By Joe Gore - From Guitar Player, October 1988

Every aspect of the man and his music defies easy categorization. He's a rock and roller who came of age musically as a member of a free-form jazz group. He's a high-wattage screamer whose secret ambition is to master fingerstyle ragtime guitar. Soloing, he can move convincingly from pentatonic riffing to post-Ornette Coleman chromatacism and back again in just a measure or two. His playing is polished and subtle but never without a go-for-the throat intensity. Although he's a literate, educated musician (his prose has appeared in the Village Voice, and he's composed a large-scale multi-media theater piece), he views music-making as a largely non-conscious, intuitive activity. His list of influences reads like an encyclopedia of 20th-centruy music; the names of everyone from jazz saxophonist Eric Dolphy to sonic experimentalist Edgar Varese to blues great Lonnie Johnson are liable to pop up when Vernon Reid talks music. In short, he undermines a lot of commonly held assumptions about what "rock," "jazz," "funk," "popular," "classical," "blues," "black," and "white" guitar playing are supposed to sound like.

As a sideman, Reid has been a fixture of the New York music scene throughout the '80s. Lately, however, he's started to receive international attention as the leader of Living Colour, a full-throttle rock and roll quartet. Their debut album, Vivid, showcases the band's tough-as-nails sound. Corey Glover is an iron-throated belter who can shift effortlessly from a throaty R&B growl to a metallic castrato shriek. Bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer William Calhoun are a thunderous, yet precise, rhythm section -- imagine a cross between Led Zeppelin and Chic. At the heart of Living Colour's sound, however, is Reid's over-the-edge guitar playing.

The 29-year-old musician was born in London of West Indian parents and raised in New York City. He took up the guitar at age 15 and was playing professionally within a couple of years. After a brief stint with R&B singer Kashif, he joined the Decoding Society, the highly acclaimed jazz ensemble led by Ronald Shannon Jackson, saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman's one-time drummer. After touring extensively and recording six albums with Jackson, Reid set out to form his own band. Living Colour's current lineup is the end result of years of personnel changes. Along the way, he's played with the art/dance band Defunkt, jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, militant rappers Public Enemy, avant-garde composer John Zorn, experimental guitarist Arto Lindsay, and others. Through it all, Reid has blurred the lines between jazz, funk, rock, and art music without ever compromising his basic approach.

Unfortunately, the music industry doesn't usually like to have its boundaries blurred, and one of its most cherished boundaries is the one that stands between "black" and "white" music. Apart from a few rare exceptions such as Jimi Hendrix and Prince, rock and roll has become white turf. To a large extent, the music business can't accept the idea of a black hard rock band, despite the music's undeniably Afro-American origins. Of course, there's no law prohibiting black musicians from playing rock and roll, but those who do are not likely to be embraced by the industry. The career prospects are grim for a black musician who falls outside the rigid stylistic confines of the "urban contemporary" sound. ("Urban contemporary" is the industry's code name for music aimed at a predominantly black audience.) Black musicians who don't rap, croon romantic ballads, or make good-timey party records usually find themselves locked out of both black and white markets.

Reid has attacked such stylistic stereotyping with his actions as well as his music. In September 1985, he and Village Voice writer Greg Tate formed the Black Rock Coalition, a "united front of musically and politically progressive black artists and supporters." They declared their intentions in a founding manifesto:

"The Black Rock Coalition opposes the racist and reactionary forces in the American music industry which deny black artists the expressive freedom and economic rewards that our Caucasian counterparts enjoy as a matter of course. We too claim the right of creative freedom and total access to American and international airwaves, audiences, and markets. Like our forebears -- Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Funkadelic, and Labelle, to name but a few -- the members of the Black Rock Coalition are neither novelty acts nor carbon copies of white bands who work America's Apartheid Oriented Rock Circuit."

The Coalition's founders argue that the very existence of "black charts," "black radio," "black concert promotion," and so forth perpetuates a separate-but-unequal economic system that excludes black artists from many avenues of musical expression. Vernon places the blame on both white and black elements within the music business; as he told Geoffrey Himes of the Washington Post: "The white side of the industry claims that it can't put a black band on an album cover and sell them in suburban malls. The black side of the industry claims that black audiences don't want to hear rock and roll."

