here, there and everywhere – kyle eastwood speaks · pdf filehere, there and everywhere...

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE – KYLE EASTWOOD SPEAKS TO SJF

Written by Charles WaringWednesday, 19 June 2013 21:48 - Last Updated Thursday, 20 June 2013 08:46

It can't be easy being the offspring of a Hollywood legend but KYLE EASTWOOD - the son ofcelebrated movie actor/director, Clint Eastwood – appears to carry that apparent burden with anonchalant ease. Initially famous for being the only scion of an iconic film star – and thereforeregarded as bona fide Tinsel Town royalty – California-born Eastwood, now 45, is anestablished jazz musician and movie composer. True, some of Eastwood's soundtrack work hascome courtesy of his father (such as 'Mystic River,' 'Letters From Iwo Jima' and 'Million DollarBaby') but with a series of accomplished and varied jazz-oriented solo albums to his name, theaffable bassist/composer has steadily been making a name for himself on his own terms. Evenso, some interviewers – especially those who write for lifestyle magazines – seem lessconcerned with Eastwood's music and more preoccupied with his family lineage, though that'snatural, perhaps, given that the bass player's love affair with jazz was a result of his father'senthusiasm for the idiom.

Having just released his sixth album – the excellent 'The View From Here' on the Jazz Villagelabel – Eastwood is just finishing up his UK tour and has a trip to Japan scheduled for July. After a week-long stint at Ronnie Scott's, where he's a top-drawer attraction and always playsto packed houses – he and his band turned up to play a one-off gig at the newly refurbishedRegal Cinema in Evesham, a small market town in rural Worcestershire that seems a worldaway from Hollywood. Just prior to the sound check, SJF's Charles Waring grabbed a fewmoments with Kyle to talk about his life, music and career...

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"Sorry, I've got a little bit of a hay fever thing going," confesses Kyle Eastwood, who thenpauses to blow his nose. "I find I'm a little more nasal than usual: it's not just the Americanaccent," he laughs. Taking a break from the sound check and relaxing in a large red swivelarmchair in the deserted downstairs part of a large cinema, Eastwood is softly-spoken andseemingly easy going, giving the impression of someone who's comfortable in his own skin. Thefact that he's well-travelled might be a contributing factor to his sense of savoir faire. His newalbum has received good reviews and he's now playing gigs all over the world – from Englandto continental Europe and his native USA – in support of it.

Does he enjoy being on the road? "The travelling gets a little bit weary sometimes," he explains,"but I love playing so that comes with the territory. I think playing live is musically the mostsatisfying but I like working in the studio and writing music for film and all those other facets ofmaking music. But I think playing with musicians and playing live is wonderful."

On 'The View From Here' Eastwood draws on his soundtrack composer's gift to create imageryand atmosphere with music – in fact, the album is almost the musical equivalent of a travelogueand is characterised by many exotic song titles that depict places around the globe; such as'From Rio To Havana,' 'Sirroco,' 'Luxor,' and 'Une Nuit Au Senegal' – the latter replete withinfectious African musical inflexions. Does he draw inspiration from the places he's visited? "Yeah, that's always been an inspiration for me, hearing music from other countries and othercultures. I've always found myself inspired to write after a period of travelling."

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As a musician on the road, Eastwood leads a nomadic life; travelling from gig to gig, city to city,and country to country. But California is no longer his home, though his roots remain there. "Ilive in Paris," discloses the bassist. "I've lived in Europe for I guess almost seven years and Ispent about a year and a half in the UK, in London. Paris is nice: it's a big city but it still has akind of village vibe to it. I like the pace of life there. I play quite a bit of the year in Europe. It's anice, central, base."

Stylistically, Eastwood's new album continues with the cool, acoustic jazz vibe of his previousrecord, 'Songs From The Châteaux.' It also features the same band, with saxophonist GraemeBlevins and trumpeter Graeme Flowers combining to make a striking horn section, withdrummer Martyn Kaine linking with Eastwood to form a kinetic rhythm section. Arguably theband's lynchpin is noted jazz pianist, Andrew McCormack. He's been collaborating withEastwood for several years now and his input was crucial on the new album. Says Eastwood:"He has a great sense of playing melodically but listening really well and playing off the others.Once you play with people enough you hopefully get to that point where things becometelepathic. That's the beauty, I guess, of jazz music when it happens right."

Though Eastwood's the undoubted star of the show, his new album reflects a democratic ethosand relies on significant contributions from all of the band members. "It's pretty much acollaborative effort with the band," he states. "Andrew (McCormack) and I got together andcame up with a bunch of ideas and then collaborated, the two of us at first, in Paris at my place.We worked on some of the tunes together and then we brought the rest of the tunes in variousforms to some of the horn players and the other members of the band and we worked them outat rehearsals, started playing them at sound checks and started working them into the set."

And the significance of the album's title? "I guess 'The View From Here' is where I happen to beright now in my own musical journey or development and hopefully I've grown as a player and acomposer - but there's always room for improvement."

As bass players go, Eastwood's something of a virtuoso – he can play funky slapped licks onthe electric bass a la Marcus Miller but is also adroit on the stand-up acoustic double bass anduses a bow as well to play melodies and create effects. But, surprisingly, perhaps, Eastwooddidn't begin playing music on the bass: "I started on piano and got really interested in bass anddrums. After that, I guess when I was about ten or eleven, I started playing some drums a littlebut my parents - for some reason (he laughs at the recollection) - didn't want to buy a drum kit.I'd taken piano for while and then just picked up the electric bass and started teaching myself. It

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just came naturally really. So I started getting really into bass players. I started just figuring outMotown tunes, R&B stuff, reggae and all kinds of stuff like that. That was the kind of early stuff Istarted teaching myself to do. James Jamerson (legendary Motown bass player) was definitelyan influence."

