It's that "duo thing"
The Delicate Balance
of
Tuck & Patti
The Glacier and The Hummingbird, husband and wife duo guitarist Tuck Andress and singer Patti Cathcart fighting the chill of an Orcas Island summer evening.
See more pictures.
Interview by Carol WrightHusband and wife duo, singer Patti Cathcart and guitarist Tuck Andress, have been performing together for 23 years. The late Windham Hill guitarist Michael Hedges steered the two to the label, but they were an established duo with a polished and crafted sound long before recording their first album, Tears of Joy, in 1988. Admits Tuck, "A vocal and guitar duo just wasn’t supposed to ‘happen’ in the first place." Patti explains they arrived at Windham Hill right as "Will Ackerman was leaving," and, adds Tuck, "we managed to ride the wave of label acceptance."
The pair has released five albums with Windham Hill and one on Epic, with two additional solo albums on Windham Hill by Tuck, who explains that composer/arranger/producer/singer Patti is really the musical heavyweight of the group. "Performing with him is like catching a tornado," says Patti, lobbing one back. Onstage, Patti has the looser style, while Tuck totally concentrates on wrestling down the fingerboard.
Their days with Windham Hill are over, and they’ve formed their own label, T& P Records, pleased to be in full control of their recordings at last. At the end of a long tour, Tuck & Patti played at vocalist Susan Osborn’s venue, The Living Room, on Orcas Island, Washington. Carol Wright interviewed them at Susan’s house, as Susan sat in as recording engineer.
Carol Wright/NAV: Tuck, when you were growing up, what kind of guitarist did you think you’d be?
Tuck: Initially, I played Rolling Stones and Beatles. Early, I heard Wes Montgomery, Jimi Hendrix, and jazz, realizing there were all kinds of guitar styles. I played in rock bands, soul bands, many kinds of groups before Patti and I met. Largely electric, however, not acoustic
NAV: Did you study officially?
Tuck: I developed a very good ear, so I was good at teaching myself by studying albums and watching other guitarists, night after night. Special were Terry Saunders, an amazing player, and a wonderful rhythm soul guitar player named Odell Stokes. My first guitar teacher, Tommy Crook, played in a style similar to what I do now. He could play three or four parts at the same time and still have it sound like music and not like an exercise. Django Reinhart was a great improviser, but my real influences were more on the Charlie Christian derived side of jazz, Wes Montgomery and George Benson.
NAV: How did you both end up in the Bay Area?
Patti: I was born in San Francisco, and lived on the peninsula, while...
Tuck: I grew up in Tulsa and came to Stanford.
NAV: Was Michael Hedges a catalyst to get you with Windham Hill?
Tuck: Yes, we were friends, lived in the Palo Alto area, and played in the same club. He went with Windham Hill, and we assumed we’d end up there.
Patti: But you know, we didn’t have our first album until ten years after we’d been performing. Labels would call – like Concord Jazz – and say "hey, we want to sign you kids up, but ya have to get a band." No. Thank you. Windham Hill’s secretary called, she asked that we send Will a demo. We are honored, but we don’t have a tape and we are not ready to record yet. We were kinda crazy, just blinded by music. We were doing something everyone said we couldn’t do anyway, so we might as well do it on our terms.
But performing: From the first moment, we had a "listening" audience. And because they were listening, it put this pressure on us to go as deep as we could. They were seeing right through you, week after week. Both of us took a breath at the same time, and the music was gone! I remember the first time we did that, it was a shock. We were on fire. It wasn’t about making it or getting a record deal. Just about the music, deeply in to the music.
NAV: And romance?
Patti: We were best friends, and it didn’t get romantic for a year-and-a-half. He didn’t have a clue! I knew before he did. Okay, yes, yes. You are a hermit guitar player.
Tuck: Um hmmmm.
Patti: You don’t need any woman. (But I am here.) We got married three years after we met.
NAV: How much of your performance is improvised, how much set?
Patti: We were improvising from the beginning. We might start off playing a Stevie Wonder song, take off on an excursion, and wind up back with Stevie. We were notorious for not making tapes or writing down our arrangements. It wasn’t until we recorded that we actually documented the songs so we could perform tunes the way that folks heard on the album.
NAV: Tuck, you make playing sound easy – though in concert, I’m amazed at the dexterity you have to pull it all off. Those parts are incredibly complex and demanding. How long do you work a piece before you record?
Patti: We move quickly because it is most fresh is when you haven’t thought it to death. One of the things about our collaboration is that Tuck has just gotten faster, more like our timing is...
Tuck: more together.
Patti: But, Tuck is like a glacier...
Tuck: Gla-cier, and...
Patti: and I am like on rocket time!! Whoosh!!! So we have a glacier and...
Tuck: a hummingbird...
Patti: working together.
NAV: On stage, it looks like Patti is the ballast, while Tuck is jetskiing over the fingerboard. Patti, when you write these complex parts for him, do you "scat" it out?
Patti: Yeah, I sing it out, arpeggiate it. His parts are formidable, but as time has gone on, I learned his style and the textures he can do.
