In Part 2 of this comprehensive interview, Andrew York shares thoughts about his diverse musical background, teaching and his future ambitions as a composer and guitar soloist. We also discuss favorite books and authors, history and other non-musical endeavors and interests, but ultimately return to the subject of music. The interview ends with Andrew's insightful comments about the guitar quartet genre and life on the road with the LAGQ. Andrew's innate intelligence and thirst for knowledge is apparent throughout; it's going to be interesting to see where his path takes him next!

Stephen Rekas
Guitar Sessions Editor

You mentioned playing the flute and the lute. Were there any other instruments in your life?
After I majored in flute for a year I minored in flute, piano and upright bass with guitar as my major. But I don't really play those instruments anymore. Whatever chops I might have had with those instruments, which wasn't that much to begin with, are pretty much utterly gone. I couldn't keep up with it. It was great at the time. It was wonderful because I could learn an instrument rather quickly and surprise people, but I didn't want to keep going. There wasn't enough time in the world if was trying to play serious jazz, I was really studying bebop hard, studying classical the whole time, and also writing...but I also practiced piano and flute...There are choices you have to make, but I enjoyed playing piano for a semester and playing two-part inventions. It was fun! It was a great thing to do when you're young and experimenting.

Have you ever experienced a creative dry spell, and if so- how did you overcome it?
Sure. There were such periods; it's part of being undisciplined too. I go long periods when I don't write at all. In fact, more often I'm not writing although I'm often sketching. Really putting all the ideas together and finishing a piece- it's not a regular thing. I even go through really long periods when I don't play guitar. Weeks sometimes when I don't touch a guitar, though I'm trying not to allow that to happen and I want to keep the guitar under my fingers more these days.

In my own unwilled absences from playing the guitar I find the technique generally holds on but the repertoire slips away.
At this point my chops go down a little bit when I don't play, but I can get them back pretty quick, in a week or something like that if I have a concert. It's the endurance that can be an issue if I haven't played for a while and have to suddenly start playing a lot every day. That's actually hard! It's not a good thing not to play...

Which of your albums would you recommend to someone buying one of your recordings for the first time?
The four solo CDs I've made are all quite different, so it depends. The most eclectic is Perfect Sky. It came out just after my college days. I still had the electric guitar and the record contained three arrangements on the electric guitar. There was one steel-string version of "Sunburst" and the rest were very new works I had written for nylon-string guitar.

Dénouement is the most focused and crafted, the most symmetrical numerically speaking. All the groupings start with the letter "D"- Dances, Dreamscapes, Delineations, and Dénouement and follow a 3-8-3-8 numerical series- all very thought through and all very pure nylon-string [compositions]. It all just flowed together as a project and I'm proud of that one. There's some fine music on that one that I love.

The third CD Into Dark is all nylon but a little more eclectic again because I did the Bach Cello Suite in C Major and bunch of other pieces go pretty far a-field; like "Marley's Ghost" uses reggae bass, and there's kind of a swing jazz piece called "Freelin'" even though it's on nylon-strings- so stylistically moving around a bit and then Scott Tennant joined me and we recorded "Evening Dance" which I hadn't recorded yet.

Then not long ago for Sony Japan [offered a record project] with the guitarist Dai Kimura who is a real star over there- we work together quite a lot both on stage and on records- Sony asked me to do a disk of my music and Dai played some solos of mine; I played some solos and we did some band tracks with bass and percussion. I arranged some of my tunes that way. Sadly, that record's only available in Japan or here as an import; you could order it.

What's it called?
It's called California Breeze. I think it sounds a lot better in Japanese. You wouldn't name your record that in the States. It was like, "Oh please, we want to call your record "Breeze from California". It's really bad. I thought, "If we have to do this, please call it California Breeze."

Why not "Breeze from Virginia" where you were born and raised?
No really, they pushed the LA thing...a big marketing ploy. Dai and I shot a video in Malibu that was beautiful, all on the beach with the palm trees, the ocean...we're sitting on rocks finger-syncing along to the track. They were going on this "Japan meets California" idea.

