Lite Wizard: Clive Carroll
British guitarist Clive Carroll does not suffer for confidence.
Without hesitation, he talks about the complicated Doc Watson and John Renbourn tunes he might pick for fun at home (but not in public), hypothesizes about the electric bandleader he could have been, and wonders aloud if he should add more blues licks to his set to delight fans during upcoming American tour dates.
"I can do it," he says, laughing, "but I don't find it really satisfying. I do realize the audience likes to see some fireworks, though."
Carroll, now 38, has been picking stringed instruments almost all his life. His parents gave him a banjo when he was 2. He picked up the guitar when he was 9. He's been onstage ever since, first supporting his folks in their regionally touring traditional act, The Carroll Family, and then playing in assorted rock and funk groups as a high schooler.
The basic chords he strummed as a child only served as stepping stones toward his adult virtuositya slide of rapid fire notes, manipulated loops, percussive chords and tempestuous rhythms. For the last decade or so, those techniques have earned him lofty titles from various international guitar-centric publications: Britain's "best and most original young guitar player," an "acoustic renaissance man," one of the "top 10 acoustic guitarists of all time." But all that dazzling skill doesn't necessarily mean Carroll makes music you just have to hear.
Carroll's reputation outside of such acoustic aficionadosthat is, the sort of instrumentalists or collectors who vehemently debate wood choice and neck-joint constructionremains marginal at best, even as both the ranks and reputations of solo instrumental guitarists have blossomed during the last decade. Entire labels have emerged to proselytize this trend. Imaginational Anthem, a compilation first issued in 2004 to document the connections between acoustic stylists old and new, will see the release of its seventh volume later this year.
Carroll actually hasn't released an album since 2009's Life in Colour, but it's safe to assume that his new output wouldn't have made any such reappraisal. Despite his bona fides, he has never been included on any of those compilations. And though he references many of the same influences as the young guns of the guitar resurgence (particularly, folk that is English, Indian or Appalachian), he has very rarely been associated with those sounds. In conversation, he even distances himself from description as a mere instrumentalist. Carroll is quick to point out that he considers himself a composer whose passion happens to be "a plank of wood with six pieces of wire strung on it."
"I don't really see myself fitting into the guitar world," he says. "I'm performing as an artist in my own right, not a guitar enthusiast."
But as a teenager in the '90s, Carroll listened to the likes of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, guitar heroes known for their speed and bravura. In his early bands, he mimed them to an extent, delivering fast leads with razor-thin picks.
"I just wanted to wield a pointy electric guitar and a distortion pedal and just shred for hours. That was quite fun," he says. "But playing solo, I felt like I needed to create something more substantial than just stringing together guitar parts."
Watching him perform now does begin to feel a bit like a workshop, though, with his good-natured demonstrations of how his loop station allows him to play twice as many notes twice as fast or pointing out the ways in which his "Mississippi Blues" changes nightly. Though he may not consider himself a purveyor of flair more than function, his music often scans as sucha series of tricks, sequentially arranged and arrogantly executed.
Carroll doesn't pay his bills only by playing the acoustic. He studied composition at London's Trinity College, and the bulk of his work stems from writing music to accompany television shows, commercials and the occasional movie. For years, playing solo guitar served simply as a reprieve for his orchestral work. But he began thinking of them on the same plane and writing for himself as he'd write for a larger ensemble: Imagine the musical structure, properly notate it, and only then figure out how it fit onto the guitar's fretboard. At best, his music is graceful and sweeping, a subtle ripple of emotion; more often, though, it is stiff and predetermined, its compositional pull masking whatever story or sentiment might anchor the piece. It could soundtrack a pleasant elevator ride.
Thinking about the work of John Fahey and Jack Rose, two late successive godheads of the recent instrumental tide, Carroll seems to invert their point. It's romantic to think, of course, that those people weren't technicians, that they didn't think about how they built their material as composers or how they delivered it as players. But their best music, and that of the legion that has followed them, seems more concerned with the mood of the music than the mechanicsthat is, the atmosphere that their sound creates, rather than the erudition it showcased.
Not long before he died in 2009, Rose said, "[The guitar] is like a band in a box. Listen to Blind Blake recordings. He sounds like an orchestra. It is a limited instrument and a limitless instrument at the same time."
Carroll seems plagued by that paradox of scope in a peculiar way: As a musician, he seems capable of putting most anything into the guitar. But mostly what he seems to get out of it are a list of accolades and a following of gearheads eager only for feats of dexterity.
This article appeared in print with the headline "Band in a box."
