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Product Description Rick Peckham is an internationally known jazz guitarist, clinician, composer and writer. He has performed with George Garzone, Jerry Bergonzi, Mike Gibbs, and Dave Liebman, and recorded the album Stray Dog (ropeadope.com) as a member of the highly original jazz ensemble Um, led by trombonist Hal Crook and featuring organist John Medeski. His most recent recording Left End, a set of original compositions mixed with collective improvisations, was recently recorded with drummer Jim Black and bassist Tony Scherr. In addition to extensive work in the US, he has led or played on tours of Ireland, Canada, Spain and Germany. Assistant Chair of the Berklee College of Music Guitar Department, Peckham has been a faculty member since 1986, and was integral to the development of Berklee's ear training and musicianship curricula. He organized the college's honorary doctoral tributes to Roy Haynes, Joe Zawinul, Jack DeJohnette and John Scofield, featuring then-Berklee students Kurt Rosenwinkel, Matthew Garrison, Antonio Hart, Abe Laboriel Jr., Melvin Butler and Seamus Blake. He is also a prolific and accomplished writer, recently releasing Modal Voicing Techniques, a best-selling DVD for Berklee Press. A conversation with Bill Milkowski and Rick Peckham about Left End Bill Milkowski: I dug your record a lot. I like twisted stuff. Rick Peckham: Hey...that's great! BM: From the opening tune you immediately get the sense that this will not be a Wes or Grant Green homage. It's a way over the top power trio outing. RP: Yeah, and people wonder if there are overdubs on it. There really aren't. I was using a rig where I had all the chorus and time delay on one side and all the distortion on another side so I could pan back and forth with an Ernie Ball volume pedal. Steve Morse talked about doing that sort of thing years ago. I really wanted a big guitar sound on this recording, no matter what happened. Even if I was just playing a single note or a chord I wanted it to be big. I don't like small guitar sounds. Jazz guitar is pretty famous for having poor tone. The whole conception of tone and using that with jazz vocabulary is what I'm trying to do. Tone is a whole expression in itself and it's a big part of what I loved about my favorite players. BM: I also liked that other CD you were on with that band Um (featuring trombonist Hal Crook, drummer Bob Gullotti, bassist Dave Zinno and keyboardist John Medeski). RP: Oh yeah, Straydog (Rope-a-Dope Records). I was hoping that album would do more than it did, but it still was good. We played at Tonic in New York and the place was totally packed. Medeski effortlessly fills any place he plays. BM: This new trio of yours on Left End features a fabulous rhythm section in bassist Tony Sherr and Jim Black, who is such a musical drummer. RP: Yeah, I love these guys. I used to play with Tony down in Texas when he was at North Texas State. I was there too. And when I came up to teach at Boston, that's where I met Jim. And so, I had never played with the two of them together until we did the record but I had played with them in different groups in each of those towns. BM: When did you go to North Texas? RP: I was down there from '81 to '85...so I was there right as (producer-composer-saxophonist) Bob Belden was getting ready to leave. It was his last year there so I got to see him some. BM: Did you attend Berklee? RP: No, never did. I got hired here in '86 and was hired into the ear training department, then worked in performance studies with Hal Crook and Jim Odgren. Then I got in the guitar department as assistant chair of the guitar department in '92. And I've been there ever since. BM: I'm interested in the fact that you obviously have a lot of schooling in jazz and music and yet you embrace rock music to a huge degree. RP: Yeah... BM: It's got more to do with Billy Gibbons and Neil Young, as you pointed out. RP: Yeah, yeah, which is why I have that tune on the album called 'Gibbons' and the other one called 'Shakey,' which is Neil Young's nickname. BM: ...and the James Gang. RP: Oh yeah! I love Joe Walsh -- James Gang Rides Again and James Gang Live. BM: So there is a part of you that is embracing that rock aesthetic as much as jazz or improvisational music. It seems like you have one foot in one camp and you're looking around in other areas as well. RP: Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. When I first started playing jazz...I don't know how I got the idea but it really seemed like part of playing jazz was that you had to hate rock. And so I sort of bought into that for a while. I bought a guitar and put strings on it that were too heavy to bend and just tried to get into Wes Montgomery and