Guitar Master Tal Naccarato Digs into His Roots, Performance Tips, Street Gigs and the Classics (Part TWO)
By: Rick Landers
Tal Naccarato Interview: PART 1
As a follow-up to our Tal Naccarato interview, here’s PART 2! We found Tal’s insights into performing, practicing, lessons learned to keep focused very helpful and one of our interviews that’s helpful to return to periodically to remind us of how to raise our games as musicians and on-stage performers.
Classically trained, Naccarato clearly knows his way around the fretboard as illustrated on his new album, Ten and Two Blues, to be released on April 27th 2022, as well as on his last three albums, Hot House Flowers, Piedmont Black & Blue, and Dreamflower Sessions, which all field songs of traditional blues and songs influenced by past Appalachian traditional masters, while at the same time weaving his own signature style that make his music both roots driven and contemporary.
Rick: So, you live in New Orleans.
Tal Naccarato: Yeah, I like to be down there until it gets hot, and then I head back to my home in New York City; when it gets hot in New Orleans, you want to kill yourself.
I can’t take the humidity down there, so I’ll spend time there in the spring, then go back up north. I have a place in New York and live there most of the year.
Rick: What kinds of projects do you have at the moment? You working on an album?
Tal Naccarato: I just completed and released my latest album, Ten and Two Blues a few weeks ago. And, yes,I am currently working on the next one; it’s called, The Theory of Hurricanes. The name, Theory of Hurricanes means that sometimes people can sometimes sleepwalk through their lives a bit. And they say, ah, you know, what’s happening today? What are we gonna do today? And they just go about their lives in an uneventful, kinda ‘grey porridge’ kinda way.
And then, all of a sudden, the hurricane hits and then everybody’s at the top of their game. All of a sudden they’re right in there. And all of a sudden, they’re these warriors against snowstorms up north, you know; two feet, three, four feet of snow. Down south, tornadoes and hurricanes. That’s no time to be mediocre. It brings out the warrior in you.
Rick: Let’s shift a little bit. What guitars do you have at this point? And do you have a go-to guitar? When you’re at home, you grab a guitar you want a noodle around or do you not noodle? Do you just practice or is noodling a kind of practice?
Tal Naccarato: I don’t noodle and I won’t sit there and watch TV, like I used to and, you know, noodle around.
Don’t do it. It’s work. It’s a job. You know, I look at it as a job and civilian, non-musician type folks say, “Wow, man, I don’t see how you could play like that.”
You play guitar. So, you know, how do you do that? How do you know what to do? Where to go? You know what, at this stage of the game, it’s so much in my DNA that I don’t even think about it. It just happens.
I could sit here with any players. And I don’t know if they’re better than me or as good as me, or not. It doesn’t matter, but I’m not afraid of many players. And I’m sure they’re not afraid of me. And that’s where you want to be.
So, sometimes you’re playing and there are people taking a schooling. Sometimes with you, other people are playing and you’re taking a schooling, but there’s always schooling going on. I mean, I’m always at school, man.
I don’t wanna have the best house on the block. Yeah. I want to live in a modest house among of all these beautiful houses, you know? And so, I want people and players to be better than me.
I’ve always chased my friends who were good players; absolutely hounded their older brothers who were players. I wanted to hang out with them. I wanted to hang out with the older guys who were making music I liked. So, when the old guys say, “Get lost kid,” I’d be like, “How do you do that? How did you do that?”
You know? And they would say, “Well, I’ll show you if you get lost.” So, I don’t noodle. I’ll practice because the bottom line is that it’s all a bit of pain in the (expletive). The whole thing, this whole thing is a world class pain in the neck. It’s like if anyone tells you anything less, they’re crazy. Or they’re better than me in some way. Sometimes I wish the whole thing would just somehow go away. But I have no choice. This isn’t easy stuff. Ry Cooder used to say, “That goddamn bottleneck!”. [Laughing]
Photo Credit: Rick Landers
Rick: Did you ever have a day job or have you always been totally a musician, which is a tough life to pursue?
Tal Naccarato: I’ve always been a musician, but I’ve always worked the fringes of the music world in order to make a living. Frank Zappa used to say, “If you want to play music, once in a while ya gotta sell some real estate”, or something to that effect. The rent never sleeps.
