William Ackerman - The sacred surrender to simplicity

The Chinese mystic Ch'ing-yuan Wei-hsin is said to have once declared: "Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. After I got an insight into the truth, I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance, I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers." For acoustic guitar enthusiasts who have discovered the American primitive guitar of experimenters John Fahey and Robbie Basho, mountains stop being mountains; but to arrive at full acceptance of an apparently elementary style like that of William Ackerman, a Californian born in 1949, listeners need mountains to look like mountains again. The music the man has recorded, from his 1976 debut to today, glows with disarming simplicity, a use of minimal means to achieve maximum emotional impact. It's an immediate style that some might even find insubstantial. It's a fingerpicking style woven between hope and melancholy, effective both in solo performances and in interplay with other instruments (in 2021, "Brothers", recorded with trumpeter Jeff Oster and pianist Tom Eaton, came close to earning the guitarist his second Grammy, after his win in the new age category in 2001 with "Returning"). Already by his second studio effort, the excellent "It Takes A Year" ('77), he had shed the echoes of Leo Kottke and reached full maturity; the two tracks "The Bricklayer's Beautiful Daughter" and "The Impending Death Of The Virgin Spirit" wonderfully sum up an aesthetic that moves from observation of the micro to the macro. Just like the album covers, which depict a photo of a tree, a clouded sky, a leaf, shrubs in the fog: images so familiar they border on boredom, and the guitarist-poet's invitation is precisely to resist that boredom and bring our wonder back to the ancestral beauty inherent in existence.

Released for the most part by Windham Hill — an international benchmark label for the spread of early new age — Ackerman's extensive discography boasts essential albums ("Passage", "Conferring With The Moon", "Imaginary Roads", all released in the Eighties), as well as lesser-known ventures such as, in the new millennium, the instrumental quartet Flow, responsible for two improvisation albums that, in stature and rarefied atmosphere, wouldn't feel out of place on the prestigious ECM roster. Listening again to the meditative watercolor of "Processional" (from "Passage") makes us understand, better than words ever could, Ackerman's innate ability to play the instrument's six strings with a total surrender to the sound itself, a quality that doesn't come from academies, coursework, or grueling, desperate study, but from a yielding trust in the Spirit which, for a biophilic musician, reveals its face through melody.

William, when do you remember seeing a guitar for the first time?

I grew up in California, in Palo Alto, where my father was a professor of English at Stanford University. One afternoon, when I was about 12, I heard an electric guitar being played at the house of our neighbors, the Kilmartins; I ran over and dashed up the stairs, heading for the room of their eldest son, Michael, who was probably four years older than me: I found him there, playing. That day he taught me the chords of G and A minor, which are, believe it or not, still my favorite chords of all time.

Not many people in Italy know the story of how Windham Hill came to be.

And here comes the most absurd part of the whole thing. Years after that afternoon, I had released my self-produced debut, "The Search For The Turtle's Navel", and left 10 copies for sale in a bookstore owned by friends, in Palo Alto. That was, at the time, the only store in the world selling my record. Well, I was walking out of the store and who do I run into walking toward me? Michael Kilmartin, whom I hadn't seen in 15 years. What I didn't know was that he worked in radio promotion for one of the most famous bands in the world, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

And the result?

Thanks to his involvement, my debut got played on the top 10 FM radio stations in the United States! I still remember the excited phone calls from listeners to this or that radio show. One of the stations was KZAM, in Seattle. Michael suggested I call all the stations and thank them for playing the record, and when I called KZAM I spoke with Jeff Heiman, at the time the assistant music director of the station; he told me that "The Search For..." was the most requested album by listeners. Then he added that I should come to Seattle to play a concert. Keep in mind I had never played a concert in my life, but I was obviously thrilled at the idea. My cousin Alex (de Grassi, ed.), who worked with me as a carpenter, drove me to Seattle. Long story short, I didn't even know where I was supposed to play... and I found myself at the sold-out Seattle Opera House, in front of 3,000 people. I played every song I knew and then told the audience I had nothing else in my repertoire, but that if they'd like, Alex could play something, and so he did. On that crazy night Windham Hill was born, and it carried on like that for decades.

Speaking of "In Search Of The Turtle's Navel": what does the title mean?

In '48 my father was the head professor of the second group of Stanford University students in Germany. I was 10 at the time. One of the students was Bill Sterling, the university president's son, and he and I often played ping pong together, and to keep the game interesting, we'd make small bets. At one point he told me he'd give me a German mark (about $0.25 at the time) if I found a photo of a turtle's navel. Obviously I was too young to understand that turtles, being reptiles, don't have navels. When my father found out, he thought it was a hilarious joke. For me, that search became mythopoetic. I'm not exactly sure why I thought it would make a good title... I probably felt my first album was a kind of impossible dream, and so, well, "In Search Of The Turtle's Navel".

