Rodney Jones Discusses 5 Things You Should Know When You Play "The Blues"

JGT's Bob Bakert talks to guitarist Rodney Jones about the top five things to know when playing "The Blues".  Additionally, they offer a sneak preview of the upcoming Rocky Mountain Arch Top Festival, promising to be a spectacle for every jazz guitar enthusiast.  Originally posted on Jazz Guitar Today on July 20, 2023.

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Transcript

Bob Bakert 0:01

Hey everybody, I'm Bob Baker with Jazz Guitar today, and we are here today with Rodney Jones. How you doing, brother? I'm great, great to see you. Man, you're like smiling, you're a happy guy, I am Rocking and rolling. This is going to be just a short, sweet, sweet conversation about the Rocky Mountain Arch Top Festival and your involvement in that. Sure, you're going out there. The event to be there or be square.

Rodney Jones 0:27

I'm going out there. Ed Cherry and I are flying out together. As it worked out, we're on the same flight going out.

Bob Bakert 0:33

Oh wow, that's amazing. Yeah, so we're all about promoting the concert. What do you got planned? I mean, you got a trio out there. Are you going to hire some guys from there? I mean, how do you have any idea?

Rodney Jones 0:45

I'm going to use a local rhythm section and you know, I mean the way that I'm playing now is a combination of, you know, greasy blues, right right, you know riding your pocket where's the barbecue sauce? And cutting eggs. Let's go to Mars. You know, I like I. Both of those things exist in the same universe within me, so you're going to get some of both. You're going to get some guitar playing. That's, like you know, harkens back to Grant Green and Wes and George Benson, and then you can also get, like, stuff that hasn't yet really been heard on the guitar. There's a lot of sort of ways I've developed language on the instrument that hasn't really been heard before to my knowledge, you got a guitar in your hands.

Bob Bakert 1:29

Give us an example of what you're talking about.

Rodney Jones 1:31

Well, sure, well, let's see. I'll give an example. Let's see what I got here. What is it?

Bob Bakert 1:37

By the way, you're a Ben Adato artist I was as of today. You were as of today, or.

Rodney Jones 1:44

I know I am Sorry. So you hear the guitar, yeah, right.

Rodney Jones 2:00

That's what I play, right, that's what I play Very more like old train McCoy is taking. Yeah, and I think that hasn't really been done on the guitar by someone that has the facility that I have. Yeah, people have done it. You know, nathan Page has has, you know, brought in kind of the more intervallic sort of things, and other people have done it in a legato fashion, right, but no one that had sort of more of a George Benson type of fluency adapted the more modern vocabulary on the guitar until hello.

Bob Bakert 2:54

Hello, hello, julie guy, you know it's really funny that you say that, because that's um, that's what I've been uh, the word complain is a little bit too strong, but that's what I've been trying to tell people for a long time. I said, you know, uh and freed Hawk is a big um advocate of this as well, you know, got to get the instrument out of the fifties, you know, I mean, or the 40s. Well that's right.

Rodney Jones 3:16

I mean, if you think of the evolution of the good, you know, the guitar compared to that of the piano, you know, even just within Miles Davis's group, you could look at, like you know, red garland and a winter Kelly and then a giant leap with, like Herbie right or even Bill Evans with the voicing. But if you look at the guitar development, you know, you have West Montgomery and then the harmonic concept expanding into the modern language of McCoy and train and Joe Henderson and that sort of aesthetic didn't really happen by players. That were the known guys. You know.

Rodney Jones 3:48

George Benson went, you know, had amazing facility, clearly could play anything, but you know it's more of playing, you know, vamp and commercial music, you know, and standard based things. And the other players, you know, went more in the fusion direction in the seventies and that kind of thing. So where are the guitar players of the late sixties? The only guy I can really think of that really sort of did that language successfully was Nathan Page, the guitar player who lived, who's from Florida, who played with Jimmy Smith for a while, who played, you know, brought some more modern language to the guitar, but he was limited by facility.

Bob Bakert 4:21

Well, if you think about the guys that played with Miles during that, you know his period. There there was guys that were rock influenced guys Correct, you know they knew the language. I mean Mike Stern, john Scofield. You know all those guys, yeah who are great players, brilliant player.

