Mike Stern

From the Heart

Artist Interview by: David Binder

January 2004 - Guitarist Mike Stern has spent over twenty-five years honing a style that blends the harmonic depth of bebop with a rock and roll sensibility. Equal parts Jim Hall and Jimi Hendrix, Stern has made a career out of listening and playing from the heart. “For me jazz does not necessarily mean that it’s better because it’s more complicated,” explains Stern. “I listen more from the heart for whatever gets me; sometimes it can be the simplest diatonic, one-chord thing with a simple melody that just grabs me.”

Early Years, Early Exposures

Stern was exposed to music at an early age. “My mom is a piano player, just for fun,” says Stern, “and she always played different records around the house. And, of course, I was listening to a lot of rock – The Beatles, Hendrix and The Cream. And singing was always an important thing; I was in a choir when I was a kid, it was this cool school that I went to that had a teacher with a lot of energy for music. He liked my voice and encouraged me to join this choir, which actually led to me being in a real opera. I was about nine years old and some guy from the Washington Opera Society in DC came to us and said that it was the best choir in the DC area, and that he needed some kids for the little ragamuffin part in Tosca. So I was actually in an opera – I had about two lines – but when you’re nine years old and are in a real opera, it’s like, ‘wow!’”

Stern was initially self-taught. “I used to learn a lot of rock and blues,” Stern explains. “I used to listen to a lot of blues; Chicago blues, a lot of Albert King, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Charlie Musselwhite, all those cats,; and then a lot of Hendrix, Cream, Jeff Beck and cats like that. I started learning guitar when I was about twelve, and I’d listen to a lot of those records and just play along with them; I was able to pretty much figure them out by ear, and get enough of what I needed.”

Stern remembers hearing his first jazz record. “It was a Miles record, ‘If I Were a Bell,’” Stern says. “So when I finally started really listening to some of the stuff my mom was playing, I took one of those records up to my room and tried to play along; I got lost right away. I forget which record it was, but the keys would change and the melodies were more intricate, and I just got completely lost. But I loved jazz, so I got into it and started studying more, and I learned how to read.”

Early jazz guitar influences included Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass and George Benson. “Benson’s early instrumental records,” Stern says, “I loved all that stuff; he’s an incredible guitarist, totally underrated because people don’t think of him as a guitarist.” Stern also listened to a lot of horn players, including Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley, and pianists including McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans, to try and translate some of their phrasing onto the guitar, in order to get a different vantage point.

Berklee School of Music

Stern enrolled at The Berklee School of Music in Boston. “I was just learning how to read, where the notes were on the guitar,” Stern describes. “I didn’t know shit, but got more and more into it and just stayed with it. It’s as frustrating as learning any kind of language, and just as awkward; I felt like I was never going to get it, so I thought I’d just learn enough to help my blues and rock playing, because I felt like I was in a rut there and needed someplace to go to try and find different ways around the instrument; I just felt like I wanted to learn more and see what that would do.”

“And then I got really into it,” continues Stern. “The more I got into it, the more I loved it, jazz for itself; so it started nurturing itself the more I practiced; the more I got into it the more passionate I became. But I was slow as hell at transcribing. I thought I’d never get it; I couldn’t remember any of those chords for those standards, it just took forever.”

“It was a gradual evolution,” Stern continues, “there were levels I would reach and then I’d get a little glimpse of getting through a tune. The same way you learn a language, you throw yourself into it and learn the logistics. Berklee was great for me because I knew what I wanted. You can get lost too, but if you really know what you want then you take what they do, do all the stuff they say, and add on some things of your own. That helped me a lot, because I was scuffling a while, just trying to get fluent in the language and figure out what it meant for me. I didn’t know what my potential would be, still don’t really, but it was slow and I had to get over a lot of frustration and stubbornly stay with it. A lot of it was about keeping going and keeping faith; if you do this and you do that, it might suck, so you go back and try it again.”

