Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell has made some surprising connections during his long career. He's that rare player who finds a link between jazz standards, free improvisational music, folk, country, and old time music, and with his new group, The Intercontinentals, music from Greece, Brazil, and Africa. Frisell lives in Seattle, and Banning Eyre caught up with him at the Experience Music Project. The powers that be there give Frisell special respect, so the two were taken to Paul Allen's private viewing quarters, high above one of the museum's extraordinary performance spaces. Here's their conversation.

Banning Eyre: Bill Frisell, welcome to Afropop Worldwide.

Bill Frisell: Thank you.

B.E.: Your career has been a series of encounters with different groupings of musicians, rather than having a band that you stick with over time. What is it about that approach that attracts you.

Frisell: Well, really it was like that from the first moment that I started to play. That's how I learn and grow. Every time I meet someone new, and every time I'm in a new situation, that's where it all seems to happen. I mean, of course I have to sit and practice and figure out stuff and listen to records, read books--all that stuff. But for me, just five minutes, an encounter with a new musician is worth hours and hours of practice. It's the fastest way to get on with it, I guess.

B.E.: What's the story of this group, The Intercontinentals? How did it come together?

Frisell: Well, let's see. I live in Seattle and there's this organization Earshot that has a festival--the call it the Earshot Jazz Festival, but it's music. I've played there a number of times. They've been real supportive of me. Actually, the first time I came to Seattle, it was with them in 1988, I think. They've been just great for me to have an outlet here to do things. So a couple of years ago, the festival was coming up and they said, "Do you want to try something? Maybe not play with your regular band but just try something new?" It was kind of this haphazzard thing. There were all these guys that I wanted to play with, some I had met very recently, like Christos Govetas, who lives here in Seattle. I walked into this music store and he was trying out an oud, and I just sat there and was mesmerized by him. I didn't know who he was or anything, but I just sat there for about fifteen minutes listening to him playing. And then, by some good fortune, I went back to that same music store maybe a month later and he was there again, and there was somebody there who introduced us.

Anyway, I met him in a music store and from that first meeting we said, "We've got to get together and play sometime." I don't know how long it took. It was a couple of years. We'd talk and say, "Maybe next week," and something would always happen and we'd never get together. So that's Christos. Then Vinicius (Cantuaria), I had played with a tiny bit on two of his recordings. But it was always in sort of a studio situation. We'd never really played live together, but I felt some connection with him. We had the desire to get together.

And then Sidiki Camara. I met him when he came to Seattle playing with Boubacar Traore. There's this big festival here, The Bumbershoot Festival, and I was playing with my band and they came to hear me, and I didn't know anything about either one of them. But they came and I was introduced to them and invited to a dinner, I think it was either right after the concert or the next day. Someone went, "Oh, you gotta hear these guys play." I wasn't familiar with their music. So I went to this dinner, and we eat, and after dinner, Boubacar took his guitar. So the very first time I heard him play he was sitting like we are now, just inches away and I'm watching him play and it was just the most amazing experience. And Sidiki was playing with him too. He didn't even have his calabash. It was at the dinner table. He just had a plate and a pencil or something. He was basically just banging on the table, but it was like the most incredible music, just hearing it in that way. I'm probably getting way off the subject, but it kind of flipped me out watching. You know, I've been playing guitar for what, 35 years or more. Usually, when I watch a guitar player, I can sort of tell what they're doing. But I'm inches from him and I thought for sure he's got his guitar tuned in some weird open tuning. I couldn't really tell what he was doing by watching him, but it was just this incredibly beautiful music.

B.E.: But in fact, he wasn't using a special tuning.

Frisell: No. There was only one guitar and they said, "Okay, why don't you play it?" So he gives me the guitar and I thought, "Well, I'm not going to be able to play that." But of course, it was just in normal tuning. So that was was kind of a mind blowing little moment there. That was the beginning of this fascination with Boubacar's music. By the time it came around to this Intercontinentals thing, we play one of his songs and there's one song that I dedicated to him. It's almost that I stole a little bit of a phrase from one of his songs. I think that his spirit was somehow hovering over this whole thing a little bit. Later on, I got to spend more time with him. He came to my house a couple of times and I slowly learned a few of his songs.

B.E.: Including the song you cover here, "Baba Drame."

Frisell: Yeah, that was the first thing. At another dinner he showed me that song.

B.E.: It sounds like by the time you got to recording it with The Intercontinentals, you were really comfortable with it. Everybody seems inside the songs, and you take it to places it never would have gone otherwise.

Frisell: Well that one I played and played and played. I learned a lot of sort of guitaristic, just little things I absorbed from him. I hope I've absorbed them deeply enough that it's not just some sort of mimicry on the album. But it's clear to me that I was in the midst of listening to his music a lot when we were recording this album. As well, it was a time hearing a lot of new music. I mean, Christos also--he knows thousands and thousands of songs from Greece, and all this Balkan music. It's like a whole world there. And then Viniscius knows every Jobim tune that was every written, and he's reworked all of them. Those guys are so deep into those other worlds.

