Stephen Johnston is an extremely talented Jazz Guitarist and composer located in Montreal, Quebec who shares with us his musical and educational background and what it takes to pursue the dream. A very inspiring read

JazzGuitarLife.com Interview with Stephen Johnston: was conducted at my home August , 2005. Check out his website at www.stephenjohnston.ca

JGL: Hi Stephen and thanks for participating on JGL. I realize it was a late night for you having done a show and all, so why don’t we start with “What did you do last night?”

SJ: Last night I was playing at a local bar in Montreal called Café Sarajevo which is generally a Bosnian hang out but they feature world music…it’s actually where the 2080 used to be…(ed. note – the 2080 refers to a now defunct jazz club that was located on 2080 Clark street in Montreal, Quebec in the mid 80’s)…I was playing in a quintet run by Anthony Rosankavich, a composer and a good friend of mine. He does a lot of film work, documentaries, arranging for pop groups, all sorts of stuff. He’s quite a busy guy. Actually, the quintet is our recreational band. It’s called Tony’s Ambulance Band and we just play his compositions and some standards with the occasional person sitting in. It’s a bit loose.

JGL: Cool…so do you play often with this band?

SJ: Not really. We’ve been playing about once a month over the summer and that’s about as busy as we get, although we’ve done other events. Actually the band was formed to do specific things. We were a strolling band and I was playing electric bass with a little amplifier on my back…lol…we did the Montreal Film Festival and other events. We were actually a real live strolling band.

JGL: That sounds like fun. So tell me, who is Steve Johnson? I take it you are not from Montreal originally?

SJ: No. I’m from Ottawa, born and raised. And actually I lived close to where Mike Rud lives now. Anyway, I came to Montreal in the Fall of ’89 to do a degree here at Concordia University. I studied with some great guys like Gary Schwartz, who I noticed up on your site, Mike Berard, and Bill Coon. They were my three guitar teachers. But some of the more important teachers were Charles Ellison and Dave Turner in terms of motivation and the ethics of traditional Jazz music. Charles Ellison was an incredibly motivating person in my life. Since then I have been playing professionally. I played in a band named “Panache” which was a vocal band…I don’t know if that name rings a bell for you…?

JGL: No, sorry…

SJ: It was me and my brother Paul on Bass, and a singer named Adam Braughton. We did stuff like Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Joe Williams, Chet Baker, that kind of repertoire and we also wrote our own tunes which was cool. We got a lot of exposure with videos and albums and all sorts of stuff. So since graduating from Concordia I’ve just been playing. Playing, working, and now I am just finishing up my Masters at McGill University which has been two years of pretty intense stuff. It’s a great program. (ed-note: as this interview "goes to press" Stephen has completed all requirements for his Masters degree.)

JGL: I can imagine. How old are you?

SJ: I’m 35.

JGL: Ok. Before we get more into a background thing…how did you find Concordia coming from Ottawa? Did you come here wanting to study Jazz Guitar specifically?

SJ: Well at that time, and this is the end of the 80’s, I wasn’t listening to Jazz Guitar hardly at all I would say. The Jazz music I was listening to was Miles Davis and his groups and a live Woody Herman album which I still love called “Woody’s Winners” which is not a compilation although it sounds like a compilation, but it is a live recording from San Francisco on vinyl and it’s just a great and really powerful record. There was also a Count Basie double album that I would listen to all the time and lift solos off of. So I was listening more to horn players. It took me years to get into the sound of guitar in a Jazz context because I came from a heavy rock background, British rock bands like the Stones, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Kinks and then being the 80’s I got so into the whole Van Halen thing. That whole decade, well decade and a half, ‘cause it started in the late seventies, was I think the pinnacle of the virtuosic guitar player. I mean before that, the guys who could play like that were guys like Johnny Smith, Howard Roberts, George Van Eps. I mean it was a different statement. It wasn’t the same bravado that was going on in the rock world. So I was really into that and it took me a while to get into the “mellow” sounds, subtleties and nuances of Jazz in a small group setting.

