iNTERViEWED
BY BRiAN LUSH
It’s all too easy to grow cynical when thinking about the
music industry. You always hear about it being in jeopardy or that it
neglects
the needs of its artists and about the difficulty in making a decent
living at
it. Let’s face it, if it wasn’t about pushing units, it wouldn’t be a
business.
The standard for success involves staying within the lines of a
specific genre
and appealing to a demographic. With that being said, ‘MANUEL IS BACK
WITH
FRIENDS’
- the
fifth album by
singer-songwriter MANUEL BRUCE - does neither of those things but what
it does
do is celebrate the one thing that gets overlooked in the business of
music –
the music. ‘MANUEL…’ is a rollercoaster ride through the music of North
and
South America
with a heavy emphasis on the latter. BRUCE’s
(pronounced BROO-SAY) latinophilia has been the focus of much of his
work up to
this point with a heavy concentration on Andean traditional music but
his
latest offering expands his exotic musical palette into the realm of
blues,
roots and fifties pop with some rather stimulating company such as
longtime
guitarist ALEJANDRO DIAZ, saxophonist JIM ABBEY, guitarist LINDY
RAINES, ROBERT
CROUCH and blues pianist PROFESSOR PAUL.
ROCKWIRED
spoke with singer-songwriter MANUEL BRUCE over the
phone as he was on “a practically empty” golf course. Here is how it
went.
‘MANUEL
IS BACK WITH
FRIENDS’ is a great listen! Now that all of the work that has gone into
it is
behind you, how do you feel about the finished work?
You know, anything could be better but I’m very happy with
what came together. It was a very collaborative effort. A lot of people
that I
had played with over the years pitched in and helped me put it
together. The
bulk of the recording is myself and my guitar player and a
percussionist that
we work with pretty regularly. There are actually about six or seven
people
there that contributed to this thing greatly. I was pretty much the
cheerleader
as much as anything. I obviously contributed a lot to the album and
It’s my
first time stepping up as the lead guy and it was fun. I’ve played with
some
pretty damn good musicians in my day and it’s kind of fun to shoulder
the whole
responsibility of seeing the album through from start to finish. It’s
been a
real pleasure for me. I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope that people
like it.
It’s hard for me to know what the in-thing is right now. In making this
album
we wanted to do our own thing and hope that other people will like it.
It sounds like it.
The album is quite varied in terms of sound.
One reviewer said it sounded like I had attention deficit
disorder.
‘MANUEL IS BACK WITH
FRIENDS’ is your fifth album. What do you think is different this time
around from
previous releases?
The first four albums were a very mixed bag but the first
two were straight Andean music from South
America.
I played with a group for fifteen years that played nothing but
Peruvian/Andean
music. We only sang in Spanish and we placed all of the typical
instruments
from Peru
and Bolivia
and
that band kind of moved out of town on me. One member of the band
actually
remained. Because there were only two of us we really couldn’t do the
full
Andean band thing so we started doing more eclectic Latin music from Brazil and Puerto Rico
and we started dabbling in playing fifties and sixties styled rock n
roll and
whatever else we could do to get gigs. We did that for about five years
and
then that guy moved out of town (Fairbanks, Alaska) and so
right about that
same time, I hooked up with my current guitar player who is an absolute
genius
guitar player and musical know-it-all. We started collaborating and we
just
found ourselves writing music together and recording and we were
precisely on
the right wavelength. I think the most exciting thing about this album
is that
I had found the guy that is so musically inspiring that it forces me up
in an
upper bracket and shifts me into high gear. I really think that we are
going to
start putting out some wonderful music. I think we’ve done pretty well
on this
album but I think this is just the start for us. I think we’re ready to
move
onto bigger and better stuff. I can’t say enough about my guitarist.
His name
is ALEJANDRO DIAZ and he’s a Mexican guitarist who was very successful
in Mexico
before he moved to the United States.
He’s been here for about twenty years and he has an encyclopedic
knowledge of
music and a repertoire that just goes on forever. If you listen very
closely to
the guitar work on this CD you’ll hear what I’m talking about.
