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Tribal Tech-Gary Willis
- Thread starter Jetrider79
- Start date
Check his solo albums out too.Very good grooving on Kiyomi Otaka - Out Of Sight also - there hi plays with Dave Weckl.Gary is real groovy monster despite whoever hi plays with - K.Covington,D.Weckl or G.Borlai.
If you look up "groove without mercy" in a dictionary, it gives you this. 
First time I heard/saw this, I went
Gary is the man!
I esp. love his playing on Tribal Tech's Reality Check. "Nite Club" is my absolute favorite.
As already mentioned, he lives in Spain and teaches at two universities. Plays shows as well as clinics on a regular basis.
First time I heard/saw this, I went
Gary is the man!
I esp. love his playing on Tribal Tech's Reality Check. "Nite Club" is my absolute favorite.
As already mentioned, he lives in Spain and teaches at two universities. Plays shows as well as clinics on a regular basis.
Gary is indeed the man when it comes to technique. Just look at his right hand.
When i was a kid and i heard Got Tuh B i was just floored!! been a Gary Willis devotee ever since, the complete monster bassist in every department! i always find him inspiring to listen to and learn from.
Gary on his mountainbike.
You hear the song:"Mean Streak" from the album Actual Fiction (2007).
You hear the song:"Mean Streak" from the album Actual Fiction (2007).
Thanks i spent this morning checking out his stuff on SoundCloud. Such a shredder he is
Tribal Tech update....
From Scott's website.....
Willis and I both feel like it's time for a change. Deron Johnson is an incredible player, having worked with Miles and many others. I had the opportunity to play with him and never forgot how inspiring it was. His forte is rhythmic improvisation more than synths. Gergo is one of the baddest drummers ever - period. Look for the band to sound more edgy and raw, and much less like Weather Report.
------------------------------------------------
I thought my first answer would be enough, but I guess it wasn’t because a lot of people keep asking me why we made a lineup change right after our reunion album. Both Kinsey and Kirk were fired for personal and musical reasons - I don't mind talking about the music, but the other stuff is private. I will say this - it was our agent who had a personal problem with Kirk. Willis and I had completely separate personal problems with Kinsey. Those problems have escalated over the last two years. It’s not like me to bad-mouth good musicians, but in his case I’ll make an exception.
Kirk is an extremely talented musician - fans of his drumming with Tribal Tech may not know that he also plays keyboards. He claims it’s his second instrument - in a way, I’d agree because his drumming is many levels above his keyboard playing, but he knows an incredible number of tunes and can play them in any key. I believe he enjoys playing keyboards and singing more than playing drums in a support role. Kirk has always said that his drumming style is “explosive”, and on stage it just gets to be too much for me sometimes. This isn’t anything I haven’t told Kirk myself. Kirk sounds amazing on our records because he knows the music needs to groove. Gergo Borlai is a different type of player who puts a lot of energy into his grooves and isn't as concerned with fills and reacting to what everyone else is playing. Willis has been wanting to work with him for a long time and that’s the main reason for the change.
There’s a happy medium between a boring drum machine and a drummer who reacts to what everyone else is playing to the point where the music looses it’s feel, and Kirk has demonstrated on every record that he’s a bad ass musician who knows where to draw that line. Unfortunately his playing was sometimes dramatically different on stage. We used to kid Kirk about the drummers he hires for his keyboard gigs - every one of them total groove guys with very little chops. We’d ask, gee Kirk, why don’t you ever hire anyone who plays drums like you? It’s always been comedy for us to imagine him split into two people - the keyboard player/singer forced to work with himself on drums. He’d fire himself in a heartbeat - and even Kirk thinks that’s funny. I'll take some of the blame for Kirk feeling frustrated sometimes - I feel we didn't give him enough solo space. A drummer with those kind of monster chops, who's also used to being more of a front person, should be allowed to show what he can do. The music calls for a more supportive role, and I'm sure that can be frustrating to someone with such a huge vocabulary of ideas. Anyway, Kirk and I are still friends and he’s one of the most talented guys I’ve ever worked with.