JGL: Right. So going to Concordia you basically wanted to study Jazz as an art form…and not so much as a Jazz Guitarist?

SJ: Yeah…I was into it although I didn’t know why. It was a last minute thing and if I hadn’t have gone into music I would have gone into Sciences. Both my parents were scientists. There was so much stuff I wanted to learn and one of my first teachers, a great Ottawa guitar player, Bob Saboran, who was the owner of Metro music in downtown Ottawa, he has since passed away unfortunately, he got me into Howard Roberts’s stuff ‘cause he was a huge Howard Roberts fan and also of Bucky Pizzarelli. There was a book I studied from by a guitarist named Tom Bruno or Tom Brunner? Something like that…anyway it was a book called “How To Play Guiitar In A Big band” and I still have that book. I was in my high school stage band so I had to play voicings, not just power chords. So that’s where I started, which was a small introduction to Jazz Guitar. But when I got to Concordia I had to figure it out as I went.

JGL: You mentioned three really top guitar players that you studied with at Concordia, Gary Schwartz, Mike Berard and Bill Coon. Obviously three different musical personalities as well as individual personalities. How was it studying with those differences?

SJ: Well, they were all very different…lol…My first year was with Gary Schwartz. I was pretty wild when I first got here. You know being in a new city and all…but I practiced a lot…practice, practice, practice, go to school, do my work, and then go party…lol. Gary picked up on my energy pretty quickly and he really…he didn’t bust my chops in a sort of negative way or a boot camp kind of way, he was just really strong about emphasizing certain things I should do to get a really solid base…

JGL: Like what in particular?

SJ: We did a lot of reading. He took me through two books. One of them was the Joe Pass Chord Solos and the other was the Barry Galbraith book that was similar to Pass’. It was just chord solos and I think that year, or those first two years, the first with Gary and the second with Mike Berard, were the years that I developed the fastest in terms of playing Jazz on the guitar. Those books teach you…well first off, the Joe Pass chord solo book, in learning where things fall onto the guitar, I think I learnt the quickest out of that book because you are playing a piece of music and you can import that into any standard you’re playing. The whole process of learning…well…you need a teacher who is going to teach you how to teach yourself. And how to go about learning and troubleshooting how things work within yourself or using the resources available by yourself. So it was great studying with Gary. We talked a lot about things. Gary is not really a typical straight-ahead guitar player guy, but he’s a fantastic guitarist who is sensitive to the process of learning. He’s an educator who really helped me settle down and get my shit together rather than my just running scales for six hours a day which I could do endlessly anyway he taught me to focus. Mike (Berard) was different in that we really worked specifically on bebop, on blowing and on the tools needed to do so. Mike is a very meticulous kind of player and that was great because he would tell me “This is what I want you to do, this is my curriculum and you can fill in the blanks and do as you wish”. He didn’t say that I had to learn Jim Hall solos. In fact, I wasn’t listening to guitar players. I was listening to Coltrane, Cannonball, and Charlie Parker and I lifted a lot of those solos right off the records. I mean albums and albums of each guy. Sometimes I would write them out and sometimes I would just memorize them…

JGL: Cool…and did you find that this way of learning filtered through your playing?

SJ: Absolutely…

JGL: So you found this way of learning the Jazz language to be positive?

SJ: Oh Yeah. Those were really two good years. I was like a kid in a candy shop. I would just be fascinated watching and learning from those two players…especially watching Mike play those cool bebop licks…

JGL: Yeah I know…I love the way Mike plays…so then in your third year you studied with Bill Coon. How was that?

