Steve Tibbetts

Steve Tibbetts is an American guitarist, composer, and producer. His fusion of exotic and urban sonic landscapes offers an intuitively receptive approach to sound creation. He plays guitars, synthesizers, and percussion instruments, using the recording studio as another musical instrument. His music weaves elements of vanguard improvisation, jazz, rock, ambient, and his interpretation of global folk traditions. Tibbetts calls his music "post-modern neo-primitivism." His acclaimed string of intermittent releases for ECM began with 1982's acoustic Northern Song. 1989's panoramic Big Map Idea made the new age charts, while 1994's The Fall of Us All won glowing reviews from indie rock and jazz outlets. In 1997 he issued Chö, the first of two globally celebrated collaborations with nun Choying Drolma; the second, Selwa appeared in 2004. 2010's Natural Causes landed on the jazz album charts, while 2018's Life Of went Top Five. In 2022, ECM issued Hellbound Train: An Anthology. Tibbetts was born in Madison, Wisconsin and spent his early teen years there, learning to play guitar at age 12 when he heard the Blind Joe Mendelbaum Blues Band play distorted guitar at the Dane County (Wisconsin) Junior Fair. In an interview, he claimed he was overwhelmed by "the splendor and majesty of it" -- and the fact that the band was extremely loud. It was the jumping-off point for his musical investigations. Later influences included jazz guitarist Bill Connors and Harvey Mandel -- Tibbetts asserts that he lifted his fingerstyle playing from the latter. After moving to St. Paul, Minnesota for college, he began his sound experiments using his acoustic 12-string and electric guitars, as well as distortion boxes, pedals, and anything else he could rig up. It was in St. Paul that he met future collaborator, percussionist Marc Anderson, and the pair have worked together on and off since. Tibbetts' self-issued, self-titled debut album was issued in 1976, and gained some local airplay on both of Minnesota's public radio stations. The few critics who heard it at the time had no idea what they were listening to. Yr, his first album with Anderson, followed in 1977 on Frammis. Both were later reissued handsomely by Cuneiform. Tibbetts continued his study of sound and global musics, learning to use unusual open-string tunings and scales, always with an ear toward blending sonic atmospheres and musical traditions. Tibbetts sent an envelope stuffed with negative reviews of his albums to ECM label boss Manfred Eicher. The producer, impressed by his music as well as his audacity, signed him. Northern Song, his label debut, was issued in 1982. Critic J.D. Considine infamously likened its gentle acoustic approach to the sound of his refrigerator running (Tibbetts keeps it posted on his web site with other negative reviews). While the album drew favorable reviews, it was largely responsible for spawning new interest in his first two recordings. He followed with Safe Journey (1984), Exploded View (1986), and Big Map Idea (1989); the latter made the new age album charts despite its intensity. He stopped performing regularly in 1988 and became a world traveler -- he is almost as well-known for it as he is a musician. Tibbetts spent the next few years roaming the globe and collecting sounds, expanding his portable makeshift studio to his home one, and recorded whenever time permitted. The Fall of Us All was released in 1994; his last record for ECM for eight years, it is widely considered his masterpiece. While in Nepal working on a study-abroad program at a small monastery in the Katmandu Valley, he heard Tibetan Buddhist nun Choying Drolma singing daily prayers. Tibbetts had a tape recorder, but was so blown away, he forgot to hit record. He returned to Nepal the following year and taped Drolma for many hours. With her permission -- as well as her guru's -- he returned to the U.S. with the recordings and began framing the centuries-old chants and prayers with guitar, bouzouki, gongs, horns, and other instruments, with ambient sounds. He sent a copy to the nuns in Nepal, and one to England's Hannibal Records. The label released it globally through Rykodisc in 1997. Titled Chö, it gained global acclaim, and prompted the pair to play a world tour of sold-out houses. Way back in 1976, Tibbetts was working in a record store. A friend played him a recorded example of the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, whose sympathetic (drone) strings under the fingerboard deliver a rich, resonant tone under an enormous organic sound. Almost 20 years later, he saw the Finnish band Värttinä, who had a hardanger player. Tibbetts finally arranged to work with the musician, who ultimately dropped out at the last moment but suggested colleague Knut Hamre. Tibbetts left for Bali to administer a study program and took Hamre's music with him. Impressed, he returned to work with the fiddler on the album Å, issued by Hannibal/Rykodisc in 1999. Tibbetts returned to ECM for 2002's A Man About a Horse. The album was cut under difficult circumstances. While on a ladder working on his gutters, he had an ill-fated run-in with a wasp hive, and fell directly onto his hand. With some immobilizing surgery pending, he laid down several hours of raw material that he would dissect digitally at a later date. The sonic canvas was lush, yet precisely what he wanted -- and included some thunderous drumming from Anderson. It was recorded so seamlessly, some critics ignorantly complained about the lack of his trademark, sheets-of-electric-guitar sound on the set. In 2004, Six Degrees Records issued his second collaboration with Drolma entitled Selwa; it was received with the same enthusiasm as its predecessor. Tibbetts spent the next six years traveling, teaching abroad, and recording almost constantly. In 2010, he released Natural Causes for ECM. The set featured the track "Gulezian," co-written with guitarist Michael Gulezian on which Tibbetts layered over 20 guitar tracks. It placed at 15 on the jazz album charts and at 13 on the traditional jazz charts. The artist had not recorded an album for six years before entering his St. Paul studio with Anderson and cellist Michelle Kinney. The resulting Life Of was, in its way, a sequel to Natural Causes. Tibbetts played 12-string and piano and mixed the record at Macalester College's concert hall. ECM released Life Of in the spring of 2018. It went to number three on the traditional jazz albums charts and to number nine on the jazz albums list. In 2022, ECM released Hellbound Train: An Anthology. Covering the entirety of his four-decade career with the label, the two-disc, 27-track set was divided neatly into acoustic and electric chapters.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo