’28 oozing years in showbiz, but it’s not like this is going to take up more than a couple of paragraphs,” grins Dave Ledbetter.
The veteran guitarist, pianist and composer is wryly surprised at being interviewed about his upcoming performance with his band The Clearing at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
He’s got a point. Despite having performed with a roll call of South African jazz luminaries over the past three decades, Ledbetter seldom hits the headlines. He remains best known as a musician’s musician, boasting a CV that reads like a veritable road map of the musical road less travelled.
‘I started off my career as a frustrated bass player,” he reminisces about his first professional gig anchoring the beat for James Phillips’ infamous punk band The Illegal Gathering. ‘I never thought I was going to be good enough on piano or guitar to ever get asked to play. So it was bass for me, the bottom end of the spectrum where you’ve just got to protect the beat and play the right notes, which I did pretty well.”
The jazz bug
Well enough to audition for legendary saxophonist Duke Makasi’s jazz combo Work Force as a keyboard player in 1985 as it turns out. ‘I had been taking lessons with Merton Barrow at the Jazz Workshop, but I hadn’t been playing keys very long and I wasn’t very good,” remembers Dave. ‘Duke said, ‘play me a couple of choruses of [Herbie Hancock’s] Maiden Voyage. I did. Then Duke, who was a man of few words, said: ‘It’s cool. But Dave you must check out the voicings you’re using on those chords.’ And I said, ‘why, what’s wrong with them?’ And he said, ‘well basically, that’s kids stuff!’” he laughs.
For Ledbetter the jazz bug had bit, big time. ‘I was getting exposed to this great original music,” says Ledbetter about performing alongside saxophonist Robbie Jansen and trumpeter Stompie Manyana in Work Force. ‘Through them I was getting to play with everybody who was important: Winston Mankunku, Ezra Ncgukana, McCoy Mrubata, Sakhile, Khaya Mahlangu, Johnny Fourie, whoever was around.”
By the early 90s Ledbetter had started developing his own jazz voice with Free Spirit alongside Basil Moses (double bass), Kevin Gibson (drums), Andrew Lilley (piano) and Gary Finberg (guitar). At the same time he was also showcasing some original ‘mainstream’ jazz compositions in Rough Diamond. Their repertoire struck a major chord with Mother City audiences at legendary watering holes like The Jazz Den and The Brass Bell. After three years twiddling away on the keyboards in Rough Diamond, it was friend and co-founder Greg Telian who asked Ledbetter a crucial question: ‘Dave, aren’t you a guitarist?”
A bit ping pong-y
‘Fuck ja, I think I am. But I play piano as well. So what am I? Who am I?” he remembers wondering. ‘It was the beginning of my whole life going pear-shaped on account of this unending debate about which fraternity I could officially declare myself as being ‘in the ilk of’, you know what I’m saying? Ultimately it was a bit ping pong-y. If the gig was on guitar, you played guitar. If the gig was on piano, you played piano”.
Which he did. In 1995 this meant playing piano for the accordion maestro Nico Carstens on his genre-bending BoereQanga band’s Made in South Africa. In 1996 he showcased his multi-instrumental skills on debut solo album, Scorpio Rising where he played guitar, vocals, keyboards and bass. Later that year his guitar and vocals helped trumpeter Marcus Wyatt, drummer Kevin Gibson and saxophonist Buddy Wells hone their chops in his own funky fusion collective, the Truly Fully Hey Shoo Wow Band.
Fast forward 14 years and Ledbetter’s swapped the ebonies and ivories for an axe again in his cooking new combo, The Clearing. ‘The learning curve for me, as a guitarist who plays piano is how to learn to lay out. It’s something I’ve experienced a lot in this band, with Dr Andrew Lilley on piano,” he says. ‘In all the groups that I listen to that’s what they do. In the straight, mainstream tradition when [pianist] Oscar Peterson and [guitarist] Joe Pass played together if there was another soloist involved they’s talk it out between themselves. When Joe took a solo he’d like Oscar playing underneath him. Of course when Oscar took a solo he didn’t like anyone playing underneath him. He had a lot to say!”
