Joe Pisapia (now of the band Guster) has had a long and colorful musical career. His jazz driven, indie-rock fueled, guitar playing can be found sprinkled through multiple bands including a solo release with Liz Hodder entitled Beautiful Mistakes and on multiple albums with "Joe, Marc's Brother." Today Joe can be found working with the band Guster, a gig he landed after producing one of their albums. It was during a performance with Guster at the Rothbury Music Festival that we were able get this interview with Joe, where he talks about his humble beginnings in Nashville, his songwriting and about being out on the road.
UG: So you guys been out on tour?
Joe Pisapia: We've been in and out, weekend warrior style, kind of like Nashville country style, leaving on Wednesday coming back on Sunday. It's pretty sweet.
So you've been playing a lot of the festivals?
Yeah, this week we played the Summerfest, Taste of Chicago and then this one.
Chicago's supposed to have a pretty excellent music scene, how was the crowd for that show?
It was awesome. The crowd was actually above and beyond because it was raining for most of our set and people still hung tough so it was good.
"There's always still so much more to learn."
You know it's funny, even today it's still the same for me. I still love guitar more than anything. I can remember trying to make my finger do a bar chord, and I couldn't do it; I kept trying and trying and trying, not working. Then you think wait a minute I can name ten people that can do this, everybody I love in rock and roll can do this, and then one day you just do it. But then there's always still so much more to learn. I'm really into the Django Reinhardt stuff so I try to figure out a lot of his stuff. I go on YouTube, jam with people. For me jamming with people is the best thing. Maybe there's some player that you like, even when you’re on the road. We were on the road with this guy named Lucas Reynolds. His band's called Pictures and Sound. When we would have days off, we’d take the guitars in the hotel room and be like, “Wait - what did you do there, how do you do that?” We would just play guitar, cycle through changes, III, vi, ii, V, I, and take turns soloing over it and showing each other stuff. There's just an unlimited amount of learning that can come from doing that. One of the best things that any teacher every taught me was to economize your movement and to think about the musculature in your hand before you make a change - left hand and right hand. When you’re going to make a chord switch, you’re reading ahead on your chart. I'm already thinking about how that chord is going to feel and how it's going to feel to change from where I am to where it is, and then when you do, you visualize it, you just land there naturally. Think about it ahead of time, think about how it's going to feel in your muscles to do that chord and get familiar with that feeling and then put it there and it will be right on time. Then think about the most economical way to get there. I was never good at reading music but I used to take it home and look at it and make my little roman numerals about where I wanted to be on the fretboard and I would always think about economy.
Right. You talk about guys like Django Reinhardt; he played with two fingers...
Exactly, you think about if that guy could do it and still nobody could touch him what are we doing with all our fingers?
As far as an approach to learning to play, did you learn a lot of theory or the technical aspects of guitar more?
I always just enjoyed theory. When I was young my teacher tried to get me on the reading and I just wasn't having it. I thought it was too much to go through the three step thing; reading it through your eyes, into your brain, processing it and then playing it. In real-time I could never get the hang of that and everything looked jumbled together - like is that a C or an E? I could never tell so he sort of switched gears with me. He was an intuitive guy. He said, “Well, let’s learn more theory, jazz and taught me how to do substitutions and I kinda got into that. I started really enjoying that. That is so helpful to me in life; doing arrangements, thinking about balance and weight, or even learning piano from that; thinking about how the chords lay out, the chemistry of certain things. I don't know… I love it, and I never stop learning.
It kind of sounds like you use theory as a tool.
Yeah, for sure. Sometime it's great to bend the rules and break the rules. It's exciting to work with people who don't know it as well because they’re excited by something. Maybe it's a different inversion or something they've never played before but the way they approach it is just so new. You’re like, “How come they’re just doing that and it sounds so unique”? I would do that and it would just sound like I was searching for some other way to do an inversion.
