“I’m just gonna have a nasty right hand, and write words that are really sincere” Zoh Amba on their journey from avant garde sax to an indie-rock guitar phenom
Amid the squalling notes, Zoh Amba was trying to get somewhere else. Their tenor saxophone, buffeted by clashing free jazz percussion and popping bass, was a hand reaching out. “It was like this deep plunging together to really get close to God,” they say, reflecting on records that made them a key figure in New York’s avant garde scene; both a critical darling and a collaborator capable of pushing more seasoned players to the edges of their capabilities.
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Their new record Eyes Full is, at first, a more terrestrial proposition, its guitar-and-vocal heart beating through a series of character studies drawn from the margins of an imperfect America. But, Amba insists, there’s more in common between her two creative identities than there initially appears.
“With the songs it was more of a long process of thinking about that same thing,” they say. “It’s just a different type of journey to it. I don’t think we succeeded in reaching those places yet, but I think we tried.”
Amba grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee, and played guitar before they ever picked up a sax. Even as a teenager, wandering the woods around the home they shared with their family, their first instinct was to explore. They have discussed at length the influence of experimental jazz great Albert Ayler on their music, but the guitarists who informed their early approach, from Michael Chapman and Bert Jansch to John Martyn, were cut from a similarly unconventional cloth.
“I could play in standard but it didn’t really feel like me,” they say. “I found these other tunings and I really started finding my way in it, with different finger-picking. They fingerpicked so clean, but being from the Blue Ridge Mountains I felt like a dirty-ass right hand was my only goal.”
Image: Angela Betancourt
Full Hearts
The songs on Eyes Full, which will be released by the indie-rock institution Matador, are lit up by the antic energy of Amba’s playing, given a sense of restlessness that seems to capture the nomadic nature of their author’s recent past. After leaving Kingsport in their late teens, Amba played and studied music in San Francisco and New York before eventually winding their way back home. “I could see how it looks like that on paper,” they say when this observation is put to them.
In reality, the record was written on the floor of their apartment in the undertow of a difficult year, a sense of isolation offset by the places that Amba was able to travel to by picking up their guitar. “Sometimes I’d start with a tuning, find a little thing and keep at it,” they recall. “Other times I’d have the words come with it or I’d run in the park, because I was really disciplined at the time. For a reward, I’m gonna get a big beer at my favourite bar. I’d go in there and sit, and I would be thinking for a while by myself, staring at the wall, writing down stuff that I’d put back on these guitar parts.”
On the streets outside the bar were people just like the ones who’d eventually populate the songs – medicated children, dreamers, and broad-spectrum fuck ups who don’t deserve that being the only thing written on their gravestone. There is enormous compassion here, with the feeling that Amba is reaching out to past versions of themselves as much as they’re extending a greeting to others. “You only can really understand what you know,” they say.
“I’m just gonna have a nasty right hand, and be a great guitar player, and write words that are really sincere,” they continue. “[Words] that feel like things other people are chasing in their lives, or trying to chase words to figure out how they feel. I think, especially being a kid, you are looking for something to connect with. I know I found certain things that really kept me looking forward to being alive, and looking forward to keeping going. I’m hoping that this music reaches these kids who need to hear a little something.”
Image: Eleanore Hendricks
Friends Indeed
After a couple of attempts in Brooklyn that didn’t work out for one reason or another, bringing Eyes Full to life required Amba to call upon the services of two old friends: guitarist Kevin Hyland and drummer Jim White, whose loose-limbed style with the Dirty Three and as a member of Bill Callahan’s band seems to perfectly mirror Amba’s approach.
Recording at Drop of Sun studios in Asheville, North Carolina, around 90 minutes’ drive from Kingsport, they liked things lean, largely eschewing overdubs and keeping takes to a minimum. “We made it in two days or something like that,” Amba says. “It was a pretty quick turnaround. I wish we had a little more time but time is money for people. It was beautiful — we stayed upstairs, we ate meals together, and it just felt like we were in this bubble together, which was really sweet.”