Middle-aged jazz cats
As The Clearing’s leader does Dave have a lot to say? ‘Not as much as you’d presuppose Dave should have in this scenario,” he replies sagely. ‘I’ve got set beliefs about where the music comes from, what it’s about and what my role in it is. There’s the purists who will tell you it can only be ‘like this’. Then there’s the younger or middle-aged, ageing cats like myself who think there’s space for everything and that includes leaving space. The more space you leave, the more the music can breathe, that’s how I see it.”
It’s this ability to let the music breath that has allowed Ledbetter and The Clearing to move seamlessly between jazz, African, country, funk, groove and world music. ‘The influences are so vast,” he nods. ‘We cover more ground than most of the bands I hear around, which is maybe a blessing or a curse. But I think it’s a blessing. If you consider our diversity, there is so much to celebrate.” Such diversity has also struck a major chord with audiences who’ve caught The Clearing’s residencies at Speedway and Polana over the past year.
‘Nobody’s ever said it to me because I’ve never really asked them: ‘bru, what do you really think of the bridge in this song grab you?’ But the feeling I get from most people who’ve listened to the music and hear the stuff I’m writing is that it’s very positive, it comes from a very good place, it feels like it leaves you in a better space than before, you know what I mean?” muses Ledbetter.
A place of calm
Does he think there’s something in the DNA of the variety of music he’s played over the years, and is currently drawing on that makes his own compositions inherently positive?
‘I think so,” he says. ‘If you listen to some of the tunes they sound like they come from a place of calm, a reaffirming place. It’s the musician’s responsibility to perpetuate things which are positive in music, that make you feel good, that unite people, that say this place is a good place to be at. Hell knows, there’s enough kak going down globally. There’s chaos in this place, it’s ongoing whether you like it or not and it’s completely tangible. So musicians have a responsibility to put their best foot forward.”
As an elder statesmen of South African jazz, does he also feel responsible for passing on such karmic knowledge to the young guns in The Clearing?
‘I didn’t when I was their age!” he chuckles. ‘No, I think I am. It’s a wonderful thing. There’s a wonderful youthful exuberance about playing with guys who are under 35. For somebody like myself who’s over 50 it’s hip because you recognise in them all the things you were and parts of which you still are. On a subliminal level one only starts to take stock of things when one reaches that ‘clearing’. In the last five years I’ve moved to a spot in the country, there’ve been some personal life changes, I’ve stopped smoking ganja!” he laughs. ‘I’ve basically cleaned my act up and I stay in a beautiful place that inspires me to create beautiful music.”
Right. Most of his compositions for The Clearing are inspired by his home on the slopes of Chapman’s Peak, aren’t they?
‘Environment is very important when it comes to feeling inspired. Not that it’s essential because wherever you go you take yourself with you. You’re still going to have to look at yourself in the mirror every day,” he says. ‘But it’s beautiful, there’s a river in the garden, it’s in a forest. Country Boy, Forest Road, Spaces and those tunes are of that place. That’s also why the band’s called The Clearing — it’s a clearing in the forest. But it could also refer to a clearing of a consciousness, of old ways, a renewal of vows, you know? There are a number of transformational aspects to it. But essentially, this is me standing up and saying ‘hey, this is where I am now’. This music reflects that. I’m very honoured that I’ve got such a high calibre of musicians playing in this band. If we can stick around long enough to get an album out and be heard a bit more, then I think we’ll all feel pretty fulfilled.”
Dave Ledbetter (acoustic, electric, fretless and lap steel guitars) leads The Clearing’s Buddy Wells (saxophones), Kesivan Naidoo (drums), Andrew Lilley (piano and keyboards), Shane Cooper (double, acoustic and electric basses) and Lee Thomson (trumpet and flugelhorn) through some cooking South African jazz originals on the Moses Molelekwa stage on March 26 at 6.30pm.
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