Quick Q and A with Pat Wictor (2009)
 by Kathy S-B  ·  30 October 2009

Pat Wictor continues to amaze me. His profound love of the music he plays permeates from every pore in his skin and oozes from his soul. His lap slide guitar playing is fluid and his vocals are simply stunning. Watch out for a new upcoming live CD. Check out some great close-up shots of Pat playing his lap slide guitar on his MySpace page. You can also hear a variety of different songs on his website A YouTube video captures Pat singing one of his signature songs, "Heaven is So High."

You’ve lived all over the world and very much consider yourself a world citizen. Do you feel that your experiences abroad have influenced your music at all? And have you had the opportunity to return to any of those countries as a traveling musician?

It’s not easy to hear much evidence of my travels abroad in my own music, but those experiences opened some unexpected doors in my musical life. I had access to great live music living in Europe, particularly jazz, which was much more accessible to a young person than over here. I managed to see Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, the Gil Evans Orchestra, and Chet Baker, all when I was a teenager. In the year that I lived in London, I was seeing live music three or more nights a week. It was one of the most exciting years of my life! The jazz club in Stavanger, Norway looked the other way when I visited (I was a regular there), even though I was clearly underage. It’s unlikely I would have been exposed to the great variety and quality of music I saw, if I’d been living stateside.

I went to small schools in Europe, and through my junior high and high schools I had my first experiences playing guitar, singing, playing jazz, and encountering every kind of music from renaissance recorder music to 20th-century composers. The school and public libraries in London and Stavanger were filled with huge record collections, which I raided constantly, listening to a lot of jazz and classical music. In general, the arts receive greater public and governmental support in Europe, and my musical development benefited greatly from it.

The other unexpected way that those experiences abroad influenced me is that when I finally returned to live in the U.S., it was really a conscious choice to live here (not unlike an immigrant’s). I was on a quest to understand what it means to be an American, and how I could be one, given that I didn’t share many of the experiences or opinions of my fellow citizens. My search eventually led me to the historic music of the rivers, mountains, and hollers — mostly the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia. That’s my point of emotional connection with American-ness — our beautiful and sometimes terrible history is bound up with that music. It embodies and expresses the promises, yearnings, and disappointments of our country, with unmatched eloquence and emotional force.

What is it about the lap slide guitar captures your imagination and your soul?”

It’s got the greatest expressive capabilities of any acoustic guitar I know. You can play it with the vocal expressiveness of a fiddle or a wind instrument, with the sweet tone of an acoustic guitar. Marvelous. It’s also an instrument with major technical limitations, and one of the pleasures of playing it is trying to figure out some way around those limitations. That’s led me to invent some unique — far as I know — tunings and approaches as I’m trying to extend the possible sounds I can get.

I love the quote that says that you are “the only begotten son of Bonnie Raitt and Chris Smither.” I can hear — and see — why this radio promoter said that. I do hear a lot of Chris Smither in your music. Do you consider him an influence?

Yes, Chris Smither is a big influence. I think he’s one of the few songwriters who shows that you can express incredibly high-concept ideas in relatively traditional song forms and down-to-earth language. I try to strive for some of that in my own writing, as well as some of that rhythmic drive that infuses his music.

You’ve done some incredible covers on your recordings — Bob Dylan and Dave Carter, to name two. What makes a good cover tune for you?

My three criteria are: 1) Can I bend the song into a different shape, put my own stamp on it, and make it sound different from any other version of this song? 2) Does the song fit in to my repertoire relatively seamlessly? Does it sound like me, or some aspect of me? 3) Do I feel comfortable singing the lyrics, each and every line of them?

This last criterion has sometimes torpedoed songs that were otherwise pretty promising. If there’s a line in the song I can’t wrap my mind around, or that wouldn’t feel right coming out of my mouth, then I can’t sing the song. I’ve got to be able to stand behind every line of the song.

It’s a known fact that you are an avid reader. It’s quite extraordinary that you share so much and in such depth about what you’ve been reading — including the classics. Your newest CD Heaven is so high . . . and I’m so far down was inspired by some of those classics including Homer’s Odyssey. I commend you for highlighting the importance of the classics and for making it cool and enticing to pick them up as inspiration in this crazy world of ours.

Yes, the classics provide some perspective on the insanity of our time. It really helps to read something written 2500 years ago, and to see how sharply relevant it is. I hope other people will see the classics as an opportunity to read some of the most marvelous, brilliant creations in human history. The language and the ideas in the Greek and Roman classics have not been surpassed, in my opinion, but have certainly been a foundation and a model for so much literature written after them. For anyone who loves language, storytelling, poetry, and just plain thinking, the classics are essential reading. Get together with some friends, and read ‘em together — they’re a gift that keeps on giving.