“My main thing was instrumental performance,” concludes Stern, “just trying to learn as much about the guitar as possible. I did a little bit of composition, but I figured I’d be overwhelmed if I did too much, and I’d get into it later. I do wish I’d pushed it a little more now, as I eventually got into writing and, of course, I’m way into it now. I’ve studied with a couple of people since, who have really helped me out with it.”

First Break

When Stern was twenty-two, he got his first big break with Blood, Sweat and Tears. “I was studying with a couple of great people in Boston;” says Stern, “one was Mick Goodrick and the other was Pat Metheny. Pat was eighteen and I was twenty, but he was already teaching there; even back then he sounded so great, so I went to see him and asked if I could study with him. He said, ‘come on over, let’s play something.’ So I went in and we played ‘Autumn Leaves’ or something like that, and I hit all wrong notes and sounded like shit, but he said it sounded great; he really dug something that I had, which was my time feel; I didn’t even know what that was at the time.

“Anyway, after a couple of years he was telling me that I should go out and play,” continues Stern, “that all I really needed was to play more. So he heard about an audition with Blood, Sweat and Tears and said I should go and audition. (Drummer) Bobby Columby called and said they’d like to check me out; that Pat had recommended me. So I went in, figuring this was a good time for me to do the audition and get turned down, to know what that would feel like. I didn’t even want to do it at first, but I did the audition and then they called me back and said I’d gotten the gig, which was a real ass-kicker for me. The musicians were really smoking in that band, it was Bobby at first, and then Roy McCurdy, who played with Cannonball Adderley; a whole bunch of different people.

“So I was with them for about two years,” Stern continues, “and Jaco (Pastorius) played in the band; that was when I first met Jaco, before Weather Report. Bobby had produced Jaco’s first record, and when Ron McClure left the band and they didn’t have anybody they asked Jaco if he’d do it for a couple of months. That band was killing; I was twenty-two years old and I learned a lot; they say there’s no substitute for experience, and that really moved things along for me.

“So after Blood, Sweat and Tears,” Stern concludes, “I went back to Boston and played a lot of bebop gigs with a fantastic sax player, Jerry Bergonzi, and Tiger Okoshi, a much underrated trumpet player. Tiger had a more electric band, more fusion; great music. Bill Frisell used to play with Tiger’s band too; Bill and I knew each other from when I came back to Boston; I knew Sco (John Scofield) a little bit as well, because we’d both been at Berklee around the same time, but in different years. He was a year or two ahead of me.”

Miles

After gigging around Boston, drummer Billy Cobham called Stern and asked him to join his band; Stern stayed with him for nine months. “I had done some gigs with Bill Evans, the horn player,” says Stern, “and he comes up to me and says, ‘you know I’m playing with Miles Davis.’ And I said to him, ‘yeah, sure.’ But then he said, ‘I am, and we’re doing a record now and are going to go out on tour; if it doesn’t work out with the current guitar player I’m going to recommend you.’ Barry Finnerty was the guitarist, a great player; but sometimes things don’t click personally, for whatever reason. So Bill brought Miles down to New York, where I was playing with Billy Cobham, and Miles dug it. He actually called Billy off the bandstand while we were still playing; all of a sudden we look around and there’s no drummer, and we’re still playing. He tells Billy (rasps) ‘tell the guitar player to be at Studio B at Columbia tomorrow at six o’clock.’

“So I showed up and we did this one tune that they never used,” Stern continues, “and then a week later we did a tune which ended up on Man with the Horn. He didn’t have a name for it, but there was this long guitar solo on it and he dug it so much he called the tune ‘Fat Time,’ which was my nickname, that’s what he used to call me; one, because I was weighing in like a mother – I was heavy because I was drinking at the time, I was crazy; since then I had to go the totally sober route, I’ve been dry for twenty years; and two, he also called me Fat Time because he told me I had fat time; once again that time thing.

