George Cartwright

It's a beautiful early winter day here. Not too cold, blue sky, breezy, my wife went to Chicago for an art thing of some kind (she's an artist) (and quite wonderful at installation, performance pieces, painting etc) and my son and I are home. He has colored (two new Pokemon he has invented) and continued his continuing runnig football game intersperced with cartoons on TV and walking to me about whatever flies into his head. He is seven. (G.C.)

Could you introduce you to the french public ?
Hi. I am a saxophone player, composer, improvisor, band leader, parent, mate, worker. In reverse order : the last year in Minnesota, six in Memphis, 14 in NYC, 2 in Woodstock, NY 4 in various places and schools in the south, 4 in Starkville, MS at Mississippi State University, 4 in Belzoni, Mississippi for high scool and 12 in Midnight, Mississippi from birth.

When did you arrive in NY ? Is you integration in the Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio an important moment for you ?
I arrive in NY in 1979. Very much to have the opportunity to be around the musicians Karl had come there, to play and practice every day and to concerts on the weekend, it was a wonderful experience and time for me

What did you listen at this time ?
Oh, that's a big question. Like now, everything I can find and like.

When and why did you decide to become a musician ? Was it easy to do this choice ?
I had always liked music. Church music, music on the radio, Elvis, songs my grandfather taught me, popular music when I was in high school like the Beatles, Beach Boys, the Band, Cream etc. In college I became aware of the blues and listened to many of those people and started and interest in jazz with Charles Llyd's Forest Flower.
I got my first saxophone on my 21st birthday, a gift from my grandmother. I had been playing the guitar, self taught, and wanted to start with an instrument that used your breath and one that I would learn the basics on so as to have a solid foundation for whatever I wanted to do with it. After I was a Conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam I decided to pursue the sax seriously and went to Jackson State, Memphis State, The U. of Southern Mississippi and ended up at Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio in Woodstock NY. There I studied with Oliver Lake, Leo Smith, Kalaparusha, Dave Holland and many others. The choice was slow but clear. An accretion of realization more that a moment in time of clarity. Clear none the less.

At the beginning of your career, what were the more important meetings with musicians ?
I'd have to say my actual "career" started in woodstock where I met Michael Lytle and Tom Cora among others. Then to NYC where I met many other people that had great influence on me. I like to be touched, to be affected, to play and be around people who I can feel change me, and, baby, there they were in NYC!!!
Michael Lytle was the most important in that we played a lot of duets together and practiced a lot together. I learned a lot about music from him. I also fell in to working with Ornate for a little while on a project he had going with Roberta Baum. THAT was some experience. Wonderful. I started Curlew then with Laswell, Cora , Bill Bacon and Nicky Scopelitis, also working with Meltable Snaps IT with Lytle and David Moss.
I had been soooo serious about music for so long, I have to tell you something that really affected me. I was going on stage at CBGB's with Curlew when Rick Brown of Fish and Roses (and a very good friend always) was standing by the stage. As we went up to play I said hi and he said "have fun". Suddenly it all fell into place, I had enough serious in me, I just needed to start adding the pleasure and fun part. it may sound strange but my path became clear in that slight and passing moment between me and Rick.

How did you decide to create Curlew ? What were your projects and ideas at the beginning ?
While I was in Woodstock I had started to write music (hard not too, what with being around all these wonderful players and composers) . When I moved to NYC I was invited to go on tour with Davied Allen and NY Gong (basically Material at that point). When I got back I asked Laswell if he'd like to be in a band with me, I had songs to play and it went from there. I was already doing a lot of improvised music. I wanted Curlew to be more of a dance band along the lines of Ornette's Prime Time but with more noisily improvisation and with clear and strong players who would make it distinctive. Heart, soul, clarity, power, beauty, intimacy, were all qualities I wanted to find in players and music for as long an I have know about it. This is want I looked for.

