My Common Tones with Alan Licht: A Personal Essay
A few weeks ago, I read the announcement that the guitarist and writer Alan Licht is releasing a solo album on VDSQ this fall, titled Havens. My excitement nearly took me out of my chair, as it will be one of his most significant solo outings since 2015’s Currents (also on VDSQ). However, that explanation alone doesn’t seem to cover my thrill over Licht’s upcoming release. I realized that in the past few years, Licht has been a significant influence on me as a musician and writer, a guidepost as I’ve began exploring guitar improvisation and interviewing artists. Havens will be one of his first releases I can experience as an admirer of his work. Reading an interview Licht gave with Talkhouse upon the publication of his 2021 book, Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995-2020, a quote from Licht about interviewing struck me: “Before meeting [your subject], you don’t want to just be a fan. You want to engage with them because you have something in common with them.” Today’s blog post will be a personal essay, a small foray into my common tones with Alan Licht and a reflection on the power of feeling kinship with someone’s artistic output and philosophy.
Growing up, I took lessons in classical guitar for seven years, learning elements of fingerpicking, craving the dissonances of Leo Brouwer etudes, and arriving at lessons with nails that were too long on a regular basis. Only in the past five years or so have I been introduced to a whole world of artists who write instrumental compositions and improvise on acoustic guitar while drawing upon folk, blues, and the avant-garde. Guitarists such as Yasmin Williams, Matthew J. Rolin, and Alan Licht were a handful of the people who opened that door for me, ushering me into a realm that felt distinctly tied to my past but pulling me in a new direction.
I stumbled into the music of Alan Licht a few years ago, completely unaware of his legacy within underground music, and equally unaware that he was also a writer. Sifting through our new arrivals at the shop, hoping to stumble upon a new staff pick to choose that week, I pulled up Licht’s solo acoustic album, Currents, intrigued by its placid, tropical cover. I was immediately swept away by his acoustic guitar excursions, intrigued by the interplay between melodies, the thick textures summoned out of one guitar. I meandered around my neighborhood listening to “Seven’s Song,” admiring architecture and basking in the sun. “Currents” accompanied me as I was hours-deep writing a piece and in desperate need of focus. As albums tend to do, Currents intertwined with my daily life at the time.
Licht is maybe best known for his contributions to minimalism, both as a historian and a musician. He listened to classical music when he was very young, before branching out into 70s mainstream rock, and then delving further into the underground with Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma, and Hüsker Dü. The record Licht often cites as ultimately changing him was Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, a triumph of minimalism that was beloved by those such as David Bowie and Brian Eno. He told Perfect Sound Forever, “It was like you could tell he was doing some of the stuff that you could hear in rock music like the Velvet Underground with one obstinate figure repeating with changing over it and the steady pulse.” Licht also described how he listened to minimalist music at extremely loud levels, louder than classical music, louder than rock. I believe anyone who loves minimalist music can relate to the impulse to channel its rhythms, repetition, and drones so searingly into your headphones that all else is obliterated, your whole body subsumed by the sounds.
I’m unsure if the classical to mainstream rock to underground music pipeline is incredibly common amongst those with a penchant for underground music, but it certainly resonated with me. I find there is something healing about underground rock and minimalist music, a place where splinters of my musical past can find a common ground. Like Licht said above, you can hear what the Velvet Underground was doing in Steve Reich, and you can hear what Steve Reich was doing in Stereolab and Makaya McCraven, and on and on in perpetuity. Immersed in classical music during childhood, I think there was a time where I wanted to swing the pendulum, to listen to something completely different, with my sights set on The Beatles, Ramones, Blondie, Nirvana. But what happens when the pendulum wants to rest, to hang still in the middle, finally at peace? In that place is where people find the cross-pollination in artists such as Philip Glass, Sonic Youth, and Glenn Branca, where musical experimentation is as highly venerated as a pop hook.
While reading Licht’s interviews (where he is the subject), his discussions of improvisation specifically drew me in. He has mentioned how taking guitar lessons as a child caused him to approach the guitar differently, maybe more unorthodox, than his peers who were self-taught. In my experience, I view this phenomenon as an impulse to deconstruct what I know, to tune the guitar differently so I can’t rely on my existing knowledge of the fretboard, to strike the guitar with objects besides a pick to see what timbres lie undiscovered, to view the instrument as not a guitar, but simply an emitter of sound that can be transformed.
He goes on to tell Perfect Sound Forever that, “‘Mistakes’ or unplanned moves are the basis for any kind of improvisation. You have to see what happens and where it takes you.” The ability to make mistakes, or for mistakes to be reframed as part of a process, is a large part of what has drawn me into improvisation. Having spent years grappling with the rigidity and perfectionism of most Western classical performance, I recently have come to crave improvising because mistakes are often not mistakes, but rather organic fragmentations in the performance, during which control can be relinquished to allow the music to guide you towards your next move.
Licht also views writing and interviewing in a similar way to improvisation, his perspective merging two seemingly separate practices into one. In that interview with Talkhouse, Licht described writing and interviewing as, “I feel like when you come up with the perfect way to phrase something, it’s the same as coming up with the perfect phrase in music….An interview is partially improvised because you go to it prepared with a list of questions or topics to cover, but you don’t know exactly what you or the other person are going to say.” The way he describes these processes perfectly captures how musical and writing methods can be incredibly similar, and manifest the same type of creative fulfillment for someone who does both.
When I began this blog, it ushered in some of my first experiences interviewing artists. Licht’s interview style, as found in Common Tones, was particularly influential. I felt compelled to read his interviews in a way I didn’t experience with others. When I read his interviews, I didn’t want to ignore the bolded or italicized text — or in other words, Licht’s contributions to the conversation. I wasn’t there just to hear the thoughts of the interview subject, I wanted to understand what they were saying to each other.
Turns out, the phrase “common tones” itself, is connected to this idea. Derived from the title of a John Adams piece, Licht said to Colpitts, “As I see it, I have something in common with all these people and they all seem to have something in common with each other, even if they don’t realize it.” This concept not only relates back to my earlier discussion of how underground music participants and their work are all in conversation with each other, but also provides the basis for what feels like Licht’s thesis statement on interviewing.
Looking at the cover of Common Tones, this philosophy is perfectly conveyed in design. A couple panels are depicted, each housing two speaking bubbles. Two people are talking, and they are sharing their common tones. To take Licht’s philosophy further, common tones describe how it feels to be engaged in creative work, period, both as a creator and receiver. Finding that your views on creativity and art are aligned with those you admire makes you feel like you’re part of a broader, creative whole. And in a society that is becomingly increasingly isolated and fractured, this communion with art and those who make it is essential.
– Hannah Blanchette
July 19, 2024 | Blog