How about this Leeds gig coming up in July?I'm playing with a couple of friends of mine and they are two of the best guitar players I've played with in the past few years. I've been pretty lucky, I've got to play with some really amazing guitar players and these guys are two of the best I've heard.
There's Michael Berk from London. He's a fantastic player. It's hard to describe him as he plays all sorts of different styles. He's a slide player, finger style, fast classical shred! His latest thing is he's worked out a finger style version of Bohemian Rhapsody with all the harmonies. It's really good, really fun.
The other, Armit Sond, is the complete opposite in that some of what he plays is completely obscure, and some is staggeringly beautiful. Some of it, to be honest is hideous, but I think he does that on purpose! [laughs] He'll open a gig with the most hideous chord you've ever heard, and he'll pull the strings of the guitar and make crazy noises. It's just an acoustic guitar, he doesn't use any effects. He has one thing he does with his guitar that involves a glass of water. I won't say any more, but it sounds like an elephant having sex! [laughs]. It's extraordinary. Then some of his stuff is the most sublime ballad that you've ever heard. All of his stuff sounds like it's from space, he plays chords that nobody has ever played before, which sounds simple. But, if you think about it, it's like an artist coming up with a new colour. It's a really big deal. And he's had a Grammy award as well!
So how's your day panning out at the moment?
Yeah, not bad. Just been shopping. I've actually just been offered an endorsement deal with a guitar company today...
Oh, brilliant! Which company?
Takamine, I don't know if you're guitar player yourself, or if you've heard of them? Just been going to a couple of guitar shops, trying to choose which one I want, because they give you a free guitar! It's really good fun, 'cos I never buy guitars as I never have enough money.
I know Takamine do these special models with a valve inside, I don't know whether you wanted one of them or a standard one?
I tend to prefer pretty basic things... so, from their point of view I'm quite a good person [laughs] to take on because I don't have expensive tastes.
Something you can drop down the stairs and it still works?
That's exactly it. I've literally done that with one of my guitar before.
Well, firstly a friend of mine wants to know, do you give lessons, and how much!?
Do I give guitar lessons? I used to, but I don't have any time anymore, so I've stopped now.
I see, busy schedule then?
Yeah, yeah, I do so many gigs. And then when I'm not doing gigs I'm either recording or doing PR type stuff, playing radio and things like that. I just don't have time to teach, which is really sad because I used to absolutely love it.
I used to teach, a band in Leeds called Ajanta and I taught two of them to play guitar; there are only three of them in the band. Things like that really make it worth while. I think I must have started teaching the youngest one from the band when he was around 9 years old.
Must give you a bit of satisfaction to see them develop?
Yeah, feels good. They kick ass.
Can you remember the first cassette or LP or CD you ever bought?
[laughs]
Nobody ever asked me that before. Erm, I think, it was quite a while before I ever bought anything because my Dad's record collection was enormous. That was just my source of music really. I was never really into the music I saw on the T.V or heard on the radio, so I never really bought any of it. But, the only things my Dad never had was things like crap pop stuff that I did like. Probably the first thing I bought might have been by Wham or something like that. I actually can't remember. The first thing I do remember buying myself was Please Please Me by the Beatles as it was the only one my Dad didn't have. [laughs] So I had to buy it.
So were you born into a musical family then?
No, well, my Dad used to write reviews for the local paper. So he was basically a music critic. But that wasn't his main job, that was just a hobby really. But no, my family were rubbish at music, all of them. My brother isn't too bad. My Dad has tried to play every instrument known to man and he's failed at every turn.
They do say talent skips a generation...?
Maybe yeah, my Mum's one of these people that doesn't really like music much.
Do you think music is something you're born with or something you learn over time?
I don't know really because I've been playing from such an early age that I don't know whether I was good or whether I just practiced [laughs]. But some people definitely just have it, and some people don't. It's funny really 'cos the talent can be in two ways. You can be really talented physically, so you can be really good actually playing or singing. But, you can be really talented intellectually with music. So you can be really good at writing and composing but actually rubbish at playing. So yeah, it's a funny one really. I think erm, I don't know, I can't answer that [laughs].
What do you think about the MP3 music industry nowadays and has it effected you in a positive or a negative way?
Well, for me it's great because things like, not strictly MP3s I guess, but things like the internet in general and MySpace and all that stuff. I get loads of people coming to my gigs. That's their main source of information about me, to go onto MySpace and all the people see my videos on YouTube and spread the word and tell other people. Often, when I play in towns that I've never been to before, and you know, 50 or 60 people turn up to see me play in some little place somewhere. It's really good 'cos I've got no record company doing PR for me or anything. It's just me on my lonesome.
