Way back in 1999, three young guitarists were making a stop in San Antonio to perform live at Borders Books and Music, and when the gig was over, the California Guitar Trio headed over to Texas Public Radio’s offices on Datapoint Drive to guest on Deirdre Saravia’s “World Music” program, then airing on Sunday nights. I helped engineer the broadcast, with wires strewn about the control room.
“I remember it turned out great,” guitarist Paul Richards recalled on a recent Zoom call. “And it was a good experience for us.”
After seeing a photo taken of the group in 1999, Richards laughed. “We all looked like kids!”
In 2000, the CGT returned to San Antonio for a performance at Tequila Mockingbird, and since then, there had been no shows in San Antonio until August, 2023 when the group performed at Sam’s Burger Joint.
COVID kept me from attending that show, but Paul Richards graciously shared audio with us of the group’s performance days prior in Houston, and spent some time with me on Zoom, catching us up on what they’re up to. Read below for an edited transcript of our chat, and listen to the audio of their Houston performance by using the audio player at the top of this page.
Nathan Cone: Well, let me start by going back to the beginning. As acoustic guitarists, what made you all want to play as a trio with plugged-in acoustics and have that type of sound?
Paul Richards: That all began with our work on the Robert Fripp Guitar Craft seminars. Robert Fripp began teaching these guitar seminars in the mid-eighties, and all of the work was done on acoustic guitars, which made it easier to play together when we had 30 players together. And so in those early days, Ovation Brown guitars—and I'm pretty sure that's what we had when we showed up at your place years ago—for many years we used these Ovation acoustic guitars and they also had pickups. And part of the Guitar Craft courses, and part of Robert's teaching, is to learn how to perform live. He would book tours for us, and bring us on tour, and that became Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists. In fact, I think it was in the late eighties, we even did a few shows in Texas. We didn't play in San Antonio, but we were at Houston, at Rockefellers. Sometimes it would be 30 acoustic guitars on stage, all plugged in! And so that was really the beginning of us focusing on the acoustic guitar. And it was during one of those tours with the League of Crafty Guitarists that Robert Fripp asked my bandmate Bert Lams to start a side project on his own, and he asked him to write a list of who he really would like to play with amongst the students that were active at that time on the Guitar Craft courses. And it was myself and Hideyo Moriya that ended up on that original list. And so in 1991, Bert Lams had just moved here to Los Angeles, and he invited myself and Hideo to come here and start this project. It started out on acoustic guitars, and we always use that as the main format. Although now on this current just this year, both Bert and I started using these Taylor hybrid guitars, which is kind of an acoustic-electric hybrid. It has both acoustic pickups and electric pickups on it. So on the recording that you hear from Houston, you can hear quite a distinction between the more natural acoustic guitar sound and on a few tunes we're using some more electrified sounds, which, we've always done a little bit with that, but now we're refining it.
Well, the other thing that, you know, comes out of the Fripp teaching that I wanted to ask about is the tuning of the guitars as well, which for those who are guitarists, they're used to this standard tuning. And Fripp came up with this thing in the eighties of the New Standard Tuning. And I'm curious how he went about teaching that to y'all and how you feel it benefits you as a player to use this different tuning of the guitar.
So on the early Guitar Craft courses, before Robert Fripp's tuning was widely known, we just showed up on the course and... I had heard rumor that there was a different tuning, but I didn't know what it was. The early courses were held at a retreat center near Washington, D.C. called Claymont Court. On my course, there were probably 35 people and we all turned up, and then on the first meeting, Robert said, okay, everybody retune your guitar to C, G, D, A, E, and G. So the great thing about this is that it immediately leveled the playing field, for beginners or the more advanced players. Suddenly we had to start over again! So that was one of the things I really liked about it in the beginning. And for me personally, I had already been playing for quite a while and it was an opportunity for me to let go of all the things that I had already been doing and I thought that I was already pretty good at, and completely throw all that away and start over with a fresh palette.
The thing I like about this tuning is that the range is expanded, so it really works well in this format that we have, the guitar ensemble format. So the low notes are lower, the high notes are higher and everything is kind of spread out more. The lowest four notes on this tuning are the same as the cello, the classical cello. So the low note C in this tuning is the same note as low note on C on the cello, and it goes up in fifths like the cello. So it's almost more of a "classical" tuning in a way in that it is the same as the cello and viola going up in fifths. And then the top string is tuned to a G, which keeps it all within C major pentatonic. And that's also another thing I kind of like about it, because in, in learning the scales and learning all the notes on the guitar, having the open strings all be in C is kind of like the white keys on the piano. Maybe it was because I was applying myself more at that time, but it did seem easier for me. And now, even though now I still play a bit in both tunings, I know all the notes better in this new tuning.