Tuck: She has a real good sense of what ultimately is going to work for the guitar, but she doesn’t limit herself to what I am able to get hold of right now. Patti’s concepts for guitar arrangements keep me just about where I should be stretched, part of the beauty of our collaboration.
Patti is really the writer/arranger/conceptualizer/producer for us.NAV: Producer?
Patti: On our last CD, Taking the Long Way Home, my producer-vision was clear. I was The Producer, so I was totally going to be the producer. This wasn’t "wife-Patti-nothin" talking; this was exactly how it was going to go. Some things are very controllable; and if you control those, the recording process does not have to be wrought with other difficulties. I didn’t want 22 hours of straight studio time. I wanted "banker’s hours," relaxed, home early.
It can be done, though with every birth there will be some pain and heavy breathing. Rather than fight it, go with it, like using Lamaze to breath deeply through childbirth.
I think that happened on Taking the Long Way Home. We gave birth to a whole new way of doing it, intense and wonderful and horrible all at the same time. I think it really worked, don’t you?
Tuck: Definitely. I came from this kind of nervous uncertain thing that started off our relationship where I thought that as instrumentalist and guitar player who knew how to notate and play chords, it was my job to be there at every point supplying possibilities. But I had no conceptual direction. My whole life had been simply exploring possibilities and cataloging them. I had felt the need to jump in to the creative process, but I was really unqualified to do it.
Over time, I have learned to stay out of the way of one person’s real coherent strong and directed vision. I’ve learned instead be a collaborator who is there to further it. It’s really neat to watch Patti process these things. They manifest very quickly without a lot of sidetracking.
My life has been sidetracking. I can sidetrack through every style of guitar, every possible fingering. I know every chord, every scale that you could play, through the entire fabric of possible guitar playing.
Patti: It’s like, Tuck, we have to – like – finish it. We really do have to FINISH it.
Tuck: That’s foreign to me. I still don’t "get" it. I mean like there are 63 chords that would fit with the two notes here. So let’s try every one and go on to the next chord. That’s why I never write any songs.
Patti: He’s still cataloguing the possibilities.
Tuck: In Patti’s case, it’s my goal to learn to be the ideal support for that. She’s so strong at going down the path...and what a cool path! And still, I’m completely involved in it. So, it is a duo thing, a delicate balance we’re both getting good at.
NAV: Is there an overall vision for your music, beyond inspiration that typically sprouts each song?
Patti: Love. Love – made – audible. Some artists will speak of their art as "love made visible," but for us it is "love – all the way – made audible," so people can hear it.
NAV: Do "you" disappear in your music when you sing?
Patti: No, but I become a part of it. We seem to disappear into each other, but I don’t "go away." I feel like I become a big part of all of it. I become The Creator, and get a chance to share in that and to be a part of that. We live here, and we tend to forget we’re separate, and you get to remember who you are and be a part of it.
NAV: What do you think about recordings these days? Less meaningful?
Patti: Songs are over-polished now. Sing the line "and I really LOVE you!" Cool! But the recording session goes like this "And..." sing it again... "aa-nd" no "aNdd..." That’s it! "Really...reeally..." Piece by piece. Even when produced really well, the line leaves you cold because it has no breath.
NAV: These Whitney Houston wannabees who are singing to become a "pop star" ...?
Patti: If you could take a magic snapshot of every singer, you would see a little girl in front of her mirror, holding a brush like a microphone. And her eyes would fantasize of being lit centerstage. But what happens to her heart when she sings that note is completely different. It is not-to-be-discussed in the music industry. It’s just like talking directly about "love," for fear of sounding stupid or weird. No one talks about that. So...
NAV: So...you can...so, do.
Patti: Yes. Singing for oneself is healing, soothing; it’s a balm to whatever your little heart is going through. But at the same time, some of us sing and realize there is a power in the sound that is a balm to others. And then you want to be that.
Those little girls are in touch with that genuine impulse, but the industry pushes them away from that. It’s not acceptable; it doesn’t fit the business plan. "You can’t have all these people running around talking about their hearts, God dammit. This love stuff won’t sell."
NAV: But what is expressed, that looks like love, but it’s artificed, pressed to the limit?
Patti: Yeah, let’s modulate up. Let’s leap, let’s scream, let’s pose. Pop songs are "crafted," jerked around, a roller coaster. I want to make songs that I wanted to hear, from the heart, from what I believe.
I grew up in a time when music said something to me. It was an event when Stevie Wonder released a new album. It was like The News! Let’s rush to get it and stand and cry and listen to it. You want that. That’s why some teens are buying the old records, to hear The News. How much can you hear about Gucci, and I bought a diamond and stuck it on my bootie? Or now rap’s gone to the lowest level: Got a gun and shoot you down. How much can you hear that?
I have sat with record company execs as they looked over these groups. One group would perform and I’d think, "Wow! They are rapping about joy and excitement!" And the execs sit there, arms folded. The next kid comes out and raps, "I kicked them in the ass...and I ..." and they all perk up. Somebody has to say something, but people are silent because they want to make a living in show biz.
NAV: You will now record on your own label, T & P Records, but what was it like being with Windham Hill? Did the record execs interfere?