Grant Green. But when it finally came time for me to make a record I didn't want to jump into something that would be just another jazz record, I wanted to get into the difficult work of integrating Paul Kossoff and all the great classic rock guys that I always loved. BM: And of course all those guys from that era were very experimental in their own right...rock today behind devoid of that whole thing. RP: Right. BM: Adventurous rock music with an open-ended improvisational thing. RP: Yeah, that's what I want to get deeper into. BM: Of course, Scofield and Frisell dip into that hybrid thing when they play. And certainly there are many guitarists who are embracing different aesthetics in their playing. But the Grant Green-Wes Montgomery thing...that's the cliched profile of someone who teaches in the guitar department at Berklee. RP: That's right. BM: That's what you'd expect of someone...so this is totally renegade material. RP: Well, that's the idea. When I'm making a record I'm not trying to document what somebody else has done, I wanna go somewhere different. And I went through a whole period where I was going back and listening to all the music that inspired me in the first place in the '70s -- like Ritchie Blackmore with Deep Purple and Paul Kossoff, who did all the open string tunings with Free on that great album Fire and Water. All of those albums from that era are really great. When I was in high school I would play along with the Stones' Get Yer Ya-Yas Out and Exile on Main Street over and over again, like so many other people did. For a long time I didn't know which one was Keith Richards and which one was Mick Taylor on Exile on Main Street. But man, I can see why Mick was angry that he wasn't getting credit because there was so much that he was doing on that album that was really beautiful. Since then I really got into Mick Taylor and that open G tuning of his. And recently I got that new DVD with him playing with John Mayall. He sounds unbelievable on that! I think it's the best thing he's done since Exile on Main Street. Track by track analysis: 'Left End' -- That was a band that I used to go see in Cleveland, near where I grew up. And this was a band that was signed but they really didn't go anywhere. There was a scene in that Kris Kristofferson-Barbara Streisand movie, A Star Is Born, where they go into a place and somebody has a Left End t-shirt on. That's about as big as they made it. They had a singer who could sing like Robert Plant and a guitarist who was like Jimmy Page and even a bass player who played with his fingers, which was the first time I had ever seen that. So in it's way, this band was kind of an introduction for me to some great players. '353-1001' -- I wrote that for Jim Black. That was his phone number when he was living in Boston. It's a piece in compound meters, which Jim handles beautifully. 'Mr. Medium' -- That's my take on 'Mr. Big' by Paul Kossoff, the Free thing. I loved that band. So here I just tried to improvise the melody and add a bridge. Playing with Tony on this piece was so great because he has such anticipation for what's coming. He has great instincts as a player and he helps create a special band vibe. 'Shakey' -- I was just trying to channel Neil Young here...'Cinnamon Girl,' 'Down By the R Review ...bears the influence of Grant Green along with various schools of rock guitar without a trace of incongruity. -- Paul Donnelly, ejazznews.com, May 28, 2004An inventive, probing player... -- Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times, 4/22/04Peckham is a monster guitarist, with a full arsenal at his disposal. -- Jim Trageser, turbula.net, Spring 2004Peckham's concise composing serves an array of sonic textures and unexpected twists, with a healthy dose of attitude and wit. -- Sean Fitzell, All About Jazz New York, July, 2004Peckham's music is a joyful, boisterous union of rock, er, 'primitivism' and seat-of-the-pants improv. -- Peter Marsh, BBC website, July, 2004biting riffs that take their cue from the solid roots of rock, but with intricate technique and complex harmonies ... -- NPR website, October 24, 2004 About the Artist A charter member of the notorious Boston-based improvising unit, Um, with trombonist and fellow Berklee educator Hal Crook, drummer Bob Gullotti, bassist Dave Zinno and occasional guest keyboardist John Medeski, Peckham appears on their debut CD, Straydog (Rope-a-Dope Records). He has also toured and recorded as a member of Irish bassist-composer Ronan Guilfoye’s cross-cultural Lingua Franca band, and is featured on recordings by Human Feel, The George Garzone Quartet, and others. Peckham attended North Texas University and is currently Assistant Chair of the Guitar Department at Berklee College of Music. See more