Bob Bakert 4:39

Yeah, but they're definitely more they're. They're well Sco. I mean they know the language, I mean they do know the language and they've got facility and all that, but they were playing it with a different voice, for sure. They were playing it, you know, with basically guitars would be used in rock and roll with that sort of that sensibility of tone. I think that's what I think. Yeah, I think that's right.

Rodney Jones 5:04

I mean, here again, none of this is like you know, to put it down or say it's not good, because it's beautiful. I love the way it plays and John Schofield is a brilliant, you know, amazing, incredible guitar player to me. I love it. I'm just saying that the aesthetic of like you're picking up an acoustic guitar and playing modern language Right, it doesn't. It didn't really exist.

Bob Bakert 5:26

No, it wasn't having.

Rodney Jones 5:27

And not so much now. Even you know.

Bob Bakert 5:29

Well, that's, I mean again, that's what Fareed's talking about. But I mean there are guys. I mean you know there are guys out there that are doing it, but it hasn't hit like the main score.

Rodney Jones 5:39

Who are those guys? I want to know those guys who's the guy Jonathan Kreisberg.

Bob Bakert 5:43

That's what I'm thinking about.

Rodney Jones 5:44

Yeah, it's a little something a little different, it's not exactly.

Bob Bakert 5:48

Yeah, it is, I agree with you, it's something a little different. But he's a brilliant guitar player, with just a different thing, yeah, and this conversation could get a little bit weird because of the guy that's.

Rodney Jones 6:00

Yeah, well, the bottom line is there's lots of lineages and lots of of directions. The guitar has gone since the 60s and sent into the 70s and thing. Very few players have skewed to the, the you know, and very few musicians have skewed to the, the Coltrane Quartet in more players skewed towards the Miles Davis Aesthetic with Ron and Herbie and Wayne and that sort of sound, then McCoy, elvin and Jimmy Garrison and Coltrane, that kind of driving playing, you know, at all costs long solos going in. That that wasn't really a popular thing for musicians in general and guitarists in particular.

Bob Bakert 6:42

Now, why do you think that?

Rodney Jones 6:45

It's because I think it's. I think it's extremely difficult. I think it requires it requires a love and a commitment to loving that sound. I love that sound, so I'm willing to do the work to play that way, because it's not just it's not something I'm interested in, it's something I feel organically connected to, it's something I genuinely love, Like I love the blues. You know the difference in playing A blues. You're gonna hear a lot of people play a blues at the Rocky Mountain, but not everybody's gonna be playing the blues. You know there's a difference in playing A blues and playing the blues.

Bob Bakert 7:18

All right, I got, I got. You got to tell me all right, what's? I'm gonna ask the question what do you mean when you say there's a difference between playing A blues and the blues?

Rodney Jones 7:28

Well, playing A blues is knowing the blues form and playing the language of playing on the blues. Okay so playing the blues is is you know? Your dog died, your wife left you and you have something to share.

Bob Bakert 7:40

Oh, you're feeling it from your heart.

Rodney Jones 7:42

I mean where it's connected organically to some part of your life experience. When you pick up the guitar to play the blues, there's no faking it, there's no like oh, I'm gonna play this tune. There's no thought in it.

Bob Bakert 7:53

I'm so glad that you had said that, because the reason I didn't play you know, the rock Blue stuff you know I don't have this is the wrong guitar. The reason I didn't play all that stuff that the that a lot of guys were playing, is because I didn't feel it was authentic to me. There you go, you know.

Rodney Jones 8:14

That is being true to yourself and I.

The Essence of Playing Authentic Blues

Bob Bakert 8:17

Yeah, I didn't. I didn't feel this is, this is an authentic to me. What the hell do I know about? At the time I was in my 40s. You know I was a kid from the suburbs, white kid from the suburbs. You know all that kind of. What the hell do I know about being, you know, 66, 72 years old, living in Mississippi, having grown up with parents that were, you know then that well.