Patti: Amazingly enough, we have shape shifted our way through this industry. They have never come to a recording session, ever. They don’t know what to do with us, because "it" wasn’t supposed to be here, anyway. It wasn’t supposed to happen!
Tuck: This is one case where artistic strength has actually won out.
Patti: They sometimes give me some hassle about "going to play this on the radio," and I am honest with them. I say, "Look, are you going to spend three million dollars on me ? Go get me a personal trainer, shoot a music video? Cause if you are, then let’s talk about mainstream pop airplay. If you are not going to play that game, then don’t talk to me." It cost like $300,000 to break a single at radio these days. We’ve been honest with them, and they say, "You aren’t supposed to talk to us like that!" Yes, I am. Supposed to tell the truth.
So all the other things that they use to hold an artist hostage – "We won’t give you tour support." Well there are only two of us so we don’t need tour support. We tour Europe and Japan and the states, and we make a living in music.
The ultimate threat they use – "we won’t put you out" – fine. We’ll do it ourselves. We now have our own recording studio. We know every part of the music business, and have the best booking agent in the business. We know how to take care of ourselves.
NAV: Are your albums going to cycle off Windham Hill ever?
Patti: Never. That is like the gold of a label, its catalog. The sampler business is very lucrative. They don’t have to get your cooperation. Bam! It’s done and out there making money.
NAV: Do you get paid for compilations?
Patti: You’re supposed to get paid for them, but they have a clause called "cross collateralized," connected to your other compilations. One is a moneymaker and supposedly "supports" the money loser. So, you’re always in the hole.
Tuck: And they’ll say, "No nothing’s every recouped." And they do the accounting, and it costs you a bundle to audit.
Patti: Tuck had the ability to find every cent of our royalties. And a friend who works in the biz was surprised that Tuck found it; he joked that it was "his job to make sure the artist never got it." As a writer, you always can get composing royalties, but there are the packaging deductions and "reserves." Even though you owe you the money, and it’s undisputed that they owe it to you, it’s kept in reserve for...
NAV: Returns?
Patti: A rainy day. Returns are another deduction.
So with our new label, we are going with a program from Tower Records called 33rd Street Records, which is geared to people like us who are touring artists. The contract is only four pages long. It’s a licensing deal, and they have the right to sell it for X years. Your master reverts back to you, so you never have to give it up. They get you into their stores when you tour there, and they also distribute to other chains. It’s a clean deal.
NAV: Tell me about some of the places you’ve played. I’ve heard about a laser light incident?
Patti: We were playing in an opera house the Middle East war zone. I was singing "Love Warriors." Being a black woman, I am aware of the people who have died for my freedom. I have very rarely felt that I had to be willing to die for something. But that red light bead, pointed right at my heart, was a very clear thing. "Okay, you’re singing about ‘Love Warriors,’ to stand up and be counted. You BELIEVE that?! Cause right now, honey child, as you look down at this red bead, you might have to die for that.
That moment was really the gift. Yes! I am truly walking my talk here. It was all called home – right as I was singing – right in that little red laser bead pointed at my heart. Yeah, ya know, I’m ready.
NAV:(directed to vocalist Susan Osborn) Susan, have you ever put your life on the line for song?
Susan: Someone wrote me a death threat with a copy of my CD cover attached. Unless "I apologized," they’d kill me on the fourth of July. I reported it to the police, but was I going to change your life and direction because of some random nut? No!
Patti: But it does stop you.
Susan: It was a moment of decision for me as well. It made me see that I believe in what I’m doing.
Patti: Are you going to change what you do because the record company hates one song?
Susan: No...
Patti: You going to change what you do because you just got a horrible review for your concert last night? Are you going to...? So, go down the list and be very clear of who you are.
Susan: We were very lucky to be nourished by artists who really did that. There was some heavy-duty medicine coming though in the music in my formative years.
Patti: The bar was raised because you heard them. Cat Stevens, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan...
Susan: Odetta, Joni Mitchell...
Patti: Who else? Leonard Bernstein! Even on The Lone Ranger, we got messages to "be good, be outstanding, give back."
Susan: What I see is our society’s addiction to perfection and intensity. The commercials and ads are airbrushed to perfection, and everything’s maxed out. Young girls want to hear, BE, Britney Spears. It’s scary to me. When I was nine, I wanted Peter, Paul & Mary. There was something there to tell me there was a world in need, and you can actually make a difference through music.
NAV: Patti, what about your concert in China?
Patti: It was a UNICEF television event celebrating the empowerment of young girls. The fact that they said yes to this program shows that they might want to change.
Tuck: But to touch on something you said earlier, we were the only group to actually sing live.
Patti: Suddenly, there is MUSIC! Tuck hit the guitar. People started screaming. They went crazy. It was real.
Tuck: People will react to what’s close to the heart. If you give people a choice of real or fake, they’ll take . . . .
See Tuck and Patti's website at http://www.tuckandpatti.com. Tuck's written a lot about his guitarwork, and Patti shares about shoes.copyright 2002, Carol Wright, all rights reserved
Carol Wright
P.O. Box 402 / Eastsound, WA 98245
cwright@rockisland.com