A Conversation With Chuck Loeb

Mike Ragogna: Chuck Loeb, we’re continuing our interviews of Fourplay’s new album Espirit de Four…although following the French theme, it also includes, shouldn’t it be “Quatre”? And by the way, you good?

Chuck Loeb: [laughs] I’m good! Yeah, I guess it would Esprit de Quatre, but then it wouldn’t rhyme with Esprit de Corps, which is the pun we made. The whole thing’s confusing.

MR: Yeah, we covered the name in your buddy Bob James’ interview. Okay, let’s get into the songs, like “Logic of Love?” That’s one of your original compositions for the group, right?

CL: Yes it is.

MR: All right, what’s your creative process? How do you bring your material into the group for the experience of everybody working on it together?

CL: Well, I heard a line once where a composer said, “The best source of inspiration is a gig, a natural recording or something where you’ve got to get it done.” When I’m writing for a Fourplay project, this is now my second one during my ten years of band, I very much think about each personality. I think about Bob the way he approaches music and Nathan (East), what he can add, and I know Harvey (Mason)’s always going to be exciting coming up with just the right drum part with him. “Logic Of Love,” in particular, actually started out as a guitar piece. Actually, two of the songs I wrote for this record were like that. It was a little fingering guitar piece, like a little etude that I was working on, and then I kind of extrapolated it into a song. One thing I will say is that when you actually get into the studio and each of those three monster musicians starts to put their parts on your composition, it just breathes this new life into it that’s a little bit hard to even predict. It’s always greater than you think it’s going to be and different than you think it’s going to be. It turned into quite a different thing than what it began as.

MR: And I imagine you have the same sort of reaction to it as you would during an improv, where you sort of don’t know what’s coming down the pike.

CL: Exactly, yeah, because although a lot of the music is on the written page, a lot of the music is improvised so you’re hearing things come at you that are somebody’s take or somebody’s solo or somebody’s interpretation of what you did. It’s exciting, especially right in the beginning when you’re in a studio and you hear it, and it’s like, “Wow, that’s so great,” and each of us kind of spurs the other guy on.

MR: You’re a renowned guitar player, and you’re in a line of great guitar players who were in the group Fourplay. You’re following Larry Carlton who followed Lee Ritenour. That’s quite a mighty lineage.

CL: It certainly is. It was a daunting moment when I was first asked to take the place of Larry after he had taken the place of Lee. These are two guys that I have been listening to and admiring greatly for many, many years both on their own as well as being part of what has always been one of my favorite bands, Fourplay. Yeah, it’s a great lineage to be part of. On the last project, I wrote a song called “Third Degree” and dedicated it to those guys, because it’s an honor to fill those shoes, or try to, anyway.

MR: And that last album was, of course, Let’s Touch The Sky. You’re a young guy, right?

CL: Well, I’m not the youngest guy in the band, actually.

MR: Really?

CL: Yeah, because Nathan has always been the baby in the band, and when I joined the band, he said, “Am I still the youngest guy?” Turns out, I’m older than him by about fourteen hours. Mine birthday’s December 7th, his is December 8th. So he remains the youngest guy in the band. That’s 1955. I’ll let people do the math, they can figure out how old we are. But he’s still the youngest guy.

MR: Thank God.

CL: Yeah, yeah.

MR: At least you don’t have to be the runt of the litter.

CL: Exactly.

MR: And it’s also amazing, your daughter, of course, being Lisa Loeb, what a great singer-songwriter she is. I’m joking, just joking.

CL: Yes, that’s a good joke, and actually, she gets it all the time because I do have a daughter named Lizzie Loeb who’s a singer and songwriter and a very good one and everywhere she goes, she hears, “Wait, Lizzie Loeb? Aren’t you Lisa Loeb? Are you Lisa Loeb’s daughter?” and all that kind of stuff. I’m always a little bit taken aback when people think Lisa Loeb is my daughter, because I’m not that old!

MR: I’ve seen you and Lizzie play when you were at The Bitter End a couple years ago. You both were awesome.