Can you explain us the evolution of Curlew since the beginning ?
Lots of changes, lots of people, great people to play with. Always wanting you to tap your feet (each at a different times and accents hopefully) and not be too concerned with your brain having to explain it. It has been a lot anger thing I thought it would be, but not as long as I have hoped for. I think it is a good idea, a simple idea, not just MY idea certainly but when you start filling the details of any quite and simple idea, there is where it gets good. I mean, think about it, when I play with Curlew (or any other project for that matter the same applies) I get to turn to Davey Williams and get to hear him play the guitar, be it parts I have written, ideas I ask him to deliver in his own manner, or solos that scrape and soothe simultaneously those details fill in  a manner unattainable in any other fashion. And on and on it has gone with Ann Rupel, Samm Bennett, Tom Cora and the others. Not just musicians with passions about ideas about music, but with passion about passion itself. No emotional Tomfoolery or tricks just the real stuff. For "A Beautiful Western Saddle" you work for the first time with Amy Denio and poet Paul Haines.

Can you speak to us about this experience ?
I'll make noe bones about it, I love Paul's writing and Amy is a blessing to have agreed to sing with me. Technically I have taken Paul's words and put them to music, trying to find the best and most distinctive ways to present them in music. He's a tricky writer (my fave) and throws things out there that slide and bounce around rhythm, the page and brain. And he's funny. Very funny.

Did you know Paul Haines before A Beautiful Western Saddle ?
Yes, I had written some music for inclusion on a video that Kip Hanrahan was making of Paul's poetry about 1981 or so. It was a video that just had the poems appearing across the screen one word at a time  and in different colors if I remember correctly  as the music various people had written to the appearing poem was playing.
I had also used some of Paul's words on my cd "DOT" and had recorded two songs of Paul 's on Kip's "Darn It" with all words by Paul.

You say in the liner notes of this CD that there was the "desire for Curlew to work with text and singer". Can you explain why ? Was it necessary for Curlew to do something different ?
Well, I guess it was more like I wanted to work with singer and text (HEY! Like Bob Dylan and Otis Redding!) (singer and text sounds sooo intellectual) Really in music you either have a singer or you don't, more or less, some grey area there for other stuff but you know I mean in general, so since Curlew had done mostly instrumental things and I had been already working, with Paul it seemed logical to include the band in my relationship with Paul. Or Paul in my relationship with the band. I also knew they would all write good music to his words. And it's not so much to "do something different" as to do more of what is there and possible to do.

Do you think poetry and music are two complementary arts ? Did you know for example the work of Kenneth Rexroth or other artists like him ? In a general way is Art important for your music and life ? Can you explain why ?
I love to be shown what I didn't know and that would seem to be one of the essentials of art. Revelation. But on a wide variety of scales. I believe Art is important to everyone. If you asked people I believe they would agree. What I like about art is the possible revelation it can bring. And the best can bring it over and over. The worst can seem to bring it once so clear but later seem only like a mistaken glance in a bar when  you were oh so wrong about that look you thought you got. Poetry is like other other art, painting, performance, movies, conversation, those looks in the eye, and touch just to name a distinct few, if it's there, it is . If it's there more than once and holding the promise of trotting on off into the future forever, ah, even better. Is this true also for the things you don't want to see and pain that is in all true art ? good question. And, I only guess really, like all the rest. Music is distinct as is conversation in that it is always different each time and the ebb and flow of "it" always giving so hope, depending of course.

I like very much the cover art on your CDs. Do you choose the artist or the concept ? Could you say us something about that, some words about the artists ?
Thank you. I like them too. And am pleased that I work with Cuneiform Records where I can choose what I want for the covers and put them together myself. As far as deciding what goes on and into the covers I just pick something I like that seems to come up at that moment in time.

For instance:

1) the first Curlew on Landslide was a drawing by Julian Jackson, a friend of Tom Cora's from Richmond. I saw it and liked it.

2) North America is a photo by a photographer from the Mississippi coast named Lyle Bonge. It is the cover of his book  of Mardi Gras photos from New Orleans from the late 50's and early 60's called "The Sleep of Reason" (Oproduces monsters, Goya) that a friend of mine, John Evans, showed me in his bookstore, Lemuria in Jackson Mississippi and I liked and called Bonge and met him one day in Biloxi (see Jesse Winchester's "Biloxi": on his first record for reference) at his house where he was building by hand a sailboat in his back yard. We looked thru his photos, he gave me 4 to take back to NYC , I picked one out and used it on the cover. It is a  picture of a guy, in a dress, lying back on a VW Bug and laughing. Gotta love that. In the Moers CD version it is left off the cover. Lots of brains there at Moers. Leaving off one of the most wonderful photos of the 20th century.

