a blues cliché but, done properly, they bring a vocal quality to blues guitar... “Yes, that is the great thing that happened on the electric guitar; the expression finally came in that you don’t really get out of bebop jazz guitarists.” One of the easiest traps to fall into when you’re playing blues is to max out the intensity of your soloing straight away and leave yourself nowhere to go. How do you avoid that? “Play shorter solos. Seriously. I play until I know that I am really pushing past myself. There is a point where you can emotionally go a little further or at least you think you can. Actually, I don’t spend my time really bending notes a lot. I do, but I am more focused on chords and harmony. That is what really interests me.” Who would you class as your biggest musical inspiration? “If there was any one artist I would say that I am most influenced by and that I play like him, I’d say Miles Davis. I don’t mean that anywhere near like I am as great or anything like that. But that is the real school for me. He was never a really great bebop player – but he had a beautiful sound and was really harmonically hip. He made the most of the way a certain note sounded against a certain chord. I really ran with that. It’s wonderful when you find people who show you that you don’t have to play all of that stuff [histrionic, over-busy playing]. You just don’t. In fact, it is better if you don’t. I really feel that way. I would rather listen to Miles Davis than many, many other great artists.
“That, for me, is the thing. I like a good song. I like to play the note that sounds cool against a chord. For me, it is a lot more open. A friend of mine Bob Malach is a tenor player. He told me he was playing with one of the contemporary jazz-fusion guitar players, who said, ‘You play the melody and then you start your solo. And at the end of the solo, you see God.’ But if every song goes like that, it sounds the same.
“For me, it’s important to have a good song. There are more things to get your attention in a cool lyric. The song is a little journey, a little experience unto itself that is complete unto itself. There is a satisfying experience whether you ever take a solo or not. Then you add your improvisation to that, to whatever extent feels good.” Given how many different ways guitarists have approached the blues over the years, how do you keep your blues playing fresh? “Chords. That is how it works for me. I worked hard at becoming a songwriter. I try to create an environment where the guitar can do something that it hasn’t necessarily done before. A different atmosphere, a different feeling. In other words, the song is different. If you are playing shuffles and slow blues all night – which is what I did
with Jimmy Witherspoon for a couple of years and Charlie Musselwhite for about a year – after the first few songs, you have done your thing. Even BB King sang most of the night, right? About 10 per cent of a night with BB King was guitar, even when he was younger. The blues is a vocal music.” Do you think blues guitarists that sing have an advantage, in that you can do call-and-response between the guitar and your own voice? “It’s hard work. I would rather somebody sang and I played! That is true call-andresponse: two different people, right? In my group I don’t do it. But we are not exactly a blues band. If somebody says, ‘What kind of music do you play?’ I say, ‘Blues and R&B.’ R&B opens it up a little bit. It is more songoriented. Rhythm and blues is songs. It’s not people taking solos. As I say, for me, it’s more a matter of playing a song. We’re not playing the blues or anything in particular… we’re playing a song that goes like this, but the background is strongly R&B.” Let’s talk tone. Some blues players favour a clean, pure sound that slices through the mix. But others like to add gain so the extra compression helps each note sustain and sing. Where do you sit on that tonal spectrum? “When I have my sound together the way I like it, I play with a Dumble Overdrive Special. That is a very special amplifier. Sometimes, I feel I am not even able to talk about it in a way that would be meaningful. I’m not sure about that because of the uniqueness of the amplifier. Fundamentally, the guitar sounds like itself. That is what I like. I like my guitar to sound like itself and to have a sound curve that’s even all the way across. The lows, the mids, the highs: you hear all of them. They’re clear.
“From there, what I really like to do is just hit the boost. The boost on the Dumble, all it does is remove the EQ section. It’s this midrange boost thing: it doesn’t get woofy down the bottom; it doesn’t get too bright up on the top. It is just like, ‘Boom’ – powerful midrange. I can get everything I need right there. I don’t need the overdrive, I don’t need to compress it. Really, all I need is a little bit of reverb. And I use a short delay. I like a short delay, because it opens the sound up just a little bit. It kind of makes it a little bigger, sort of like doubling yourself. Then a long delay when I am playing quieter just to create that space.” Last time we saw you play, you alternated between your Tele and an SG. Do you feel like you can cover it all with those two guitars? “Well, honestly, I would be playing a Les Paul. A great Les Paul would be my first call if I had to only play one instrument the whole night. But they are just too damn heavy. But there are things about that Telecaster – it’s a ’60 – that you can’t really find anywhere else, particularly that rhythm pickup and that middle setting. But I play a lot of rhythm guitar on the treble pickup and I guess that is kind of unusual.” You get a surprisingly round, full note from your Tele’s bridge pickup… “Yes. I love that sound. To me, it’s brassy so it’s kind of horn-like. I moved to the treble pickup and play the treble pickup a lot, primarily because of Miles Davis. I grew up wanting to be John Coltrane. Of course, that was never going to happen, but the rhythm pickup turned up to the point of some kind of distortion is akin to the tenor sax, so I started moving towards the treble pickup and I kind of went, ‘Wow.’ And I think that’s because I listen to Miles Davis so much.” Using a Tele bridge pickup like that is pretty upfront and in-your-face… “Exactly, yes. That is a beautiful thing. That in itself is kind of a little challenge to yourself. It also works as a rhythm sound. A great rhythm sound. I will tell you one thing that I always forget, it was something I realised much later. Do you know the guitarist Buzz Feiten? Yes? Well, he played with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Did you ever hear that record? It’s called Keep On Moving. I saw Buzzy playing with Butterfield the first time, I saw that band many times. Three of those times was with Buzzy Feiten. I think he was 18 when he joined. He’s on the Woodstock video of Butterfield’s performance.
“Anyway, Buzzy played rhythm guitar on the treble pickup. That stuck with me. He was playing a 335, too, through a Fender Twin. That made an impression that I didn’t realise, because I wasn’t doing it then. It was like some years later I started playing more and more on the treble pickup rhythm guitar. I am like, ‘That is Buzzy’s sound, man.’ It is kind of interesting. That has happened a few times in my life where the influence was dormant and then it appeared like 10 years later or something.” It was there all the time... “Yes, waiting [laughs].”
“The song is a little journey, a little experience unto itself that is complete unto itself. There is a satisfying experience whether you ever take a solo or not”