Eight Strings and a Passion For Playing

By Dana Hocking

Contemporary jazz god Charlie Hunter is headed back out on the road again. Armed with his eight-string guitar (roughly three bass strings and five guitar strings) and two other uncommonly talented musicians, he is more than ready for another tour, this time in support of his new Charlie Hunter Trio album, Friends Seen and Unseen. With a leaner band (Charlie used to tour as a quintet) and a new record label, he is hoping to make Friends… his 10th consecutive No. 1 contemporary jazz record.

So far everything is going well. “I feel great right now,” Charlie said through an unusually clear cell phone connection as he and his band began the trip. “We’ve only been on the road for about an hour so far and nothing’s gone wrong yet.”

Dry sense of humor notwithstanding, he really did seem pleased with the changes around him. “I was on a corporate label for a long time, and I learned a lot about how that worked,” he said. “I was lucky because I got in right before things really got bad for people who were in the middle of the road or even the bottom end of the economic spectrum in the music industry. It all worked out in the sense that I got an audience, but I made some choices that were probably not the best choices I could have made. That’s all water under the bridge now, though.”

So, what is Charlie Hunter’s personal take on the current state of the music industry? “Oh, I don’t really have any use for it,” he said without a bit of hesitation. “It’s kind of like an old horse that you’re just waiting to die, but it somehow keeps on managing to keep all the grass to itself. I’d like to see a situation where there wasn’t really a ‘winner takes all’ mentality towards popular music and popular culture. Again, it’s about people educating themselves and getting access to music that can be music.”

He continued. “Why should you bother researching the fact that bovine growth formula and genetically engineered foods are bad for you when it’s so much easier to just drive through McDonalds? I think it’s that kind of situation with music. Why bother seeking out something that will be an infinitely more enriching experience in the long run when you can just turn on MTV and get bombarded by bubblegum? It’s just so much easier and we like our convenience. I really feel like there is enough audience for all of the musicians that want to do something, and ultimately the Internet could provide that, even though right now we’re addicted to this cycle of the haves and the have-nots. It seems like a lot of people in America, musicians especially, would rather dream of being unrealistically wealthy than reaching a smaller amount of people and having a real quality to their art.”

Charlie finished the interview with a few thoughts for young musicians still struggling to make it. “Keep doing what you’re doing and try to do it yourself if at all possible,” he said. “Try to exclude every middleman that you can exclude. Try to exclude corporate music moguls at all costs, unless it’s something that works entirely to your benefit and almost not at all to their benefit because otherwise, you’re screwed. You just can’t get into bed with them. Unless you’re selling millions and millions of records, you really have no reason to talk those people on a business level, whatsoever. Do what you love your way and everything will work out in the end.”

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Record Label Artemis Records Released July 2004

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