We had a studio in Times Square in Manhattan on 46th Street in the old Eaves Costume building. We did advertising art and music for film and television, and we were also photographic retouchers…..that’s something that they still do on computer.
We did it on computers eventually as well, later on in the nineties. But, the bottom line is that my background is in art as well as music.
In met a lot of people around that time in that arena..great music people…like my friend Juan Patino, one of the early developers of ProTools; when I first met Juan, he had just recently finished producing Lisa Loeb’s debut album, which was a monster platinum seller hit.
I contributed some studio session guitar work on his next project, which was his own very well received solo album, ‘Anatomy of a Breakup’; I played the lead guitar you hear on the ‘Too Much To Ask’ track, which was the single.
I still remember how that happened..it was a funny thing..He was playing the rough mix of the record for me in the studio and he was digging it, but he felt that the single needed a little extra something, but he wasn’t sure what, so I turned around and pulled an acoustic Seagull guitar down off the wall and started ‘noodling’ as you said before, along with the track. [Laughing]
And he lit right up, and looked at me wide eyed and said, “Wow, that’s nice…what is that…?…that’s not Clapton?…is that Keith Richards…?… that’s not Richards…I never heard riffs quite like that before…who is that…?..what’s that you’re playing…?”
And I said, ‘What do you mean, man, that’s me! [Laughs]
And he said, “Can I record that?” and I said, “Press record, man” and we recorded for the next couple of hours, and we had it. He called me the next day and said, “Wow, you gotta come over and hear this!” He loved it. It was a good time in the music industry. A lot of fun things happening.
At that time, on the same block as our studio on 46th Street, was the High School for Performing Arts; it was across the street. It later merged with the High School of Music and Art in Harlem. We worked for advertising agencies and we did, you know, jingles and we did art and supplied movie music to film studios and production companies; I did that on and off my entire life.
And I’ve always played live. I’ve always had my own show. I’ve always been writing; always working on numerous projects at once. Like right now.
One of the projects I’m working on is I’m taking some takes from the late seventies and I’m making this new album. And I’ve also got about, I would say about seven albums, more worth of additional stuff that just hasn’t made it into record form yet.
I don’t know what physical medium form these next few releases will take, they will certainly be released digitally, but I may still make some CD’s as well, not sure, don’t discount the CD because they did that with the vinyl record and look what happened.
Rick: That’s true. Vinyl’s back.
Tal Naccarato: Nothing more convenient than a CD. Yeah. A CD’s great; try putting a vinyl record in your car. Not to mention the downgrade in sound quality that occurs with the online digital music being offered today.
You know, it’s a bit suspect how the playing mechanisms for the medium seemed to disappear overnight, especially since there was so much product out there. The ‘fruit’ computer companies and the car companies, and the like seem to have made some kind of a smoke-filled back room deal with the devil arrangement to remove CD drives from computers and automobiles pretty much at the same time; ya know, more satellite and digital subscriptions; let’s trash the CD!
And satellite still requires some programming and everything else. There’s nothing better than just pulling a CD out and putting it in the slot. It’s not a cassette, you know, a crappy cassette. Yeah. It’s not unwieldy. A small, lightweight, portable external CD drive, USB or otherwise powered, is a beautiful thing.
Rick: And you’ve got the cover.
Tal Naccarato: The news of death of the CD has been greatly exaggerated, you know? And the thing is that, where they missed, the record companies got greedy. Keep the LP size. Yeah. They should have kept that just as it was.
What a CD is, is just a little record. It’s a small record. But they didn’t get that. They should have left it alone. So when you opened up the thing, or maybe you should have just pulled out a sleeve and there was the record, it just happened to be smaller. And you didn’t need a needle. They should have sold it as something that you didn’t need a needle for, or a turntable.
With albums they were selling art. Which is what you need to do. That’s what was lost. Because, there’s no art anymore. One of the best things about the old albums, was there was art. They should have just changed the size of the disc, not the cover art.
Rick: I’ve never heard that before. I think that that’s a great, it’s brilliant. Maybe they should do that..
Tal Naccarato: Well, it’s probably too late now that the Genie’s out of the bottle. Yeah. And once the Genie’s out of the bottle, that’s it.