But I've gotten way sidetracked. I meant to talk about Sidiki who was at that dinner. So Boubacar played a little bit and then they handed me the guitar and Sidiki was there with the stick and the plate or whatever it was. I didn't know what to play. Sidiki said, "Just play." Someone suggested that I play "Wildwood Flower," which is this old Carter Family traditional--you know, bluegrass people play it. I knew this already, but it was such an amazing feeling playing with Sidiki. I played that song with him at tha moment, and it was meant to be. The beat that he had, and that song, and the way--You know, I've been intererested in this whole thing of whatever comes from where and goes back and forth, music coming from over there, over here, and then African people listening to Hillbilly music. It was great to actually feel that and feel how one it was.

And then, he loved that song so much. I don't know if he'd ever heard it, but he remembered it from that first time played it. We didn't record it on the album, but live we've played it a lot. He wrote some word for it in Bambara, so it kind of turned it back around. I don't remember the exact story he sang, but it's just so cool the way things just keep turning around in a circle. It's the way that folk music is supposed to work, I guess. You know, one guy plays it for somebody else and then they add something to it and it just keeps going around that like that. He just loves that song. Everytime we start playing, he wants to hear that "Wildwood Flower" thing.

B.E.: So from that first moment, you liked the idea of working with him. But how did he get into the band?

Frisell: Well, Sidiki lives in Brussels. It just felt so natural to play with him. We don't speak the same language or anything, but there was nothing to talk about; it just felt great playing with him. I had a tour in Europe with another one of my groups and I just asked him, whenever he was closeby, I'd just have him come and he'd just play with us. It was always like that. We were on tour in Europe and got to Brussels and he showed up, and he hadn't met the other guys in the band or anything, and hadn't had any rehearsal or anything. Maybe he'd heard some of the music, but it was just sort of an instant hookup. So he played few gigs with that band and then a couple of other sort of spur of the moment things where he would show up and play. So he had to be in on this thing.

B.E.: So where did the Intercontinentals actually record this record?

Frisell: We did that in Seattle, more than a year ago. We did a couple of gigs as a quartet with Sidiki and Vinicius and Christos. We did that first gig here, and then Minneappolis I think, Chicago, England. We did a few things. And then for the recording I added Greg Leisz on slide guitar and Jenny Scheinman on violin, who I've done other gigs with.

B.E.: On that cover of the Boubacar song, "Baba Drame," who is singing?

Frisell: That's Sidiki. He might have doubled his voice in the studio. I just recently listened to Boubacar's version--I should be more aware of these things, because supposedly it's my record. But when Boubacar's version of that song on his record, I went, "Hey, wait a minute." Because Sidiki is talking about some other stuff. Do you know? Maybe you know better than I do.

B.E.: No.

Frisell: Well, he's changed the words again. He's talking about Boubacar. In Boubacar's song, I know it's a tribute to his close friend who was his calabash player for a long time and who passed away. That song is dedicated to him.

B.E.: I didn't actually know that. But now, it's the young calabash player turning it around and praising Boubacar. That would be very natural. Songs are so often freeform entities in Mali, and they are different each time you approach them they are different. Even though these are not griots, that art transcends griotism. It's a very natural thing in Mali, changing the words to suit the occasion.

Frisell: Yeah. I should maybe know what he's singing, though.

B.E.: Vinicius is such a great composer. He's written some great songs for other people.

Frisell: Yeah, he's just like a melody machine or something. He just sits there with the gutiar and it's amazing. I don't know how he does it. It's almost like he can improvise songs on the spot. I don't know if he's improvising them or he just has this huge well of melodies that he's drawing from. It blows my mind.

B.E.: Does he write some of the songs on the album? I haven't seen the notes yet.

Frisell: Theres's one that's all his, "Perritos." And then there's a Gilberto Gil song, "Procissão." But I think Vinicius reworked it quite a bit. I haven't even heard the original version of the song. So those are his songs. Then Christos wrote one song, and we also do an old traditional Greek song that Christos taught me and we sort of reharmonized it a little bit. It's some old, old song that he knew.

B.E.: When you were working with these musicians in the studio, were there any surprises that came you that you might want to draw attention to on the record?

Frisell: Well, actually, when we recorded it, things were still in a kind of state of growth. We had played, like I said, as a quartet. I was trying to add more of my own music each time we played, and then when we did the recording, Greg and Jenny were there, which was a whole other element. I knew that they all going to connect in a good way. It's more of a personal thing.

B.E.: But you didn't know what they were going to play.

Frisell: Not exactly. Everything was revealing itself as we were doing it. Were there any surprises? Well, the whole thing was kind of a surprise for me.

B.E.: And how do you feel about it now?

Frisell: I'm really happy. I'm looking forward to having a few chances to play. Hopefully, it will keep evolving and more things will happen. It's weird when I do a recording. A lot of time the recording is the first thing that a group does, and then you take that and go out and play live and sort of use that as a blueprint. I don't like to play what the record is exactly, but that sort of gives you a framework to start from. So maybe, this recording is just the beginning of that group could be. We'll see.

B.E.: Thanks, Bill. I hope I get to see it live someday.

Frisell: Thank you.

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