Take Your Niacin

John has come a long way since his early days improvising on accordion, studying at the Berklee College of Music, and honing his B-3 chops at Boston strip joint gigs. A respected music educator — as well as producer, composer, and performer — John has amassed much wisdom to share. We caught up with him at his home studio in Southern California to hear his thoughts on B-3s, theory, history, and improv.

What’re your thoughts on vintage B-3s, advancing technology, and digital tonewheel clones?

The B-3 sound has resurged in the past few years. The best clones I’ve played so far — there’s two of them. The E-mu B-3 Module . . . they sampled my B-3 for it for three days and it sounds really good. And then the software plug-in with Apple Logic is really good — the EVB3. But still, it ain’t like playing a real thing. People don’t understand that it’s not just the sound, but the way the two manuals are set up and the way the drawbars work and the percussion and everything. The performance parameters are 50 percent of the sound, the way the B-3 player plays it. If I took two Roland VK-7s, which are not bad either, and made a double manual out of them, I still couldn’t get it to do what that one B-3 does. So by hook or crook, however that bloody instrument evolved, it evolved in an amazing way. The piano’s been around and it hasn’t changed dramatically. There are better sounding boards, better hammers, but it’s still the Holy Grail. And the B-3, to me, is the same thing. It is a Jurassic Park ax, but the sound is so relevant these days that people are using it. The drag is, too many producers and bands — just because of laziness and ignorance — are using these god-awful sounds. Every time I hear a good fusion band and then a clone B-3 played on the top of it, I think, “Oh God, it would have been so much better with a real B-3.”

So it’s made a comeback. Every once in a while I get a call from guys who want to learn how to play and I’ll teach them some drawbar stuff, but most of the cats are happy just using clones, which is kind of a drag. But maybe it’s a good thing too for us ten guys who use the [vintage B-3]. [Laughs.]

Do you play the bass pedals with Niacin?

Sometimes I do when Billy solos, but I use a cut-down mini B-3 [customized by Bill Beer Keyboard Products]. It’s got my pedal board and is tricked out for Niacin, so I don’t bring the [bass] pedals. Sometimes when I play in town, I’ll bring [another B-3 with bass pedals], but it’s just too awkward to bring on the road. And since we have a bass player, I either comp when he plays, or I’ll play finger bass to give extra support.

When I was playing in strip clubs, it was only trios with a sax player, and I had to learn how to play bass. I needed the bucks and I played seven nights a week, four hours a night, 40 to 50 tunes a night. There’s no way on earth I could have learned how to play pedals using them just occasionally: Every night playing is the only way to do that. This guy who went on before me was a monster — heel-toe and sh*t — and I used to sit there all night long and go, “Oh my god.” He gave me lessons and then, after about six months, I could start playing heel-toe. I still can do it, but I’m a little rusty. You have to have special shoes on. [Looks at his shoes.] These are a little wide.

You really need special shoes?

Well, you don’t want to hit too many clams. And I don’t like my bare foot with a sock because it hurts my foot.

Did you ever try wrestling shoes?

Yeah, they could work. Or dancing shoes. I have a pair of loafers that are thin with hardly any heel because I like them to slide.

How do you feel Niacin’s music has morphed over time, from the first album to Organik?

Well, the first record, I didn’t want to push the envelope too much, because I had just met Billy and Billy’s a monster bass player in the rock world. So we kept it more progressive instrumental rock, with not too much jazz fusion thrown in. And it was good — those records are still valid. But by the time we got to the fourth record, I wanted to push the envelope a little bit more, and by that time Billy was into it too and Dennis already knew how to do that stuff. He can do anything. So on Time Crunch, I pushed the envelope a little bit and everyone was going, “Whoa! This is the best record yet!” So on Organik, we really pushed it out even further. I’m glad about that, because it becomes sort of an aerobic act for me: Now I gotta do the same thing for the next record. I hate being in bands where I’m bored, and I’ve always liked feeling like the underdog. I like being in a band where I look at the next tune and go, “Holy sh*t!” It’s like lifting weights. The audience likes that, and since we set this band up to be that way, we don’t have to compromise. It’s great.

We’ve never had a deal where a record company tried to water us down. One time, this Japanese label that we’re still with asked us, “What do you guys think about adding a vocalist and guitar player?” Billy and I went, “You’re blowing it. That’s not what Niacin is about.” Now, nobody screws with us. The reviews are saying, “Man, they don’t have a guitar player, but they sound [complete],” because I’ve been playing synth leads and stuff.

