Smokey Hormel: Have Guitar Will Travel

By Michael Louis Albo

Smokey Hormel is a legendary and versatile guitar player who has been on the music scene for the past 25 years, playing with such diverse musicians as the Blasters, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits and Beck in addition to fronting his own bands. Currently gearing up for the release of his new all-instrumental album on the Afro Sambas label, Smokey's Secret Family -- which is also the name of the new band -- is a tribute to the African music of the '50s and '60s, a favorite style of this eclectic whiz.

Sonic Boomers: What was the genesis of this album? 

Smokey Hormel: This is something I've been working on for a few years. Actually, it's been on my mind for several years. I put the band together to play this Congolese rhumba music from the '50s and early '60s. It's an instrumental group; the core of our lineup is two or three percussionists, tuba, clarinet and guitar.

SB: You don't hear a lot of tuba in popular music these days.

SH: I love playing with tuba. It's really a great thing. I'm always trying to get musicians I play with to play like a tuba. The thing that's great about it -- especially in this kind of music -- you can sustain notes, but the release of the note is what creates the pocket. It's not so much the note, but its release. When the note gets choked off, it creates this sort of pocket that makes it really funky.

SB: How did you discover this music? 

SH: Years ago, I used to play in this band out of L.A. called the Blasters. It was loud blues and heavy rockabilly. Psychobilly is a better term. I was playing that music every day with those guys on the road. We had left on tour and a friend had slipped me this cassette with a compilation of different African music that I hadn't really heard and I just found myself listening to that all the time whenever I wasn't playing. It was the opposite of what I had been doing on stage. It was my own little oasis in the midst of all this loud, aggressive music. As I traveled more, especially in France, there was a lot of African music. Since then, I've been trying to learn more about it. I was first drawn to this artists out of Sierra Leone named S.E. Rogie, who had these really cool records in the early '60s and those recordings just sound really raw and have that sort of Sun Records feel. His guitar playing's really fluid. He's the first one I really got into and then I branched out. In the '90s, when I was on tour with Beck, in Japan, I'd go into records stores and be able to find this stuff. It's mostly in other countries where you can find it. In America, it was kind of hard to locate. There were certain artists you could find, but the older stuff you had to search for a little bit.

SB: How's the Western swing music you've been performing live coming along?

SH: It's going good. I still play every week. It's really fun. We're always trying to learn new songs. If you just play the same old songs, people get bored. And I get bored and the band gets bored. We're up to about 200 songs now. It's really been great, and it's got me singing, which is something I never really took seriously before. Now I'm actually really enjoying it.

SB: What kind of guitar did you use for the new record? 

SH: I play a Harmony Stratotone a lot on this African album. It sounds great through just about any amp. And it works well with pedals. They've really gone up in price because a lot of people have started using them. Marc Ribot, when he went back to working with Tom Waits, got turned on to them, so now he's using them. Now they're upwards of $1500, but you used to be able to find them for $300. The thing is when you play with your fingers, it's almost like playing an acoustic guitar. It resonates. A lot of solidbody electric guitars can be kind of stiff in their tone, but in that thing, you really feel like you have some flexibility.

SB: You're also using small amps on the record too, right? 

SH: For a long time I've really been into Gibson amps. In the '80s, I was befriended by Ry Cooder when I was playing Western swing and we started hanging out and he turned me on to these Gibson GA-20s. They're classic. That's what he used when he did some of that early stuff with the Rolling Stones and his first couple of records. They're not very loud, but they get a nice overdriven sound when you push them a little bit. Lately, I've really been into the old Rickenbacker amps too. They have a lot of high-end, but they don't hurt like a Fender can. I'm one of those guys who, when he plays a Fender, turns the treble all the way off. So, on this record, I used the old Rickenbacker amp and the Gibsons. I think on one song, I used a Magnatone from the early '60s that has the tremolo that goes from speaker to speaker. They're amazing amps too. For the Western swing band, I play and sing through the same amp. I have this old Standell solid-state amp from the mid-'60s. It keeps the volume of the band down.  It's the same amp that Wes Montgomery used to use.

SB: Did you compose the music on Smokey's Secret Family? 

SH: There are a couple songs I co-wrote with some of the guys in the studio, but, for the most part, these are covers. They're instrumental versions of songs that had vocals on them. Rather than trying to sing in whatever languages were being used on the original recordings, I just wanted to do something instrumental. That's sort of how I picked the songs: "Well, this would sound good." I've always wanted to do a guitar instrumental record, and rather than doing a blues instrumental -- there's so many great guitar players who have done that -- this was an opportunity to do something different.

SB: You've got some amazing players in the band. 

SH: They're great. The tuba player -- who also plays trombone on the record -- is Clark Gayton. He's one of the best musicians I know. He comes from a long line of jazz royalty. I met him here in New York and he does a lot of things. He's in Levon Helm's band and he also did that Springsteen Pete Seeger session. It's just a pleasure to have someone like that around. The clarinet player is a guy named Doug Wieselman. I met him years ago when he was in this band called the Flying Karamazov Brothers, so he's super versatile. I worked with him on this Nickelodeon cartoon called "The Backyardigans" and he just blows my mind when we do a session for that. He's one of the main composers for that show. He's just phenomenal. He's full of great energy and great ideas. The percussionists I met in this band I used to play in called Forro in the Dark. They're these Brazilian guys: Mauro Refosco, Gilmar Gomes and we also added a third guy, Davi Vieira. They're all really bad-ass players. Gilmar is just a great conga player. He's so musical and can play anything. When you get him together with the other Brazilian guys, it's combustible. It's like a party. We had such a great time. I feel super lucky that I was able to get all these guys in the studio to make the record. It's really been a remarkable experience.


For more on Smokey Hormel, visit his website at http://www.smokeyhormel.com