Sounds like something you could put up on YouTube.
I think it is on there! I've seen it. You could take a look.

You were recently married!
Yeah!

Is your wife also a musician?
No, she's got a background in acting and theater and she's a voice-over artist. We got married on New Year's Eve, had a great wedding in Savannah, Georgia.

What are your interests besides music, and now family?
Well painting is a big one. I read a lot and I'm interested in some really disparate subjects. I like science quite a bit and read a lot of physics. I also like prehistory- history in general, but I'm really drawn to prehistory, pushing the envelope back and what can be learned by extrapolating from ancient periods as well as from the end of the last Ice Age and how civilization spread. This to me is deeply fascinating.

I'm really into red wine. I'm collecting red wine; I learning that's such a huge world spanning the history of the grape, the flavors... The Monastrell grape is a really interesting grape I'm into right now... I love gardens; I like to be outside in really beautiful areas and taking walks through gardens. This to me is very balancing and necessary.
If you're going to be in the Barcelona area you should visit the Santa Clotilde Gardens near Blanes on the Mediterranean Coast about an hour north of Barcelona. That is an amazing place with Mediterranean plants, of course.

How has your family affected your music? You've already spoken of the role they played in your early years, but how's it going now?
They are extremely proud that I've made a go of it. Things have gone well. They're delighted when they hear me on the radio. They always call me up and they're so excited, still. I remember when I was applying to colleges in high school both my mom and dad talked to me ...

I did a lot of work in science when I was young and it was a choice of going into science or music. I remember one summer between fifth and sixth grade I went to a summer school for gifted science students. We were doing college-level math and stuff like that by age 10 or 11. It's something I had an affinity for and I'm still deeply into it. Even now, I try to read about the cutting edge of what physics is doing. To me this is just really interesting and I always want to know more about it. So it was a choice, but I was compelled to go into music. I loved it so much and it was such a personal thing that I always felt confident that things would work out.

...My parents sat me down and said, "Look, you know it's hard to make a living in music. We just want you to think about this. If you go into science or medicine it's just going to be an easier way to make a living, but whatever you do- it's your choice and we will support you," which was really cool.

I said, "I'm going to think about it a little bit," and so I did and it was clear that I had known all along, "I'm going to do music," and they both said, "Ok, great; we're behind you 100%. Go do it!" There was no pressure, they were just completely supportive, and so I was really lucky that way. I've never had to prove myself to them. They were just totally into it, and very happy when I proved that I could make some money in music.

So there's a house that "Sunburst" built.
Yeah!

That's cool. That's very nice.

What's on your reading list recently? Can you mention some specific titles?
Hmmm. Right now, as you might expect I'm reading some easy Spanish readers, trying to get my Spanish chops moving 'cause May is getting kind of close and I want to be somewhat proficient- so I'm doing a bit of reading in Spanish. [In May, Andrew will be teaching a master class in Spain.]

I can tell you I am starting up Herodotus [The Father of History] again, the [nine-volume] histories; I wanted to get back into that. It's concerned with prehistory, his conversations with the ancient Egyptian priests and things like that- pretty fascinating stuff. It gives you a glimpse of the world at that time.

A great book I've read once and I'm reading snippets of it again, fairly cutting edge for the layperson...it's pretty easy to read and not really mathematical though the concepts do take some re-reading...It's by Brian Greene. He's a physicist who wrote The Elegant Universe. He's really well known. You can find his stuff at airports. He's at that level of availability and accessibility. The Fabric of the Cosmos is really great.

I'm also reading a book that I just got at the used bookstore. It's called Painting with Acrylics- trying to get some ideas. I'm really enjoying that. What else? I'm reading a book called Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek. I'm about an eighth of the way in, seeing what this guy's about and if I want to finish it- fairly interesting so far. So that's sort of my bedside table at the moment!