SJ: It was fun. I mean I certainly learned from Bill but I think from that point on I was saturated with studying…taking a lesson a week is a lot…

JGL: Yeah…plus not to forget your other work as a student as well…

SJ: Yeah…although I always did my work and I got through but I always prioritized playing my instrument because if I didn’t I would lose touch. For that reason I was a little saturated with lessons and lifting all those solos, so I just felt a need to play and have a little time off. He was also quite strict about his curriculum and I had to lift assigned solos for certain reasons and this and that and you know, I did it but it certainly wasn’t a labor of love. It’s different if you lift a solo because it moves you. I mean it’s like a book. You get to read and analyze someone else’s work and in doing so you get a chance to demystify it and find out the reasons why it moves you so. The demystification process is like the high and there was nothing I wanted to demystify by learning Jim Hall solos…at that time because it wasn’t in my ears like Milestones and all those Coltrane, Cannonball and Red Garland solos were. To me stuff like that was IT! That’s what I wanted to do but Bill wasn’t into it. But we got along all right.

JGL: Were you also playing outside of school as well?

SJ: Yup…I started to. I was a hermit the first year, just holed up in my room practicing. I didn’t play right away because even though I knew a bunch of stuff I was insecure about playing music. I was a decent rock player but going into this Jazz thing I felt like a total beginner. It was a really unsettling feeling. So in my second year that was when I started playing and jamming. I was jamming all the time at that point and I was also busking on the street. We busked a lot in Ottawa…

JGL: So you would go back home during the summers?

SJ: Yeah…the first two summers I went back. The first summer I went back and made sidewalks and curbs in a cement gang. And the second year I did the same but the company, which was small, started falling apart so I worked in a fish store with fish and when we could we would busk and then eventually I spent all my summers here.

JGL: Now just briefly…what got you into guitar in the first place?

SJ: Well it’s sort of funny but I quit…well I played piano and then I played Baritone, well Euphonium actually, and I also played trumpet for a few years…then I decided to quit music. I was sick of always having to practice and you have to do this and do that and I was a teenager you know and I was actually quite a jock and sports was probably my first calling and so I quit playing music and a friend of mine who was listening to a lot of Beatles, Stones, the Yardbirds, early Eric Clapton, played guitar. So I eventually bought this cheap nylon string off him for twenty-five bucks and I just started playing guitar for fun. There was no Royal Conservatory of Music practice regime where if you didn’t practice for a certain period of time each day you’d get a slap…lol. So I just started playing the guitar because I’m a curious person and it just developed into what it is.

JGL: Cool. So since Concordia have you been working steadily in music?

SJ: Kind of. I was playing quite a bit but I also worked in different jobs. I was one of those people who kind of got irked by the lack of consistent financial rewards in the music world so I had some pretty crazy jobs. I worked in the fish business, cutting fish for eleven years. I worked at Waldgrams, I worked in a big warehouse where the fish comes in from the states which is where we get most of our fish. So different places, I even worked in the fish business when I went to England. I’ve never been an office type. I’ve always preferred to do something outside like landscaping or something like that but it gets harder as you get older. I haven’t worked a job like that for the last three years. It’s just that those jobs eventually become physically taxing and you can’t practice as much plus it’s hard on your hands. So I did a lot of that in the daytime and did videos and I began touring a lot with Panache, doing festivals, videos, recordings that sort of thing.

JGL: It seems like that Panache group was becoming quite popular. Why are you not involved with it now?

SJ: Well, Sinatra died in ’98…at least I think it was ’98…anyway, we had our third CD out and a second video out and it was time to take the next step. We were ready to be exposed on a higher platform so to speak…we were not just playing Jazz gigs...so what happened was Sinatra died and the Sinatra team wanted to put a show on at the Montreal Casino and our singer Adam was asked to do the young Sinatra so he went off and did that and my brother and I were left standing with our pants down around our ankles. We had no other work at that time. In hindsight that was a lesson I learned. You have to always play with people, do sessions, and I would do that. But there were times when we were really busy on tour, doing a video, or recording and wouldn’t have time for these things. I didn’t really keep up with other people in the community as much as I should have and consequently I had no work and was back working construction. Which was kind of a drag because I thought “f**k, I should be playing”, you know? “What am I doing?” Anyway the group just crumbled…

JGL: That happens…so this was what made you decide to go back to school to do a Masters in Jazz Performance?