If it's as bad as all that, how did Living Colour score a major label deal? It wasn't easy -- the band wasn't picked up by Epic until Mick Jagger caught one of their shows, became a fan, and produced two songs for the band. Despite having talent to burn and a stack of rave reviews the size of a small phone book, it took the direct intercession of one of the most powerful men in rock to bring Living Colour to the marketplace. Given the chance, however, the band has delivered in a big way -- Vivid captures Reid, Glover, Skillings, and Calhoun at their hottest.

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You've said that you don't consider yourself a "natural."

I'm not. I had an inclination towards music, because I loved it, but I wasn't a prodigy. I wish I was -- I've met really young players who had it all together. Martin Aubert, who was the guitar player in the first Defunkt band, was killing when he was 13 or 14 years old. I came to playing late, when I was 15. Playing the guitar is something I really had to work at. Things had to happen to really push me; I had to be embarrassed. When I was with the Decoding Society, I sometimes found myself sitting in a hotel room, thinking, "Maybe I have no talent." Ronald Shannon Jackson was very demanding. You had to throw yourself into the music and not be distanced from it. A lot of people approach music in that way -- "Yeah, I can kind of play it" -- but don't immerse themselves headlong in the feeling of it. I had to because he demanded that. At the same time, I never left any of the other things that I loved behind. I never left my love for Santana or Hendrix or whoever.

Your playing over the years has a lot of continuity. Even though Living Colour sounds very different from the Decoding Society, you don't seem to have compromised your approach in an attempt to "go rock."

It's funny -- rock was the music I felt I had the clearest voice in. I was always struggling with jazz, even though I loved it. I loved Dolphy, Coltrane, and Ornette so much that I tried to integrate the two things. The Decoding Society was a school for solidifying what I really wanted to do; it was my chance to integrate the blues with the harmolodic concept, to pick and choose and make it really coherent.

Could you explain the harmolodic concept?

The harmolodic approach was developed by Ornette Coleman. It's a theory of music that frees melody from its subservience to harmony. Traditionally, certain chords dictate certain melodic lines, but in Ornette's theory, melody, harmony, and rhythm are free from each other; they can interact on different levels. You can play things in different keys and make it work because the combination of keys creates another, freer tonal center. Everyone has had the experience of being somewhere, listening to music, and then hearing a radio outside playing different music. For a brief moment, you hear the two songs together and you perceive the consonances between them. Harmolodic theory tries to synthesize that moment.

Like the story of how Charles Ives, the 20th-century American composer, was inspired by hearing two marching bands as they moved in different directions?

Exactly. It's an idea that's been around.

What is your response to people who accuse you of "going commercial"?

In all seriousness, look at the statistical averages of black rock and roll bands that are killing on the charts and really making it. You'll see that there's a definite amount of risk. It's not something that's happening in a mass across-the-board sort of way -- not since Hendrix. This is just as challenging as being in the Decoding Society, but it's challenging on another level because you're dealing with a whole social milieu, a whole way of thinking about rock and roll that's been locked in place since the middle '70s.

You're very outspoken on the issue of the black guitarist's position in rock and roll music.

It's a curious thing. We constantly ask ourselves, "Where do we fit in?" I remember how, years ago, the rock guitar poll in Guitar Player never included Ernie Isley, who was in the Isley Brothers, one of the few successful black rock bands after Hendrix. That always bothered me. It was like there was an alternate history; there was the history of everything you knew about, and there was this other thing happening off to the side. At least half the guitarists who really influenced me are not known. There are horrendously under-recorded players, like Ray Muton, from New Orleans -- he played with [drummer] Billy Cobham's band for a couple of tours and one record. Charlie Singleton was also in that band; he went on to play with Cameo. He was an astounding, well-rounded player. I thought, "This guy is going to be a star," but since then, never heard from him. Arthur Rhames, from Brooklyn, had a fusion band called Eternity, a trio based around the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I've never heard a better guitar player. He also played piano and saxophone -- he was frightening. Blackbird McKnight -- he played with Parliament, the Brides of Funkenstein, and Herbie Hancock. Kelvyn Bell, from the original Defunkt band, and Ronnie Drayton, who plays on the latest Defunkt album. There are so many.