Rick: But, not for individual independent artists who want to do that.
Tal Naccarato: Yeah. For me, that’s the way and that’s the only way I would make a CD. If it had the LP cover, I would make it, you know, the same size. So now I’m sure people do that.
So now, the new album, Ten and Two Blues, has been released on Bandcamp and all the other streaming services.
I did videos of each one of them. So the twelve songs that are on that album are available as videos now on both my website, and on YouTube; you can go there and see them. I’ve digitally remastered them and they’re released now. The album is available digitally, but no CD.
And now that that is completed, I’m working on the new album, The Theory of Hurricanes, as well as working on and transferring some tapes from the seventies for another project that’s in the hopper. There’s a lot of material in the can. And, I’m writing a whole lot of new stuff, as well.
Rick: How do you do that? It’s very expensive. It’s a prohibitive thing for a lot of people to try to do. All of it costs money.
Tal Naccarato: Well, you’ve gotta look at it this way. Nowadays, video is your calling card. In the old days, advertising, we used to call it “the book,” the way you present your work. So, now I have a video book. It’s the way I present my work so that people can see, you know, what I do. And when they see it, I get work. So, you know, you gotta have a calling card.
You know, there’s no rule of thumb…it’s always different, nowadays, some people still say, send me a CD. Like I played at The Troubadour/ The Folk Project. And they asked for CDs, they wanted something they could plug in their car while they were driving, and they wanted art. Others want everything digitally.
Rick: Where I was getting at was the, to actually do that is pretty prohibitive for a lot of people.
So, so that leads to the second part of the question. What do you think about GoFundMe pages or efforts and those types of things where people are asking money from other people in order to produce their album?
Tal Naccarato: I think it’s great. I think if you can get anyone to give you money and you are playing real deal music, you’re playing real traditional music, you deserve a little push. I love traditional music, and original music in the traditional vein. Now, if you write music that somehow resonates with people, if God is good, it will be traditional one day!
You see, that’s our goal. Our goal is just to add to the repertoire and the answer to your question is, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go, go. If you’re doing that kind of thing. It’s all about authenticity. If you are authentic, if you have an authentic presence, people know that right away. Yeah. You’ve gotta be authentic.
And if you’re authentic, people will give you money. I don’t personally do that. Because I don’t know enough about it. I hear about it a lot, but I don’t really pay much attention to it.
Rick: I don’t. My concern is asking people for money is something that, it kind of just doesn’t feel right to me. There are people getting twenty grand or so.
Tal Naccarato: You know, I think that if you are doing good work and you believe in the material you are doing and it’s not self-indulgent, yeah. And you are somehow furthering your musical genre, then you have every right to ask for money from anyone who can give it to you. Okay? And that if you feel authentic about your music, then by all means. I feel that, if someone wants to give me money to do that, that’s fine. I’ll take it as long as they don’t tell me what to play or how to play it.
Rick: So where do you go from here? Let’s say twenty years from now, you look back from your life. What do you want to be proud of?
Tal Naccarato: Well, there’s a good question. I want to have a body of work behind me where I play selections of the music of few particular musical genre’s repertoires that I respect.
Now the musical genres that I inhabit are, uh, for lack of a better word, diverse.
As I mentioned in Part 1 of this interview, I recently purchased a Manuel Adalid Model 12 Cedar nylon 6 string classical guitar. It is one of the most beautiful instruments I have ever owned. I want to record an album that includes selections of the classical guitar repertoire on it, as well as a few original compositions in that same vein of my own. That’s one of my goals.
Some J.S. Bach, Fernando Sor; Francisco Tarrega, maybe… maybe one or two contemporary composers as well. You know…I’ve been recently working on the Bach 4th Lute Concerto, ‘Gavotte en Rondeau BWV 1006’ and a few other pieces; challenging stuff.
And it’ll be something done completely in my own style, something that hopefully even a top classical player would look at and say, at least, “Wow, that’s interesting.” Something that they would play on classical radio. That’s my goal for that particular recording.
So, I’m going to do those recordings. That’s in the hopper. I’ve got a four, or five new original songs that I want to do as well; some ‘Americana’, some country blues. I’ve also got a couple of electric guitar pieces that I want to do. That’s in the hopper. I’ve got a cherry red ’64 Gibson SG. And it’s got P-90 pickups on it like the one that Pete Townshend used at Woodstock.