Well, in addition, you also have now Tom Griesgraber playing a Chapman Stick as part of your ensemble as well, which is not a guitar. It's guitar-like, it kind of combines both elements of piano and guitar, and it's got a very low sound to it as well. So how does that fit into your arrangements?
Well, again, that really expands the range of our group even further. And you're right, the instrument that Tom plays is called the Chapman Stick, and Chapman is the name of the guy, Emmett Chapman, who invented that instrument. And Tom tells the story about how Emmett was a guitar player but wanted to find a way to bridge jazz piano and guitar. And this was his solution, to create an instrument where both hands are on the fretboard, tapping as equal partners.
I love the repertoire that you do because it's a mix of all sorts of genres. You've got jazzy stuff, you've got rock influence, and classical influence, and then you do these originals as well. How do y'all write together?
A lot of that also comes from our training with Robert Fripp. I had done some songwriting and worked on original music before that, but Robert Fripp really helped refine that experience and develop our songwriting capabilities by giving us challenges on the seminars to work on new music, mostly with the within the group. But anything with was encouraged and, you know, Robert would even say things like, "Okay, you have 24 hours to write an entire set of music, go!" Then we'd stay up all night writing pieces of music. And some of it was great! Maybe some of it was not that great! But we also began to learn the process of knowing what works and what doesn't work. And that's a big part of what the Robert Fripp Guitar Craft courses are about, is learning what he calls "rightness" and learning that sense of rightness that when something is really working, it really can touch your heart or have an excitement to it or an emotional response in whatever way, in a variety of ways. So for our years of studying with Robert on these Guitar Craft courses, we spent a lot of time developing that. and he was always encouraging us.
I had written a few pieces early on with the League of Crafty Guitarists, and we performed them with the big group. And so when we began work on the smaller project with California Guitar Trio, I just continued that process of writing, and how that looks and continues to this day, even after 30 years, is that in our own personal practice, we may each come up with different ideas or it could be even just a phrase or a few chords or a melody and being present with our practice, we recognize, oh, that's kind of a cool riff or cool idea. And then in a rehearsal, I can take that to show it to Bert and Tom or even send an MP3 to those guys and see if they like the ideas. Our best work is usually done together as a group. In fact, just a few weeks ago, before those Texas dates, we were in Long Beach and we spent some time working on some new music for these upcoming tours and a new album. And the process still remains similar, that each of us present an idea or two. And if the others like the idea and are excited about it, we can develop those ideas together. Now, one thing that Tom brings to the group that in addition to his the unique instrument and the very wide range of notes and sounds that he can do, he's also a very prolific writer, and sometimes he'll show up and he'll have a whole piece that he wants to show us and may have us help develop our own parts to a certain extent. But sometimes he's got a lot of the ideas already worked out, so that's been a cool thing. And on that recording from our show in Houston, you can hear a couple of Tom's tunes, including the very first tune on that recording is a song that he just recently wrote that got the working title called "Flicker." And he came with that tune, and then Bert and I refined our parts to fit our playing styles and to work well with Tom. So that one came together pretty quickly because Tom already had most of the part written out. And then there's a couple of other new tunes on there as well. There's another one of Tom's and then one of my tunes on there that also developed in a similar way, but maybe with more or less collaboration on each of those.
Along the lines of composition, what makes a cover work really great for you guys, whether that's coming from the world of classical, or rock or otherwise?
Well, Bert is the real classical player of the three of us. And so for all of the classical music, Bert is the one who helps arrange and sort out all the details for and we lean heavily on his classical ear. He, Bert, graduated from the classical conservatory in Belgium and went through all that very formal training. And he also received some awards for his classical guitar performance at that time. And so all of the Bach and Beethoven, I had some that I when I was at the University of Utah, when I was younger, I was in the jazz guitar program, but I studied with a private teacher that we also worked on a little bit of classical music. And then I also studied with a classical composer named Stan Funicelli, who helped us with some of the California Guitar Trio arrangements.
"We still have people coming up to us at shows, 'I heard you in 1995 at the Austin Music Hall!!'"