You have to hold on to the past. It's important to see things in perspective and see how one thing influences another. Eddie Van Halen says, "I never listened to Hendrix; I listened to Clapton," but Clapton -- well, Robert Johnson was the one who influenced him. If you make a family tree or a timeline, you'll see that we're all influencing each other. To say Led Zeppelin influenced me is to say that Led Zeppelin got me into Muddy Waters and made me say, "Ah! That's where that was coming from!" Michael Hill, another guitarist from the Black Rock Coalition, is a fantastic slide player, and he heard it first from Duane Allman. Being disconnected from the roots and dealing only with the branches is odd.

You told the New York Times: "The existence of a ‘black' music chart requires black artists to conform to what the industry considers rhythm and blues. That means that you're not going to be able to sing about the illiteracy rate; you're going to have to sing about sex."

There are certain expectations of black people; that they're into escapist entertainment, or that black people should provide escapist entertainment all the time. That's not cool because you start to do what's expected of you; if that's your only option, that's what you do. After a while, you say, "Why bother practicing all this stuff if I'll never get a chance to play like that?" That's the kind of thing I'm afraid of. It's a human issue.

In general, isn't it taboo for pop artists to deal with real life?

That's true; there's a conservatism all across the board. There are unique problems for black artists, but not all problems are unique to us. A lot of people are chafing under the strain of, "You gotta move those numbers, you gotta do silly love songs all the time." That can really frustrate and trap an artist. I hope we're entering into a time where there's going to be more creative music.

There's a great statement that you made to the Village Voice a few years ago: "I don't separate Dolphy from Sly from Monk from 'Trane because the common thing that links all these people together is the blues. The blues is what links Ornette to the Temptations or Hendrix or 'Trane."

It's true. The blues is really more than a structure; it's a feeling. Once, I heard John Gilmore play a solo with [jazz composer and band leader] Sun Ra, and he played just total sound. There was nothing linear, but the feeling of the blues came across so strongly. Or I think of the first time I heard Dionne Warwick -- such a clear, clean, but still human voice. It's interesting that Carlos Santana also credits her as an influence, since he was the first rock and roll guitarist who really grabbed me.

Blues is a thread that links all these different experiences. It's a matter of expressing the blues in one's life. Even getting past the point of, say, listening to Muddy Waters or Lonnie Johnson all the time, because when you do, you're listening to their lives. The only things you can draw from them are things that resonate in your own life. Other than that, everything else will fall away, unless you're a total chameleon and you're trying to submerge your life. People either try to find resonances in their lives, or they try to obscure what their life is and take on another persona. It's like that Steely Dan song that says, "Any world that I'm welcome to is better than the one I come from." Some people will take on the persona of another player and say, "I want to be that, because I don't like my life." Is the music an expression of your state of being, or is it something you're just taking on?

So do you consider yourself a blues player?

Yeah, I do. The blues is at the bottom of my playing. It's something that I constantly try to work with. I try to get to my center, to what I'm really feeling. Guitar playing is a sort of feeling analysis that tries to strip away all the crap.

Sometimes you play from a predominantly pentatonic vocabulary, and at other times you use more open, chromatic sounds. Do you shift gears conceptually when you move from a pentatonic idiom to a chromatic one?

Part of it is a matter of separating myself from the tonal center. Partly, it's trying to connect with the rhythm. Sometimes I concentrate purely on what's happening with the drums and free it up that way. I also find myself working with dominant figures along with the pentatonic and chromatic things. I do find myself shifting gears, but I'm not sure whether it's a conscious thing. When I'm practicing, I try to think of that stuff, but when I'm performing, I try to just be in the moment.

Were you in the moment when you recorded the "Cult of Personality" solo?

It's funny how that came about. That's a first take. I'd done the tracking for the song -- doubled the guitar parts and so on -- when our producer, Ed Stasium, said, "Okay, we've got the stuff laid down, let's come in and do a solo tomorrow." But I said, "I've got to do it now." It's the funniest thing -- I was really beat until he said, "The track is coming now," and then I plugged into a musical stream of consciousness. After it was done, I thought, "Did I do that?" I really think I plugged into what that song was about on that solo, and I really felt good about it.

It's not a stereotypically structured solo. You come out ripping away at maximum speed, then move into longer, more sustained sounds toward the end.

On the ending section, I feel like I got into a really "singing" thing over the chords. I did some other takes after that one, but. . . [shrugs].

