Interview: Charlie Robinson

Recently I had the chance to sit down and speak with local guitar hero and instructor Charlie Robinson. Charlie has been teaching in this area for a long time and has built a strong reputation as being one of the foremost players around. Ranging from classical to country to jazz, Robinson has taught some of our top guitarists through a variety of ways including the "caged" method as well as sight reading and ear training. As a guitarist myself, I have yet to hear anyone around here play as smooth or as fluid as Charlie. So when we sat down one on one to discuss guitar, I was naturally excited. I had a lot of questions, and he made me feel right at home. He was a great interview; very calm and easy going.

HM: First of all Charlie, how long have you been playing for?

CR: Let's see, I started when I was six, and I'm sixty-five. So like fifty nine years or so.

HM: How'd you get started playing or what was it that inspired you to start?

CR: I just liked it, my brother was practicing how to play fiddle. So, he'd show me the chords and I'd back him up while he practiced his fiddle. I just kept going.

HM: What guitarist would you say inspired you the most?

CR: Oh, probably, that was in the old days, this is like (laughs) back in the forties. Well naturally Charlie Christian, Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, those kind of guys.

HM: So more along the country lines?

CR: Well, that's what I was mostly doing then. I had to make a living you know? Country makes a living. Jazz is hmmm (laughs).

HM: What equipment do you use these days to get your preferred tones?

CR: I don't use effects now. I try not to use them. I try to create the effect physically as opposed to electronically. I use a little Polytone amp and I got an old Takamine hard-body guitar that's been all re-worked. It's got humbuckers and stuff on it, that I like. It works good. I can't find another one to replace it as a matter of fact, so I wish I could. It's getting to look like a piece of junk, you know? I mean it looks bad man! It's all scarred and...

HM: It adds character?

CR: Wooh! Yeah it's got character all right! (laughing)

HM: Is that like a hollow-body?

CR: Semi-hollow.

HM: Fully electric?

CR: Yeah. I play so many varied type of gigs, like tonight, I'm in Grass Valley with a jazz band, and the thing works, you know? I can go over to the front pickup, tone it down a little bit and man, you get a nice fat, jazz sound out of it. And by the same token, if you're doing something country, you can crank up the back pickup and start carvin'.

HM: As far as song-writing goes, what direction do you see yourself going?

CR: Song-writing. You know, I don't really write... I could write music and stuff, you know. I don't really have an outlet. What am I going to do with it, just put it in the archives? So I don't really write.

I've written things in the past that we play or perform at the jazz festivals.

HM: So it's primarily jazz that you would say you write in?

CR: Song-writing has been easy for me for some reason. I can just get a thought about a song and just start writing something around it.

It's no big deal to me. An attitude is why put something down in concrete and say OK this is it? When I want a song I'll write one to fit the occasion. It's like going out and playing a gig, you know?

If you go and play a country gig, you better play country! (laughs). That's the way I look at it. I just kinda.. I don't have any need to go out and write a bunch of songs.

HM: What are you doing currently playing wise? What are your musical outlets at this time?

CR: Right now we're doing some local dance gigs around. Like senior dances and stuff. The reason I like to do those is because there's no smoking and they're not drinking. It's just a nice clean atmosphere, and most of them are three hours. Easy gigs. I'm playing with this jazz band out of Sacramento that plays festivals and stuff. Right now we're getting to do the Sacramento jazz festival this weekend.

HM: What's the name of the band?

CR: Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras Jazz Band. Tonight I'm doing a really interesting gig. I'm playing with Jake Hannah. He's a real well-known drummer. You guys have his sticks and skins and stuff. And Bob Draga, who's probably one of the greatest clarinet players on the circuit. Excellent player. So I'm really looking forward to it. Nice piano player too. Gonna be a great gig.

HM: You being a teacher, I've spoken to a lot of your students, and a lot of them make reference to the "CAGED" method. What would you say are some of the benefits of learning guitar that way. What is it that makes it a good way to go?

CR: The benefits are almost endless. Number one, it teaches you the guitar neck. In other words, how many times have we sat down and

played, and would like to do something in another place and are a little reluctant to go there because they're not sure how to get there. The "CAGED" system eliminates that. I mean you look at the guitar neck in its entirety. Not just in one or two places that we get caught up in playing. And that's what the forms are all about.

The CAGED thing stands for the C form, like if you make an open C chord then put a bar with it, you can move it anywhere up and down the neck. Well if you put those C A G E D in one key, you'll have the entire neck in the key of C or G or E flat, A flat whatever you want. That's one thing, that's the main benefit. It just teaches the fretboard. Secondly, if a guy wants to learn how to read all over the neck; you know how most of the books teach you to read in one position, open? And then they'll move you a little bit and then a little bit...man, if you can read the C scale in the C form, of the CAGED system, you've got it in five forms. You got the whole neck, you've got all those notes. It's beautiful. Another benefit of it is applying all the modes. In each form, you have the seven different related modes, Dorians, Phrygians, and Lydians. It's great, it's the best one I've seen. These forms are in the archives. Again the main reason for learning the thing is for the knowledge of the instrument. It's a map.

HM: Out of all the recording sessions you've done, which one will you remember for the rest of your life?