What kind of synth are you using?

Kurzweil K2600. I’ve always used that and I just love it. I have all kinds of custom programs in there and, since it’s a sampler, I can sample anything I want. It’s just great because the fans expect that we’re writing rock art progressive jazz funk music. There is no “style,” in other words. We can write anything we want and they just want us to play our asses off. And the good thing about that is that we’re not self-indulgent, where it just sounds like a jam session. We write very structured tunes with strong melodies and good form and then, within that, we allow our improvisation to shine — as opposed to three superstars getting together and wanking off. I don’t like that.

How much of the new record is planned, and how much of it that made it on to tape is improv?

All the tunes are structured. A lot of the material comes from the last tour, and this tour it will happen again. At sound check, we jam and I always record it. We start doing some weird sh*t and then I listen back afterwards and go, “That sucked, that sucked . . . ooh, that’s good!” Then I flip that into my hard drive and write a structured tune around it. It has a from-the-heart feel, but at the same time, I’m a composer and I can write music for orchestra. I take the art of composition and craft the tune from something meaningful, because if either one of those elements is missing. . . . I hear things that are passionate everyday but then the craft isn’t there. When you have a good idea but you don’t have the craft to finish it, it suffers. Or the opposite: You got craft, craft, craft, but no passion and no soul.

People who are studied in that structured, “craft” environment: When it comes time to speak the language of music, do they have a harder time?

Only if they were brought up wrong. Look at the heart and soul of the great classics. In the tradition of classical music, there wasn’t such a thing as an untrained creator. Every one of those guys — Bach, Beethoven, Bartok, Stravinsky — they’re all monsters, but they’re all grounded in fundamentals. They all went to school. They could read and write music. They had unbelievable ears. Most of them played violin and other instruments. They wrote unbelievable passionate music that’s still brilliant 100, 200, or even 300 years later.

Improvisation has to be part of the fundamentals. If you just study technique, chord positions, and chord substitutions, but you don’t study the art of how to spontaneously create music on all three levels: melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically . . . if those three rudiments aren’t studied, that’s what gives “sheet music people” a bad name.

You know the line, “Those cats can only play by ear”? Hey man, I play by ear and I’m trained! “Ear” just means you’re hearing stuff in your head. Now, a guy that plays by ear who hasn’t studied and can’t read, he usually can’t sit in with a band, he can’t read charts, and he can’t study certain types of music by looking at the sheet music. To be honest with you, there aren’t many cats who can do that well. Most ear players settle into the blues or some other cool things that the ear naturally hears and they can function in.

Would you say that half of improvisation then is learning to be a conscious listener?

Yeah. The other half is understanding the theory of it. Say on a scale of zero to ten, your ear is about a seven. That means you will grasp about 70 percent of what you hear, but that other 30 percent is going to be beyond you. But if you also had training where somebody showed you what these cats were doing — the theory of it — you can get that other 30 percent.

[Starting out,] I really couldn’t hear some jazz fusion stuff. I had to study it and it wasn’t until somebody explained things to me that I went, “Oh! That’s what they’re doing!” Then my mind was ahead of my ear and it led me to push the envelope. I’ll have students that come in and want to do a copy of some new cat who’s a monster. They’ll have 60 to 70 percent of a solo down, but the rest of it’s not there. They’re not going to learn a lot from that solo if they don’t get the whole thing, but their ear can’t figure it out until I show them the theory behind it.

As a player, performer, and an educator, what have you learned as a teacher to get the concepts across to your students?

I try to balance reality with theory. Too much theory and not enough hands-on makes the student lopsided cerebrally. It’s like the boxer who’s studying the art of fighting but has never gone in the ring. Then there’s the opposite guy, like Joe Frasier used to be, who wasn’t that skilled of a boxer. He would lower his head, be angry, and if he could bull his way through you, he could beat you up. He ran into Muhammad Ali and then Sugar Ray, who was a skilled boxer with passion, and they carved him for dinner.

So, the way I teach, I work with the rudiments. I’m always going back and forth from both worlds, so we study some theory and some drilling, and then we apply it in a tune. One of the problems nowadays with the advancement of technology is that too many people are in studios playing with drum machines and quantizing everything, and they don’t know what it’s like to have a lick thrown at them from another human being and have to respond. That’s why I push them to get in bands and play with other live musicians. I train people’s ears and I hook their ears up with their hands, so whatever they hear in their head, they can play.