| Guitarist, Producer and Songwriter; Danny Kortchmar |
| Written by Bridget Sprouls | |||
| Tuesday, 13 September 2011 00:45 | |||
 What common ingredient do certain records of James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Ringo Starr, Don Henley, Neil Young and many others too numerous to list here all share? The answer is Danny Kortchmar, a seasoned session guitarist, producer, songwriter and a household name in the music industry. Kortchmar is credited on an assorted 420 albums to date, which, funnily enough, includes the soundtrack to Cheech & Chong: Up in Smoke. Timessquare.com was given an exclusive interview with the music pro, who now lives and plays in NYC. TS: Well, why do you do what you do? Did you always want to be a professional musician? Daniel Kortchmar: Yea, from the time I was a teenager. I absolutely adored music, so that's how I knew what I wanted to do. Elvis and Chuck Berry were the inspirations for most people from that period, but the real thing that kicked it in for me was The Beatles, who hit just before I graduated high school. And when they hit, I realized what I wanted to do; and I wanted to be in a band. The Beatles, in my opinion, were kind of an r&b band when they started out. I loved the rhythm and blues and soul music, and when I saw The Beatles doing it with guitar, white guys doing it with guitar, it became apparent to me, the direction I wanted to go in. Then I got to meet them all and play music with them all, And, Yes, I was simply over the moon to meet those guys, and they were all great people. TS: You spent a lot of time playing and writing music in LA with people like Carol King, Linda Rondstat, and Don Henley. Now you're back East again. Could you talk about the differences between being a session musician in New York versus LA? Kortchmar: In the seventies the styles were very different, and in New York there's an awful lot of soul and rhythm & blues. LA has it too, but that's kind of our foot in New York; that's what New York has. My favorite guitar players were Eric Gale and Cornell Dupree. They played on a lot of rhythm & blues and soul sessions, and I just really looked up to both those guys. They were in New York and I was in LA. In LA I got to do a lot of singer-songwriter stuff, which became a wonderful thing for myself and several other guys just starting off that I played music with - like Ross Copland, James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne. So, uh, that was our scene out there with the singer-songwriter kind of thing, which was great, and we loved that. But New York was more of a, I don't know, I just felt like they were doing more r&b and soul records, with Aretha Franklin, stuff like that; so I think that was the big difference. But you know it's funny - I envied them being able to play on those records, and they envied us because we were doing really well. Mutual envy is a sign of... TS: Ignorance? Kortchmar: Yea, that's it. TS: And how many guitars do you have? Kortchmar: Ha! The changing number... twenty, I would say. The ones I play a lot, those number just six or seven. That's probably way less than a lot of guys have but probably more than some. But I know guys with hundred and hundreds of guitars... TS: What's the most nervous you've ever been while playing? Kortchmar: That's a good question. I'd have to think about that. I didn't really get nervous playing with James and Carole, but I guess the most nervous I ever got was playing was when I had my own little band. I had put out a solo album and was opening for Linda Ronstadt on tour and also playing in her set back in 1979 or 80. And that was pretty terrifying. I certainly wasn't scared of playing with Ronstadt's band, but I was scared of doing my own stuff. I had never done that or at least not for so big an audience. TS: Where do you think Rock music is headed? Kortchmar: Right now, music is a niche situation. In other words, it's not like there's a top forty type thing like when I was growing up. It's all over the place. There's alternative rock and hip hop and there's dance music; so it's all these kinds of niches. And where do I think it's going? I think it's going to be more and more independent. It's going to be less based on the big record companies and more based on bands putting out their own music, finding their own way. And stylistically, where is it going - all over the map. Young bands starting up draw from every resource, from everything that's happened before them. For instance, there's a wonderful band I think from LA called Dawes, D-A-W-E-S, terrific band, and they sound very much like Jackson Browne's early records. And then there are other bands that sound very modern, and you don't hear so many traces of that which came before. People are trying all kinds of things. For Instance, the group Beirut from Brooklyn, they don't sound like anybody. And then there's The Black Keys and they definitely have an r&b, a bad ass r&b sound, but very stripped down. TS: I've read that you are putting together an album of all the songs that you've written but that up until now were performed by others. How's that coming? Kortchmar: Yea, that's correct. That's what I do in my shows. We're playing Iridium on the 14th, and in that band we do a bunch of my tunes that I wrote and others have recorded. A few of those songs include "Dirty Laundry," "Sunset Grill," and "New York Minute"; for others, check out The Danny Kortchmar Band at The Iridium Jazz Club on September 14th. For more articles like Guitarist, Producer and Songwriter; Danny Kortchmar, please visit the Music Interviews Section of TimesSquare.com
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