CL: Oh wow, yeah, absolutely!

MR: All right, enough about how great you are.

CL: [laughs] Hey, let’s talk about me.

MR: Well, yeah, it’s your turn, let’s talk about you! What got you into picking up that old guitar there?

CL: I grew up in a time where you were more likely to be a musician than not. it was in the sixties when every couple of days there was just another amazing Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Wonder or Beatles or Rolling Stones record or Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell. It was just this flow of amazing, inspirational music. My sister wanted to play the guitar, my parents bought her a guitar. There was a guitar in the house, she didn’t really pursue it much and I glommed onto the thing and taught myself pretty much for the first few years, mostly scratching up old 45s so I could learn what chords they were playing. By the way, that’s a 45 rpm vinyl single, for people that have only ever seen an MP3 player.

MR: Is that one of those things you put in one of those boxes with the big horn on it?

CL: Well, yeah, I guess back when there were no cars and we had to ride horses to the studio, yeah.

MR: And the dog used to sit in front of it and listen.

CL: Exactly. Tilt his head to the side. But the thing is that actually learning by myself had its benefits because when you study in music school you study something called “ear training” where you’re supposed to listen to something and identify it. Basically, I guess that’s kind of what I was doing by teaching myself by ear. So that turned out to be a good thing and I later went on to really studying formally and even going to college. One very good thing I’ll point out: When I was eleven I started playing. By the time I was about twelve and a half, I had decided I never wanted to do anything else except play the guitar and write music. That was a real boon. That was a great thing, to have made a decision and also to be able to do something that I loved.

MR: And when you were thirteen you were in Stan Getz’s band.

CL: [laughs] Almost! I joined the band when I was twenty-two, I went to college for a couple years, came out and had some gigs around New York with other guys. I went to Berklee in Boston. I only lasted two years because I got a gig on the road and then I came back to New York, where I grew up. After playing with some people around town–Chico Hamilton, Hubert Laws, Ray Barretto, Freddie Hubbard–I got the call from Stan Getz, which was a very steady gig because he was on the road all the time. I hit the road at twenty-two years old and I’ve basically sort of been doing it ever since.

MR: Now, let’s also do a little refresher. Some people might remember the group Metro.

CL: Yes.

MR: Can you go into Metro for a hair?

CL: Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. That’s one of my favorite projects that I’ve been involved in. I’ve been lucky enough to be in a bunch of these different bands like Fourplay, which I think was good training for being in one of the premier versions of it. Metro was a project that was put together by myself and keyboardist Mitchell Foreman. Originally, it had Anthony Jackson on bass and of course Wolfgang Haffner on the drums, who’s still the guy for the group when we get together. Metro grew out of a project that I did with a saxophonist Bill Evans–not the piano player, the sax player. He belonged to sort of an underground legendary thing, and we kind of splintered off from that and made about five or six CDs and we’ve toured little bit. It’s a little hard to tour because we have guys in LA, New York, and Turkey. It’s very scattered, but it’s a project that’s near and dear to my heart and I thank you for bringing that up.

MR: Of course, and I’m also going to bring up your first solo album, which could be, oh, let’s see,My Shining Hour?

CL: Wow. Yes. That one’s not one that everybody knows about, because it was only a Japanese production at first. I think eventually it did come out in other parts of the world, but it was my very first project. It was a challenging record because it was back when they were doing what’s called live two-track, in other words, you played and mixed the record live. The engineer was just sitting there getting the balances just right, we were playing, no overdubs, no punching, no fixing. It was a moment in time that you capture and I’m proud of it.

MR: You’ve had a solo career, you’ve had the group career, you’ve played tons of live gigs. Which medium is your favorite? What’s the thing you look forward to the most, like, what energizes you?

