Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke (born September 11, 1945) is an American acoustic guitarist.[1][2] He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He has overcome a series of personal obstacles, including partial loss of hearing and a nearly career-ending bout with tendon damage in his right hand, to emerge as a widely recognized master of his instrument. He resides in the Minneapolis area with his family.[3]
Leo Kottke
September 11, 1945
Athens, Georgia, U.S.
Musician
Vocals, guitar
1966–present
Capitol, Chrysalis, Private Music, Oblivion Records
Focusing primarily on instrumental composition and playing, Kottke also sings sporadically, in an unconventional yet expressive baritone described by himself as sounding like "geese farts on a muggy day".[4] In concert, Kottke intersperses humorous and often bizarre monologues with vocal and instrumental selections from throughout his career, played solo on six and twelve string guitars.
Biography[edit]
Early life and career[edit]
Born in Athens, Georgia, Kottke moved with his parents so frequently that he was raised in twelve different states.[5] As a youth living in Muskogee, Oklahoma, he was influenced by folk and delta blues music, notably that of Mississippi John Hurt.[5] Kottke learned to play trombone and violin before trying the guitar and developing his own unconventional picking style.
A mishap with a firecracker permanently damaged the hearing in his left ear,[5] a condition that would be exacerbated by exposure to loud noise during firing practice while he served in the United States Navy Reserve, when the hearing in his other ear was also damaged.[6]
Kottke attended the University of Missouri for two semesters, where he was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. He left Mizzou after his second semester.
After being discharged from the Naval Reserve because of his partial loss of hearing, Kottke attended St. Cloud State College (now St. Cloud State University), in Minnesota, but left before completing his studies, choosing instead to hitchhike around the country, busking for a living, before finally settling in the Twin Cities. He arrived at the Scholar Coffeehouse in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis in the autumn of 1966 and soon was a regular performer.[5] There, he recorded his debut album, 12-String Blues, which was released on the independent Oblivion record label in 1969. He recorded 6- and 12-String Guitar (also known as the "Armadillo album", after the animal pictured on its cover) for John Fahey's Takoma Records later the same year. It remains one of the works most closely associated with Kottke and has been re-released many times on various record labels. Fahey's agent Denny Bruce signed Kottke to Capitol Records, and in 1971 Capitol released Kottke's first major label record, Mudlark.[5]
Tunings[edit]
Kottke's guitars are often tuned unconventionally; early in his career he heavily used open tuning, while in recent years he has used more traditional settings but often tunes his guitars as many as two full steps below standard tuning.[7][12][13]
Orchestral works, re-recordings, and other collaborations[edit]
In 1976, Kottke collaborated with arranger Jack Nitzsche on the release Leo Kottke, which featured Kottke backed by a small orchestral section on a number of tracks. In the later part of his career, he has begun reworking and re-recording tunes he wrote and recorded in the early 1970s.[6] For example, 1999's One Guitar No Vocals offered a new instrumental version of 1974's "Morning Is the Long Way Home", with the countermelody opened up from behind the vocal line, stripped of its original trippy lyrics.[14]
Kottke combined previously recorded tunes into new compositions, notably the mini-suite "Bigger Situation", also released on One Guitar No Vocals. In 1990, he and composer Stephen Paulus created Ice Fields, a work for amplified acoustic guitar and orchestra in a concerto format. Ice Fields featured five movements, each based on an existing Kottke composition, with orchestral backing and interlude sections.[15] It was premiered by Paulus's Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and has been performed occasionally since but has not been released on record, partly because of the high cost of producing a recording with a full orchestra.[13]