It was later on, a few years later, that he gravitated towards the acoustic double bass andplaying jazz. "It was when I started studying bass properly. I was always interested in jazz.When I started to learn and actually play jazz I got myself an acoustic double bass and focusedon that for a few years. Now I kind of go back and forth (between the acoustic and electric bass)but I had a bunch of years just playing acoustic."

What attracted him to jazz? Eastwood muses for a moment before answering: "I guess just thefreedom really; playing and expressing yourself and also dialoguing with musicians and gettinglost in the moment. I think that's why most musicians get into jazz really."

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But to trace the origin of Kyle Eastwood's passion for music you have to go right back to hischildhood. "As far as my earliest memories of music, my parents listened to a lot of CountBasie, Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck," reveals the bassist. "And some of the Miles Davis/GilEvans records bring me back to my childhood years: that's what my parents were listening towhen I was very, very young. My parents listened predominantly to jazz with the odd bluesrecord and a little Johnny Cash."

Eastwood's father – once a budding musician himself before movie stardom beckoned –instructed his son in the raw rudiments of making music. "My father taught me a little bit of whathe knew," reveals the bass player. "He was mainly self-taught. He started showing me theleft-hand parts, the bass parts, actually, and then he would teach me blues progressions andstuff like that. So that was what he showed me at first. My father always has a piano in thehouse and he still plays and my mother used to play but doesn't play piano so much anymorebut she still plays the ukulele."

Music, evidently, then, is in Kyle Eastwood's genes. He shares with his father (pictured below) alove for the Monterey Jazz Festival, which is still a big event in the jazz calendar. "It was justabout 15 minutes down the road from where I grew up," he says and vividly recalls the first timehe went – it was 1976, he was eight-years-old and the legendary Count Basie was on the bill:"That was pretty much the first live music concert I remember going to. Count Basie was stillalive and was playing with the band. So I remember being really impressed by that because itwas quite a swinging, powerful, big-band and then I remember watching part of the show fromthe audience and then going and watching the last half of it from the side of the stage, near thedrummer actually - and that's when I got into drums."

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Also, because of his father's movie star status, he had an opportunity to meet some jazz giants:"I met Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie out there at the festival. At some of them Iwas just a little kid kind of running around probably, but I got a chance to meet some of them." In addition to writing and performing jazz, Eastwood's versatility as a musician is evidenced byhis role as a soundtrack composer. "It's a completely different thing," he says. "You're writingsomething that's meant to complement something that's on the screen. It's a little morerestrictive than making a jazz album and writing music for yourself but it's a different kind ofchallenge. There's a lot of sitting behind the computer and editing and trying to see what fits andwhat doesn't so it's a different process. But it's fun, doing it." There was a point earlier in Eastwood's life when it looked like he would follow his father into theworld of films. As a teenager he studied film for a while at university: "For a short stint I was atUSC for a year as a film major but I was doing music courses as well. Right at that time - I wasabout 18 or 19 - I started leaning more towards music really thinking that was what I really lovedthe most so I just decided to take a year off of school and just started studying with a couple ofteachers privately and studying bass. And then I started working with some bands andmusicians in Los Angeles and it was just to see where I was at the end of that year ... and Inever went back (laughs). I think it was 1987." So how did his father feel about his decision to quit college and become a musician? "I think ifyou'd asked him when he was in his twenties what he wanted to do he probably would've toldyou he wanted to be a piano player. So he's happy that I've found something that I really love todo and I'm serious about. He's always been encouraging and supportive." With six solo albums under his belt and a raft of movie soundtracks, Kyle Eastwood isn't contentto rest on his laurels. "There's always new things to do and different people to play with," hesays. "I think you learn different things from playing with different musicians and you play differentlywhen you play with musicians who play in different styles so I'm always open to playing withdifferent people or trying another musical genre." Certainly, as a musician, Eastwood doesn'tconfine himself to the jazz world – his listening tastes prove that. "I listen to all kinds of music,"he says and then reels off the names of some of the artists that are currently in rotation on hisi-Pod: "Everything from Count Basie to Bjork and Led Zeppelin to Radiohead and all kinds ofclassical music and jazz. I love music in general. If it's good it doesn't matter what sort of labelthey put on it or what genre it is. If it's good and musically interesting then I'm into it." As for his next project, Eastwood is understandably vague. After all, there are myriad tour datesto fit in before he can contemplate entering the recording studio again. But something that mightbe on the horizon – though it's a long way off still – is a large ensemble project. Says Eastwood:"we were talking about maybe trying to do a concert with orchestrated versions of some of myoriginal jazz compositions and then doing some film music as well. So that's a project I mightwork on in the next year or two." KYLE EASTWOOD'S 'The View From Here' is out now on Jazz Village. Read SJF's review of 'The View From Here': http://soulandjazzandfunk.com/reviews/2149-kyle-eastwood-the-view-from-here-jazz-village.html

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http://soulandjazzandfunk.com/reviews/2149-kyle-eastwood-the-view-from-here-jazz-village.html

http://soulandjazzandfunk.com/reviews/2149-kyle-eastwood-the-view-from-here-jazz-village.html

here, there and everywhere – kyle eastwood speaks · pdf filehere, there and everywhere...

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