It's cool how you develop the song's opening riff. You expand it into a longer phrase that sets a three-beat rhythmic grouping against a straight 4/4 backbeat. It creates the sort of metric clash that you find in both a Led Zeppelin song such as "Black Dog" and a Thelonius Monk tune such as "Straight, No Chaser."

Yeah, like Monk's "I Mean You." "Cult of Personality" was a band composition. Corey was singing this phrase over and over, and I kept trying to work it into something. It made me think of the main phrase. Muzzy and I were working with it, and Calhoun laid this heavy backbeat against it. It was weird how it would turn around. Afterwards, I thought, "Hmm, this reminds me of something." People have called it a Zep-type approach. I guess if you listen to something enough, it becomes part of your consciousness and comes back out. Years ago, I was listening to Bill Conners on "Captain Señor Mouse," from Return to Forever's Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, which is a great, great guitar record. Then, while playing with Defunkt one night, I found myself playing this solo which seemed oddly familiar. When I listened back to the tape, I recognized some things from Bill Conners.

You get a larger-than-life tone on "Cult of Personality." What was your setup?

For the album, we used the old analog dinosaur setup. I used a Pro Co Rat distortion, a Korg multi-effects box -- with compression, chorus, flanging, and overdrive -- and an ADA Digitizer for additional chorusing. I also used a Boss Digital Delay/Sampler and an Alesis Microverb. We miked close, in the middle, and in the corner of a really big room. We had the "great wall of amps": a Carvin, a Dean Markley, a Vox, a Marshall head, and a Fender Showman head. It varied from cut to cut.

Did you record all the amps at once?

It averaged two or three amps per song, pretty much. On "Desperate People," we had everything on. It was so loud that the engineer would literally run into the room when he had to adjust something. That was really funny. [Ed. Note: Dennis Diamond, Living Colour's guitar technician, said, "The volume was so loud it was killing rats as they walked past -- and Vernon was playing with no earplugs!"] There were times when I thought I should be in the control room with them, but I wanted to get that wind. It fatigues you, though; if you're doing that stuff, you've got to watch out. I'm very careful with my hearing. You've got to take a break. Don't do it for three or four hours. It's like getting hit in your body.

Did you double many parts?

Yeah. "Cult of Personality" was done three different times with three different guitars. I used two ESPs -- a Strat-style and a Tele-style -- and a Fender. On "Broken Hearts," I used a Dobro and a lap steel. Mostly, though, it's the ESP on that song; I used the tremolo and a volume pedal to create slide-type effects.

You and Muzz voice the main riff on "I Want To Know" in fourths, instead of the fifths you'd probably expect. You also follow up on the fourths idea in your solo.

I try to do little things to change it up. I tried to get that particular solo to be more of a blues thing, even though there are the fourths. There's also some backwards guitar at the end.

There is a little Charlie Christian touch on the "Middle Man" solo; you play a phrase that's reminiscent of that little chromatic riff he always used.

That's a kind of Charlie Christian or Django Reinhardt thing. But I don't try to make a conscious nod to this or that; I just try to be open. Different things will just manifest themselves. I did listen to a lot of Charlie and Django. The two of them, their stories! How Charlie died so young, but changed the course of everything. When I was 23, I was depressed, because I thought, "Wow! Charlie Christian died at this age, and what have I done? And Django! He overcame a crippling disability and a lot of people say he actually played better because he was driven.

The accents on the intro to "Funny Vibe" are so syncopated that it's difficult to determine the actual meter. In general, how do you reconcile "out" time with rock and roll?

Odd meters can backfire on you if they become too self-conscious. "Black Dog" is in odd time, but it feels so unconscious. When you say "Hey! I'm going to do this phrase in 11/8," it might not be naturalistic. I wasn't thinking of that phrase as odd when I put the music together.

There's also an unusual 3+3+2 rhythmic grouping towards the end of the tune. Where did you pick up these unusual metric ideas? Are you a Bartok fan?

I listen to a bit of Bela Bartok. I actually listen to Phillip Glass quite a bit. The jazz people turned me on to Stravinsky. Charles Ives is unbelievable, and I've got this Edgar Varese record from the '50s that I listen to quite a bit.

There's a Varese-like phrase in your "Funny Vibe" solo; you set up half-step motion in two isolated registers, and then you "hiccup" between them.

That's a little thing I learned from Rodney Jones when I studied with him. He showed it to me as a picking exercise, but I turned it into a linear thing. I'm working on developing that.