“I’ve never recorded a record before, so I didn’t really know you could do it any other way,” they add. “Honestly, just get in there and do it. I think I’m interested in other forms now, but at the time I didn’t know anything. I overdubbed some stuff on Child You’ll See, I went in there with this Gibson guitar and I was bowing this SG through all this shit. I put an old saxophone recording that I played solo years ago on top of that. We overdubbed in a creative way, not in other ways. But people should do whatever they need to do. That’s just how it fell for us, I guess.”
There is real chemistry between the trio, with Hyland’s electric deployed in washes and waves against the woodiness of Amba’s acoustic. White lopes beside them like a labrador in a rumpled suit, always on the balls of his feet in case something fun comes his way. It’s naturally less improvisational than Amba’s jazz work, with plenty of time spent woodshedding ideas with Hyland, but when White’s snare tumbles into the room on Dead End Street, suddenly there as the guitars egg each other on, it retains the sense of art coming to life in real time.
“With the jazz stuff, when you’ve been doing it for so long, you learn [people’s] not cheat codes, but different ways to get into certain things,” Amba says. “I feel like Jim and I are so similar — my right hand is really like the way he thinks on the drums. Kevin is a really great guitar player in a different way, so it all worked. Me and Kevin spent a lot of time together. Me and Jim didn’t, but we’ve known each other and have played together through the years. Baby tours a lot so we didn’t rehearse too much, but me and Kevin just, like, wiped it out, you know?”
Image: Eleonore Hendricks
Tattoo You
Aside from borrowing a Dillion DTT-72 from Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman, Asheville royalty and no stranger to Drop of Sun, to deliver the squalling, Wednesday-esque freakout on Dead End Street, Amba leaned heavily on a characterful Martin D-18, which they picked up while on the road shortly after inking their Matador deal. “When I signed I got a Telecaster and a tattoo,” they say. “Honestly, people love Telecasters, and I was like, ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’ It was so sick but, you know what? I actually don’t think I’m a Telecaster person.”
“I had a cheap Guild — it wasn’t cheap for me, by the way — and I wrote most of the record and demos on that,” they continue. “I love that fucking Guild, but I wanted something that’s going to hold up. I asked a buddy what guitar I should use for what I’m trying to do, and they said a D-18. I went in there, and I tried the old ones, I tried the new ones, and it was so fucking expensive.
I was trying to trade everything in the car at the Chicago Music Exchange to get the money down. I was going to trade my Guild too, with the Telecaster, and they’re like, ‘That guitar is $200.’ I was like, ‘That can’t be real, you’re lying to me!’ I ended up putting the rest on my credit card that I’m paying off for the rest of my life. But I have this D-18, and I love it.”
Rick Rolling
Of late, Amba’s credit card has added a Rickenbacker 330 to their live rotation, helping them move between acoustic and electric renderings of songs from Eyes Full while keeping one eye on what comes next. “People been like, ‘Don’t beat the fuck out of that guitar!’ But I’m gonna do whatever I want with that guitar, it’s my guitar,” they say.
“We went all over the place looking for Ricks in New York, and they’re too expensive. We ended up going to Guitar Center in Brooklyn, and we found this one — it was a very affordable guitar for what it is. I’ve been playing the Rick with a Big Muff. I was like, ‘I’m never gonna be a pedal motherfucker, I like being an acoustic motherfucker.’ But here I am fucking with pedals, you know?”
Out among the trees, Amba found their place through alternate tunings. Out in the world, rekindling that feeling requires time and patience. We all have to go on the ride with them if we want to get to where they’re going, which feels fitting.
“I play some new songs with the Rick because it’s in standard,” they say. “So it’s easy to turn back. I do Smile With Your Eyes, which is DGDGBD, and I have to tune the guitar. Then there’s this other one with everything down a half step, then there’s C#F#C#EBC, then C#G#C#F#BC#…I’m getting really good at stage banter. I’m like, ‘Hang on, everyone, we’re gonna get there together.”
Zoh Amba’s Eyes Full is out now through Matador.
The post “I’m just gonna have a nasty right hand, and write words that are really sincere” Zoh Amba on their journey from avant garde sax to an indie-rock guitar phenom appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
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