Jazz Guitar Wiz Charlie Hunter Plays the Kuumbwa Monday Evening

Over the past two decades, guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter has rolled through Santa Cruz more than a few times to saturate the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in the rich sound of his eight and seven-string guitars. His current tour rides the wave of his last album, Public Domain (2010), and stops off at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz on Monday evening.

Since he first picked up the challenging instrument over 20 years ago, Hunter has never stopped exploring the complex and infinite crossroads of the guitar-bass hybrid, coaxing 17 albums from its fanned frets. 

Playing the rhythm, lead, and bass all at once requires extreme manual and mental dexterity, concentration, and yes, discipline: the self-taught musician says he still practices at least three to four hours a day. 

“If I don’t set aside at least three or four hours a day I feel worthless,” said Hunter. “That’s the beautiful thing about this, is you can always be working towards something.” 

Hunter is currently rocking a custom-made seven-string guitar made by Jeff Traugott of Santa Cruz, and playing through a tube amplifier from another Santa Cruz-based company, Headstrong Amps, for the highest quality of sound. Drummer Scott Amendola, who played in the Charlie Hunter Trio, accompanies Hunter. Expect glimpses of fresh material bubbling up through a healthy dose of improv.

Santa Cruz Patch's Q & A with Charlie Hunter: 

Santa Cruz Patch: Your 17th album, Public Domain is the second solo album you’ve done over your career, and it’s also a throwback of old standards, how did this album evolve?

Charlie Hunter: I wanted to do a solo guitar record because I felt like I had been practicing a lot and I was really kind of ready to do one that I would be proud of hopefully. And I knew I wanted to do like kind of standards but I didn’t want to search out every composer and pay them their $5, which is probably what they would have earned from the sales of the CD, so I used all public domain songs which are generally at this point about 90 years old. My grandfather is 100 years old, so he helped me pick out all of the material because he grew up with it.

Patch: Public Domain was recorded live, mostly in mono, and with no edits, is this how you always record?

Hunter: Yeah, I just like it better, I mean there’s a whole craft of layering or over-dubbing music. I just don't do that, I could if someone asked me to, but generally when I do my own thing it's more about the interplay of the musicians and what's going on in time when everybody's playing together and reacting that way and that to me is what I like in music, capturing that kind of live vibe. 

Patch: How do you describe your music? 

I don't. (laughs) When people ask me to describe my music i just tell them just go on Youtube, type in my name. It's just very hard to try to verbalize something that's almost an intrinsically nonverbal form of communication..

Patch: After busking all over Europe in your early twenties, you came back to the states and started playing an eight-string. What prompted you to take up the challenge of learning how to play this instrument?

Hunter: It was something I was drawn to because I had played a lot of drums, and I played a lot of bass and it's kind of an amalgamation of those things. I had no idea really what I was getting into 20 something years ago when I started doing it and now I feel like I’m 44 and I finally have it dialed. It’s more than twice the amount of work than playing a guitar but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I really enjoy being able to do something different.

Patch: Is it wierd for you to play a normal guitar now?  

Hunter: It's not wierd, it's easy. (laughs) Conceptually I’m not as interested in it, so you can kind of hear that. If I play the guitar it doesn't do much for me, I always feel like there's something missing. I've created such a concept on this instrument that over the years it's evolved into something that is so very different from guitar. It really is it's own thing, If I had to switch instruments I’d play drums, I wouldn’t play guitar or bass. 

Patch: You talk about playing on the streets for money as a very momentous time for you. You played in Zurich, Paris, the South of France, Germany, how did this experience shape you as a musician?

Hunter: It's a toughness. And I mean not a toughness like a man kind of macho toughness but a deep kind of resilience that putting yourself in the element at the lowest possible rung of societal reality creates for you. 

You're playing eight to 12 hours a day—it's tons of tons of time and it just makes you really strong and most importantly, you have to get people to stop. If you don’t get anybody to stop they're not going to give you any money. And if you don’t get any money you're basically, you know, in the park.

People who have been street musicians, we have a thing that people who haven’t been street musicians, they just don't have. I'm not saying that all street musicians are great, thats very far from the case. But the street musicians who go on, I mean,  Madeleine Peyroux she has that, she has that vibe, whether you like her music or not she definitely has that. Pretty much anyone who has done that they have the vibe, and you just can't get that in music school. 

And I would get angry about that when I was younger, I wanted to go to musical school but I couldn't afford it. But man I wouldn't trade that experience for anything, I really wouldn’t. 

Patch: You’ve also talked about hitting plateaus in music, points where you’ve kind of hovered before being able to progress further. What advice do you have to other musicians and artists who might find themselves in a time of creative stagnancy? 

Hunter: That's always going to happen, and as long as you put the energy into it you're going to be fine. The worst thing for anyone in that situation to do is to get frustrated and clamp down more and close up. The cool thing about music is that you can do it from any angle. If you get bored with the guitar then you can play the drums for awhile, or just listen to music, or maybe go hang out with new musicians. 

A lot of it has to do with if you’re not surrounding yourself with people that inspire you, you're not going to move forward. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to play with people who are technically way better than you, it's just to find something that you like about them that inspires you to play something and then you'll be able to move forward.

Patch: About six or seven years ago you switched from an eight -string to a seven-string guitar, why did you decide to make the switch? 

Hunter: The eight-string was basically like an attempt to be exactly the range of a guitar and a bass, and it just didn’t work, it's too much range for one instrument. There are just so many different geometric and physical reasons.. it was great for me to start on that and to learn on that but ultimately it didn’t serve the job of being it's own thing very well. I dropped the highest guitar string and retuned the instrument and it just started to really sing from there, more of it's own kind of thing. I just enjoy those parameters more than the 8-string parameters.

Patch: What other musicians inspire you?

Hunter: The list is so long. I feel honored to be a very, very tiny little link in this chain of musicians stretching back to our earliest ancestors in a little village in Africa somewhere making music. That to me inspires me at the end of the day. If I think about it in those terms then I don’t get as hung up on myself. 

Patch: What’s it like playing with Scott Amendola? 

Hunter: My entire thing is much more soul, blues and kind of groove oriented, and Scott definitely has spent a lot more time in the free improvisation avant garde world so we just bring that and just kind of meet in the middle. It's always groovin' and it's always improvised and so it just evolves.