Why did you decide to do a cover of the Talking Heads "Memories Can't Wait"?

Because I liked the idea in the lyric of a party in your mind that you hope will never stop. I think of people in a situation where they have to be straight, but in their heads they're losing it completely. That duality really appealed to me.

Your solo on that song has a strong Band of Gypsys vibe.

Yeah, that's the one. If there's any sort of nod to Hendrix, that's where it comes in. I've talked about the issue of Hendrix and black guitar players, and that legacy is something that I have had to personally reconcile. The whole Hendrix thing looms over black guitar players in a way that I sometimes feel is unfair. But I love the man and his music, and there's definitely some acknowledgement of that in my playing, but I'm very careful to note that there are a lot of other acknowledgments, as well -- to Coltrane, Dolphy, Ornette, and many others.

"Glamour Boys" is a sort of Caribbean-rock number. You and Muzz play fairly traditional soca parts against the drummer's straight backbeat.

The music is a tribute to my parents and to where they come from. I was really wanting to work with a calypso structure, and the music went really well with the words. Arrow is actually a second cousin of mine. [Ed. note: Soca is modern, uptempo, calypso-derived music from the West Indies. The word "soca" is a contraction of "soul-calypso." Arrow is a popular soca singer from Montserrat.]

Are you going to do any more music with an Afro-Caribbean flavor?

We've got another Caribbean thing that didn't make it onto the album, a song called "One Way Ticket." African music also fascinates me. I listen to some of the great African guitarists, like Francis Bebey, Ray Phiri -- he was the musical director of Paul Simon's Graceland project -- and Bob Ohiri from Sunny Ade's band. I also listen to the kora players, like Foday Musa Suso, who played with Herbie Hancock. [Ed. note: The kora is a 21-string harp played by traditional West African minstrels.]

You and your drummer both seem fond of the six-against-four polyrhythm. You frequently play 12/8 fills against a prevailing 4/4 meter. Is that spontaneous?

It's a little thing that we'll break into. It's something we do in rehearsal. I really try to connect with Calhoun, and we'll go into that together.

It looks as if you have two different right-hand positions. When you start to play a really speedy passage, you curl your right wrist more sharply.

When I started playing, I had very thin arms, and I had to find a comfortable position to pick from. Some people pick straight up and down with their wrists locked, but my picking comes more from my wrist than my forearm. I used to hold my pick between my thumb, index, and forefingers, with my fingers extended. I could play very quickly, but my playing had no articulation, so I began to hold the pick between my thumb and the side of my curled index finger. I used to glue three heavy Gibson teardrop picks together and sharpen them to a point, but I gave that up when I discovered Jim Dunlop Jazz IIIs. They're a lot thinner, but they've got about the same density. When I first started playing, I used only downstrokes; I really had to work at alternate picking. I don't do much sweep picking.

Do you play that way for rhythmic reasons? Do you associate the downstrokes with the strong beats of the measure?

Definitely. I got a lot from rhythm players like Jimmy Nolan [from James Brown's classic band] and Teenie Hodges, who played with Al Green.

It sounds as if you play hard, but your motions are actually quite delicate.

I work with my musculature. I do a lot of push-ups, and I work with a small weight for my wrist. I try to make it so playing is easy and not a complete strain; it is a muscular activity, as well as a spiritual one. The weight of the ESP doesn't bother me, because it's not as heavy as the Les Paul, which was my main guitar in the Decoding Society. I use D'Addario jazz-rock strings, gauges .011-.049. I used to use super-extra-slinky strings. I remember auditioning for an R&B singing group and my guitar was always going out of tune when I played rhythm. They said, "If you want this job, you've got to get it together." A friend of mine suggested a heavier gauge. So I tried the .010s, and then the .011s when I got the Les Paul.

You make very musical use of feedback. Do you have any special techniques for generating and controlling feedback?

Every guitar has its sweet spots. My main ESP, for example, is really good on the third string between thee 5th and 9th frets. I usually try to find a good spot to stand onstage. I'll turn only part of the way towards the amp, and I'll hear it catch. I definitely got that from Santana. People say it's the neck, or the nut, or the body, or the pickups, or the bridge, or the amp, or the speakers, or the tubes, but everything is so interdependent that you've got to take a holistic view. I usually keep my volume and tone controls up all the way and use a volume pedal, although I sometimes pull back on the volume knob to reduce the feedback.