After Dave Goldblatt left the band, Willis and I were on the fence about hiring Kinsey. He’s a great improviser, and had more cool sounds than anyone else, but also sounded the most like Zawinul. We thought that under our direction he would develop more of his own voice. Unfortunately that never happened. In fact he sounds more like Joe today than when we hired him in 1991. I always hoped Kinsey would eventually have a solo career like many keyboard players his age, and I even agreed to help him by touring with his band for less than a third of what I normally make. All his friends who played on his first record, myself included, did it for free. He made money from the sale of that record, but he didn’t pay the musicians back a dime. If it was me, I would have made some kind of affordable payment, even if it was 50 bucks as a gesture of thanks.
I was playing for years in the Zawinul Syndicate, listening to Joe use his vocoder in a way that I’d never heard anyone else do it. The Prophet 5 was Joe’s main voice in Weather Report, but in the Zawinul Syndicate, it became the vocoder. It made me sad to see Kinsey get a vocoder and use it constantly in his own band, copying Joe’s voice to the letter. I never let him do it in Tribal Tech, even though he wanted to. It’s like if I went out and bought a voice box and imitated Peter Frampton - everyone would think I was joking. Over the years we had to veto a lot of “Joe-isms” Kinsey brought to the band, and even though I’ve talked to him about it, I just don’t think he cares that he sounds so much like Joe. I won’t mention names, but there are two mega-famous guitar players who didn’t hire him for that reason.
Kinsey has always been a huge fan of one chord vamps. I like them too, but not all the time. I’ve seen the audience reaction to a whole night of his “songs” with no chord changes. Not very well received, and now there isn't an agent on earth who would consider booking one of his projects. I used to bust his balls and say “you call this jazz? Stevie Ray Vaughn has more chord changes in his music than you do.” For awhile, Kinsey was using the catch phrase “composition is over-rated” on his web site to promote his record. A more honest catch phrase would be “hard work is over-rated.” I'm not saying there isn't an art to creating one chord loops, but I hate them in the context of jazz, especially when they go on and on at one volume level and don't allow the music to have dynamics, or breath. A long time ago I decided not to play in his band anymore, and I’m sure he could tell I wasn’t enjoying it. Joe Zawinul was as famous for his amazing compositions as he was for his playing. Being the biggest Joe worshipper ever, I’m not sure I understand Kinsey’s disdain for the art of composing. Willis and I wanted X to be a more harmonic album than Thick or Rocket Science, and we put a lot of pressure on Kinsey to help make that happen. He’s the main writer of “Gravity” and “Working Blue”, which shows me that he has the ability to be a composer, but he made it very evident during the making of the album that he doesn’t enjoy doing it - he’d rather jam over his one chord loops.
This is sure to piss some people off, but I don’t like seeing bands reading charts on stage. I have much more respect for musicians who have the dedication and work ethic to memorize the music than I do for musicians who can read. Kinsey played the last two tours with his face buried in his iPad all night, which totally pissed me off, because the rest of us learned the music. About halfway through our first tour with Kinsey, Willis stole Kinsey’s charts and threw them in the trash. Kinsey made it through the next night, but I’m positive that it was the first time he’d ever played on stage without reading. Twenty five years later and he still has to read to play a gig, even on songs he’s played a hundred times. As much as I think there’s a value in learning to read, I also think there’s a huge problem with musicians who aren’t able to pull themselves away from the page. I’m not going to mention the name of a famous bass player who I worked with - we were on stage playing a regular 1-4-5 blues and I looked over at him and saw he was reading a chart. It was just too funny. (no, it’s not Jeff Berlin!)
Kinsey is now playing in the Zawinul Legacy Band, no doubt reading charts. I love Joe's music and I've covered some of his tunes myself on our HBC record and tours. (we memorized the songs) Since Joe isn’t around anymore, a tribute band put together by his son is a nice gesture, and it’s not quite the same as an AC/DC tribute band since those guys are alive and well. In the context of the Legacy Band, I guess it's Kinsey's job to imitate Joe while playing his music. It’s the perfect gig for him. As for me, I’m tired of Weather Report being brought up in Tribal Tech album reviews, but it was stupid of me not to realize that the keyboard style and sounds were bound to draw comparisons. Jaco may have influenced Willis to pick up a fretless bass, but Willis sounds like Willis, period. I'm very much looking forward to working with Deron Johnson. He sounds like Deron Johnson.
Regardless of what I’ve said about Kirk’s live drumming and Kinsey’s identity crisis, they’re both great players and I think we made some cool music together. I hope the band finds more of it’s own identity on the next record.