We were working with Kenny David Han, producing some of our records. He's a real genius and just at the end of the day, or before the day, he would just sit at the piano and just play. You would be able to ask, “What's that, what you’re doing there?” and just talk about it; just being around people like that where you can feel free to ask questions, it’s really illuminating.
So you come from more of a jazz background. Was that something that you had to work on to incorporate into more of a rock setting?
Yeah for sure. I always wanted to do this thing where we played heavy jazz chords but in a rock format. I sort of did it with this band I had called Joe Marc's Brother which was visceral guitar, three piece pop, but very sick jazz chords and weird tunings and that's what we were into. Of course people don't really dig that, the musicians dug it. I mean people sort of dug it, I guess, but we never made any money. It was really fun, we felt like we were getting our creative juices flowing all the time. Yeah, you definitely have to tone it down. I always like sneaking in flavors. I love jazz, classical, rock, pop, whatever - I like it all. I even like country. I just try to blend all the things together. Like I started to play pedal steel a couple of years ago and like without a theory background on pedal steel you’re lost. You've got to have some kind of theoretical background otherwise you’re just kind of swimming in the high tide without a life jacket. It's really really fun and exciting. When I first got it, I had just got a case of that Ensure protein drink. I would sit up in my studio at like 11 am. I would play and I would have to turn on the lights because it would get dark and I would drink that stuff and it would be like 11 pm and I'd be like, alright I'm tired. It was totally geeky.
"Sometime it's great to bend the rules and break the rules."
I grew up really digging British stuff like Bowie, Kinks, Beatles, T-Rex-ish stuff. I always feel like when you’re younger that's what really shapes you because you have such a kid's perspective of it. It's not like you could sit down and figure out all these songs, so they were so magical to me before I moved to the more theoretical approach. The whole glam thing; Queen, Bowie, that whole affect was what I was into when I was a kid. But then you kind of grow and you get into different stuff. Right now I listen to a lot of instrumental stuff. I'm really into Bill Evans, Django Reinhardt, Duke Ellington. I feel like if I accidentally lifted from any of those guys it would be cool, because it would be accidental and it would be so far removed from jazz and put into a pop context. I feel like if I listen to indie rock of the day or pop of the day I would end up accidentally lifting something. That's what comes out of me anyways, after all's said and done, even though I aspire to liking these bigger, headier things. Maybe I'll sound like The Shins when I end up writing a song, whoever - I don't want to end up accidentally plagiarizing anybody.
So talking about your songwriting, how does that process go for you? A lot of the musicians that we've talked to, it's just like an instant and the whole song comes out...
I think every time it's a different nature. Sometimes I'll write a song and it's like, “Alright here it is; the whole thing, words and everything, melody, chords.” The whole thing would be there in a half an hour, twenty minutes. What I generally do is I record on a little cassette recorder but it turned into garage band because my cassette recorder broke. If I get an idea, sitting around the house all day with a guitar, I'll tape it. I like the cassette version because it's chronological. Then when that ninety minute tape is filled up, which usually takes six or eight months, I'll put it on. I don't usually listen to it before then, and I'll see if anything is still good. If it still inspires me then I'll do something with that. It's a great way to see what you were thinking, what you were feeling. I don't know why certain melody lines keep coming up, why certain changes keep coming up. You think they come up by accident but you’re really trying to hear something, trying to get something out.
Do you find then once you've gotten that progression out, or that melody out, then it goes away? It stops coming up in your playing?
Yeah, totally. Or what I find is then I'll get obsessed with it and I'll want to use it in every song and I'll have to catch myself like. “No, no, no. I can't use that anymore. I've all ready used it.” I think I picked the best way to use it but you’re never sure.
The music business is becoming more and more competitive. How did you break into the scene? What was a pivotal moment for you?