Rodney Jones 8:38

Here's the remarkable thing, though that that's that is one way the blues expresses. But the blues is not racially dependent and it's not. It's not even culturally dependent. It's human dependent. If you've ever, if you've ever, lost someone that you loved, if you've ever wanted love, we've ever felt alone. Who've ever wondered what you're, what road you're gonna take, or felt deserted or or stroke you know, frustrated and trying to get to something? All people have the blues. All people can relate to that.

Bob Bakert 9:03

But you are. You are singing a song that I've been writing for a long time.

Rodney Jones 9:09

I'm saying but not everybody goes there. You know, I learned this from Lena. I here's what I learned from Lena Horner. Maybe I told you before, no, but when I played with Lena, she would. She, after she would leave the stage, she would be drinking sweat, tears Pulling out of her eyes to the point where I was really concerned. I'm like Lena, are you okay? And she said what people don't understand is when I sing these songs, I have to live the lyric. I can't fake it. When I sing body and soul by saying you know, man, I'm living those words, I'm connecting everything I've ever experienced and living it. That's a much different. Look, you go to a jam session day with our players and you play. You say, hey, let's play, let's play. You know invitation, where's that? You know, hey, you want to play any original key. What's that? D minor? No, it's a C minor. You know the movie?

Bob Bakert 9:53

it's from no, you are so singing out of my hymn all I can't believe it. That's unbelievable am I saying it like you? Wrote it. You're singing like I wrote it, man You're. You're not preaching to the choir, you're preaching to a preacher.

Rodney Jones 10:09

I'm preaching to the minister. There you go.

Bob Bakert 10:11

Well, fellow preacher, I you know, I see, I'm an actor, you know, I mean, I've been studying acting now for a number of years and you know the thing you have to do as an actor is get into the character, really feel that character.

Rodney Jones 10:21

Well it's you know, I tell you, bob, I use acting as an analogy for students and it's this if you don't connect to this thing of playing the blues, then you're always a great actor who, no matter how great your performance, you don't know the point of the play. Aha, you know. You know, when you play the blues, when you connect to your, your organic, true, deepest self in the music, then you know the point of playing the music. You know the why of it, the point of the play. You might be a great actor. Think of all the great guitar players can play that Be kinds of facility, chords, language, all this stuff. And I listen, you know, and it's like green means with no salt.

Bob Bakert 10:57

Listen, man, I'm telling you.

Rodney Jones 11:01

I know it's healthy, but you know.

Bob Bakert 11:03

No, no, I'll tell you know they say I Heard this is this was true, but I don't know for a fact because I wasn't there. But they that in the days of when people pitched Sinatra songs, you know when, those days he would get this, get the. He didn't want to hear the music, didn't want to hear the melody, he would get the lyric, take himself away from everybody and read the lyric and if he didn't emotionally connect with the lyric, he didn't want to hear that.

Rodney Jones 11:26

He didn't want to hear the lead of us the same way.

Bob Bakert 11:28

Yeah, so, and that I'm also a also a singer, and that's the way that I Learned that from Frank. If I, if I can't sing this with the motion, so get it back to your playing top five things you need to do To play the blues authentically, from your heart. I mean, what would you take Top five? Things top five things to play the blues authentically not necessarily in order. Not necessarily in order.

Rodney Jones 11:59

You're five things, top five things. Number one you must be willing to look yourself in the mirror and tell the truth. If you're gonna truth tell through your music, it begins with truth telling to yourself. Number one you have to look in the mirror and tell yourself the truth about where you are, who you are. You have to own the mistakes on the successes, on the failures, on the pain. Own it all. All except that, as part of what makes you this amazing thing we call a human being, you know our spiritual being and be willing to accept that. That's number one.