And the name Windham Hill, what does that refer to?

The label was blessed from the very start. We managed to win over an audience through the sheer strength of the music alone, just like that, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere. The name has to do with an experience I had as a teenager. You should know that, back in high school, my girlfriend told me she'd like us to get a room together, an idea that, for me, at the time, was the fulfillment of a dream. So we ended up hitchhiking from Northfield, Massachusetts, and arrived in Vermont, more precisely in Windham County. There, without any warning, we tried to stay at an inn in the middle of the countryside, called Windham Hill Farm. The owners, Hugh and Mary Folsom, asked us what we were looking for, and we told them we'd basically ended up there on a whim. They offered to let us stay, and in exchange, I'd be their dishwasher; my girlfriend Kate, meanwhile, would wait tables. I was a young guy still searching for his path, and there, at Windham Hill Farm, I became a kind of adopted son to Hugh and Mary. I still live in that area today, about half an hour south of the inn, which years ago burned down in a fire.

What is your modus operandi?

When I take on the adventure of a new album, I'm drawn to the idea of approaching composition from angles that are new to me. You know, there are times when I think, "Mhh... this track sounds like Will Ackerman again," but then I tell myself there are worse things in life. Keep in mind that I don't read music, neither scores nor tablature, and I'm essentially ignorant on the subject from an academic standpoint. So, by necessity, my modus operandi for figuring out whether a piece works or not is to sense whether I truly feel connected to it on an emotional level. After decades in this business, I've become pretty quick at deciding whether an idea is worth exploring or deserves to end up in the trash.

How do you know a piece you've written won't sound self-indulgent?

Honestly, I don't have clear-cut stylistic criteria for judging which tracks will end up on the albums. Let's say that if one piece resembles another too closely, one of the two gets cut. Then, of course, it happens that some compositions aren't good enough to deserve release, which is why I always wait a month or two before finalizing the tracklist. All of us musicians are in some way in love with our own repertoire, especially the pieces we've just finished, but it happens that, two months later, I might realize that what I liked so much isn't actually that successful or original.

New age: a lot of people view it with suspicion.

At least in the beginning, the term "new age" was tied to a considerable body of philosophical knowledge. As for me, my music wasn't trying to save the world, nor to offer a fleeting reprieve from the stress of everyday life. It was just music that I "felt." And there was nothing intellectual about it - if anything, I was actually trying to switch off the thinking part of my mind, in favor of the part tied to emotion.

There's a musician who left us too soon: Michael Hedges. Do you remember what you were doing when you learned of his death?

Sure. I was in the recording studio. Though, to be honest, I can't remember who told me about the tragedy... it's all still very hazy. I've never met a person more alive than him, truly, and that makes coming to terms with his passing even harder. Learning of that fatal accident was already devastating, but discovering that he'd already been dead for several days by the time he was found made it all impossible to accept.

Yesterday I was listening back to his "Aerial Boundaries": how would you sum up its value, from a technical standpoint?

His innovations, as you know, had to do with the guitar. On "Aerial Boundaries", sound engineer Steve Miller built these massive layers of reverb. At first, Michael wasn't thrilled about that choice, since it wasn't how he'd imagined the album. If I remember correctly, he stormed out of the recording studio half angry. When he came back, he asked me and Steve whether we genuinely liked that sonic approach, and I had to admit that, yes, I loved the final result.

What can you tell us about John Fahey the man?

His label, Takoma, was a light in the dark for me. Luckily, producer Ed Denson managed to keep him on track long enough to get him to record albums that are essential for the instrument. I worked with Fahey a bit, but he was an alcoholic and, to be honest, he didn't turn out to be a particularly sweet or kind guy. I even played a few shows with him, but I can assure you he wasn't nearly as fascinating a person as his music would lead you to believe. I remember the first time I saw him live, before I'd even started playing myself, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. John walked on stage, fiddled around with his guitar for a while, and then announced, "I need to go empty it," meaning he had to go take a piss. With that he left the stage and stayed away for about half an hour. When he came back, he delivered a sad, pathetic performance. Despite his university studies in Philosophy, I never once heard him talk about the subject. Addictions, sadly, limit the reach of our passions, and I'm afraid that, in that respect, he limited his own life a great deal.

What memories do you have of Basho?

Artistically, he was influenced, to some extent, by Indian music, though only partially. He too was a difficult person, someone who lived immersed in solitude. He wasn't exactly graceful, let's say, when it came to dealing with other people. I think the life he led, from a young age, left him feeling rather isolated, and although I'm no psychologist, I suspect he withdrew into a kind of monastic existence.

For Windham Hill, Basho recorded "Vision Of The Country", a work inexplicably overlooked even by his admirers.