SJ: Well…I was in England having been fed up with Montreal and that whole thing I just described and I went to England, my parents live in England, and I lived there for a couple of years and I ended up coming back to do a pop record with an English singer and when I came back, we did it with all great musicians, guys who had gone through the McGill program. Well I had run out of money and 9-11 happened and I ended up just staying here and I had the itch and I thought “well there are a couple of things I can do. I can play guitar and I can cut fish…and I can type a little but not fast enough to save my life”…lol…and I thought “Man I can’t do anything. What kind of life am I going to have. Everything is going bad.” So I decided I better go back to school and learn something. So at first I actually tried to do a business degree but that didn’t work out. And I realized that I was getting the “ol’ grumpies” sitting there looking at my guitar in the corner so I thought I’m just going to go back and do a Masters in music. For no other reason than that is what I love doing and it would be a whole lot of fun doing it. And even though I realized that financially I would end up having debts and very little money it’s not about that. It’s about being alive spiritually and what’s important to you. So that’s what I did and I have no regrets. It was a great program with great, great teachers.

JGL: Who did you study with?

SJ: For my private study I studied with alto sax player Rémi Bolduc for all three semesters and for very specific reasons. Actually, the three big reasons I wanted to go back to school was to have large ensemble experience, meaning big band experience, which I got in spades because everything just fell right into my lap with Gord Foot who is just a great big band leader. Also I wanted to study with Joe Sullivan for arranging and composition and his whole thought process and of course to study with Rémi. Those were the three big reasons plus a few other things as well. So all these things really fit well and they all complemented each other.

JGL: Did you consciously choose to study with a teacher whose main instrument wasn’t guitar? Or was this just handed to you…

SJ: No, it was my own decision to study with Rémi. Rémi had played with my group Panache as a sideman and we toured together so we became close friends and have been for years. At least ten years preceding my entry into McGill. And he’s super well researched having spent lots of time in New York with Kenny Wheeler and Ben Monder, just top pf the heap guys. He’s studied with Steve Coleman and other heavies. It’s that whole New York thing which you have to be in touch with if you want to seriously study Jazz and tune into that whole New York channel. And Rémi is tuned in to that by not only studying with those guys but also playing and writing with them. He’s really on the cutting edge of the practical elements that make up Jazz and I really wanted that to rub off on me. You know getting down the odd time things and certain harmonies and addressing a lot of time issues in my playing and improvising especially. Not necessarily my comping so much but more my driving the rhythm section in my solos, in my single line stuff. Rémi is really the only in Montreal on that level, at least to me, so of course I wanted to study with him. The fact that he wasn’t a guitar player didn’t mean anything to me. I play guitar so no matter what I play on the guitar it’s going to sound like a guitar. So it’s never been an issue. And I love listening to great guitar guys. Greg Clayton is definitely one of my favorites.

JGL: So would you recommend guitar players study with someone who plays another principal instrument…

SJ: Well sure. A lot of guys do it because they want to get a conceptual approach to what they’re after. I mean you need to study with someone who plays the same instrument to get the mechanics of that instrument down but then you can go off with someone else to get down what you are hearing in your head.

JGL: So are there any guitar players you do listen to a lot who “speak” to you or did when you were coming up?