More from Scott on Kinsey.....
Actually I think he’s an amazing player, and I owe him a lot. He’s the one who brought the element of looseness to Tribal Tech, which we desperately needed because before him the music was way too arranged in my opinion. His influence led to jamming in the studio with no pre-written material, and then composing over the jams in post production while keeping all the cool interplay from the basic tracks. It’s a fun way to make records, and without Kinsey I never would’ve experienced it.
I respect him so much as a musician, that it’s been painful for me (and some of his other friends) to watch his career. He didn’t do anything for three years after Tribal Tech stopped playing, and then when he finally started a band, it was a direct imitation of the Zawinul Syndicate, complete with vocoder, samples of African singers, and to fill the role of the guitar player/ human sequencer, a Mac playing one chord loops. What a waste of genius level harmonic abilities, not to mention career suicide. Nevertheless, I tried to help him by talking my agent into booking two tours with Scott as band leader, but he’d only book it if I was in the band too, so I agreed. The tours weren’t successful, and the agent dumped the project. After awhile I bailed too, because I couldn’t bear to hear another note from that vocoder, and I was sick of playing solos over inflexible loops which trampled over everything I love about improvised music. This was long before I had any personal problems with Scott.
I like one chord jams, and the good ones happen because of dynamics and interaction - Miles and Weather Report are perfect examples. Imagine Bitches Brew chained down by a loud, monotonous electronic loop going non-stop through the record - all hope of interaction and dynamics gone.
Check out Brown Street on the Weather Report 8:30 album - that’s the way to do a one chord jam! Incredibly melodic and interactive playing by Wayne and Joe - with not much more than a major scale as their vocabulary. They managed to make a long jam continually interesting - without a loop.
Using a Mac as a band member reminds me of guitar clinics. The computer is a necessary evil for that, but in my opinion, jazz audiences sense the artificial nature of it and don’t like it much. Scott has the talent to write great tunes, and he’s quite aware that composition isn’t overrated. He’s also a brilliant acoustic jazz pianist, but won’t take anyone’s advice and show that part of his talent to the public. I have no doubt that he’ll eventually dump the Kinsey Syndicate idea, and find better uses for his computer like spreadsheets and porn. I’d love to see him find his own original direction and have a chance at a career.
OK, I’m done talking about keyboard players - forever!!! One last statement, but you have to imagine it being said with great enthusiasm by Alfalfa from The Little Rascals.
“I guess Herbie Hancock is about the best piano player there is!”
http://online-discussion.dhenderson...&start=0&sid=113265a4676160673cabfad412db3ef5
WOW!
From Scott's website.....
Willis and I both feel like it's time for a change. Deron Johnson is an incredible player, having worked with Miles and many others. I had the opportunity to play with him and never forgot how inspiring it was. His forte is rhythmic improvisation more than synths. Gergo is one of the baddest drummers ever - period. Look for the band to sound more edgy and raw, and much less like Weather Report.
------------------------------------------------
I thought my first answer would be enough, but I guess it wasn’t because a lot of people keep asking me why we made a lineup change right after our reunion album. Both Kinsey and Kirk were fired for personal and musical reasons - I don't mind talking about the music, but the other stuff is private. I will say this - it was our agent who had a personal problem with Kirk. Willis and I had completely separate personal problems with Kinsey. Those problems have escalated over the last two years. It’s not like me to bad-mouth good musicians, but in his case I’ll make an exception.
Kirk is an extremely talented musician - fans of his drumming with Tribal Tech may not know that he also plays keyboards. He claims it’s his second instrument - in a way, I’d agree because his drumming is many levels above his keyboard playing, but he knows an incredible number of tunes and can play them in any key. I believe he enjoys playing keyboards and singing more than playing drums in a support role. Kirk has always said that his drumming style is “explosive”, and on stage it just gets to be too much for me sometimes. This isn’t anything I haven’t told Kirk myself. Kirk sounds amazing on our records because he knows the music needs to groove. Gergo Borlai is a different type of player who puts a lot of energy into his grooves and isn't as concerned with fills and reacting to what everyone else is playing. Willis has been wanting to work with him for a long time and that’s the main reason for the change.