When I was younger, like twenty-three or twenty-four, my brother and I moved to Nashville. I had a fantasy of going to Nashville. I wanted to bring my Fender Telecaster and a Princeton Reverb and that's it. I didn't want to use any effects or anything like that; I just really wanted to learn electric guitar. I was like pure electric, using the volume knob for gain; keep it pure, use the reverb or tremolo on the amp but that was it. I really wanted to get into that. I would go downtown and there was this guy. His name was Red Volkaert. He was one of the sickest players I've ever seen. He was this huge guy with red hair - made the Telecaster look tiny on him. He plays like country slash jazz stuff. He used to play at this place called Skull's Rainbow Room. The guy Skull was from the show Hee-Haw. It was the weirdest place, dollar cover, I would go down there and drink instant coffee, and after a while I just became a regular. They'd say, “Hon, you’re a regular. You don't need to pay cover”. I use to sit in the front row and ask the guy for lessons. I would ask him, “What are you doing here, playing this little place, playing like four sets to fifty people a night?” He didn't want to be on the road anymore. He used to play with guys like Merle Haggard. But he wouldn't give me lessons because he was too humble. He was like, “Oh I'm just an old picker.” I was like, “Give me a break man – you’re the best I've ever seen.” I would ask him on breaks, “How'd you do this or that and he would get his guitar and show me. It was so awesome! So that was kind of a pivotal moment for me playing-wise; just hunkering down and getting into it - just enjoying it. At the time that we moved there, Nashville was very cheap to live in. You could wait tables two or three days a week and still make enough to pay your rent, live in a nice place and just play music all the time. And that's what we did. We went down there for a different reason. I never really wanted to break into the country music scene; I just really wanted to gig out. It was awesome! My brother and I went there together and we would have three or four full days a week just to jam.
You talked earlier about favoring a simple guitar setup. Has your preferences in rig changed over time?
It's funny because on the road we went to the Pod realm; we went to the dark side. The Pods are alright. They just really help with consistency. We were doing a bunch of live dates one year and we just kind of stayed with them. The front of house guy was like, “These are awesome because they eliminate bleed through the mics and blah blah blah” ….but they're alright.
So you guys run all your guitars direct?
The bass goes through an SVT DI, our banjo goes through one of those, and then lap steel and guitar all go through the Pods. Keyboards are direct. The only actual acoustic sound we have onstage is vocals and drums.
"I don't want to end up accidentally plagiarizing anybody."
Well definitely, we all have in-ear monitors, too. At first I didn't like using those either because it really takes away the feeling of playing. You don't feel the air, you’re not pushing any air. My setup in my old band was a Telecaster through an AC-30 and a Super Reverb, with a 2x12 and a 4x10. They’re out of phase because of the English/ American (manufacturing). You could really feel it; the Fender pushing all the high end out, and I would run them really clean too, have a lot of headroom. It was fun. But for this, it's more delicately arranged, the way we do stuff. I've found that the 335 works best for Guster. It's just the all around best guitar for what we do. I brought the Tele out, and they’re all microphonic sounding, like they need to have some work done …..and through the Pod it's just so noisy. It's not like a real amp where that kind of thing is dynamically dampened; with the Pod everything is up at this really high level because of the compressors.
So then when you guys go in the studio, and you don't have to worry about stage noise, what kind of setup do you use?
It depends on the song. I have a lot of guitar and amp combos at home that I like. I also really like the sound of an acoustic through an amp. Sometimes they sound more rocking, more tension, more pressure.
What advice could you give to players trying to make a go at a life in the music industry?
I would say do it because you love it, and then whatever happens is going to happen. I was hanging out with my Dad recently just after getting done in the studio with David Han. I was telling him I am so happy I chose music as a profession. The reason being, I've been playing thirty years, and even now there's still so much stuff that I'm learning as if I just started yesterday. To me that's the magic of it. Anything else you master it and then you’re just bored with it. Say you become an awesome architect and then you’re bored with it and you still have to go through the motions. But music - there's always new stuff to learn. Even if it's hard to make money, or make it into a career, it's always going to be there to make you feel better. No one can take that away from you!
Interview by Nicholas Cole-Klaes
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