How did music begin
for you?
It’s an interesting story because I was a musician in high
school and even a little bit in college but what really got me going as
a
musician was going down to South America with another buddy of mine who
was a
musician and we busked our way around the street corners of South
America. I
played with him for about four or five months in South America. Eventually, he
went back to San Francisco
and I just loved South America
so much that I ended up staying for about two and a half years. During
that
time, I realized that I wanted to play music and I also fell in love
with Latin
music in general – particularly Bolivian music. The musicians in South America aren’t isolated.
They listen to music from
all over South America so they infected me with an appreciation for all
of the
great music of Latin America
in general. It
was kind of like being a white boy lost in the blues. Instead I was a
white boy
getting lost in Latin music. I’ve
never
regretted it. People look at me and I’m just a plain old white boy and
they
have no idea that I speak fluent Spanish, I sing without an accent in
Spanish
and I have composed about half a dozen tunes in Spanish. It’s a part of
my life
and I really love it. I also like a lot of other stuff. I like a lot of
fifties
and sixties rock n roll and Bossa Nova. I really like Tango. That
probably
doesn’t work all that well in the rock n roll scene. Actually one of
the songs
on the album was originally composed as a tango. When it was recorded,
the guys
in my band decided that it didn’t quite fit in with the
Peruvian/Bolivian mode
so they converted it into a Taquirari which is a Bolivian tropical
rhythm.
That’s the song ‘LA LECHERA’. It’s a song about a young college student
who falls
in love with his milk maid. The song has a humorous tone. It’s kind of
like ‘HERNANDO’S
HIDEAWAY’ except that it’s in Spanish. I’ve just become fascinated with
all of
the great rhythms of Latin America and when I hooked up with ALEJANDRO,
we
liked a lot of the same rhythms and we’ve just been having a good time
ever
since.
Explain the creative
process to me in terms of songwriting. How does that work?
It’s interesting because in the past, I’ve written quite a
number of songs but my modus operandi is that I get inspired by
something and
words pop into my head and somehow a melody becomes attached to the
words. I’ve
had a number songs that were just stretched out over a long period of
time and
I’ve had songs where the whole thing has formed in one moment. That
‘HOT
CHICKEN SOUP’ came out that way. I’ve now moved into a new era of my
creative
process in that I’m really drawn – as is the guitar player ALEJANDRO –
to music
that has a great melody. It’s not necessarily the most complicated
piece but a
melody that really has some meat and substance to it. I’ve started
writing some
melodies and the track ‘NOSTALGIA’ grew from that. It’s one of the
first
instrumentals that I’ve ever written and ALEJANDRO collaborated with me
on that
song. Now I’ve gone back and I want to redo it because I’ve come up
with lyrics
for it. It’s kind of an interesting progression for me because I’ve
never put too
much thought in to how I’m going to write a song. I’ve made a more
conscious
effort to create an intriguing melody and afterwards coming up with
words to
fit into that melody. I’m really excited about writing this way. I’m
always
carrying a recorder around with me and humming into it. Of course all
of the
humming drives my wife crazy.
You’ve got two covers
on the CD that I recognized. One was 'SLEEPWALK' and the other was SAM
COOKE’S
'YOU SEND ME'. What you made you want to do those songs for this album?
It was an opportunity to do something different.
I’m a harmonica player but I play chromatic
harmonica more so than the more common diatonic harmonica. 'SLEEPWALK'
has always
been a traditional pedal steel slide guitar song. It’s got such a
beautiful
melody but not that many people have done it with a harmonica primarily
because
it’s difficult to play with a regular harmonica. It almost calls for a
chromatic instrument to do it justice. We really had a lot of fun with
it. If
you listen carefully, you’ll also hear a bass harmonica in there too.
I’m
interested in both the chromatic harmonica, the bass harmonica and the
chord
harmonica. Any place that I could use them in a song, I do it.
'SLEEPWALK' is a
great tune. 'YOU SEND ME' was a great excuse to mess around with my
buddies and
play some doo-wop. I think it came out pretty good.