3) Live in Berlin- designed by a friend and employer in NYC, Mark Uriu, of a map of Berlin, (is it upside down?) with his colored version of that city.

4) Bee by photographer Michael Macioce .pal of Kramers and wonderful photo taker. A scene of what? Real? Not? Not to mention Michael DeCapitie's slightly referential and funny and gratifying liner notes.

5) A Beautiful Western Saddle- again cover photo by Michael Macioce, designed by Ruth Peyser, great guitar player and animator, photo of a baby skeleton in a jar he photographed while in India and visiting my Bombay pal Jamal Meklail.

6)DOT, print by Susie DeCapite of, the WORLD as she saw it. Loverly , loverly. Always makes me smile.

7) Paradise, first Memphis CD with cover by my loverly wife and artist Anne Elias. I just loved the painting and picking it from Anne made it very special. Liner notes by Mike DeCapite and good ones yet again..

8) Fabulous Drop, cover and back by Daniel Ball Memphis photographer and a good photo of a hand is hard to find don't ya know. More wonderful and hilarious liner notes by M. D.(check out his Through the Windshield  novel of  a year in Cleveland and a splendid  book.

10) The Memphis Years Terminal Moraine cover by Anne again, intriguing and slightly funny (to me anyway) shapes hard to describe. Liner notes again by Mike (forever I hope,) but not exactly funny, really kind of frightening and unsettling, but, clear also. Designed by Duplex Planet guy David Greenberger.

Could you please elaborate about your Knitting Factory years with Curlew. What are the most important moments, the most important meetings with people ?
When I first moved to NYC there were lots of places to play. As the real estate got more and more expensive the small places went away. I remember just before the Knit opened up it really seemed like there were very few places to play. When it opened, it was great cause then there was a place to play that seemed open to whatever was going on in music at that moment. Strikes me that The Knitting Factory was/is more about The Knitting Factory than the musicians involved in it tho if you could work it just right, it would give a bit back to you (people might not notice, and distractions abound, but musicians and artists in general need money to survive, we'll end and go away if we don't get it but the machines out there will be happy to not let you know this and TELL you you are getting it and the lies will keep selling and selling).
I have great respect and admiration for Michael Dorf and his keeping it together and furnishing musicians a place to play, I don't think it is  the only place to play. Like I said, it has done a great job of promoting itself and thereby giving people a place to play ( I mean, it gave the Amica Bunker a place to do its gigs every Sunday night for years) and an association that people notice and give some credence to. However, history, as we know, is much more complex than that but we all like the easy way. OTHER clubs were :The Saint, Studio Henry, TR3, the Mudd Club, CBGB's, Roulette and lot's now forgotten.
Let's see now, a large organization, headed by one person and made functional by legions of aspiring (desperate ?) musicians drawing a few fans to buy the drinks to keep the large organization functioning with occasional infusions of money by who ? for jazz festival promo rights and LOTS OF GREAT PEOPLE PLAY THERE!!!! Nice club. I'd go, if I was in town. Hey, I'd even play there (it's been a while) and I did LOVE playing there but if you look at the economics of it, no dough there for any just played there musician. and to draw from that, well, great music, little money when the money is in SUVs and lots of other stuff.
My musical contacts stem from relationships and meetings that  have more to do with meeting people and ideas in the air at the time and mutual attractions that yielded music and great friendships in the end. I'm afraid the Knit gets no credit for that. It's US, not a club. No matter how nice and timely and hip it may be. THE MUSICIANS!!!

Why did you choose to leave NYC ? Was it a new start for you and your music ?
I'd been there 14 years. I was not (not even close to) rich. but mainly we had a baby and didn't want to have him in the city and I wanted to be back in the south for a while. A new start ????: well, in a way, it was to go back to Memphis and see what I could do there, sort of some unfinished business in a way there, and my time there was wonderful. Hated to leave and have missed NYC since but my responsibilities and desires for my child supersede what I'd personally chose to do, and, having a child, is more wonderful and fun that anything else, here I am.

The Memphis Years is a musical fusion between Southern and Northern sounds.
Southern, yes, in vernacular somewhat I suppose and by virtue of the southern people playing on it except for Lawrence Miller and Amy and, well, Paul of course, but I would shy personally way from fusion of the two areas as a concept, all music is a function of people's lives and as that it flops right out on the floor and then we all look (listen to) at it and call it names when at it's best all we should do it experience it as it is and on it's own terms and where anyone is "from" is meaningless to me. It's where their heart resides and merges with mine that I run to.

