It started — as have so many things — with the Beatles. The synchronized bows at the end of each song, the cheeky bantering with the press, the getting chased by mobs of screaming Brit girls in A Hard Day's Night — all this introduced American audiences to a relatively unfamiliar concept in pop music: the romance of being in a band.
Lest we forget, music did exist before the Beatles. But most of it, including rock 'n' roll, centered on the solo artist. Sinatra became a legend only after escaping the anonymity of singing with a big band. Elvis did it his way, while his backup musicians grinned from somewhere in the shadows. Even classical music embraced the solitary virtuoso: the Liszts and Paganinis, whose moody charisma and wondrous performances transformed mighty orchestras into groveling, unobtrusive sidemen.
The Beatles changed it all. Instead of whining “I wanna play rock 'n' roll,” a generation learned from them to insist, “I wanna be in a band.” What they meant was that they wanted the adventure, the camaraderie, the sense of belonging to something that could change the world — if possible without having to join the Marines and risk their lives.
So the solo artists receded from the spotlight. They never disappeared, of course, but they definitely surrendered some of their mystique to the pop gorgons that generally dominated music. From the Stones and the Who to the current crop of Blink-182, Linkin Park, P.O.D., and so on, solo performers have slunk away, guitars slung across their backs. And, when nobody was looking, had the musical time of their lives.
FREE JAZZ MEETS COUNTRY BLUES
Among his fellow guitarists, Kelly Joe Phelps is a legend in the making. He caught my attention when he released his first major-label album, Roll Away the Stone (Rykodisc), back in '97, which featured slide work that I described in Musician as “capable of chilling the spine, if not raising the dead.” In July 2001, he released Sky Like a Broken Clock, his fourth solo album, but his first with other artists. Backed by players recruited from Morphine and Tom Waits, Phelps presented a terrific selection of tunes, which he and his colleagues played exceptionally well.
For Phelps, who has been working exclusively solo for something like ten full years, it was an almost radical departure. “There were a few reasons why I did this with other players,” he says. “I knew these songs were focusing more on how I would handle words as a singer rather than on what I was going to do with the guitar, whereas my previous CDs were more involved in combining the guitar playing and singing.”
But when he plays this material on the road, he goes it alone, as he has always done since walking away from the Portland, Oregon, jazz scene. He had been getting gigs around town, playing straight-ahead post-bop with other fast-note specialists. Eventually Phelps got tired of rehashing Herb Ellis licks and found himself listening to more free-form stuff like Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and Anthony Braxton.
The weird thing is that these artists led him not toward avant-garde ensemble improvisation, but toward a solo focus rooted in deep blues. “Jazz taught me a lot of very important things, but there was something missing that kept me from being a complete musician,” he remembers. “Because I was listening to free players, when I heard Robert Pete Williams, suddenly it made sense to me on an improvisational level. His music was just going all over the place, and it was such a spiritual music — it came from so deep within this guy's soul — that I remember going, ‘This guy can't really play, can he?’ When I applied the same context as I would apply to listening to something by Ornette Coleman, it suddenly made all the sense in the world to me.”
JAMMING WITH YOURSELF
Dusting off his finger-picking chops, Phelps realized that basing his path to musical self-discovery on the work of artists such as Williams and Mississippi Fred McDowell meant giving up the band gigs and working on his own. “It got to where I wanted to hear the music in that straightforward kind of a setting,” he explains. “I didn't want any clutter; I just wanted to hear the guitar and the voice. To be honest, I wasn't concerned at all about not working with other players. I was, in fact, looking forward to it.”
Beginning with a gig in Portland, Phelps embarked on the solo path without a single backward glance. Adjustments had to be made, but for musical and personal reasons almost all of them were positive. “I don't miss playing with other musicians, because I find that I can interact with myself and the song,” he says. “Being a finger-style picker, I have the advantage of thinking of a song in terms of its bass motion, its harmonic motion, its melodic motion, and also the vocals. So already I'm interacting with four different elements. From there I approach the songs very much as I used to as a jazz musician, in that the format of the song is just the blueprint. From the start of the song to its end, I try to play it different each night.”
But doesn't he miss the rhythmic input of a creative drummer or the propulsive nudge of a solid bass player? Not at all. “When I was playing jazz I played bass, so I learned how to interact with the drummer and how that felt. I played sax and trumpet, and I played drums all the way through high school. So I can have this self-contained interaction with these elements because I've actually done it on these instruments. When I perform I separate those parts from each other and develop them individually.”
THE UNCLUTTERED LIFE
In addition to all that, Phelps realized that working alone fit his disposition better than being part of a band. He's a loner by nature, so the approach he's chosen has given him the personal as well as the creative space that he's always craved. “I'm very comfortable by myself,” he says. “I don't particularly look for personal interaction. Being alone in a car for five, six, or seven hours, getting to a gig — I enjoy that a lot. When I go on the road and work every night, everything falls into place: there's just enough driving, just enough personal interaction. I get to do the gig, which I enjoy thoroughly. And the next day I get to do it all over again.”
Doing it alone has also helped Phelps develop his ability to focus his concentration in a way he never would have been able to do in a band. “Without the distractions of being with other musicians, o acm now able to focus very deeply and not be affected by outside influences. This does allow me to forget the social context of where I'm playing. I'm not aware that I'm sitting in front of 400 people who paid good money to see me play. This has given me greater freedom to apply an improvisational quality to the music, so that instead of thinking while I'm playing, I can get up inside the music more naturally.”
Clearly the solo life isn't ideal for every performer. Some players need that energy that comes only from locking into a groove with a band. But there's plenty of room for all types in music, so if you can't take your singer's groupie hustle or your lead player's “Eruption” cadenza for even one more night, remember: you can always give notice, pack up your gear, and drive off to seek something a little different, yet just as satisfying, on your own.