I've been enjoying a book called Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier, the same author who wrote Cold Mountain.
Oh! I read Cold Mountain. I like that book!

I liked it a lot. I loved the depth of Frazier's research and then his ability to establish supposedly a fictional tale within it.
Cold Mountain made a big impact on me. Of course, I knew that part of the country well, growing up there. The characters really did come to life. I can still call up images of the book, which is getting rare as I get older. I've read so much that a lot of books slip away after I read them, but that one did have some images that went right to long-term memory. So what's the name of it, Thirteen Moons?

Yeah, Thirteen Moons is the new one. It's concerned with the pre-Civil War/Post-Revolutionary era, and again Frazier does the same depth of research. It's astounding how much Frazier knows about history, botany, animal behavior. It's just phenomenal.
I love guys like that. I used to really enjoy reading Michener and James Clavell. I read Shogun several times in a row. It just killed me. It was such a great adventure; it gave me a sense of the Japanese culture before I'd even been there. It was so familiar that when I finally went there Shogun had prepared me in a great way. I even learned some rudimentary Japanese from the book. As the character the character Blackthorn learned the language, you learned it too as you read the book. I love stuff like that- historical fiction and well-written adventures that take place in the past or another culture.

Here's another great one- Have you read Pillars of the Earth?
No.

I can't think of the author's name; he's another author who's airport worthy in terms of availability of his books.
Airport worthy? I've heard of "airport art" but only in a negative context.
I spend so much time in airports, sometimes I need a book. I think I've read everything Stephen King has published- on airplanes- because I just needed something to read.

Pillars of the Earth is historical fiction that centers around the building of cathedrals, the technology involved. He has great characters. The author's name is Tim Follett. I'd recommend that one to you too; you might really like it.

We've kind of veered away from music here, but it's been fun. Thank you. Do you teach privately?
No, I don't teach. It's been a while now. Once in a while I would give a lesson in my home but I've been pretty nomadic and hard to reach. I lived east of LA; I spent a year living mostly in Germany, now I'm back in LA. It's not the kind of situation where I was easy to find.

But now you do occasional master classes like this one coming up in Spain.
I'm doing quite a bit of teaching the first half of this year. I mentioned Spain but I'm also doing a full week's residency in Virginia in high schools that have guitar departments. They have an artist in residence program in Loudoun County. To me this is important and great; the cool thing is that often I'm teaching my music or helping people who want to learn more about interpretation of my stuff and I think this is very valuable.

How do you go about teaching interpretation in general? Obviously you have some concise suggestions about your own music, but what about the standard repertoire?
I don't have a ready answer for that. It depends on so many things- the level of the student's playing, what their intuitive abilities are in understanding music. Of course, there's the technical level which will impinge on how much they can take in. So it's case by case. Someone who is advanced or sensitive can begin to work on subtle things. There will be amateurs that don't have a refined musical sensibility or musical ability and there's nothing wrong with that, but then you're painting in much broader strokes trying to get them to understand fairly large concepts rather than the fine ones, trying to talk about things to awaken whatever ability they've got to the degree they're capable. I certainly have no system.

Teaching is not a direction I've wanted to go, although I've taught a lot in the past. I once taught a beginning guitar class for a year and enjoyed it because people came with nothing and they would end the semester reading some music, able to play a little classical technique and read melodies; they knew some chords, and they could do some songs. This is from scratch so I loved it. I don't do it anymore but that was the kind of teaching I liked, giving people some skills that were exponentially greater than what they came in with- because they came in with nothing.

Right now I don't really want to teach the traditional repertoire, if I have a choice. When people hire me for concerts and a master class I try to make clear to them that, "You don't want me so much to be teaching the traditional repertoire." For the same reasons I mentioned before, there are so many people who devote themselves to this and do it so well. There are more and more young players coming out every year with greater and greater technique as the pedagogy improves, not necessarily greater understanding- a lot of these are young kids that have great chops but not really the wherewithal to use them properly.