Is it quite a good networking tool, MySpace and YouTube...?
Yeah, I do get offered quite a lot of gigs through there but often they're not entirely suitable. It tends to be mostly fans that I acquire through MySpace rather than actual contacts. It tends to be loads of new fans.
Were you born in Leeds?
No, I was born in Blackpool.
How do you feel about guitar technology, and technology in general?
From my own point of view, I do like using effects and stuff, but the reason I do like using acoustic guitar more than electric these days is that it's portable. That's a really big deal 'cos it means you can get your guitar out at any time that you want, and if you're inspired to play, or if you just feel like you want to play, or you want to write something, you've just got a guitar. That's why the acoustic guitar is the most popular instrument 'cos you can just use it whenever you want, use it whenever the mood takes you. When I'm on tour, recently in fact, the last gig I had was in Nottingham. I was driving and I only had about an hours driving so I had a couple of hours to kill, so I stopped off halfway by a canal in the countryside and just sat and played my guitar. I ended up with a few hippies who live on the river, they just gathered round and listened to me play. Which is a pain because I really just wanted to sit down and play some scales! But you can't do that, you've got to play songs. They don't like scales [laughs]. So, you can't do that with the electric guitar with all the effects and everything you've got to plug in.
What is you're earliest memory of picking up the guitar when you were younger?
Well, erm, I got my first guitar when I was 2 and my earliest memory... I don' t know if it's actually real or if it's just what I've been told so many times all my life... it's of watching Top Of The Pops and it was Dire Straits, on Top Of The Pops, which I don't think would happen these days. TOTP isn't on anymore, let alone get Dire Straits on there. Yeah, Dire Straits were on, I just saw the guy playing a guitar and I really wanted one.
Would you say you were influenced by Dire Straits?
No no, not particularly. [laughs] Not except the actual, initial reaction when I was about 1 and a half or 2 years old. So no apart from that.
Who were you influenced by past and present?
Right, well when I was a kid I was obsessed with the Beatles, I still am. Me and my best friend used to learn all the words. I would be Paul and he would be John and we'd just learn every bit and all the harmonies and everything. We could do whole albums, we just put the record on and sang along with it... that's my obsession.
I was really into Jeff Beck when I was really young. So, all his kind of jazz, 70's jazz fusion, kind of a like a mix between jazz, funk and rock was what I was really into. Which is pretty weird [laughs]. That's just one of them. He was my Dad's hero and he's passed it onto me.
So they were a big early influence, and they still are. Those are two big early influences on me but there are millions and millions of others.
Would you say you lean towards US or British music, or would you just drift between the two?
I don't know, I do really like British music. I really like local music so there is that. In terms of a grand scale I don't really have a preference at all. One of my major influences, the blues which, is the original American art-form really I think. It's the first proper American art-form that developed but I'm also really into Leeds music. A lot of my favourite bands, I mean proper favourite bands, not just favourite local bands, are from Leeds. So at the moment The Scaramanga Six's new album is probably the album I've listened to most this year by far. I just think they're fantastic.
How do you think to the health of the Leeds Music Scene at the moment?
I think there's some really, really good stuff, but the bands I tend to like are the ones who have maybe been around a couple of years longer. The newer bands, that I'm not into quite so much, are a little bit too, erm, just commercial for me. So you get, very very commercial indie, which I've nothing against you know, but they're much more likely to get famous doing that. I don't really like the current indie sound that much. It's perhaps a bit dull.
Yeah, sometimes perhaps groups can lack individuality about them?
It's a little bit mindless, it's a bit deliberately low brow. It's funny 'cos music for me was a refuge as a geek [laughs] ... and now it's like a lot of the music that's out there now is more like... music for the lads, you know? It's for going out and getting really pissed, drinking loads of lager and, then listening to indie. When I was a kid, listening to indie was for geeks, and it's really turned the table on us! They've stolen it from the geeks, first they've stolen the internet, and now they've stolen indie music! [laughs]
Need to find a new hobby?
Yeah, I'll start playing Dungeons & Dragons or something.
Changing gear slightly, where do you stand politically at the moment?
Well it's funny, I'm not really a democrat really... erm, so I find it difficult. I actually tried to sell my vote at the last general election on eBay. I got into two newspapers as a result of doing that. It was really funny. It was so funny. I just tried to sell my vote. And I ended up going on the radio debating with two local Leeds candidates. I can't remember which bit of Leeds it was. It probably would have been Leeds East. But anyway, it was with a Liberal Democrat and a Conservative MP who came on and debated with me. It was very, very silly. They just told me that I was just, erm, wasting my vote that people had fought for.
