18 Strings, one voice

by Dave Kirby

Like most of us mortals in this time zone, Paul Richards has been trying to maintain his sanity through the current heat wave. Richards still has a few hot days ahead of him, though, as he and the other two members of the California Guitar Trio prepare for a mini-tour that will take the band through Los Alamos, Colorado Springs, Boulder and back to Salt Lake City.

The band is touring in anticipation of the September release of CG3+2, their recent collaboration with sometimes-King Crimson members Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto, and their first studio outing since 1998's Pathways. Since then, the band has released a handful of live CDs, including 2000's Rocks the West, which highlights a handful of performances at the Boulder Theater the prior fall.

"It was good to get back into the studio," Richards says. "Tony and Pat really add a whole dimension to the music that's beyond what we normally do ourselves, and we're all really pleased with the results. There's definitely some wild stuff on it."

The band hopes to snag Mastelotto and Levin for a full five-member band tour once the CD is released, Richards says, but this appears problematic. Fripp may be ready to tour Crimson again this fall-and take Mastelotto with him. Meanwhile, Levin appears to be booked for-this is not a misprint-the upcoming Peter Gabriel tour, in support of Gabriel's new album, most of which was recorded three years or more ago. Evidently, Gabriel has finally finished it and is ready to expose it to the world at large.

"This is the stuff these guys do," Richards says. "Both are big gigs for them and we know we can only get them when they don't have prior commitments. We'll work around their schedules, and hopefully tour with them when they have slack time."

CTG's three-acoustic-guitars attack remains eerily palatable to an unexpectedly diverse audience, drawing t-shirted guitar tech nerds and lite-jazz/New Age fans, as well as the determined scrutiny of aging progheads. Their graceful excursions into complex folk etudes, over-the-top prog rock covers, and surf and classical stylings, speak to a collaboration that exists for composition and arrangement. In some ways, it is perpendicular to the famed fusion acoustic duos and trios of the '70s and '80s-depth and intricacy replacing raw chops as the soul of the experience.

Richards says that the band, which includes Japanese guitarist Hideyo Moriya and Belgian guitarist Bert Lams (who now lives in Los Angeles), has found ways to keep their collaboration crackling through a variety of net-based technology-scoring programs, MP3s and e-mailing.

"We send transcriptions and recorded pieces back and forth to each other," he says. "When we hook up for a tour, we usually agree to leave a hole of four or five days when we do nothing but rehearse and try out new material.

"The technology stuff is great, because we can share the stuff we're working on independent of each other. But nothing beats that face-to-face thing of playing a piece and working out parts in person. That's the way we work best."

In between tours, the various band members spend time playing locally or working on new material.

"Bert's just finished a really exciting project, transcribing a series of Robert Fripp's soundscapes for orchestra in Amsterdam," Richards explains. "I've been playing around with a new loop/delay device. My wife is a club DJ and she plays a lot of house music. I've found myself taking some of these tunes and building guitar parts around them. Hideyo's been experimenting with a new device that can emulate a whole variety of different guitar sounds, like a Les Paul driven through a Marshall stack, stuff like that."

The interest in technology is an inevitability for three accomplished players-their natural reach for new sounds, arrangements and contexts leads to places distinctly un-acoustic sooner or later.

"There is a kind of balance," Richards adds. "Incorporating new sounds into the music can be great when it extends the basic intent... but the intent is still there, and it's still based in acoustic guitars. Hideyo and I are more interested in this stuff, I think, than Bert. He just wants to focus on his compositions and his technique. That kind of difference in focus is what's kept us going so long. It's not what we do individually, but what works for the group."