The point is that there are just so many players out there. This is their life and what they do. I don't want to be [like them]...I don't even consider myself a classical guitarist. I'm obviously classically trained and the music I write is complex like classical music, but the definition gets to be a little problematic. If classical guitarist means that your trio has now been played for a hundred years and you predominantly wrote this stuff. No, I really don't want to be that!

Actually that's a very stale and scary thing to me. I keep mentioning David Russell because I just love what he does. He's got a huge repertoire. He's always adding new pieces. He's not static. And that to me is a wonderful way to be a classical artist. He's constantly moving an evolving and playing new music, old music; it's always moving. I love it that he's doing that but that's not my path.

That's a really insightful comment. I shouldn't really ask, "What are your suggestions for developing a repertoire?" because you're standing completely apart.
The artists that I admire, my heroes if you will- are Miles Davis, Picasso, and Paul Klee; they stood alone, unique in themselves. This is more what I'm about- trying to create something new and just go my own direction.

It sounds as if your heroes haven't changed since you were quite young, but just expanded in diversity.
That hasn't changed. As I'm turned on to more artists I might find others I resonate with deeply too, but even when I was a kid loving pop music at 8 or 9 years old- listening to the Beatles I would be blown away by this great rock and roll, but then I'd take that off the turntable and put on Beethoven's 7th and just be flipped out. Then my uncle would bring over with some records of "The Star-Spangled Banner" or Sousa marches or whatever and I'd put those on ... Music was incredible! I almost didn't care what it was as long as it was good and it grabbed me.

Was there a time when you played rock and roll?
Oh yeah! I started playing in bars when I was maybe 14 or 15. I played blues bass. I did that until I discovered jazz when I was 16 or 17. Then I just wanted to play bebop and fusion. I had a band and we would play for very little money as is usually the case with jazz groups. Sometimes we would make $7.00 each! But at the time my expenses were so low I didn't care. I was having a great time playing jazz in smoky bars. What a cool thing that was!

I want to talk a little bit about gear before we conclude. What are your preferred guitar strings, recording mics and instruments?
Right now I use D'Addario strings and have for a long time. I had an endorsement with them and think I still do even though I left the quartet. I love their strings. They're great. I also use Savarez "Alliance" trebles at times. For some of my guitars, those are really nice, but I use D'Addario basses for sure.

The guitars I play are by David Daily. I have a bunch of his. He is a close personal friend and we worked together on the design of some instruments; I find his instruments can be very musical and suit my needs in terms of a sound palette. They're very powerful yet quite sensitive and complex and some of them record really well too; I've been playing Dailys for a long time.

Where is he located?
Sparks, Nevada.

Any preference on recording mics?
Right now I have a couple in my house that I'm enjoying very much. They're by Marshall Electronics and they're large diaphragm tube mics, model number V-69 Mogami edition. They're tube mics so they're not as quiet [as condensers]; there's going to be a little bit of noise, but they're very warm and I'm finding that with some of the sounds I'm getting at home just recording with ProTools - I don't need to go to a studio. Sometimes I don't even have to EQ it, they just sound so good and so balanced. A lot of the things I've recorded recently have been with these mics, like the Fingerstyle Guitar column. I always record whatever I'm using.

Now you have an electric classic guitar model too, right?
I do have a guitar made by Frank Crocker in Germany. His guitars are real instruments, played by Ralph Towner and a lot of Brazilian cats. I have the first one he made. I've known him for a long time. He was showing me his design and I had him make me one. There were some problems with his first attempt so he fixed it up for me. It looks really cool and has a real classical neck so it feels like your playing a classical guitar but it has no body. It depends on what kind of needs you have. For certain kinds of uses it would be great! It sounds very electric; it's that kind of sound but you can actually gig with this thing.