There’s a happy medium between a boring drum machine and a drummer who reacts to what everyone else is playing to the point where the music looses it’s feel, and Kirk has demonstrated on every record that he’s a bad ass musician who knows where to draw that line. Unfortunately his playing was sometimes dramatically different on stage. We used to kid Kirk about the drummers he hires for his keyboard gigs - every one of them total groove guys with very little chops. We’d ask, gee Kirk, why don’t you ever hire anyone who plays drums like you? It’s always been comedy for us to imagine him split into two people - the keyboard player/singer forced to work with himself on drums. He’d fire himself in a heartbeat - and even Kirk thinks that’s funny. I'll take some of the blame for Kirk feeling frustrated sometimes - I feel we didn't give him enough solo space. A drummer with those kind of monster chops, who's also used to being more of a front person, should be allowed to show what he can do. The music calls for a more supportive role, and I'm sure that can be frustrating to someone with such a huge vocabulary of ideas. Anyway, Kirk and I are still friends and he’s one of the most talented guys I’ve ever worked with.
After Dave Goldblatt left the band, Willis and I were on the fence about hiring Kinsey. He’s a great improviser, and had more cool sounds than anyone else, but also sounded the most like Zawinul. We thought that under our direction he would develop more of his own voice. Unfortunately that never happened. In fact he sounds more like Joe today than when we hired him in 1991. I always hoped Kinsey would eventually have a solo career like many keyboard players his age, and I even agreed to help him by touring with his band for less than a third of what I normally make. All his friends who played on his first record, myself included, did it for free. He made money from the sale of that record, but he didn’t pay the musicians back a dime. If it was me, I would have made some kind of affordable payment, even if it was 50 bucks as a gesture of thanks.
I was playing for years in the Zawinul Syndicate, listening to Joe use his vocoder in a way that I’d never heard anyone else do it. The Prophet 5 was Joe’s main voice in Weather Report, but in the Zawinul Syndicate, it became the vocoder. It made me sad to see Kinsey get a vocoder and use it constantly in his own band, copying Joe’s voice to the letter. I never let him do it in Tribal Tech, even though he wanted to. It’s like if I went out and bought a voice box and imitated Peter Frampton - everyone would think I was joking. Over the years we had to veto a lot of “Joe-isms” Kinsey brought to the band, and even though I’ve talked to him about it, I just don’t think he cares that he sounds so much like Joe. I won’t mention names, but there are two mega-famous guitar players who didn’t hire him for that reason.
Kinsey has always been a huge fan of one chord vamps. I like them too, but not all the time. I’ve seen the audience reaction to a whole night of his “songs” with no chord changes. Not very well received, and now there isn't an agent on earth who would consider booking one of his projects. I used to bust his balls and say “you call this jazz? Stevie Ray Vaughn has more chord changes in his music than you do.” For awhile, Kinsey was using the catch phrase “composition is over-rated” on his web site to promote his record. A more honest catch phrase would be “hard work is over-rated.” I'm not saying there isn't an art to creating one chord loops, but I hate them in the context of jazz, especially when they go on and on at one volume level and don't allow the music to have dynamics, or breath. A long time ago I decided not to play in his band anymore, and I’m sure he could tell I wasn’t enjoying it. Joe Zawinul was as famous for his amazing compositions as he was for his playing. Being the biggest Joe worshipper ever, I’m not sure I understand Kinsey’s disdain for the art of composing. Willis and I wanted X to be a more harmonic album than Thick or Rocket Science, and we put a lot of pressure on Kinsey to help make that happen. He’s the main writer of “Gravity” and “Working Blue”, which shows me that he has the ability to be a composer, but he made it very evident during the making of the album that he doesn’t enjoy doing it - he’d rather jam over his one chord loops.
This is sure to piss some people off, but I don’t like seeing bands reading charts on stage. I have much more respect for musicians who have the dedication and work ethic to memorize the music than I do for musicians who can read. Kinsey played the last two tours with his face buried in his iPad all night, which totally pissed me off, because the rest of us learned the music. About halfway through our first tour with Kinsey, Willis stole Kinsey’s charts and threw them in the trash. Kinsey made it through the next night, but I’m positive that it was the first time he’d ever played on stage without reading. Twenty five years later and he still has to read to play a gig, even on songs he’s played a hundred times. As much as I think there’s a value in learning to read, I also think there’s a huge problem with musicians who aren’t able to pull themselves away from the page. I’m not going to mention the name of a famous bass player who I worked with - we were on stage playing a regular 1-4-5 blues and I looked over at him and saw he was reading a chart. It was just too funny. (no, it’s not Jeff Berlin!)