Each cover has its own unique story to it, how it ended up in our repertoire. It might be something from our youth, you know, like with Pink Floyd’s "Echoes." That's a tune I've known since I was a teenager. And same with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Each of the covers needs to go through a process to see if it really works within the three guitar format, because there's been a lot of cover tunes that we tried that we just never felt like it totally worked. Like even "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the beginning, I think we were skeptical. That song is so vocal heavy and Freddie Mercury is such a powerful element on the original recording, that we didn't know if it would work out. Now there's all these groups playing covers of that tune, but back 20 years ago we hadn't really heard an acoustic guitar version of that song yet, so that one went through quite a bit of work before we got it to the point that it felt like it honored the original, and then we started having people sing along at the shows. So that was also a fun element of that, that particular one.
Well, I got to say, I mean, "Echoes" is my favorite Pink Floyd song. And so I was super excited when I heard that a couple of years ago, when you went out on that tour with King Crimson, I was in Austin to go see that show. And then one of my other musical moments that I just hold dear is the first time I heard you all play, in 1995, when you opened for King Crimson in Austin and you did the Beethoven Fifth, the opening movement of it. And the audience was not expecting that because I think many of them hadn't heard you guys before, and they just erupted when the thing ended.
I remember that show! Yeah! Yeah!! On those early King Crimson shows, we were alternating, we had the Bach “Toccata and Fugue” and Beethoven's Fifth. And they were both the big hits at that time. You're right, I think people did not expect to hear the whole symphony played on three acoustic guitars, so when we kept going and going and played all the different movements… that's another one that our friend Stan Funicelli helped work out the details. He took the original symphonic score and helped us extract the basic elements that could be played on three instruments instead of a huge orchestra.
It's amazing, man, amazing. So how would you describe your fans? What roads do you hear from the fans of how they get to your music?
Even on these shows we just did in Texas and including that show in San Antonio, you know, we haven't played a lot in San Antonio, but there were people at that show that said that they've seen us, you know, 20 or 25 times in other locations, in Houston and Dallas. And in the beginning, you know, I think we were relying pretty heavily on our relationship with Robert Fripp. And we did those early tours with King Crimson in 1995, which really helped to break us to a larger audience. And we started doing some significant touring after that. So we still have people coming up to us at shows and said, “I heard you in 1995 at the Austin Music Hall” or wherever, you know, just like you were saying. So we have a lot of that. And then in addition to that, we've had other cool things that have happened along the way, like we've had quite a bit of music played on different radio programs over the years, including there's one in Philadelphia area called Echoes, John Diliberto, Echoes, and he's a big fan and supporter. And we had lots of people find out about us on his program. There is a program in New York City called New Sounds with John Schaefer…
On WQXR!
Yeah! And so there's things like that and including the there was a program on the XM Radio that also featured some of our songs and we gained a lot of fans through that. So there's been lots of ways that we've gained fans over the years. And the thing that I really enjoy is now thirty-something years later, a lot of these people are still coming to our shows. And even at that show in San Antonio, which was the first time we played there [since 2000], but we had a decent turnout because I think, you know, we've been doing this a long time and I'm sorry you weren't able to join us for that one, but hopefully the next time!
Well, thank you very much. And yeah, like I mentioned through email, my son had COVID and sure enough, I got COVID a day or two after that.
Yeah, that's how it happens!
Thankfully it was a very, very mild case.
Oh good!
What's next for the group on record, and on the road, in the future?
We just signed on with a new agency called New Frontier Touring. Previously, we had been working with SRO Artists, which was based out of Wisconsin, and the president and our main agent, AnneMarie Martins just recently retired, and so we wish them well. And we were happy to find this new agency based in Nashville called New Frontier Touring, and they're booking some tours and shows for us. So the shows we just did in Texas were the very first concerts they booked for us. And then if you go on our website at CGTrio.com, you'll see a few other tour dates on there, and they're adding more all the time. So that's a new thing for us working with a new agency after 20 or more years. So we're looking forward to trying some new things out with them. And they have some ideas of pairing up with other groups that they have on their roster, including, the Ventures. The surf guitar band is one of the bands on their label, so I think it's mostly their sons now that are the performing members of the group. I'm not sure if any of the original guys are still around, but maybe? And then the other thing that we have going is a new album, which will be the first studio album featuring the new member, Tom Griesgraber, and we've started working on a few tunes which you can hear on that recording from Houston. And hopefully later this year, maybe next month, we're going to get together and in November and record more music for the new studio album with Tom.
Well, Paul, thank you so much. I mean, this has really been a delight. I am so grateful for your time today.
Thanks for including me and I'm happy to talk to you and I look forward to seeing you the next time we're in San Antonio.