When I need to play amplified, David outfitted one of my Dailys with a pickup system called the Trance Audio Amulet pickup. It's a little more complex. It's not a saddle piezo setup. It's under the top with three piezos in three different orientations say x, y and z; each one picks up a certain movement of the top in that dimension, so you have three dimensions instead of just one like a saddle pickup. Consequently; even though it still has that piezo sound you can't escape-it's inherent to that system, but it's somehow much more natural. What I do is use the Trance Amulet pickup in combination with a mic out front and balance that. This setup gives me the ability to get quite loud and still control the quality of it. It's not perfect. Nylons are really hard to amplify, much harder than steel strings.

Do you self manage?
Right now- yeah. Since I left the quartet I think I'm probably going to seek management if I can find the right chemistry. It's got to be someone [who understands that] I don't want to be on the road all the time. I've been there, done that, but I want to do some nice concerts. I'm self-booking; I'm getting a fair amount of work from people contacting me through my website, but I don't like self-promoting so I would rather have someone take care of this for me. I do have an agent in Japan, the same guy who brings over John Williams, David Russell, and Pepe Romero so I go over there periodically, but I don't have an agent for the States.

On your own, is there a certain group or soloist you would like to perform or tour with?
It's a good question. I'm certainly going to be doing more collaboration as well as playing as a soloist. I just did this collaboration with Hindustani slide player Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Sylvain Luc and Brian Gore as well as participating in a documentary DVD [Primal Twang] on the history of the guitar that's going to screen here in LA in April. A bunch of artists had short spots narrated by Dan Crary. The other artists are Eric Johnson, Albert Lee, Doc Watson, Mason Williams ("Classical Gas"), Doyle Dykes and a lot of other heavyweights. That was a really fun collaboration. I'm looking for really interesting projects and a lot of those will involve playing with other musicians, not just guitar players I hope.

That's my feeling too. I must admit I'm not a huge fan of guitar quartets.
It's a lot of guitar isn't it!

It's the same voice x 4 except for John's low end [with a 7-string guitar].
That's always a problem. We went to great lengths to try to make it interesting and overcome that severe limitation of four guitars, no sustain the whole thing. I'm really proud of the way we did it. We got all of those great textures but I'm with you there man, that's a whole lot of guitar!

I once asked my teacher Eduardo Sainz de la Maza if he would consider writing for a guitar quartet and he said, "No, it doesn't interest me at all. I'd rather write for a string quartet or a quartet of recorders."
Yeah, I can appreciate that. Most guitar quartets play so much like guitarists. We went kind of wild in the sense that we actually practiced as percussionists. I started to add percussive elements to a lot of the pieces and it was a little bit raw at first. Because I had spent time playing percussion and I showed them paradidles and things to practice to get the time right as well as the tone. They were all such great musicians that in short order we could actually play percussion on the guitars and believeably!

Other things like style- we had many conversations about groove, because I had a jazz and pop background which was a real plus when we were trying to do things that had a groove. A lot of classical players groove very poorly. They didn't have that experience so there's something stilted and funny when they try to do something that requires it. I'd write these pieces that required this kind of groove simulating... like there's no band, so you have to fill all the roles. And we'd work hard on that before the guys would really get it, and it took time, and sometimes they would play things in kind of a Spanish way, and I'd say, "Think of it this way- this is not Spanish at all!"

What are some of your most memorable experiences with the LAGQ?
Ah! There were a whole lot of them!

There must be so many you could cite!
In sixteen years of touring together in maybe 30 countries ... It's almost worthy of writing a book. Someday the four of us should just sit down and reminisce and have somebody write it all down. It was just kind of Life on the Road is what it was, considering some of the simplest things could be really hard or really pleasant. There were all kinds of things that happened.

Did the quartet's concerts always end with a standing ovation?
No, of course not, but as the years went by- at least the last few years- it seemed like the chemistry between us had reached this point where there was a synergistic effect greater than the sum of its parts and people seemed to respond to that- and typically the response was really positive and enthusiastic and it was great... it was really great.