“Guitars adapt to whoever is playing them. I can play somebody else’s guitar for two weeks and it will change according to how I play it”: Ralph Towner on the sensitivity of the six-string – and why he doesn’t use an amp on stage.
Excerpt:
On the new album you’ve included a couple of standards, which you’ve said was a very deliberate choice – that you wanted to have arrangements of standards on the album as well as original pieces.
“Yeah, I mean, I played standards on the piano for years. I learned a lot of them from my brother’s record collection. And then my mother would play the piano and would buy whole books of standards, so I learned how they functioned.
“But I was able to improvise from the first time I picked up an instrument – play counter melodies – and so I had a knack for it to start with. They’re so much a part of my life and some of them are wonderful.
“Bill Evans was great at finding beautiful standards and making them into jazz standards. I was teaching myself how to do that as a result of hearing him. And the way they’re originally written, I mean, the art of writing these songs that, even without lyrics, tell the story in a musical way. And so I always want to include some of those because they’re written so well, and then put my own touches on them. I think it gives a little bit of variety to the record.”
Read the full interview with Ralph Towner for Guitar World magazine here
Get the album on CD and/or Vinyl here