Other than ALEJANDRO
DIAZ, you recorded with a bunch of other friends. Talk about some of
the other
people that you recorded this CD with and what you think each of them
brought
to the table.
It’s a pretty stellar cast actually. There is a guy named
'LINDY RAINES' on there. He is one of two brothers that live in Fairbanks
Alaska
and they are two of the finest blues players that I’ve ever heard and
I’ve
heard some pretty damn good ones. It’s kind of weird because they had
gotten
out of Alaska for
a little bit and they went
ahead and did a blues festival in England
but they never really had a
chance at the fame that they deserve. LINDY has been a friend of mine
for fifteen
years and we play together a lot and I just love playing with him. He
did some
of the vocal harmonies and guitar on ‘YOU SEND ME’. He, the sax player
and I
also did the vocal harmonies for I FEEL SO GOOD. He’s just a wonderful
musician. Another great guy that’s on the album is guy named ROBERT
COUCH. I
don’t want to put him in a box but he’s been a Nashville
picker for about thirty-five years and he’s basically retired to Tuscon,
Arizona
. I met him and his wife when I was teaching a conversational Spanish
course in
a town called GREEN VALLEY and I kept asking everyone in the class what
they
did for a living and he said he was a musician, and I kind of went ‘Oh
really!’
in Spanish. He invited me over to his house. And the next thing you
know we
were recording together. We have also become really, really good
friends. He
and his wife came up to Alaska
and spent ten
days up their touring Alaska
and doing some gigs up there. I took him to this studio in Fairbanks
and we recorded this song ‘MOOSE
TRAX’ which I think is a killer instrumental number. The song was his
and it
was written for his band but we took it and rearranged it a little.
It’s kind
of a dueling harmonica, guitar number which I think is really fun. He’s
had
quite a number of hits over the years. He just sold a song to someone
in Hollywood
for a movie. I
feel lucky that he’s become my friend and collaborator. We’re probably
going to
continue to do a lot of recording together. The saxophone player is a
guy named
JIM ABBEY who is a veteran sax player that worked in the San Diego
area. He used to live up in Fairbanks. He’s
just a peach
of a guy. He comes up to Fairbanks
every once and a while and he, LINDY RAINES and I go out and gig
together. It
worked out that the three of us were in town together at the same time.
I
dragged them all up to the studio and we did work on ‘NOSTALGIA’, and
‘HOT
CHICKEN SOUP’. He sings the lead on ‘YOU SEND ME’. He’s just got a
great voice
and I love his sax playing. He’s not a Spring chicken. He’s been around
the block
way more times than most people. He just has this fine wine sound that
he plays
that I think it’s hard to match. The last guy is a guy named PROFESSOR
PAUL who
lives in Tuscon and is a retired surgeon. He went to medical school in Chicago
and he said that
in between exams he would go down to the clubs and play piano and
jammed out
with BIB LITTLE WALTER. He played with his band for four or five years
while he
was going to med school. He did the last song on the album called
‘GOING TO NEW
YORK’ which is a really bluesy tune. He’s a gas! He’s just the craziest
guy in
the world and you can kind of tell that from the song. It’s not the
best song
or the worst song but I think that it really reflects him and I like
the way
that it ends he album.
What
would you like
someone to come away with after they’ve heard this album?
I would want people to think that these guys are talented
and that they had a hell of a lot of fun doing this album. I want
people to
enjoy it. One of the things that I feel is the biggest fault in most
albums
that people do is that they have an agenda and they want to either
prove
themselves as a singer, or as a guitarist or a harmonica player – which
is the
worst of the bunch because they are so enamored with their ability to
play the
harmonica. They want everyone to listen to every pearly little
harmonica not
that they ever played and they lose sight of the fact that it’s
entertainment
that we’re doing. We want people to enjoy the music. We don’t want them
to get
bored and we want to take them someplace that they haven’t been for a
while and
we really want them to enjoy the whole process and not say ‘What did he
do that
for?’ If people are either mildly or greatly entertained, then that’s
great.
MAY 11,
2010
BRiAN
LUSH (FOUNDER,
EDiTOR-iN-CHiEF)
