A Conversation with Sonny Moorman by Monica Yasher
Sonny: I love to teach. I see teaching as the opposite side of the mirror from the other. In truth I have a selfish motive with teaching; it forces me to understand what it is I do. Sometimes you can just do things, and you forget actually why you do them. The idea that I have to teach that to someone else means I have to break it back down for myself as well, and kind of understand not only that I can do it but why. Music theory things, technique things, it’s all part of the same purpose.
S: Well I have a couple of guys that are die hard Blues guys. I have some very Blues based. There is somewhat a young kid band, I mean 20’s maybe early 30’s by this point called Clutch. And, of course, there are the Black Keys that are actually from the Akron area. There are a bunch of Blues stuff happening with young guys. I’m of the mind that hip hop is actually modern Blues.
M: Really?
S: For this reason. It is simply the language of people set to a beat. Just like Blues was the language set to a beat. The music is different. Sometimes gangster rap doesn’t even appear to have music per se to me. But it is the language that people are using. Just like Blues was the language that people were used to. John Lennon said that the Blues is a chair. What he meant is that it is something actually tangible that people use in their everyday life. I think hip hop and rap is the same thing. Not always in a positive way unfortunately. Blues wasn’t always positive.
M: Very seldom really.
S: I hear it that way. If somebody has a good argument against that I could very easily be wrong. That is how I kind of think.
M: How hard is it today to be an artist? I see that you have done some amazing things. You were a finalist in the 2010 International Blues Challenge. I see that you just signed with Intrepid Artists. How have these events changed your music and being heard?
S: Well it definitely changed us being heard. We are moving to being a traveling entity that plays festivals and theatres, rather than a local entity that plays bars, clubs and taverns. But, we still do that and will be back in Fairfield OH doing that.
M: How important is it for that young upcoming artist to do a local following to a regional following to a national following? How important is that progression?
S: I have to tell you that I don’t know how a young artist would do that. I’ve been working at this for 30 years. I started playing in my first Blues band that played out for money in 75, pardon me 35 years, when I was still in college. So, for me. I’m finally getting to travel and play the crowds. I’m enjoying it!
M: Tell me. I see that you do acoustic shows. How do your acoustic shows differ from your trio? Still “Blues?
S: Maybe even more so. You were talking about the IBCs, and we were finalists as a band. But I took 2nd in world as a solo guy in ‘07. As far as I know I’m the only person to ever have been a finalist in both categories-band and soloist.
M: You should put that on your website.
S: I probably need to do my homework. To my knowledge, that hasn’t been done.
M: Speaking of accomplishments, what do you feel is your greatest accomplishment? You’ve been at this for 35 years.
S: I can give you an answer on that, because this was key to making all the other stuff happen…getting picked up by intrepid artists. If you don’t have the conduit of which to get on out into the music community through an international booking agent, your going to languish. That’s what happened to me for years. I couldn’t get out. I played the same as I do now. I have the same songs. I did the same stuff. I just hadn’t made that connection that allowed me to enter the national or international scene until just recently.
M: Did you seek them or did they seek you.
S: I started talking to them in 1999.
M: Wow.
S: We had an ongoing…get close…not quite get there relationship, since I met them. I was touring with Easy Riders magazine. A motorcycle magazine. Going around the country. Doing their rodeos in the summertime and their bike shows in the winter time. One of the acts that we picked up to do some of the Southern dates along with us was Tinsley Ellis. I am second or third cousin to Tinsley. The reason his first name is Tinsley, is that he was named after his grandmother whose maiden name was Tinsley. Well my mother’s middle name is Tinsley. So we are related at some point. There aren’t that many Tinsleys.
M: He’s a sweetheart!
S: He is a great guy. A great player!
M: Writing your own songs. How do you approach it?
S: I try to hear it in my head, and then figure it out with an instrument. Here is the difference. If you sit with an instrument, and try to write a song with a piano, guitar, whatever. You can only write from what you already know how to play. Your pallet is limited to what you already know how to play. Whereas if you try to imagine a song in your head, you have to figure out how to play it, and those limits are gone. I had a really neat improvisation teacher, Joe Dioiro, when I went to the Guitar Institute out in California, and he was a brilliant man. That was one of the things that he taught me. He said don’t write from what you already know. Write from what you want to play, and then figure out how to do it.
M: I know Sting starts out accapella with a recorder. And, I know that Michael Jackson always started with the drum tracks. Everyone attacks it different.
