An Interview with Brian Gore

IC: Your International Guitar Night X tour is set to hit the US over the next two months.  IGN is known for featuring incredible, yet very diverse sets of players each year, so what line-up of acoustic scientists did you select this time around?

Brian: This is a big one for me, being the 10th North American tour. We have three very new additions this year. Stephen Bennett is our first ever harp guitarist -- the world's most pre-eminent as well -- and our very first national steel player. He brings an awesome repertoire of wonderfully melodic pieces to the mix. Lulo Reinhardt, Django's great grand nephew, is our very first Gypsy Jazz player. He's also quite eclectic, and can groove nicely on rumba and flamenco-inspired pieces as well. Itamar Erez is our first ever Israeli player. He has a specially built guitar that allows him play semitones needed to blend Arabic with Judaic influences... very cool! We've just finished up the Canada tour and are gearing up for the US now. The audience response to the show has never been better. These guys are real pros and also fun to be around!

IC: With the inclusion of Lulo Reinhardt into the mix, will the group be preforming any Gypsy Jazz pieces at the show?

Brian: Yes, and because of Lulo's influence on the show, we're all improvising much more on this tour. Lulo is not limited to Gypsy Jazz, and we have some fiery flamenco-influenced pieces on the show as well, which is always great fun for the players and the crowd. 
 
IC: The last IGN album, "International Guitar Night III," had some fantastic arrangements and solo performance pieces!

Brian: Yeah, IGN III had some wonderful pieces on it; I love the piece from Andy Sheppard and Cecilia Zabala entitled, "Ways and Means," for example. I was also tickled pink to have Dale Kavanagh on the tour, as she’s an awesome player with interesting compositions and amazing chops! We also did a very unique rendition of "Paranoid Android" during the tour. I am frankly surprised more people haven't seen it on YouTube (however, it’s not on the album).

IC: When can fans expect the next IGN release?

Brian: Actually, the “IGN IV” album is out now! This one has the strongest pull of any album we've done so far. We have a lot of super catchy pieces, like my "Behind the Blinds.” The range of material is very nice: from Arabic / Judaic, Flamenco-infused pieces to Gypsy Jazz, folky, national steel slide guitar stuff, and super smooth, understated and beautiful harp guitar pieces... but the differing styles are complementary in many ways. We’ve had a tremendous response to it! The best ever, in fact!

IC: With such amazing IGN footage published to YouTube over the past year, do you have any plans to produce an International Guitar Night DVD?  

Brian: We actually have a DVD of this tenth annual IGN tour. It was recorded by a crew called "Warmland Studios," and is really quite nicely done. It's now available at our shows.

IC: What led you to play Stonebridge Guitars? [An increasingly popular, high-end guitar maker in the virtuoso acoustic community. - IC]

Brian: I like the Stonebridge guitar very much, and it’s the one I am mainly playing now. Very easy on the fingers and well balanced to boot! Stonebridge Guitars have been generous in giving us a guitar to raffle to one audience member per tour. Last year's Canada winner was announced in Toronto. We'll try to find a show to announce last years US winner on this tour.

IC: D’Addario does a similar giveaway at the IGN shows, right?

Brian: Yes, that came about through one of our players from last year's tour, Benjamin Verdery, who has a very close long term working relationship with D'Addario. Now, I don't know about you, but I really, really like their strings. A rep from their company emailed me out of the blue, at Ben's recommendation, asking if we could start working together. They are now the official supplier for IGN, which is really a dream come true; not just for me, but also for the other players. Most of the players I work with love their strings, so this is a match made in heaven. Also, D'Addario gives us a little care package of strings and a winder which we raffle off each night to someone who signs our mailing list during the break. The whole relationship is working out quite nicely. They are an extremely professional and supportive company. And, it's a nice surprise bonus for the audience as well, to have a chance to win some D'Addario stuff when they come to the show.

I would also like to give a shout out to AG Magazine. They were our first sponsor and continue to be very supportive of our efforts to expand the show.

IC: What sort of things do you do personally to prepare for an upcoming tour?

Brian: Right now, I’m not really doing much to prepare, and instead, I’m working on new pieces for our next IGN Live album. We have two tours under our belts, so the material is "in" good and I can focus on new material.

IC: How did you go about developing your chops when you were younger?  

Brian: I wound my way into solo acoustic guitar through years of sitting down and trying never to do the same thing twice. While I was a teen (and on into my twenties), I didn't write any instrumental pieces; I just explored by improvising and working in many different open tunings. Over those years, when things started to repeat despite myself, I found myself breaking off pieces of music from my constant “improv-exploration,” and then turning them into compositions. It was a very slow process, but one that I think helped me develop a unique and intuitive relationship towards what I do. 

IC: Did you start out as a steel string fingerstyle guitarist, or did you simply evolve into that?