CR: Probably the most interesting one for me was a session with Zoot Simms. Unless you're in the jazz thing, you wouldn't recognize the name. He recently died, I think it was cancer or something. He was an East Coast jazz musician. A big, big name in jazz, all over the world. That was a real pleasure, just to sit down and have a session with him, and then have it recorded for your archive.

HM: Had you been familiar with his material prior to the session?

CR: Oh no, in jazz man, you just sit down and go hmmm, and go for it.(laughs) That's the whole fun of playing jazz!

HM: What about classical? How do you compare the styles, or which one do you prefer?

CR: Well, I could never be a straight classical musician. I just don't have the roots. I can't get planted in one style. I like everything. In that Mardi Gras band, we even worked out some country things, you know? Like (simulates guitar), you know this stuff? It's really fun man. It's a lot of fun.

HM: Some of that chicken pickin' is amazing.

CR: Oh, some of these young guys playing country. Ooh, they can pick, man. Good pickers. I'm telling you. I don't know whether they can do anything else, but they can sure move it on there.

HM: Any that come to mind?

CR: In names, you mean? Oh, I know several of the guys names, but I can't think of them. I never can as a matter of fact. That's not my interest in music, so I hear them and I hear their names and hear other guys talking about them, but I can't recall any of their names.

HM: Where do you see music going in the next twenty years? Things seem to be blending a lot style-wise, do you think they'll continue to do

so?

CR: The styles have kind of united huh? I can remember back in the sixties and seventies, man, it was either rock and roll or it was jazz, or country or whatever. Look at the country scene now, it's almost like rock you know? And also, I know of the different bands around that do everything. You go see a concert, man they'll play some classical, they'll do some jazz, they'll do some country, they'll do some bluegrass. It's cool. It seems to me that it's hard to educate the mass of the people, and it's a long, slow wheel turning to get them around to thinking in another way. I think that's a good move, combining the different forms of music together.

So it makes them realize, hey man, what's the difference with playing a country piece and playing a classical piece? Not much, you just change what you do.

There's a lot of connections like blues to jazz, rock to blues, classical fused into rock too. In fact, I even heard a country song with like a house beat to it. So even dance music is infiltrating country.

HM: What do you think about the fact that music has gone so digital over the last twenty years? Do you think it's a trend or do you think it's a bad thing?

CR: Almost everything that you can talk about, has its ups and downs. Digitally, recordings and stuff man, it's a beautiful sound. It takes out some of the warmth or the human touch. To me it does. Which I like. Of course I'm looking at it from a jazz; just a human standpoint. I like the human touch, rather than a machine. But it has it's place. Everything has its place.

HM: Do you want to plug anything?

CR: Well, I'm in the process of making a new

CD. Just me. Its gonna have everything. Its a potpourri, man, of everything. Its got some classical, it got a couple flamenco pieces, its got some jazz, its got a couple of country pieces.

HM: Are you gonna be using a full band?

CR: No, a lot of it is just solo. Just guitar.

HM: Any singing?

CR: I say the words to some things. There won't be any singing on the CD (laughs). I don't call it singing, I say the words!

HM: Are you going to make it available to the public? If so, how soon can we expect to see it?

CR: It'll be within the next year. I'm in no hurry man. Some of the stuff; like for example I'm playing "Take Five", both parts, the rhythm and the melody together. Takes a lot, a lot of practice.

HM: For those that aren't familiar with "Take Five", what is that?

CR: That's a piece Dave Brubeck made. That was kind of a jazz piece (it came out) somewhere along in the late fifties. And the reason he called it "Take Five", its in five/four time. You gotta count one, two, three, four, five, instead of one, two, three, four. And it has a little unique doon-duh-doon-duh-doon (simulating an instrument) , and you gotta keep that going while you go dah-dee-doo-dee-dah. And I don't recall ever hearing another guitar player do that. It's a lot of work, wheeu!

HM: Are you doing that simultaneously?

CR: Yeah. I'm playing both parts. Just like a piano.

HM: Are you doing that with your thumb on your left hand?

CR: Well, it's like a classical approach. You know, in classical music you use sometimes two and three voices together, with just your one hand. That's a thing that most people don't realize about guitar and piano. This is where we separate. Piano players have both hands making noise, we have one, the right. So we gotta do what they're trying to do with two hands and condense it down to one. It can be done man. Anything is possible on that instrument, anything. But it just takes work. It depends on how bad we want it. It's like learning. That's a good thing for most guys to realize that want to be guitar players. If you want to be a guitar player, learn all you can about it, and keep going for it. That's all we can do. Right? Just keep plugging away, man. You're going to get discouraged, you're gonna get frustrated, you get depressed about it, you start going ugghh! There's gotta be something else I can do. But if a guy's gonna be a guitar player, those things just take him away from it. I use that kind of thing in my teaching. You can turn those negative things that we can look at as negative, and turn it into a positive, by just realizing that if I get depressed about this thing, and I don't practice for a week, what have I gained? (laughs)

HM: So....for all of us out there looking to become a guitar player, these are words to live by. Ask around. Charlie Robinson has enough experience under his belt to know what he's talking about.

Definitely words to play by!