“I guess if I have anything natural that I bring to the table,” continues Stern, “it’s my time sense. I can cop a groove and it feels like I can play notes in a certain way that feels good. It’s not a metronomic kind of time; it’s more about swinging in a certain way. That’s what I’m told and that’s the thing that draws me to music the most; groove. If it feels good when I’m playing, and it’s grooving, I actually feel better. It was nice to hear that from Miles, with his time, I mean he swings like a mother.

“So, anyway, he names that tune after me,” Stern concludes, “and of course I was thrilled. Then Miles says, ‘Let’s go out on the road.’ And I said, ‘yeah, I’d love to, who’s playing keyboards?’ and he says, ‘no keyboards; just you.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, man!’ He said not to worry, that I’d hear it. That’s what he wanted, not a lot of chords, he wanted a lean sound, which is one of the cool things about guitar; you play minimal voicings, it’s all you need and it opens stuff up in a lot of ways. So I played with him for about three years, with Marcus Miller, Al Foster, Bill Evans and Mino Cinelu, and did two more albums - We Want Miles and Star People.”

Launching a Solo Career

After launching his solo career with his first album as a leader, 1983’s Neesh, Stern played with Steps Ahead and, again, with Miles briefly in 1985. Stern then signed with Atlantic, a relationship that lasted sixteen years and ten albums. While there have been the occasional sidesteps, most notably 1992’s Standards and 1997’s straight-ahead Give and Take, Stern has, for the most part, continued to explore the juncture between jazz and rock. On albums including 1989’s Jigsaw, 1993’s Is What It Is, and 1999’s Play, which saw Stern paired with both Bill Frisell and John Scofield, he developed a signature writing style which included blistering bebop themes coupled with more lyrical tunes and deep grooves. He also co-led a band in the late 80s with the late Bob Berg; played in Mike Brecker’s touring band of the late 80s; and with the reformed Brecker Brothers Band in 1992. Concurrent with his solo career has been an active career as a guest artist that has seen him featured on nearly one hundred albums.

Over the years Stern has collaborated, on his own records, with a veritable who’s who of modern jazz; saxophonists including Mike Brecker, David Sanborn and Kenny Garrett; bassists including Jaco Pastorius, Will Lee, Victor Wooten and Richard Bona; drummers including Peter Erskine, Dennis Chambers and Vinnie Colaiuta. One of the longest-standing relationships he has had is with keyboardist/producer Jim Beard. “He’s just ridiculous,” says Stern, “an amazing player and a great producer; he knows exactly when to let go and when to put in his ideas; he’s got a great balance in that way.”

Unlike Pat Metheny, who aims for a much different experience in his recordings than in live performance, Stern aims to create studio recordings that capture as much of the live vibe as possible. “All my records have been done in three days, with four days of rehearsal,” explains Stern. “Then you produce afterwards, but the idea is you get the interplay and solos live; basically everything is live unless there’s a sound problem or you have to fix something. I like the live thing, because you can feel it with the drummer, an interaction that you can’t fake; that’s what gives it the spark and interesting asymmetrical thing that I love so much, where you can feel the interplay of the moment. I want that but, at the same time, you want a little production and Jim is just great at getting the right balance; it’s never over-produced, but just enough to support the tunes.”

Gradual Evolution versus Giant Leaps

While, for the most part, Stern’s playing and writing has shown a gradual evolution over the course of the past twenty years, with 2001’s Grammy-nominated Voices, he took a giant leap forward including, for the first time, vocal support from a host of singers including Cameroonian multi-instrumentalist Richard Bona. Some of the world beat influences on the album came through osmosis via his wife Leni, another guitarist with a successful but very different musical career. “Leni brings in all kinds of stuff,” Stern says. “She loves to check out all kinds of world music, not just straight-ahead jazz. She wakes up every morning and starts singing with a tamboura, and she’s been studying Indian scales, so that’s what I hear every morning, and it’s bad and beautiful and she’s really into it. And she brought in some CDs by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and man, that’s some soulful shit.”