Rodney Jones 12:30

Two You've got to be willing to be vulnerable enough to you, demonstrate in front of other people and not be afraid of judgment. You got to be willing to say, yeah, you know what, this is what I've lived, this is who I am, this is what my life experience is, this is who I am, this is what it is. That vulnerability Invites the audience in, because people don't want perfect music, they want real music. They don't want something that's it's, you know, handering to them. They want to feel something and I think if you're gonna ask someone for even five minutes of their life to listen to you, they're never gonna get that time back of their life. That's five minutes they're not gonna have in their life. You have to give them something real and of value, and that's gotta be true. So, number one, you got to look yourself in the mirror until the truth. Number two, you have to be vulnerable, right. Number three, you have to love the people you're playing for. If you're playing for you and it's about you, you missed the point of music. Music is communication and it's language, it's sharing love through sound. You've got to be willing to not make it about you and make it about us or make it about them. You've got to have something you want to share. Number four, you've got to recognize it.

Rodney Jones 13:40

When you play the blues, sometimes you're telling a story, but sometimes you're creating a mood, but sometimes you're painting a picture. Sometimes you're sharing a dream. You've got to be willing to, to Recognize that the blues is much more than just my my baby left me or my dog died it. It is much more universal than that. It speaks to people in every language, in every culture, every religion. No matter who you love, no matter how you love, no matter what color your skin, the blues is something that, if you are a human being on earth. You have it in one form or the other.

Rodney Jones 14:13

And Five if you're going to play blues for people, if you're gonna go out there and play the blues, have as your intention, understand that your intention is to make life better. You know our Blake. He said the music watches the way, the dust of everyday life. You're gonna play the blues. There's something you can bring the person's not gonna get from having a lamp or a hamburger or going to a movie. There's some other quality, something that's soul to soul, human to human. It's so organic and so true and so important. It's so needed in the world we're living in. It's something that no AI can provide, no computer can give. It's something that only an Artist and a listener can engage in. This dance, this rhythm of life, this rhythm of music, that is the intention of the blues. For me.

Rodney Jones 15:03

Now, how that comes out. If you're true to yourself and you're a, you know a 70 year old man from Mississippi comes out through that lens. You know, if you're a white guy from Southern California, it comes out through that lens. The most important thing is not the lens. The most important thing is the truth and the authenticity. Are you telling your truth? Not the truth, because that's gonna be different for everybody, but what is your truth and are you willing to tell it?

Bob Bakert 15:28

man, I'm telling you something that that is the, that last three minutes that you talked is the wisest thing that Anyone has ever said on this channel and I totally agree with you. You died in. I know I'm gonna leave that in, I promise you I'm gonna probably cut out a lot of the beginning stuff, but that, this top five thing, that I mean what I didn't even learn, that I mean, you know, I used to be. I study classical voice, study guitar, and in my singing I was more concerned about, you know, the Intonation. I was more concerned about the you know the fanatics of this, the articulation, all that kind of stuff and I didn't really start thinking about the meaning of the lyric to me, to a latent life, and so for you to impart that wisdom and Hopefully kids you know to say what do I need to do? Instead of Is what's in your heart, go for it.

Rodney Jones 16:28

But if you're just showing off, Every artist to me, the my, almost every. My mission every time is to play the notes that want to be played.

Bob Bakert 16:42

You're the best. You are the best. You've got it all going on, man. You got the facility. You're playing your ass off. I watch a lot of your stuff. You know cuz you you broadcast from that studio. How many times a week you do that.

Rodney Jones 16:56

Yeah, you know, you know it used to be, you know cuz. I mean the reason I did that, I guess you know. You know I had his career ending injury on my hand. I couldn't all 2018, I couldn't really play, so my therapy was to play all the time. And so I, you know, I just I decided you know that the playing I do is different when someone's listening. You know, it's just human nature. When someone is listening, it's a different dynamic, in effect, just what we're talking about. So I found that there was a value for me in turning on the camera, even if it was just a couple of people in the beginning. It's just a couple of people, guitar players, mostly listening. And then later I discovered I don't know people were, you know, when I stopped doing it. Then I would get emails like hey, we have, we missed you, we haven't seen you, where are you? So then I realized no, people are getting some benefit from that.

Bob Bakert 17:41

I watched a couple of times, I mean three or four times. I tuned in, I went, you know, because I was listening to what you're going. I went shit yeah it's practice I'm not performing.

Rodney Jones 17:50

I don't, I got it.