Could you explain us this concept ?
I guess not really since the above makes it kind of conceptually funny for me but... More accident location that intent. But with intent tied up in it. I have to wait to see and then move towards the action I can SEE and FEEL around me.

Do you think that in music all the fusions are possible ?
Absolutely. Since I believe that the value of music lies in HOW it is played rather than WHAT is played, you can put anything together and make it work if you play it right. Try and tell me there is ANYTHING that Furry Lewis couldn't play great if he decided to. Or Eric Dolphy, or Ornette or Muddy Waters or Hank Williams or or or ...

What changes do you see in your music since you began ?
I think I play better. Not sure if I write better. Not sure really how to tell. the old stuff is good and the new stuff I like a lot and the stuff there in the wide middle is just fine to me. But I still write. And play. Not nearly as much as I'd like but we are in the process of buying a house and that will help to give me space to deal with these things better.
I do think I have a broader and better understanding of music and my role in it in terms of sound, melody, improvising, organizing, clarifying and having the pleasure of it.

Is there anything you would want to explore better in your music ?
Practice, practice, practice. And listen much more. Not to mention play a lot more. Did I say practice ? Work on my sound and tie my technique together better. Get that tongue flapping around the reed better.

For you is it easy to offer the same emotions in concerts and in your recordings ?
Yes. When I play yes, I play to the music and not to either a microphone or an audience. They are each different pleasures for me but the same desire inside myself no matter which. And I don't think about  "offering emotions", I just play and the emotions a listener comes to while we play is so very personal to that exact person that I would never ever pretend to have knowledge about that much less a specific effect.
My job as a musician is to deal with the music and that is enough to handle but as a listener I love the wordless feelings that came come to me. Leo Smith once said your duty as a musician is to the music and if you get too involved in it you can't pay proper attention to it, that you need to be just slightly away from it to make the proper decisions about what you will do. I agree a lot with Leo's statement but also hold it as a place to operate from and consider the option of getting totally caught up in the music and my playing as a compositional device I may use at my occasional descrestion.

Is the public important for you during your improvisations ?
It is all so pointless without them.

Could you speak to us about Tom Cora ? (some word on this musician)
I met Tom Cora at the Creative Music Studio I guess it was in the fall of 1978. He had just switched from guitar to cello and even as a beginner on that instrument he had a clarity and precision to his playing that was strong. In choosing the cello it seemed to give him the perfect platform in which to produce his musical intents. He also looked really good sitting with the cello between his legs and the bow in his hand. Not to mention the welding rods he had inserted into the strings. Suddenly it seemed the cello leapt to the front of any ensemble he played in and stepped to the side and (if you ask me) to the front of the silky sound and orientation of the historical cello. That Tom was one sly guy. I guess in reality it wasn't really the cello, as we know, it was Tom that came so clearly to the front with that grin and that passion and that brain and soul combination that rendered what ever he played a musical, emotional, edge of the universe experience. And then there ARE his compositions. sometimes hard to believe in their hardness if you had to learn to play them, but totally natural sounding when he would play them for you. Annoying that often he could and you couldn't but with work we could meld them into these amazingly structured, melodically refined and subtle and rhythmically intricate but swinging pieces with slots and areas for "solos" designed to either bring out your very best, or, hopefully only in rehearsal, slap you down right out of your little seat. When I went to his memorial service at the Knit in NYC the place was packed. Well over 250 people I would say. Very moving experience. And now I will tell you what made and makes me so angry and furious I can hardly stand it: ONLY 250 people! In a TINY CLUB! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? WHERE WAS EVERYBODY ELSE? Shame on them and the world that keeps Tom and many others  like him so appallingly and baldly hidden. 

Interview by Sébastien Moig

Discography

With Curlew
- Bee- Cuneiform Rune - 1991
- A Beautiful Western Saddle - Cuneiform Rune - 1993
- Paradise - Cuneiform Rune - 1996
- Fabulous Drop - Cuneiform Rune - 1998

George Cartwright - Dot - Cuneiform Records - 1994
George Cartwright - Terminal Moraine - The Memphis Years - Cuneiform Records - 2000