People didn't fight because they thought they would loose their freedom to vote for two political parties that are virtually the same, just to lie to them all the time. [laughs]. So I'm not really a democrat. I believe in freedom. I believe in the ideals of democracy and stuff, but I don't actually think we live in a democracy.
I don't bother to vote these days I'm afraid.
Next you'll be in number 10 with Bono and the rest of the them, debating?
[laughs] I would go, if was invited. I don't think it's likely. I'd love to see inside it. No, but, I'm not a big supporter of any particular political party any more. I used to be. It's not apathy, it's not fair to call it that. It's just that you've got nothing to choose between. Me being slightly older, I know what the difference is. I remember Thatcher. I know the difference between the Left and the Right. There was such a big difference between Neil Kinnock and Margaret Thatcher, Labour and the Conservatives of that time. It was so radically different. So I know what they're supposed to be like. But now, if none of that had ever happened and we were just looking at the New Labour and the Conservatives as they are now, the differences between them are minute really.
The differences might be bigger, some people guess that they're bigger but those are hidden under the surface. And they're just memories really. So as a young voter, I don't know what I'm supposed to do really. I've got nobody to vote for. It's really bad, cos' it increases the BNP's vote massively. But they obviously stand for something.
On a lighter note, for our guitar geeks out there, do you have a favourite chord favourite scale, favourite tuning?
[laughs] That's such a good question. I don't have a favourite chord, or favourite scale, but I do have ones that I like, so I can recommend a couple [laughs]. OK, I think people at home should try playing, erm, they should try playing, erm, an E chord, but take off your first finger and put your little finger on the 3rd fret of the same string. That chord doesn't really have a proper name, but it would be called something like E Major add Sharp 11th. Which is very complicated sounding, but they should try that and then they should play a B Major scale over the top of it. And that sounds beautiful. It's a beautiful sound. It's called the sound of Lydian. They should do that. There's a little guitar lesson. [laughs]. I'll email those details for you! It's a bit complicated.
I don't have a favourite tuning no, I use different ones all the time. I can't really say that I have a favourite. "D A D G A D" is always really popular. It's one that I sometimes wander into. That's a kind of a big folk tuning, but you can really use it for anything at all, it's really versatile. Supposedly invented by Davy Graham after he visited Africa, but I don't know if that's bullshit. But yeah, Davy Graham, 60's folk. The guitarist. But it has got a slightly African sound to it. You can really use it for anything.
Any new songs developing at the moment?
Yeah, I have but at the moment I not really concerned about that cos' I'm trying to get a new album finished and out. Any new stuff that I come up with it just tinkering. I'm not the kind of guy where I write a song really fast. I generally, tinker with an idea for a while and then it'll gradually grows into a song. For me the most important thing is that the melody and the harmony and the rhythm and the words all match each other... in my mind, so that they all fit together and that they're all expressing the same thing. It's quite hard to come up with all those things at exactly the same time. So yeah, I'm not really writing at the moment. I'm working on this new batch of songs out there on the album 'Curses and Blessings'.
But the last song I wrote, I didn't actually write it recently, I wrote it when I was 15 years old. I've got this new song that I've been playing, I wrote the words back then and I've changed the guitar part, I can't remember what it was like then. But, it's actually going on my new album. It's quite emo, because the words are teenage words. It's basically a blues tune. I thought I'd sneak it onto the album as I just finished it in time. I don' t think it's very hard to use your imagination when you're that age, you've not really experienced anything. It all comes out of your imagination. You can put any situation into a song.
Do you remember your first ever gig?
Depends what you mean by gig, I think the first live performance I think I was 4 or 5 years old. I hated it. I was terrified. You see kids on YouTube, it's a big phenomenon at the moment, parents putting their kids on the internet. It's awful, it either puts the kids off for years from ever performing, or once you do really enjoy performing at that age, it doesn't bode well for them [laughs]. It's not good for you to be encouraged to show off at that age, or to that extent. Not good for the soul. A lot of kids that have been performing from a very early age in a professional or semi-professional capacity are pretty miserable when they hit middle age. It's not good for them... look at Michael Jackson!
How did you arrive at your own particular style? Are you a percussionist too?