It puzzled me too that that album never "reached" more people; he was very proud of it. Mysteries of this business that will remain just that. If I had to guess at a reason, in those years the acoustic guitar world was looking to the future, paying more attention to what I, Alex, Michael, and Daniel Hecht were doing.

An anecdote to describe him?

I remember one time we were arguing and he, absurdly, started shouting at me to stay calm. I sat there for a while, until he started talking to me again, but at that point he began addressing me as if he were in communication with some spiritual entity. I had the impression that he knew exactly which spirit he was talking to. Twenty years ago I might have been able to remember who he'd connected with; I have it on the tip of my tongue but I just can't pin it down in my mind. Actually, a few years ago I wrote a little story about this episode, but I can't find it anymore!

The essential artists for understanding Windham Hill's success?

Well, you'd need to write a whole book to fit them all in. I'll sum it up like this: there was this guy Ackerman who made a record and somehow turned it into a record label. He'd grown up alongside his cousin, a certain Alex de Grassi, a figure who managed to expand the whole thing. And then along came a certain George Winston, a pianist, who threw open the label's doors to the outside world, so much so that we landed a deal with A&M that let us move from independent distribution to a much more far-reaching one, covering not just every store in the States but reaching Europe and, above all, Japan, through Alpha Records.

A business mistake you regret in running the label?

Maybe this will sound overly self-congratulatory, but, in my opinion, we grew harmoniously, as best we could. It was inevitable that we'd have to go through a branch of A&M to access international distribution. The result is that I've lost count of all the gold and platinum records hanging on the walls of my studio. You know, talking about the European market, Italy and Germany were the countries that gave us the greatest satisfaction. With England, on the other hand, we drew a blank; the English showed no interest at all in what we were putting out.

Is it possible today to do business in a way that benefits both the record label and the artist?

Honestly, I couldn't tell you. I'm not in the record business anymore, I stepped away from it in 1992. Now my job is as an independent producer, in my studio, here, in Windham County. I deliberately work a lot less than I used to. I find myself in the enviable position of not needing to work frantically, but when some incredible musician comes along I'm always there, busying myself as a producer and, to some extent, helping them find the ideal path to take through the maze of show business.

George Bernard Shaw: "Hell is full of amateur musicians." And yet, some of the musical revolutions from the second half of the twentieth century onward have come from self-taught musicians.

I'm one of those people who likes whatever manages to sneak into the music system through the back door, those side projects that find the strength to put down roots. Nowadays a talented musician has to be very savvy, or know someone who is. I'm afraid we're losing some brilliant musicians who can't or won't swim in the fast currents of self-promotion.

Your style is deeply American. Formative influences?

As a kid I used to go to the old Stanford University Student Union to listen to local singers perform. That's where I met Dave Guard, Bob Shane and Nick Reynolds, the members of the Kingston Trio. Joan Baez was also in Palo Alto, and it was from that area that the first great musical wave that shaped the San Francisco scene set out. That whole situation worked its way into my young mind and led me to find my own path. The folk element is very important in my background, along with the fact that I never saw those artists as some kind of distant spirits, but as people very close to the earth, to everyday things, people you could approach for a frank exchange. In the years when my mind was a sponge, I discovered I was particularly fearless, because, deep down, I realized that, hell, these were still just people like me.

Nature aside, what influences what you play?

I just try to shut this darn mouth of mine and listen to what my heart has to say. So many times in my life distractions have come up and interrupted communication with something that seemed to want to be heard! But, despite a life full of commitments, I've learned to honor worthwhile ideas, to "take a snapshot of them," so I can come back to them when I can give them my full attention. It happened again today, with a strange seven-chord progression that seems promising.

Your best compositions have a disarming simplicity; aren't you afraid of coming across as simplistic?

Sometimes, sitting alongside musician friends like Michael Hedges and my cousin Alex, I've wondered what on earth I thought I was doing. But after performing in places like the Montreux Jazz Festival or Carnegie Hall, or as I'll do yet again in Japan this November, it's hard to believe that all of this is down to some misunderstanding on the part of the people who appreciate me. Sure, there are millions of guitarists in the world who have, say, more technical speed than I do, but the sincerity and truth embedded in my music have reached a great many people all over the world; that makes me a musician who's proud of what he's done and at peace with himself.

Too many bands and artists, especially in the Sixties and Seventies, burned through their creativity within the span of a couple of releases. With you it's the opposite; albums like "Meditations" (2008) or "Brothers" ('21) display a beauty on par with the classic recordings of the Seventies.

I think pop culture is an exciting place, but it mainly feeds on novelty; it's always hungry for its next meal, and if, as an artist, you don't have something to follow up your debut with very quickly, you risk being trampled underfoot by those clamoring behind you. In the Sixties and Seventies, at least, new artists had enough space and time to stay in the public eye while they evolved. Today it's different, because of the endless flood of music we're subjected to... sure, some artists will still break through, but it's a tough world for anyone trying to offer something new. Contemporary culture feeds on news, at the expense of deserving artists who are denied a solid, lasting career. As for me, I look at the current situation from a distance, and, for better or worse, I find that the musical landscape promoted through the web is mostly geared toward the frantic hunt for the next "big one".