You used guitar synthesizers with the Decoding Society and on your duet album with Bill Frisell. Can you see yourself using them with Living Colour?

I'm really thinking about it. I love synthesis and always have. I just recently got a Casio PG-300, the one with the onboard synthesizer. You can set it so that each string is on a different MIDI channel.

Do you practice much these days?

It's tough on the road; I have to sneak in an hour here and there. I used to get up every morning and just play whatever -- it didn't matter what -- just to have the guitar in my hands. I worked a lot on chords from Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry book. I try to do a little reading; I consider myself a struggling sight-reader. When I was with the Decoding Society, we had to sight-read everything.

You've composed a theater piece?

Afrerica is a multi-media theater piece that I'm writing with a writer named Sekou Sundiata. It's based on the idea of the Africa that black Americans have in their heads. There's a physical Africa, and then there's the African construct that we've put together to help us survive. Black nationalists have seized on Africa as this golden Valhalla or Asgard, this incredibly magical and good place. It's like an amalgam of what they would like to see happen here and the bit of African history that they know. There are so many Africas, and so many societies in Africa, each with its own morals. We've taken what we like about all these things. Afrerica is about this fantastical concept. It's one of my life projects; it will change as my compositional abilities improve [laughs]. An earlier version was about an hour-and-a-half long. I hope to mount another version within a couple of years.

You're very knowledgeable about a wide range of musical styles. You must have a hell of a record collection.

A hellish record collection is more like it! I do try to listen to a lot of music to keep a perspective. If you don't, what you bring to your own playing will start to become real shallow.

If you could go back in time and meet and play with any musicians who have ever lived, whom would you choose?

There's so many! I would love to sit in a room with Eric Dolphy. I wouldn't even say anything, just sit. He wouldn't even have to have a saxophone. To sit in a club and hear Charlie Christian when he was 19. To see the band that had Wes Montgomery, Coltrane, and Dolphy that toured once and was never recorded. To meet Hendrix would have been fantastic. Charles Mingus, Tommy Bolin -- if I could have said to Tommy, "Stop messing with that crap!" Tommy was one of our great losses. If I could have sat with Jimmy Nolen and said to him, "You're one of the greatest guitar players -- you changed the music." Sonny Boy Williamson, just to have him curse me out -- "Boy what you doin' there? Get out of here!" Lonnie Johnson. Robert Johnson! Wait, I've got it -- Rev. Gary Davis. A lesson with Rev. Gary Davis!

How about contemporary players?

I would love to sit with Carlos Santana. His attitude and the way he approaches music have been such an influence on me. I'd like to meet Frank Zappa; he's a 20th-century composer masquerading as a rock musician. Allan Holdsworth is fantastic because he's really searching. I never get the feeling from his playing that there's a heavy ego thing going on; it's just him trying to dig down. B.B. is truly great. People talk about "playing B.B. King-style," but I don't know what they mean, because nobody plays like him. I really admire Steve Vai, because he's so knowledgeable. And Van Halen -- he's so popular, but he's actually great. His playing is like breathing.

One of the great pleasures of working with Ronald Shannon Jackson was being able to play on stages with people like James Blood Ulmer and Sonny Sharrock. I was able to meet Fred Frith and Hans Reichel. The first time I heard Reichel, it took the top of my head off! It sounded like his guitar was made of rubber. I had the real fortune of actually seeing Muddy Waters in Holland. Out of all the concerts I've seen, that was the greatest. I have a cheap tape of the concert that's one of my prized possessions. It was my first time out of the country, and I actually got to go backstage and shake Muddy Waters' hand.

Do you feel that you owe something to your audience, that you have a responsibility where they're concerned?

I have the responsibility to be honest and to do what it is in my power to do. That isn't to say that I should play a million notes every solo; it denotes a deeper responsibility. If you've got a lot of chops, you can play by rote. You've got to really work to connect.

What would you like to be able to do that you can't do now?

I've always been fascinated by ragtime guitar playing. I really want to do that -- it's killing me. I want to have a richer chord vocabulary. I want to go back into jazz and really learn standards. I'd like to get to the point where I can smoothly integrate more intervallic skips in my playing. To keep learning stuff, to keep being fascinated, to keep loving it, to keep being in touch with what makes guitar playing cool. That's how you keep yourself fresh.