S: I would think in different genres of music you would have different approaches that would be more effective or less effective. For what I do I just try to envision the song, and figure out how you would play it, and what would you do to make this happen.
M: Do you sometimes have a song that you make three songs out of?
S: No. I carry it around until it is a song. Not by design does a song become more than one song.
M: I read how you go out there and hit a home run musically. What do you think of artists today using pixie dust to bring up their pitch, tone?
S: Anything that makes the music sound better is good.
M: Really?
S: Sure. What do you want from the end result?
M: You want it to sound good. But at the same time, what about all those artists that work really really hard to have great pitch working for them by doing hard work.
S: Well, it’s just a different approach. I had somebody say this to me and I was offended by it at the time, and I’ve come to think about it a little differently. I’m playing a little acoustic gig, and I have a guitar in my lap and a little bitty PA. I have a tuner that clamps on the headstock of the guitar. When I change guitars I check it up. A guy goes, “Oh, you’re using an electronic tuner, huh? That kind of takes the skill out of it doesn’t it?” And, to me, I said, “No”.
M: I would say no. I now see that he is kind of saying the same thing as me. (We laughed) I have a double standard.
S: At the time, was offended. I said tonight when you’re driving home, try not to use your headlights because that is cheating. I’ve come to think about it. My point, my choice in using an electronic tuner is the same thing as someone using vocal steady in Protools.
M: Who are you a fan of?
S: Living or dead?
M: Your choice.
S: I’m a huge Lonnie Mac fan, he’s still living. I’m a huge Duane Allman fan, he’s not living. I’m a huge Gallagher fan, he is no longer living. A huge Roy Buchanan fan, he is no longer living. I’m a huge Jeff Beck fan. I love Jimmy Page’s stuff. I love Eric Clapton stuff. I can go back to the next generation. Who I am really enjoying is…I’m going back and forth between Albert and Freddie King. It’s like I’ve got their whole histography on my laptop. Of course, I love BB King, and I’ve actually got a chance to play for BB King that was incredible. I got to play for Mayall too. But the truth is, I don’t feel BB stuff the way I feel Albert’s stuff and Freddie’s stuff. They hit me right here (as he touches his heart).
M: Thank you. I read that you wrote many songs for your new album.
S: I don’t write a song until it becomes a song. I don’t just sit with a pad and write songs. I have friends who say they’ve written over a 1000 songs. Weeellll yeah. You have. In form you have. Are they 1000 songs that you are really proud of that you really feel are worth doing? If that is true, more power to you. But, volume doesn’t make up for quality. I would rather have fewer songs that I feel are really solid. I’ll give you an example. This is from my perspective, so it means nothing because I’m the guy who wrote it. I think there’s a tune called “Sold Out”. The best acoustic song that I’ve ever written.
M: Why?
S: Just because it’s says things as simply as I could have ever put it.
M: That’s a key to a good song.
S: I think you can take one word out of it and not get the gest of the song, or put one word in it and change it. It’s just what it is.
M: That’s cool.
S: I’ll get a kick out of it if you listen to it.
M: I will.
S: The craftsmanship of writing a song is pretty easy to do. Once you learn the form and rhyme scheme, it’s formulaic and it can be a song. But does it do what it needs to do to be real? Or is it just an exercise in form?
M: Words are important
S: Lyrics are important. Melody is important. The melodies that support the song are all one thing, if it’s right.
M: One of my favorite songs, when you talk about how succinct words are, is down in Louisiana down in New Orleans way back out in the woods among the evergreens there stood a log cabin made of earthy wood. You can picture that log cabin with those evergreens all around it.
S: Chuck Berry was one…he is, pardon me, the best songwriter that ever lived.
M: Absolutely, a few words and he painted a picture.
S: He is a great teller of stories and you can dance to it!
M: Yeah! He hasn’t written for a while.
S: I don’t know of many musicians that write their entire lives. It seems it happens in a period, and you want to get as much out of it as possible. For all I know he may come out with a great tune tomorrow.
M: Never Know.
S: He wrote brilliant stuff.
M: What do you want to tell me that I haven’t asked you?
S: We have a new CD, “More Live as Hell”. It is all my songs. It is just a wonderful recording! Erwin Musper has done Van Halen, Def Lepeard, Mick Jagger and Jeff Beck.
M: Sounds like a great CD, Sonny! Thank you for your time.