Brian: I started out as a kid writing poetry, fell into lyric writing, then slowly wound my way into instrumental guitar.  A little bit of the poetic and narrative element has stayed with me in the process of writing instrumental pieces. I’m still writing lyrical pieces, too.

IC: Your book, "Fingerstyle Guitar: Lessons in Technique and Creativity," was published back in 2005, and included transcriptions of a couple of your pieces, as well as a lot of great advice on playing modern fingerstyle guitar.  Do you have any future plans for instructional material, solo or with IGN?

Brian: There’s nothing quite like my fingerstyle guitar book, and for that reason, it has sold reasonably well. It's a very good book for intermediate to advanced steel string players who need to modify their approach in order to improve their tone and articulation. It also offers some suggestions for working melodically in open tunings that one might compose on their own in. And in addition, you can study some of my more popular pieces. I’m starting to see people covering pieces featured in the book on YouTube, which is, of course, very, very cool. Regarding any future instructionals... After 10 years into touring with IGN, it would be cool to have a retrospective book. In the interim, we may include a folio of solo pieces and collaborations to accompany each album / DVD in the future.

IC: You've obviously had a lot of success playing in a difficult, non-mainstream field of music, so what career advice could you give to young instrumental songwriters?

Brian: The advent of YouTube and social networks have completely transformed the "category" of guitar, proving there is mass audience potential for the instrument.  This is quite a historically unprecedented and important transformation. And, this is putting some pretty interesting, substantive instrumental guitar music out there in a huge way. In terms of viewership, we're seeing something on par with pop music and other kinds of singer-songwriting. That has not been achievable for guitar before. For a guy like me, who has spent much of his adult-life promoting guitar, you can imagine how exciting the impact of YouTube has been! There has always been an irony in the world of guitar promoting. It's been seen as a very technical, quirky thing that only guitarist fanatics would be into. And yet, the guitar is the most pervasive instrument on the planet -- not just something for instrumentalists alone. What’s most exciting is that the tools for promoting your music are now, more than ever before, at your fingertips. So my main advice for any player would be to learn to be a good self-promoter through these new channels. You obviously also need to be a really, really good player, and have some good music to boot. Don't confuse artistry with opportunistic segments that have viral potential. That's a good thing too, of course. But if you want to have a career, you need to be able to build and sustain a live audience. For that, you need to be able to deliver a full, varied, rich program of music that can be a rewarding audience experience. That means being a good stage performer, musician and songwriter, not just a technically adept player. 

IC: Sound advice. You recently released a video of a new piece entitled, "Fringe Hinge."  Could you tell us a bit about this song and how the response has been thus far?

Brian: I am pretty happy with this piece, I have to say. It breaks a few of my "golden rules," which is a nice thing to do sometimes. But it is still built with tight catchy themes people can latch onto. I also experimented with using not one, but two, Spider capos, which allow me to capo strings individually. What I am able to do during the piece is go into a few different tunings while I am playing the piece, by lifting up the hinges that capo down individual strings. Technically, this is something quite innovative -- going into different tunings while playing. I’m not sure I have seen anyone else do it; and believe me, I've seen a lot of guitarists!  However, the piece is not driven by the technique (that’s one rule I don't believe in breaking). It's a really solid, fun composition.

I have gotten some great feedback on it. Steve Vai called it, "absolutely beautiful," for example. And you know, one can live for a long time off praise coming from a guy like that. Candyrat Record’s very own Rob Poland was one of the first to comment on the YouTube piece, and many of my IGN-alums have had praise for it, as well. My head is swooning! Nice way to bring in the New Year!

IC: Acoustic legend Peppino D’Agostino produced your first solo album, "The Path of Least Resistance." Is this record still available anywhere?

Brian: Yes, I just put it as an online product downloadable through CD Baby and iTunes. 

IC: With such a busy touring schedule with IGN every year, have you still found time to work on a follow-up to your second solo album, "Legacy?"  

Brian: I have a "guitar and voice project" I've been pursuing, when not touring with IGN. I recently did half a dozen very well received shows with Susan Z, a singer songwriter out of Marin County, and I've occasionally worked with other singers.  This show, which combines instrumental guitar pieces along with lyric pieces is something quite unique, and distinct from IGN. When I get the chance I'd like to do a CD and DVD with that, and more shows in that vein as well, of course! I also have recently drafted an imagistic multimedia novella called "Blooming in Plastique." It blends text and illustration and is accompanied by a complete cycle of music written especially for the book. I hope to have a final version of this work by early spring of next year. My goal is to have it published as an illustrated book with CD. I may also look to publishing it as a media rich e-book.

IC: Sounds great! Any parting words for your listeners?

Brian: Hope to see you at a show!

Purchase “IGN” albums here.

Or visit: www.internationalguitarnight.com