How did the excellent "Positano Songs" from 2021 come about? I wouldn't have imagined you had a fascination with Italy.

I don't think music has divisions by country... at least, not yet! To answer you, let me repeat that there's no plan behind what I do. What drives most artists and the music market is the belief that they must constantly engage with the audience and the hope of always winning over new listeners. I don't factor any of that in. I never force inspiration. It's the music, and only the music, that tells me when it's time to record, so all I do is position myself in front of the microphones and go along with it. I'm also in a fortunate situation, because all I have to do is walk across my backyard to get to the recording studio. But I'll let you in on a little obsession of mine, well known to my sound engineer, Tom Eaton: I have a thing for a certain type of microphone; among other things, I own some vintage-style Neumann units, faithfully reproduced by the master craftsman Klaus Heine. Coming back to "Positano Songs", that was the first time I handed the producer's role over to someone else (to Tom, that is). I trust him, he knows when I've nailed it. I don't have to record 23 versions of a piece and spend days analyzing them one by one. It's a bit like what I do for the musicians I produce: they get to play, let their fingers do what they feel is right, and pour all the heart they can into their performances; they don't need to clutter their minds with objectivity, because I'm already there supervising them and watching their backs. With Tom it was incredible, because he forced me to just be a guitarist. Experiencing what his presence gave me made me understand why so many musicians choose him as a producer.

What are your current tastes when it comes to guitars?

I'm not saying this to promote Michael Millard's Froggy Bottom guitars, but they've been the backbone of my career for decades. I also own a Martin Parlor that Michael Hedges gave me years ago, and I love Steve Klein's guitars for solo-guitar work. Albums are often put together using a range of different instruments and timbres, so if mine is meant to be the solo instrument, I want it to have a sound that stands out from the rest. And wanting a fuller sound, for most of my career I've double-tracked the guitar, convinced that layering up to three tracks is the ideal solution from a sonic standpoint.

You found your artistic maturity as early as your second album, "It Takes A Year" (1977). How did that come about?

I owe a great deal to a figure like Harn Soper, right from the early days. He drew out a handful of technical tricks for me, pulling from a much broader background, significantly widening the range of sounds my guitar could produce, and so I owe him deep gratitude for what he taught me during that period.

With "The Opening Of Doors" ('92) you enriched your sonic palette by opening up to other instruments.

Actually, I don't listen to my music once it's been recorded and produced, so I'm not sure I can give you a satisfying answer on that. Every now and then a fan writes to tell me how much they loved a track, and in that case, maybe I'll go back and listen to it. Generally speaking, whoever the guests were on the albums, I have to admit I'm almost always satisfied with what I hear. I can listen back to myself as if my music had been played by another musician. And I tell myself I must have done something right if, after almost 50 years of activity, I'm still recording new material.

What do you hope for the future of your country?

Good old United States of America? I don't want to get into politics, but I think historically we're going through a frightening phase. As I mentioned, when I was a kid I lived in Germany for a couple of years. At that age you pick up languages as easily as you gather shells on the beach, and, well, I clearly remember hearing several old men at the bar of the Gasthaus Krone, in Beutelsbach, near Stuttgart, talking nostalgically about the "good old days" of Hitler and World War II. But then Germany emerged as an enlightened nation, and it remains one today. Personally, I'm terrified by the polarization of thought happening in our country, especially at the political and cultural level. We can't believe we're immune to the global cultural shift underway and bury our heads in the sand. We need to act like conscious citizens and steer clear of radical politics. The radical right, specifically, scares the hell out of me. I'm very worried about the future. It might be too simplistic, but I think it's time to put a woman in charge. I'd love to see Kamala in the Oval Office, that's the thing.

The last time life surprised you?

I know it sounds like a trite thing to say, but every day I find reasons for wonder. The chronic fatigue syndrome I suffer from limits me to some extent, but I'm still able to delight in the beauty of the world and of people. In a way, maybe I live in a kind of bubble, but I don't ignore the problems of the country and the world, on a political and social level. There are two options: throw in the towel and give up, or try, especially in small things, to keep hope alive for a better future.

What's the most extraordinary aspect of being an artist?

When you surprise yourself. Like a child building a beautiful sandcastle, or a seventy-year-old picking up a guitar and drawing out of himself something he hopes others might appreciate. My method for reaching that sense of wonder is easily explained: choose a strange tuning, so as to lose myself completely, and rely solely on feeling as a guide. Let only the heart speak for me. In my case, for a while now, it's worked pretty well, wouldn't you say?

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