"Oh, well, you know...."
Charlie Hunter begins his reply to every single question I ask him with these four words, talking to me with the comfortable loquacity usually found only between old friends. Immediately apparent is the painstaking modesty with which the 32-year-old Hunter treats his life and his work - the development of the eight-string guitar and the techniques used to play it.
Just in case it wasn't noticeable at first, he makes this modesty even more obvious when I tell him how much I enjoyed a show he played at New York's Bowery Ballroom last month.
"We've played better," he says.
Hunter, who will play in Cohen Auditorium Sunday as part of this year's Jazz Show, has lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for the last three years. He grew up on the West Coast, however, where he spent the first eight years of his life on the road, living out of a van with his mother.
"It was the hippie era, and my mom was into all that stuff," he says. The two participated in van caravans and various festivals until settling in Berkley, where Hunter would remain until he turned 18.
There, he picked up the guitar at age ten. He taught himself much of what he knows today, though he did take lessons for a while from Joe Satriani, one of the world's most revered guitarists.
"He was sort of the neighborhood guitarist. He was a great teacher; he really motivated us young whippersnappers," Hunter says with a laugh.
From there, Hunter spent time in countless bands, learning just about every style of guitar and bass. Around the age of 18, he discovered jazz.
"I started really getting into Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt...Eddie Lang...Lonnie Johnson's work really amazed me," he reminisces. "I didn't come up in a family where people were listening to jazz. It was more like R&B, pop, blues, and other popular music."
But once Hunter had stumbled upon the work of jazz's pioneering guitarists, there was no turning back. He began transcribing their solos on the guitar, even though he couldn't read music yet.
"At that time, I didn't even know what a lot of the notes on the guitar were called," he admits. That didn't thwart his efforts; he continued his independent studies, expanding them to include the work of Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker.
"It was about harmony, exploring the boundaries," he says.
Wanting more low range from his instrument, Hunter began using the seven-string guitar in 1989. Though that instrument has become the noisemaking tool of n??-metal bands like Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach, at the time it was used only by a handful of elite jazz players.
Hunter spent three years working with the seven-string. In 1992, he teamed up with San Francisco luthier Ralph Novak to create the eight-string instrument he uses today.
"I pretty much invented it, at least this version of it," he reveals. "It's like putting two elements together...you discover what you want and create a reasonable facsimile of it."
Hunter's fearsomely large, hybrid guitar uses a fanned fret system, which makes it easier for him to play thick, danceable basslines and ear-shattering guitar leads - simultaneously. The instrument channels its sound into two separate amplifiers - one for pure bass, one with an effects loop that allows Hunter to mimic everything from organ sounds to straightforward distorted guitar with his higher strings.
"It's to guitar and bass what the drum set is to percussion." The eight-string combines the best of both worlds, just as a drum set can be used to create both bass and snare sounds.
Exactly how hard is it to learn how to play this unique instrument?
"Just as hard as the person who's learning it," says Hunter, laughing. "The hard thing is that it's uncharted territory, but that's also the fun and exciting thing as well."
As the pioneer of the eight-string, he's even taken on a few students. "They'll learn everything it's taken me ten years to learn in probably less than a year," he says, once again laughing.
Hunter no longer plays with a horn section - only John Ellis's tenor sax - or a drummer. Instead, he has enlisted the help of two percussionists: Stephen Chopek on the half-kit (bass, snare, and one cymbal) and Chris Lovejoy on congas.
"It's a whole different approach, really," Hunter says. "The way Stephen plays on the-half kit is more like playing like a percussionist than a drummer. He fills up a ton of space with what he's doing but compliments the percussionist as well."
While playing with two percussionists affords Hunter a different sort of creative opportunity, he notes that both Lovejoy and Chopek must work together at all times to hold a steady beat.
"These guys have to be a lot more careful," he says.
Hunter recently recorded Charlie Hunter for Blue Note and has been touring constantly in support of the release. Surprisingly enough, Hunter has been recording an album a year ever since signing with Blue Note in 1995 and is currently working on another studio album. A live album is also in the works.
Despite the prolificacy of his recorded work, Hunter's greatest success has been touring. His fan base is relatively young for that of a predominantly jazz artist, and he spends the majority of his year playing at what are traditionally rock clubs - like the Somerville Theater and Cambridge's revered Middle East. It's not uncommon to see teenagers and twenty-somethings dancing to the funky Latin-influenced rhythms Hunter lays down. In fact, he partially measures his success by the number of younger fans he sees at his shows. Temporarily shedding his modesty, he reveals how important touring is to him.
"I've been working my ass of for the last 8 years, touring the country and making my own audience so I don't have to be dependent on others'." The man has a point.
Hunter hopes to find some new fans when he appears in Cohen this Sunday night as part of a double-bill with John Scofield. Many jazz fans are dying to know: will the two perform together?
"We'll see what happens" is all Hunter has to say. In the meantime he's looking forward to a weekend in the Boston area.
"You know what I really like? The House of Blues in Cambridge...it's a small place, and the people there treat you real great...There's Pete's Coffee, too - what I grew up on in Berkley."
No matter what else Hunter ends up doing this weekend, Tufts students should be prepared: he's taking his invitation to this year's Jazz Show seriously.
"We're ready to roll. We're gonna kick some Tufts ass."