CL: You know, it’s really hard to answer that question because I love them all so much. I’ve thought a lot about it because I love playing, I love working on my own projects, I love being part of Fourplay and being part of Metro and different groups, and I love session work. But if I had to say what really, in the end, I would consider is the thing that’s most gratifying, it’s composing, actually. There are different ways a song happens, but when it’s finished, the thing just lives on as its own entity. To me, I can look back at certain songs I’ve written and it’s a very gratifying feeling to know that anybody else can take that song and play it and it’ll exist forever. It would be very hard for me to say that’s all I want to do because I love all the other parts, too. That’s a hard question. Too hard!

MR: Well, I’ve got another hard question for you.

CL: Okay.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

CL: Give up now. No, I’m just kidding. Go back to what I said before about when I started playing. It’s just such a blessing to know what I like doing so I can say, “Okay, I’m going to focus on this.” That’s what I would say. Once you’ve decided that you love something and you want to dedicate your life to it as a profession, what you need to do is you need to take every ounce of energy that you have and pour it into that endeavor. So if you’re going to play the guitar or the bass or the piano or the drums, if you’re going to compose, produce, record, engineer, whatever you’re doing you have to just really make sure that is the number one priority aside from family of course and health. That old adage, “It’s ninety-nine percent perspiration, one percent inspiration,” there’s a lot of truth to that. I think that there’s a lot of tools out for young artists now and, in some ways, it’s more difficult because the record business is not as good and there’s more competition, etc. But in another way, the internet and all the different kinds of avenues that we can pursue to get our music heard and commented on and appreciated opened other doors. So I would say if you love it, do it to the nth degree and then try to use all the different avenues we have available now, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube universe.”

MR: I also have to ask you, what has been your favorite thing about joining Fourplay?

CL: Well, that’s another hard question. Going out and playing is a very gratifying thing, and I’m playing with really three of the most deep, incredible, talented musicians on the planet. That’s an amazing thing. I think probably my favorite part of the whole thing is making these CDs. That’s a real lesson in democratic creativity. By the way, it’s a very democratic band. I think that’s where the Esprit de Four thing came from. There’s a unity of spirit and there’s an acceptance of majority rule in the band. I tell people I really mean it, that everything that gets decided is a group decision, so when we go in to make these CDs, that’s the thing that I really seem to enjoy the most. It’s a super-creative, intense process and I’ve always loved production. But to be producing with these guys is a very special and treasured experience for me.

MR: Nicely said, sir. Chuck, go into one more song.

CL: “December Dream,” it’s a little bit like, I had mentioned that “Logic of Love” had started out as a guitar piece. The same thing goes for “December Dream,” although I was always thinking of it being played by the band. But it’s a pretty intricate little fingered guitar melody. More than a melody, it’s almost like a lick or an etude. So I bring it in, I flesh it out, and I get it to be song length, write a chart, and bring it into the session. This song, really, with a capital “R,” took on a life of its own. When Bob heard the guitar part, he said, “I want to do something that really not challenges but comes up to the level of intricacy that that part has.” While Nathan and Harvey and I were busy rehearsing the rest of the song, Bob was hard at work composing the middle section, which is this contrapuntal almost Bach-like fugue. Man, after a little while, we said, “We’re going to break it down to just Chuck and Bob and do this thing and then the guys are going to come back in.” When Nate and Harvey heard that, Harvey came up with this amazing, intricate almost Stravinski-like snare drum part, which became his contribution. Then Nathan is singing and the walking bass that he does, kind of a double-time walking bass, all of that just was snowballing and I was just sitting there with my mouth hanging open in awe of these guys and the contribution they were making to my song. I’m sorry to be so wordy about it, but it really means a lot to me. I love the piece and I really love what they contributed.

MR: I guess we have to wrap things up, but I wish you all the best with Fourplay and for you personally. Oh, and of course, all the best for your twin daughters, Lizzie and Lisa Loeb.

CL: [laughs] Actually her real sister’s name is Christina, let me put in a plug for her, a budding ukuleleist. She’s good on the ukulele.

MR: Nice. All right, again, Chuck I really appreciate your time.

CL: Thank you very much and let me just say this, I religiously read the HuffPo, I really love it so I’m glad to be on it.

MR: Thanks Chuck!

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