SJ: Yeah. One of my favorite guitar players is Jeff Beck actually. There’s something about his playing and that generation actually that I love. For Jazz Guitar I went back at one point and bought a whole bunch of Howard Roberts’ records and I really like Ed Bickert. He’s so classy and sophisticated and just so deep. And he’s just super laid back. I remember seeing him at the 2080 with Dave laing and maybe Alec Walkington or someone like that and I remember thinking “Man, this is so burning…”. He swings so hard, so yeah, definitely Ed Bickert. I felt I really had some home work to do so I went back and listened to Johnny Smith and Howard Roberts and I was so impressed with both of them. These guys were virtuosos at a time that Jazz music wasn’t even being taught in schools. I mean they learnt it all from the streets. They could arrange, they could play very heavy Classical stuff, Bop stuff, and super well. So I really like listening to those guys but I think in general in Jazz Guitar I tend to like the more “Black” side if you will. Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, George Benson…I like when there is a little bit of blues going on, a little bit of grit in the music. When it gets a little too cerebral like a Ben Monder or whoever, my attention span isn’t as long. I’ll listen to it for like ten or twenty minutes then I’m just so saturated. It’s like looking at a weird science fiction thing…lol…it’s just harder for me to relate to. I love music that comes from the soul, from real experience. And I don’t mean like “let’s play a two chord vamp for twenty minutes” either. To me soul music is like Coltrane, or Wayne Shorter, Herbie, Miles’s groups. It’s this big, hard swinging sound that can be incredibly harmonically sophisticated, more of an east coast thing which is very powerful unlike the smooth west coats thing which can be great but just doesn’t rock me as hard.

JGL: I gotta agree with you. I mean I like Ben Monder and Adam Rogers and cats like that, but give me some down home organ trio stuff anyday to yank at my heart strings…lol. Just out of curiosity, do you think that you would be the same guitar player today if you did not go the academic route and instead tried working on this stuff on your own?

SJ: No, because in Ottawa there wasn’t much of a scene and I basically sat in my room listening to Miles and Coltrane and a lot of that stuff from the 60’s and to get the practical stuff from that you need to be playing and what school gave me was like a sheltered eco-system to this music and I think that on your own, in the “real world”, you can do it, but it will take way longer. There are really important issues that you have to deal with right away in school like time, playing big quarter note feel, how to swing, all these things are immediately brought into your learning experience rather than having to stumble upon them on your own. I was a pretty good rock player and I had some techniques but for Jazz, if I was still living in Ottawa it never would have happened and coming to Montreal I don’t think it would have happened if I had not met Dave Turner and Charles Ellison because they made it so clear.

JGL: Cool. So lets change the subject a bit to find out what you are doing now. First off, I know you have a new CD out and we’ll get to that in a moment, but first, let’s talk a bit about your first CD “Points in a Curve”.

SJ: Yeah…that’s the first solo thing I did, Dave Laing is on that, Tilden Webb who also is on Mike Rud’s CD and Frazier Hollands. It’s half my compositions and half standards, Duke Ellington and some Coltrane. Andre White recorded it so I like the way it sounds and it is a fun musical statement. I don’t comp at all on this it’s just all single line stuff which I play on my Strat through a Princeton with a tiny bit of overdrive on it. I just wanted to play lines, to have a different role because most of the time I’m playing in a trio setting where I’m playing the changes and the melody…which is a lot of fun. Actually that’s my comfort zone but this is sort of outside the comfort zone…

JGL: When did you record it…

SJ: 1998. People still seem to like it, musicians, everybody says that it sounds great so that’s cool…

JGL: Cool. Now tell us a bit about your latest CD SOJO. I have been listening to it a lot since I got it and it’s killer…some really nice playing on it and great tunes.

SJ: The Sojo cd was my masters thesis and an effort to get out of my comfort zone...which is really what I do most in practical work situations: guitar trio. I like to play with bass and drums. This group is a quintet with alto sax, and piano, so the guitar role is more like a trombone or tenor sax. I get to fool around with voicings and lines in and out of the tunes, so the possibilities are more open. As far as material goes, I like fun stuff that's challenging, so I wrote in some odd meters, key changes and a fast bebop that modulates in the last A section. Its "there's no business like showbusiness" with my melody and some classic bebop twists etc. I could go on and on,but that's the gist of it. I'm playing my 335 through a Carvin single 12" combo that
sounds a bit like the old Gibson amps that Howard Roberts used. Very singy.

JGL: Cool...it's great stuff! I wish you all the best with the release. While I'm thinking about it, you have a business, www.soundsgood.ca, can you talk a little more about this project?