Rodney Jones 17:53

I want people to see. I want people to see what enough love, discipline, devotion and focus can yield, because if I can do it, you can do it. I'm not more talented than anybody. I don't know more than anybody, but I do the work and I know that consistency. You know, repetition is the mother of skill and skilled repetition is the mother of excellence and I'm always looking to be to repeat the things that are, you know, that are beautiful, to play the things in my heart as beautifully as I can. This is my time on earth. I got I got this shot to do it. I want to give it my best. I want to live full and die empty.

Bob Bakert 18:30

Man, you're going to be out. Let's just, let's just, let's just cap this thing off. You're going to be at the Rocky Mountain Arch Top Festival. You're one of the two major headliners there, you and Ed Cherry.

Rodney Jones 18:42

Oh, I didn't even know that you know more about that.

Bob Bakert 18:44

Yeah, you're one of the two you know major headliners. I talked to Peter about that, peter Henriksen, who was the producer of the show Henriksen Amplifier.

Rodney Jones 18:52

I love his amplifiers.

Bob Bakert 18:53

Oh yeah, well, we all do. There's one right there.

Rodney Jones 18:56

Yeah, but yeah.

Rodney Jones 19:02

That I bought. By the way, just want people to know, like I'm not saying this because, oh, it's a gimmie and you know I'm going to. You know there's nothing. I played at a club called the Zinc Bar in New York and they had a Henriksen Amp there and I plugged in. I was like I didn't want to bring an amp, I just plugged into the amp and everybody, all the students, all the people came up and said, man, your guitar sounds incredible. That's the best I've ever heard you sound. And I listened to it and it was I actually called Charles Carlini who was producing the gig. I said, hey, how do I get into Texas, peter? And he gave me the information until I called, you know, and I bought the amplifier. That's how much I loved it. So you know, you know it's not, it's not I'm not endorsing, because, you know, for money.

Bob Bakert 19:46

I'm endorsing for love. No, I understand. Well, there's not. You know, the money in this industry would feed a starving family with a pizza. What can I tell you? Well, how's that joke go?

Rodney Jones 20:00

You know what's the difference.

Bob Bakert 20:06

A large piece of music. Yeah right, pizza. So, ladies and gentlemen, the great Rodney Jones, the great Rodney Jones, well, you are. You know, you guys that are as dedicated as you, that have put in the time that you have, you know that you know, when people hear a couple of chords and some notes and all that kind of stuff, what they need to understand is not that you know that you've got this to draw from.

Rodney Jones 20:33

That's right.

Bob Bakert 20:34

And you're making this statement. From this to draw from, I am and this.

Top Five Things for Playing Blues

Bob Bakert 20:40

And well, of course it's coming. You know, so you got. You're gonna express yourself in all these ways and you're choosing because your heart's telling you to this is the way I'm gonna express myself, as opposed to a guy that he only knows three licks, correct, and that's how it's. So, so, and you guys might play the same lick. I mean, who knows? I mean he might, he might just have that. You know that triad or that, whatever it is down and you happen to play it because that's what was worked for the tune and the way you wanted to do it. But you know, the guys like you that have the language together and all that I mean people don't know. You were a Juilliard for a lot of years teaching and it's obviously one of the top schools in the world and you know. So you know you're not just some dude, you know.

Rodney Jones 21:29

No.

Bob Bakert 21:30

I got that category down.

Rodney Jones 21:32

And I will mention I do have a number of courses who are like teach this stuff? All I have to do is say jazz guitar. Jazz guitar scholars at gmailcom.

Bob Bakert 21:40

Bob Baker for jazz guitar, today talking to Rodney Jones about the top five things that you should do when you play the blues or play any music. Actually, right Now, when you play blues, you play the blues. I love that, not a blues, the blues. And I'm talking about his this trip out to the Rocky Mountain Archdichess Festival we're all looking forward to. I'll be there.

Rodney Jones 22:04

Yeah, I can't wait, we'll press and flash brother.

Bob Bakert 22:07

I love it. Take care, brother. Thank you for doing so much. Thanks for all you do for the music too. I'm trying, brother, I'm trying, you're doing it. See you, man. Bye bye, thank you, bye bye.