Kinsey is now playing in the Zawinul Legacy Band, no doubt reading charts. I love Joe's music and I've covered some of his tunes myself on our HBC record and tours. (we memorized the songs) Since Joe isn’t around anymore, a tribute band put together by his son is a nice gesture, and it’s not quite the same as an AC/DC tribute band since those guys are alive and well. In the context of the Legacy Band, I guess it's Kinsey's job to imitate Joe while playing his music. It’s the perfect gig for him. As for me, I’m tired of Weather Report being brought up in Tribal Tech album reviews, but it was stupid of me not to realize that the keyboard style and sounds were bound to draw comparisons. Jaco may have influenced Willis to pick up a fretless bass, but Willis sounds like Willis, period. I'm very much looking forward to working with Deron Johnson. He sounds like Deron Johnson.
Regardless of what I’ve said about Kirk’s live drumming and Kinsey’s identity crisis, they’re both great players and I think we made some cool music together. I hope the band finds more of it’s own identity on the next record.
More from Scott on Kinsey.....
Actually I think he’s an amazing player, and I owe him a lot. He’s the one who brought the element of looseness to Tribal Tech, which we desperately needed because before him the music was way too arranged in my opinion. His influence led to jamming in the studio with no pre-written material, and then composing over the jams in post production while keeping all the cool interplay from the basic tracks. It’s a fun way to make records, and without Kinsey I never would’ve experienced it.
I respect him so much as a musician, that it’s been painful for me (and some of his other friends) to watch his career. He didn’t do anything for three years after Tribal Tech stopped playing, and then when he finally started a band, it was a direct imitation of the Zawinul Syndicate, complete with vocoder, samples of African singers, and to fill the role of the guitar player/ human sequencer, a Mac playing one chord loops. What a waste of genius level harmonic abilities, not to mention career suicide. Nevertheless, I tried to help him by talking my agent into booking two tours with Scott as band leader, but he’d only book it if I was in the band too, so I agreed. The tours weren’t successful, and the agent dumped the project. After awhile I bailed too, because I couldn’t bear to hear another note from that vocoder, and I was sick of playing solos over inflexible loops which trampled over everything I love about improvised music. This was long before I had any personal problems with Scott.
I like one chord jams, and the good ones happen because of dynamics and interaction - Miles and Weather Report are perfect examples. Imagine Bitches Brew chained down by a loud, monotonous electronic loop going non-stop through the record - all hope of interaction and dynamics gone.
Check out Brown Street on the Weather Report 8:30 album - that’s the way to do a one chord jam! Incredibly melodic and interactive playing by Wayne and Joe - with not much more than a major scale as their vocabulary. They managed to make a long jam continually interesting - without a loop.
Using a Mac as a band member reminds me of guitar clinics. The computer is a necessary evil for that, but in my opinion, jazz audiences sense the artificial nature of it and don’t like it much. Scott has the talent to write great tunes, and he’s quite aware that composition isn’t overrated. He’s also a brilliant acoustic jazz pianist, but won’t take anyone’s advice and show that part of his talent to the public. I have no doubt that he’ll eventually dump the Kinsey Syndicate idea, and find better uses for his computer like spreadsheets and porn. I’d love to see him find his own original direction and have a chance at a career.
OK, I’m done talking about keyboard players - forever!!! One last statement, but you have to imagine it being said with great enthusiasm by Alfalfa from The Little Rascals.
“I guess Herbie Hancock is about the best piano player there is!”
http://online-discussion.dhenderson...&start=0&sid=113265a4676160673cabfad412db3ef5
WOW!
Yeah, there's more at the link. He really kind of lays into them but he's also a very open and honest person, at least from what I can deduct.
He's the bandleader along with Willis so they decide ultimately.
I'm going to miss Kinsey and Kirk but I am confident Scott and Gary have chosen the best players they could have for the band.
Now, if they could just get it going and release a few albums and tour a few times over the next few years, like the good old days.
He's the bandleader along with Willis so they decide ultimately.
I'm going to miss Kinsey and Kirk but I am confident Scott and Gary have chosen the best players they could have for the band.
Now, if they could just get it going and release a few albums and tour a few times over the next few years, like the good old days.