Rick: Yeah. They can be monster pickups,
Tal Naccarato: The black pickups Carlos Santana used on his Santana album. I never knew that until one day I was paying along with the album years ago, and I said,” (expletive), this recording sounds exactly like what I am playing live!” And I looked into it, and sure enough, same guitar; same pickups!
My main amp is a mid-seventies Music Man 212-HD One Thirty. It’s the first amp that Leo Fender made after he left Fender and started Music Man. I have one of the first ones ever made and every time anyone sees it, they want to buy it.
And I also have a ’72 sunburst Strat, rosewood fretboard. Great guitar; a real workhorse; a baseball bat. You could hit a hardball out of the park with it, no problem. [Laughing]
I remember I was doing some session work one time for a Sony Records producer at CBS/Sony Studios on 10th Avenue in New York City. I was just a kid and when I walked in, there on the walls were the gold records: Sinatra, Springsteen, Bowie, Dylan, Miles Davis, on and on, very intimidating! [Laughing]
I was using the Music Man, and after I gave him an invoice for the session, he said, “Would you mind if I recorded you playing some chords on that amp..” He wanted just chords, he wanted me to crank up the reverb and the tremolo, and play some chords and let them ring out to fade.
It was the very beginning of the sampling craze. I said, “Sure, man, whatever you want, just rip up that invoice, and I will give you another one after we are done!”[Laughing]
I am positive those chords appeared on thousands of recordings made by that producer in CBS studios for many years to come!
I also use Fishman’s small Loudbox amplifier for my onstage guitar monitoring. It sounds great and I can still pick it up!
In addition to the electrics I mentioned earlier, I also have a cherry red ’60 Gretsch Corvette solid body, my very first electric guitar, thank you, Mom!
I never used it much professionally, never thought very much about it, until one day I saw Rory Gallagher using one onstage somewhere for some slide work, and it sounded great, and I thought, “Hey, wait a minute, I have that guitar!” Then I started using it for electric bottleneck, as well. He had it tuned to an open A, or G, I think, and that’s how I used it too. Fun guitar.
My main acoustic guitars these days, in addition to the Adalid, are a ’72 Hummingbird square-shoulder, and a couple of stock 2012 era SJ-200 Standard Super Jumbos; I like to keep the SJ stock so that if it mysteriously ‘disappears’ on the road [Laughing], it can be replaced quickly and relatively inexpensively, without much emotional attachment pain and suffering (expletive).
I use a Fishman Ellipse Aura undersaddle pickup for the SJ, and a Fishman Matrix Infinity for the Hummingbird, undersaddle, as well.
So, I’ve got about six or seven guitars now and I use them all.
So those are my projects in the hopper. So, that’s for between now and when I sign out, which I hope is a very long time from now! [Laughing]
Rick: But, personally, when you look back on your life, what do you want to look back on and be proud of? Not just music, but you as a person?
Tal Naccarato: Oh, well, I have my two children, I’m so proud of, you know, and my kids have grown, not fully grown, but you know, they’re old enough where they’re on their own.
And, I want to leave a body of musical work in a few different genres, because I can play in all those genres. Now, I don’t wanna be a Jack of all trades and a master of none. I wanna be a master of all that I play, but I don’t wanna be a master of the entire repertoire. Because I can’t, I don’t have the time, the talent or the discipline to do that. Rather, I would like to be the master of a large portion of my main genre’s repertoire, and then master some pieces from certain other discipline’s repertoires.
To circle back to your question, as a person, at the very top of the list, I guess I’m most proud of my family. And, then a very close second, I’m proud to be able to further the musical genre’s I’ve chosen to play within. When I’m in a room like the other night playing for you guys, it felt very authentic. I felt like you guys got it. It’s like when you meet someone that, you know, they get you. Yeah. There’s a click. So, I want to leave this consciousness knowing that people got me.
Rick: Yeah. I After a few songs and watching you, I said to a musician friend next to me, “He’s the real deal.”
Tal Naccarato: I am going to respond to that by saying what my late father would smile and say at 92 years old, whenever somebody took his photograph at a party: Thank you.