No, I always played guitar and nothing else. The first guitar I had was a flamenco guitar and I had some flamenco lessons when I was really little. So doing percussion on the guitar is something I've been doing since I was really, really young. I've been getting into trouble in guitar shops for hitting guitars since I was tiny. It's not something I've ever thought that I've invented or anything, loads of blues players do it as well. My favourite guitar player is called Michael Hedges. He was an American guitar player, but he's dead now. He did tapping on the acoustic guitar, and tapping is always something I've been really into as well. Ever since I first heard Eddie Van Halen and Steve Via and people like that, I've always been into that kind of stuff on the guitar - the twiddly bits. Just being able to translate those skills you've learned, you figure out after a while, playing electric guitar, doing tapping stuff that it's pretty hard to actually make music with it. You know, you can play really fast, but it's pretty hard to make music. When you transpose onto an acoustic guitar, and use it to play actual riffs and melodies and things, you can use the skills you've learned showing off on an electric guitar, to actually make music on an acoustic guitar. That's kind of how it evolved.
How often do you practice?
I used to practice all the time. When I was 15 or 16, I'd practice 8 hours a day. Didn't do much school work. I was always getting in trouble for playing guitar at school. It depends how obsessed you get with it. At that age I really thought it was important that I learned how to do it. So I got slightly obsessed with it. It's not like I did because it was fun, I can't remember the last time I played guitar, except for gigs. That is an absolute riot. I love doing gigs. It's the most fun you can ever have. But actually just picking up a guitar, and just playing purely for fun, I don't remember the last time I did that ever In my whole life! [laughs]
I have a really obsessive personality, even when I was 13 or 14 I'd be thinking,"I've gotta just keep practicing" otherwise I'd have enormous guilts about practice for a few days. So I couldn't take it anymore, I had to start practicing again. But it wasn't because it was fun.
Are you solely a Takamine player now then?
I don't even have one yet! But I will be. At the moment I play a Lowden called Wilma. She's nearly errr... she needs a rest. She's mostly made of glue and gaffer tape now. She was a beautiful guitar but now she's a battered guitar held together by bits of crap. So I needed to get a new guitar, but luckily I got this endorsement deal so I don't have to pay for one [laughs]. I'm very loyal to my instruments, I don't like to play lots of different ones. I never had loads of guitars. They have personalities to me. To be honest Wilma doesn't record very well. But she's the only guitar I've used for gigs over the past four years and I do a lot of gigs so I feel a lot of gratitude.
Even though I do have another guitar that is pristine and sounds beautiful when you record with it, I have to use Wilma on the album 'cos I would have felt like I was betraying her really. I know it sounds absolutely pathetic. That's how I feel and that's the worst thing - that I'm gonna have to change guitars now. I do a lot of my touring on my own. But I never feel like I'm on my own as I have Wilma. I'm gonna have to leave her behind and take some new strange guitar that I don't know. It'll take a while before I get to know the guitar so it feels like a companion.
Yeah playing them in, knowing which frets buzz, getting to know them... ?
It's not even the way they play, when you've done a couple of hundred gigs on a guitar... to be honest every fret on Wilma buzzes [laughs]. It's more about the things that you've been through with the guitar. It's the terrible gigs. When you're out on the road on your own. Thankfully, I don't do that many terrible gigs anymore. Even if I play somewhere that's not the best venue, people still turn up to see me and that makes it a good gig. In the old days I'd turn up and it would turn out to be a total dive, there was nobody there, eight acts would be playing and I was halfway down the list, nobody wanted to be there and there'd be no atmosphere, no audience and it would be a horrible night in some town you don't particularly want to be in. It's those experiences, when your guitar is the only one who was shared the same memories with you.
Was it tough at the Guitar Institute in London?
Yeah, that's right, I spent three years there. I go back and do workshops and things occasionally for them, once or twice a year. Which is really good fun as I'm like the celebrity guitarist now... instead of just... little oicke! [laughs]. So that's quite nice.
OK, to finish with heres some quick fire questions. Fender of Gibson?
Fender.
Lennon or McCartney?
McCartney.
Taylor Guitars or Takamine Guitars?
Takamine guitars. Taylor guitars are made by robots, whereas Takamine guitars are made by Japanese people, who aren't allowed to touch a guitar until they've been working for the company for seven years! You choose!
Blair or Brown?
Neither.
Bush or Clinton?
Ghandi.
Blonde or Brunette?
Blonde.
Leeds or London?
Leeds.
Yorkshire or Lancashire?
Oh that is tough, that's really tough for me. That is so tough you've got no idea. I'm actually getting married this year and I'll be wearing a white rose. I think of myself as a Yorkshire man now, but so many people get very angry with me for saying that. But, I do think of myself as a Yorkshire man now! [laughs]
Classical or Contemporary?
Both.
Sweet or Savory?
Savory.
Clapton or Hendrix?
Hendrix.
Jon Gomm, Armit Sond and Michael Berk play at the Brudenell Social on 6th July. Tickets are £6 from Jumbo records in Leeds.
Watch Jon Gomm live at Korks (Otley) on 9th April 2010 - info / tickets.
