Breaking away from the jazz cliché

Whether they admit it or not, most jazz guitarists never seem to shake off their roots, purge themselves of their favorite clichés and eventually find their own unique voice.

Trouble is, most of them never really try hard enough.

After all, it’s way too easy for fledgling fusion wannabes to hide behind the shadow of any of their predecessors — whose own unique styles reveal themselves even after the song’s first few bars. There’s Wes Montgomery’s trademark thumb-style octaves; Joe Pass’ piano-like, contrapuntal chord melodies; John McLaughlin’s blazingly-fast pentatonic flurries; Pat Metheny’s supple, chorused sound; and Allan Holdsworth’s violin-like, distorted tone played with his knuckle-busting legato technique.

"Been there, done that," spills Wayne Krantz, one of today’s emerging jazz guitar heroes, and whose liberating experience from the "clone theory" presents a worthy lesson worth emulating.

Pondering his dilemma while sitting in his New York apartment in 1985, the then-30-year-old guitarist decided to go against the grain and shelve virtually everything he’s learned — including the broad spectrum of theories he soaked up during his fruitful tenure at Boston’s acclaimed Berklee College during the late ‘70s.

It wasn’t easy at first, admits the one-time Steely Dan sideman. "I’d been like a sponge, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to define something of my own without stopping listening to those guys," he admits. "So, I turned my back on a lot of things that I loved."

"I realized that I had spent too much of my time during the ‘80s trying to sound like Pat Metheny," he confesses. And while most eager beavers spend almost all their lives chasing that trail as the end-all and be-all of their careers, Krantz realized early on that it wasn’t doing him any good.

Realizing that all the great players had their own sound, and that there was a vast wealth of raw, unharnessed musicality yet to be tapped from within, Krantz did the unthinkable. He stopped listening to other guitarists, dumped his truckload of rackmount gear and started studying all over again with nothing but a metronome for company.

Those long hours of incessant ticking proved to be the key to the evolution of Krantz’s unique style. As evinced from his previously-released solo efforts such as 2 Drink Minimum and Long To Be Loose, his newfound voice finds him fleshing out new rhythmic ideas and mapping out novel chordal combinations all over the fretboard.

While his orchestral approach betrays his strong affinity for such solo players such as Joe Pass and Barney Kessel, Krantz’s solo excursions reveal none of the traditional chord voicings of his guitar heroes.

As he himself explains in most of his jazz seminars, Krantz’ primary aim is "to cultivate immediate access to any note or harmonic combination anywhere on the guitar."

That is, instead of merely utilizing block chords or scale patterns, his nimble fingers often work at unusual fingerings, scale fragments or arpeggios — sometimes all at the same time.

It’s a far richer chordal vocabulary, that’s for sure. At times revealing a hint of country twang, Krantz’s style utilizes a lot of open strings and the simultaneous use of his right hand pick and fingers. "Ironically, I’ve never really listened to country music," he reveals. "It’s just that I use open strings a lot to get that counterpoint thing going."

If his theoretic leanings sound uncanny enough, his instrument of choice bears out his devil-may-care attitude towards the jazz tradition even more. While most jazzbos weave their magic on the bulkier, hollowbody models, Krantz treads new ground on a battered 1973 Fender Strat — the weapon of choice among rock history’s revered guitar gods. Ritchie Blackmore, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton played one. Jimi Hendrix burned and smashed quite a lot during his live gigs.

"I don’t really know why I got a Strat," he chuckles, "I think someone had just one used and I played it and it felt pretty good."

The Strat’s single coil chime presents a novel contrast to the thick and nasal sound typical of most of the early jazz cats. Playing clean most of the time through a vintage Fender Deluxe Reverb amp, Krantz’s fretboard excursions bears no hint of his ‘fusion era’ excesses.

And on the few occasions when he does burn, he slightly beefs up his signal for a slighly-overdriven tone. No, it doesn’t exactly bring him close to Stevie Ray Vaughn territory, but then again, he’s no closet blues guy either.

Another interesting facet of Krantz’ style if his novel approach to the jazz trio format. While most trios often employ the head-solo-head formula, Krantz’ trio (usually comprised of Lincoln Goines on bass and Zach Danzinger on drums) puts the drummer and bassist on equal footing — spurring them to incorporate their own themes within the compositional mesh.

This was the germ for Long To Be Loose, where the players’ solos sprang more organically out of those thematic passages as opposed to abruptly shifting between opening and closing themes.

Another follow-up effort, Greenwich Mean, is an edited version of 100 hours of live gigs at new York’s 55 Bar. "Now, we just get up there with the barest essentials of the tunes we have in mind. I released the album myself, and I’m selling it through my website (www.waynekrantz.com), because I’ve become sort of disillusioned with the small labels. A few times, I paid my rent for the month with my record, and I’ve never been able to do that before," he winks.