Seemingly a departure, the inclusion of vocals actually made a lot of sense for Stern who, he says, “sometimes writes tunes where I’m singing the melody while I’m playing away on guitar. The singing part has always been natural for me; to try and get a singing, horn-like sound on guitar, which has a lot of percussive stuff to it. Because there was singing in my formative years it is definitely a part of how I hear music.

“Some of my melodies really sing,” continues Stern, “it’s kind of a folk vibe and I’ve always thought that one day I should work with some cool singer, because that’s the way I conceived it anyway. Usually I would have a horn player be the singer, but finally Richard Bona convinced me; he was very important in supporting me doing this vocal thing, as I’d never done anything like it. He said, ‘you should try it the way that you wrote it, and I’ll sing it and we’ll get a couple of other singers.’ So that’s how I started out with Voices.”

These Times

Following the success of Voices, Stern received a surprise, when Atlantic Records decided to drop its jazz imprint altogether. “I talked with (producer) Ahmet Ertegun,” says Stern, “and he said I was always good for them; I was always in the black; I mean, nobody’s going to get rich on Mike Stern records, but I made enough so they could pay for the recording budget and promotion. Anyway, Ahmet said AOL did it, with the Time Warner merger. AOL was trying to balance their books, and Atlantic was distributed through Warners/Elektra/Asylum; although now Warners is trying to distance themselves from AOL, but at this point Atlantic has no more jazz.

Working with a new label, German-based ESC Records, Mike has just released These Times, which continues along the lines of Voices but, with only half the album featuring vocals, has a stronger emphasis on the instrumental side of Mike’s writing. “I didn’t want to do Voices,” explains Stern, “and say that was my one album with voices, now let me go back to doing my instrumental stuff. I wanted to do at least two records that had some of the same vocal stuff, but there’s a lot of instrumental stuff on this record too. I think this one came out better because it’s got more of the edge I was looking for in the playing.”

These Times sees Stern reunited with bassist Will Lee, who was so instrumental to the grooves on Is What It Is. “He’s just an amazing cat,” says Stern. “I’ve known him for ages, and he’s just an incredible player; a fantastic jazz player, and he doesn’t even know it; but I’ll tell you he swings his ass off and he’s just always there. The notes are cool, I dig the hell out of playing with him; it’s a beautiful concept, he’s an incredible all-around musician; and he’s just a natural, with this terrific positive energy.”

Vocalist Elizabeth Kontomanou plays a key role on the album, as does Richard Bona, both back from the Voices sessions. Bona, in particular, through multi-tracking, creates a huge vocal sound. “It’s kind of worked out in advance,” Stern explains, “I have a basic idea about what parts I want him to sing. For example, on the second tune, ‘Silver Lining,’ there are these closed triads that go up, kind of a Zawinul thing, a choral thing; but Richard also knows how to do this, so I give him a guideline and then he may take eight tracks to do it, and the voices kind of sneak into each other in a weird way. Sometimes when you hear him singing it sounds a little out, and then you put all the tracks together and they just sound so cool.”

Other artists on the album include Béla Fleck on banjo, and fellow Flecktone, bassist Victor Wooten. Vinnie Colaiuta rounds out the rhythm section, with Dennis Chambers on one track, the burning modal workout, “Remember,” which is dedicated to Bob Berg. On saxophones are Kenny Garrett, Bob Malach and Bob Franceschini, who is a regular in Stern’s live act.

Working at His Own Pace

Stern is adamant that his playing and writing evolve at a comfortable pace. “I’m not one of these guys who can just go from project to project and pull it off,” says Stern. “I don’t want to do too many things too quickly; I need to go at my own pace, keep things so I am as happy with them as possible. I also want to make sure someone’s available to really shape something, not just come in for two hours in the studio. I have done one thing recently, called 4 Generations of Miles, that wasn’t my record; it was kind of a cool thing, because it was a live record; we barely rehearsed, we did twenty minutes of rehearsal and went into this club and did it. It was great to play with these guys – Ron Carter, who I love, George Coleman, who’s an incredible player and Jimmy Cobb. It came out very cool, there’s some great energy on it. It’s definitely live and not at all slick, but a lot of people like that. That’s another thing I’d like to do, is try to record a live record.

