Josh Pollock may seem a strange guitarist to be featured in a jazz magazine in as much as a large body of his music is distinctly rock-worthy. Indeed in this interview he explicitly avows the necessity for rock bands, and especially ones in which he is involved such as 3 Leafs and Citay, to really rock!
But in addition to his mainstay work in and around San Francisco theaters (Shotgun, EXIT Theater) Pollock has been participating in radical freestyle composition and performance, much of which can readily be incorporated under the jazz rubric. Most noteworthy of recent projects are his own project Auricle and Daevid Allen's University of Errors (UofE) and other Gong-referencing offshoots (Acid Motherhood for one).
These qualities aside, what intrigues me most about this musician is his intention and expertise in looking beyond the strictly auditory elements of performance, to see the broader nature of the art. Without making claim to creating a new aesthetic of performance, Pollock stakes his reputation on attempting top bring freshness to performance and composition. This can discomfort an audience accustomed to straight reproduction of familiar tunes in familiar guises, but surely lies at the heart of jazz performance. In Pollock's case it may be attributable to his left-handed approach to the (right-handed, re-tuned) guitar, as much as his left-field approach to life.
Maybe also his original training in theater craft and in particular in improvisation, in combination with his collaboration with the master of musical role-play Daevid Allen, brings out most powerfully his performance skills. Pollock's incorporation into the University of Errors)UofE), Allen's attempt to break away from the shackles of the heritage of acid-prog trailblazers Gong, was itself accidental. Having been invited to join an impromptu San Francisco studio jam Pollock defied both his and Allen's expectations (and even initial preferences) but prompted the then 60-something space veteran to re-examine his original iconoclastic performance roots (e.g. The Daevid Allen Trio in 1963) and start a new band. Although it has evolved far from its initial rough rock origin, it was always essentially a performance focused project, where Pollock could counter Allen's more lyrical, glissando orientated guitar and in the process develop his own unconventional style.
In this email interview Pollock relates his approach to making music (the guitar and other instruments, as well as effects) and how it has evolved during his time as a professional. The result nowadays is music that deliberately hard to classify, sitting on the fringes of jazz, space, noise and beauty.
All About Jazz: What was your background with the guitar, or other instruments?
Josh Pollock: I started playing guitar when I was about 16. Before that, I'd tried taking lessons for other instruments (piano, drums, violin!), but I found them to be really boring and uninspiring, focused as they were on "exercises" and songs I didn't care about, and they all fell by the wayside pretty quickly. It wasn't until I just picked up a guitar that was lying around and started trying to figure out songs I actually liked that I managed to get anywhere. My success with learning instruments skyrocketed once music teachers were out of the equation, which is ironic, because I now have a job as a music teacher! (I give drum lessons at a school for children age 6-13. But I make sure that they are playing songs that they like, as soon as possible and that they are having fun. If playing music is fun for them, I think they will naturally find themselves wanting to learn how to do paradiddles, rudiments, etc).
JP: The guitar is the instrument I have the deepest connection with—the one with which I can tap into the cosmos most purely and directly. Not so much at first, of course, but definitely by the mid-90s when, frustrated and bored by the same old chords/licks and intrigued by bands such as Sonic Youth and Pavement, I started retuning my guitar, randomly, settling on a vaguely open-C tuning that I used exclusively for years. (All my playing with Daevid Allen has been in this tuning.) It put me back in the position of having only the faintest idea what I was doing, which could have been a recipe for disaster, but suddenly playing guitar was really fun again, and my playing got a lot more interesting, both to me, and apparently, everyone else. I took a long, long break from standard tuning—probably about 10 years, which was just long enough to make it alluring and intriguing again, so now I use it, but I still use the alternate tuning when the circumstances call for it.
Read more: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=46271#.UtrwcXkiifQ
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