SJ: Soundsgood.ca, which is John Fraboni and myself, is sort of an artists co-operative. The concept is basically that we would like to play more private events and corporate events playing Jazz where the money goes directly to us. You’re not paying agents where a client has to pay like $2000.00 bucks for three sets. This is fine if it is going directly to the band. But usually the band gets a small portion of that while the agent walks away with over a Grand or more just for making a phone call. And we end up playing with the best guys in town like Rémi Bolduc, Geoff Lapp, Andre White, just the highest level of players. And we try and play all around…from Quebec City to Ottawa. So that’s the focus, to make a living. I have a son and I want my income to be as solid as I can get it. So apart from trying to get festival gigs and gigs in town I love playing these corporate events. You know, I just want to play and make a living.

JGL: Well that’s everybody’s dream…lol. In your heart-of-hearts Stephen, how would you like to see the future unfold for you?

SJ: Well I’d like to stay in town and play about four or five times a week with whatever gigs I can get and to play with great musicians whether it’s standards or whatever. Doing that as a living sounds good…lol…and have the time to get to do a session or two a week to work on staying in shape and then when the season comes around for festivals, get to do a bit of that. You know, I’m a fairly simple guy and all I want to do is to play and make a living. I have no aspirations of being a star or anything like that. I’m in too deep now…lol…

JGL: Yeah…exactly…lol…the flipside of this music is that once we get too deep into the art of the music then the trappings of conventional success diminish greatly and all we want to do, generally speaking, is to be able to develop and grow as players with the hope of making a decent living without the hyperbole of “stardom”. That being said, have you ever thought of going to New York?

SJ: I thought of that and have applied for study grants and continue to do so. I would do that if I could get a bunch of money to study with someone down there. Maybe a guitar player like Adam Rogers, you know, a real virtuoso type player to help me fine tune my game and maybe take it up a few notches.

JGL: Do you feel that there is room to develop further?

SJ: Yeah. There’s always room to go further. When you stop doing that, then you should take break, let your thoughts settle a bit and just chill out or you are not being honest with yourself. The whole Jazz music thing to me in general is an acknowledgement that there is always stuff to learn and always room to grow, and always stuff to be inspired by. Sometimes life gets in the way and you get sidetracked but it’s always something you can come back to. And as we get older and wiser we see that there are other ways to do things and that there is still tons of shit to learn. I mean check out George Van Eps and Johnny Smith, those guys were always working on things and they never gave up.

JGL: And we are all the richer for that. Well Stephen the clock is ticking down and we are earning the end of this interview. I have really enjoyed talking to you and I appreciate your insight as a Jazz Guitar player. Before we go, let’s talk about a bit about gear. What guitar are you playing these days?

SJ: I play a Stratocaster and a Gibson 335 and I play the 335 pretty much on everything. It’s my workhorse. I had a Gibson 175 like that nice one sitting in the corner but I found the range to limiting as well as the size of the guitar felt limiting ‘cause it’s so big. So I basically play through the 335 and I have three tube amps that I use. I have a Fender Princeton Reverb 2, a Concert 60 which is kind of like the Princeton but more powerful and a Carvin amp which I bought in January (2005)…

JGL: Cool…I haven’t heard about Carvins for a long time…

SJ: Yeah…actually it’s my second time owning a Carvin and I really like them although I’ve kind of gone back to the Fenders. For me they have such a warm, perfect sound…

JGL: Now is this because they are tube amps?

SJ: Yeah…I have a hard time playing through transistor amps because they don’t have that dynamic range. I found when I was a kid that that they had a certain amount of compression which makes it a little easier to play but when I switched over to tube amps I found that I had to push myself a little because the tube amps made me play more but once I got over that realized that with the warmth and sound I got from tube amps there was no turning back. So now it’s all tubes.

JGL: Cool. Just a few more quick questions. First off, what is your practice routine like?