“There’s no real magic to it,” Stern continues, referring to the musical process, “just persistence and, when you get an inspiration for something, write it down right away. I studied with this one guy, and he said one thing; you just keep going, don’t judge it, because that would only get in the way. That was really valuable advice, in some ways more helpful than anything else. I would get a little too precious, like a lot of people I know, and throw out music without really knowing if it was any good; if it doesn’t work somebody will tell you sooner or later and then you rewrite it; so you need to play it in front of people; that was a big step for me. It takes a lot of courage to play things that you think suck, but more often than not you get a response from people that it’s a cool idea, maybe it just needs a little work.”

The Future

As for the future, Stern has some specific ideas. “The next one I want to do, I’d love to do with Elvin Jones,” says Stern. “I did some recording with him on a Lew Soloff record, and it was really fun; it really hooked up time-wise; he’s the kind of drummer I love, he has such a wide beat, so I’d love to do some stuff with him. Because of the way I write, I don’t know, if I did an album with Elvin, if it would all be with straight-ahead players.

“I’d also like to do more with Béla Fleck,” continues Stern. “Aside from the one track he did on my last album, we just messed around and he’s got some very cool lines; I’m thinking what a fresh thing it would be if we got a drummer, a bass player, me and him. I’d also love to do something with Herbie (Hancock) or Wayne Shorter.”

In the meantime, Mike continues to woodshed. He still transcribes solos, and is currently studying music theory with Charlie Banacos. “I know less now than ever,” says Stern, “because the music gets bigger and you find you’re just a grain of sand; but I love that. If you don’t let it get you down, don’t let it get you overwhelmed, it’s a beautiful, endless thing; you come to realize music is just huge, and if you spent ten lifetimes, you’d never even touch it. So you just keep going and try to find your own voice. I’m always trying to develop my potential, whatever that is, and that’s all anyone can do; it’s a beautiful thing, you can get lost in it; it’s my profession, it’s my hobby; I practice every day, play every day.

“I dig everybody who plays with soul,” concludes Stern, “anybody who gets to me; and that’s a subjective call. If it gets me, and gets my heart, then I’m into it, and I can get inspired by it. That’s how I judge what I dig. It’s not about categories; this kind of music or that kind of music, just does it get your heart. That’s the most important thing, the thing that guides me. And I always thought that was true with Miles too; sometimes we’d be hanging out and he’d be talking about playing with Bird (Charlie Parker), and how exciting that was, and then later he’d be talking about the first time he heard Jimi Hendrix and how much that knocked him out. So he let it go, he didn’t think that just because it didn’t have as many chord changes it wasn’t cool. That’s the way he was; it was about an attitude and a feeling more than anything else; you can tell it was whatever got to him; no matter who said what, he was for it. That’s the main thing I learned from Miles: he played from the heart and he listened from the heart and that’s what guided his decisions musically.”

Mike Stern, an unassuming man who, with a guitar style that is equal parts jazz, equal parts rock and equal parts blues, is truly the sum total of his musical experiences. With a recording career that spans over twenty years, he has influenced a generation of guitarists, even while he continues the search to find new ways to evolve his own knowledge and style. But while technical knowledge and instrumental proficiency measure largely in what he does, it is the emotional impact of music that matters to him the most; music of the soul, music of the heart.

Visit Mike Stern or ESC Records on the web.

Mike will be playing the following dates in the US. For more tour information, visit his website:

With Richard Bona, Dave Weckl and Bob Franceschini:
January 27 – February 1: The Iridium, New York City
February 3, 4: The Regatta Bar, Boston
February 6, 7: Blues Alley, Washington, DC

With Dave Weckl, Bob Franceschini and guest bassist TBA:
March 2, 3: Jazz Alley, Seattle
March 4-7: Yoshi’s, Oakland

Photo by: © Tasic Dragan

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