by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
Leo Kottke has been around since the early 1970s as a one-of-a-kind artist. He has recorded 22 albums of mostly instrumental, finger-picking style originals on 12 and 6 string guitars. Leo is the undisputed master of the 12 string guitar, writing bouncy hook-heavy compositions that baffle even the most advanced guitarists. Some of his compositions crossover into the classical genre.
Indeed, Leo is an anomaly in the music biz, in that he has been financially successful presenting complex acoustic compositions as a solo performing and recording artist. Over the years, Leo broke all the rules of music marketing, and yet he sold millions of records.
In concert, Leo mixes his guitar styling with a running comedic monologue that is cumulative, in that his little stories are loosely connected toward the end of his show. His spacy demeanor gives the audience the impression that he just took a couple of bong hits before he went on-stage. But this is part of his carefully designed and orchestrated schtick.
One could say that Leo’s monologue is a fusion of stand-up comic Steven Wright’s droll style with the witty storytelling delivery of Garrison Keillor. In fact, Leo has made numerous guest appearances on Garrison’s radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. Clearly, his music would be enough, but by delivering a continuous comedic monologue, he endears himself to his fans who feel like they know him personally.
At his Florida Theatre performance, Leo had no opening act. He strolled onto a bare stage at 8pm sharp with a microphone and two custom, hand-crafted guitars–a 6 and 12 string that looked alike, except for the number of strings. After joking that he came out and was tuning his 12 string, he launched a 90 minute show of material from his vast repertoire of original works and a few songs from other obscure artists. He never stopped, not even to take a drink of water.
Leo told a funny story about playing at a university and some goofy kid asked him to come back to his dorm room to see something special. It turned out to be a dead crow. The significance of this was that the kid loved his song ‘Crow River Waltz’. Years later Leo met another guy who also liked the song. He turned out to be the dead-crow-kid’s uncle, who had rented a canoe to Leo, which he destroyed.
On songs like ‘The Grid’ Leo sings the lyrics “All I ever wanted to do was to go off and live off the grid.” The song tells the story of Leo finding himself alone and miserable, but at least he was off the grid. It’s always a shock to hear Leo sing, since he is mostly an instrumentalist. He has a surpassingly appealing voice.
It was an enthusiastic audience who hung on his every note and every song he played from his many albums. Interestingly, Leo’s most popular and best selling album was his first self-titled record on the Tacoma label, released in 1969. The black & white cover depicting that crafty armadillo and the 14 songs from that session have become classics.
Of course, Leo was obliged to play many of the songs from that record to appease his fans. It’s still in wide distribution as many of today’s young guitarists discover it and marvel at his finger-picking style. Anyone who has ever wrestled with the 12-string beast knows that outside of strumming the thing, finger-picking a 12-string is extremely difficult. Just keeping the damn thing in tune is a trial. Each two string sets are an octave apart. It’s like picking up a sitar–whoa, what the hell do I do with this thing?
Witnessing Leo Kottke play live is like a trip down some obscure mountain path, then suddenly meeting a vagabond hiker who has been traveling all his life, living “off the grid”, with a guitar and some songs. Then you sit down at the campfire and listen to his original artistry and know that he is on his own road to glory. There is only one Leo Kottke–an individual who has forged his own path in the music biz without a compass or having to make any compromises–a rare bird, indeed.
|