SJ: Nowadays I try and practice two or three things at the same time. In other words let’s say I’m working on playing Eb melodic minor all over the fret-board either in scale form or as arpeggios, I’ll play it in an odd meter trying to do two things at the same time or I’ll play in a key I don’t often play in. Or if I am working on getting triplets up to speed in a double time feel I’ll work those through an odd meter or in a key I am not used to playing in say like on a club date with a horn player. So I try to do this just for time issues and to create parameters or degrees of difficulty. I used to just work on one issue for hours at a time but now I work on combining approaches so I don’t have to practice as long…lol. But also, it’s more for focus…it becomes a different kind of mental focus…

JGL: Yeah…Gary Schwartz mentioned in his interview for JGL that a tight, focused 20 minute practice schedule could reap more benefits than a nonspecific two or three hour practice of a bunch of things.

SJ: Yeah…when I was at school I would practice with more of a structure since I had certain things that needed to be accomplished. Like when I was in the big band I had lost of parts to work out including chords and even whole passages in unison with the sax section, stuff like that. So I would always start off with 15 or 30 minutes of just sight reading. Stuff that I had never seen before and all the way up the neck to the high registers just to challenge myself. And if I screwed up then I would keep on going. Then after the reading I would work on my parts for two ensembles that I was in. So I’d work on all this stuff and then I would get to my lesson material and work through that stuff which might have been scale stuff or voicings, things like that. By that time I could have easily gone 4 or 5 hours. Then I would take break and work on fun stuff, my recreational playing, which was basically just noodling around and stumbling upon things like a curious child, which is an important part as well.

JGL: When you are practicing do you work out with a metronome?

SJ: Yeah. I use a metronome a lot but I realized also that it is important not to use a metronome a lot. You want to be able to find the time through more natural means like moving your body to the time or boppin’ your head, how you move to it basically. But a metronome is good ‘cause it forces you to get into it, like working through some of those medium tempos to work out your double time licks if you are having problems with the technique of it. Find those tempos and really focus on that time to get over that block to acquire more technical facility so you can play double time stuff while still playing eighth note triplet type things or behind the beat type stuff. But you shouldn’t overdo the metronome use. Try and feel the time and play with others or in a duo setting…especially with just a saxophone player because you really have to focus on time…unless you are playing out of time then that’s a different thing altogether…lol.

JGL: Indeed it is. Since we are kind of on the subject, is there any advice you would give younger guys and gals getting into Jazz Guitar?

SJ: There’s not much advice I could give except to say that you should find records you enjoy and just listen to them and find a good teacher to help get over some early obstacles or roadblocks. Basically just listen to music and play a lot. You know, there are players, on all instruments just coming into McGill and they can play amazing already. I don’t know what it is, if it’s the ton of resources out there or what, or the access to technology, but whatever it is it’s turning out some great players.

JGL: Well that’s a good sign…

SJ: The hard part is the stuff they don’t teach you. Like how to make a living or how not to freak out and turn to drugs…lol. You know, those kinds of things, the realities of making a living and being open minded towards different styles of music. That’s really important because no one these days just plays Jazz to make a living. You have to play lots of different music to make a living, even the older guys like Miles probably did stuff we don’t now about. It’s not only a Bebop world.

JGL: Too bad…lol. And for the last question, if you were not playing music what do you think you would be doing?

SJ: Well I run Marathons but that’s more of a recreational thing to do to keep in shape. I don’t know. My first calling was sports but I don’t really know what I would be doing. I don’t mind working and I didn’t mind doing labor jobs ‘cause your usually working with fun guys and you get to talk shit all day…lol…and those kinds of jobs can be pretty fun…lol. But I think if I hadn’t gone into music, realistically I would have probably gone into some kind of science thing but I spent so much time playing guitar that I never ended up getting A pluses in high school. I was an A plus student before I went to high school but after that I thought “Hey, I don’t have to work to hard to get though school” so I settled with my 75%’s and worked on my guitar playing.

JGL: Well I’m glad you did Stephen and your playing gets an A plus in my book…lol. Thanks you so much for taking the time to participate on Jazz Guitar Life and I wish you all the best and much success in your career.

SJ: Thanks for having me Lyle.