David Lindley has an obsession with reggae. He was hooked the first time he heard Desmond Dekker on the radio while driving through London with a friend back in 1969. But his English companion told him snidely that the stuff was West Indian-Jamaican music and that skinheads liked it. “So I went, oh — I’m not supposed to like it? I’m in the wrong tribe?”If Lindley’s tribe had a name it might be the Globe Wandering Minstrels. Lindley has had a fascination with stringed instruments from around the world since childhood and is credited with starting the first world music rock band, The Kaleidoscope, back in “67. Growing up in southern California, Lindley often hid beneath the piano, soaking up the sounds when his concert pianist uncle rehearsed with his quartet at Lindley’s house. His first exposure to world music was as a teenager at Bernardo’s Guitar Shop in L.A., where Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo hung out along with top-notch musicians from all over the world.
Before Lindley began his journeys abroad, he spent nearly a decade (“71-’81) with Jackson Browne. That’s both Lindley’s slide guitar and falsetto on Browne’s remake of Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs’ “Stay.” But it was his collaboration with Ry Cooder in “79 on Bop “Til You Drop and the soundtrack to the movie The Long Riders (“80) that started his globe trotting, touring the world with Cooder. By “81, Lindley was leading his own band (El Rayo-X) around the world, soaking up and dispensing a world beat with its primary focus on reggae.
“It sounded like bluegrass,” Lindley says of the Jamaican genre, “because one of the things that got me was that it was three-part harmony, and it had a real kind of chop to it like somebody was playing mandolin in the back.” That chop Lindley heard made it seem reasonable to him to adapt the Everly Brothers “Bye Bye Love” to a reggae beat. “And I just went, “Oh, this is good. It just has a thing about it, it smells right.'”
After eight years and three albums (the last one, ’88’s Very Greasy was produced by Linda Ronstadt), Lindley went semi-solo. He toured the globe with Jordanian hand drum percussionist and former international lawyer Hani Naser, putting out two albums — Playing Real Good and Playing Even Better — before the two parted ways in “97.
Between trips with Naser, Lindley persuaded Cooder to go on tour with him in “95. Lindley seems to be one of the few men in the music business the reclusive Cooder wants anything to do with. “Ry doesn’t like the road much,” Lindley says. “He says they don’t make a pill for sound check, and that kind of sums it all up.” The two have just released a three-CD set of the best shows from that tour, The Cooder/Lindley Family Live at the Vienna Opera House featuring Cooder’s son Joachim on drums and Lindley’s daughter Rosanne on vocals.
Lindley has also just released another European live CD with percussionist Wally Ingram, with whom he teamed after Naser. They’ve recorded three albums as Twango Bango.
But for this outing at the Visulite Thursday, Lindley will be solo. “Just me, by myself. And that’s enough,” he laughs. “Some people think it is. I bring a bunch of instruments with me.” Long a collector of exotic instruments, Lindley’s instrumental entourage can include an oud, bouzouki, and Hawaiian lap steel guitars.
Though there is electricity involved, the music will be acoustic, amplified by pickup and the occasional microphone. “It’s called the Leo Kottke effect. The first time I saw him play, I commented on his rig and he said, well, “you want it bigger than life.’ You want to sound like the instrument sounds, but bigger than life.”
Lindley says he likes playing acoustic because if the level of the music goes up, the level of the conversation goes up. “So when you bring it down, the people don’t talk. And if they do, they feel embarrassed. A lot of people, when they talk in a club, they’re saying things that they might not want other people to hear, so it kind of accommodates them. They’re not supposed to be there together.”
But Lindley has not abandoned electricity. He says he may do El Rayo-X again, but it’s not a sure thing. “I don’t know — man makes plans, and God laughs.”
Lindley’s playing with John Hiatt on tour this summer was on electric guitar, and Hiatt liked it so much he invited Lindley to go into the studio with him when he records his next record. “We sound like a Chevrolet car horn when we sing two-part harmony,” Lindley laughs. “That’s the thing you want — you want that Chevrolet sound. And it’s like we have the same edge and stuff, and I think that would be fun to do.”
Lindley also has a cut with Ry Cooder on the newly released Warren Zevon tribute, Enjoy Every Sandwich: The songs of Warren Zevon. It’s a strange collection of artists — Adam Sandler side by side with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen on the same record. The project meant a lot to Lindley, who had worked with Zevon before and considered him a friend.
“I was around right towards the end, and his attitude was incredible,” Lindley says. “He had a great attitude going out. I only hope I can do that.” Many were touched by the way Zevon handled his last days, as documented by VH1’s (Inside) Out — Warren Zevon: Keep Me in Your Heart. “I had people come up to me and say it was a real personal thing, a real personal loss, and they all say the same thing. He went out in style, like a Samurai — a Samurai with a sense of humor.”
David Lindley plays the Visulite Thursday at 9pm. Tickets are $17.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2004.
