The universally revered guitarist plays Grand Rapids this week. The Local Spins interview with Jesse Cook, plus enter a drawing to win tickets to see him in concert.
Memories of a Toy Guitar: Jesse Cook’s love affair with his instrument started early. (Courtesy Photo)
TICKET GIVEAWAY: Local Spins is partnering with Audiotree Presents to give away a pair of tickets to Jesse Cook’s Thursday (March 31) concert at Grand Rapids’ Wealthy Theatre. Enter online here. And scroll down to watch videos of Cook’s guitar wizardry.
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There are few things that compare to the serenity of throwing on one of Jesse Cook’s records, sitting back and traveling the globe on the sonic wings of acoustic strings.
Much like Cook’s own journey, his albums circle the world, perpetually embracing an eclectic interpretation of guitar-driven music.
While flamenco comes up in nearly all of his interviews, he’s quick to address how the genre has become a broad stroke to paint a number of subsidiary world music genres. True flamenco was born in Southern Spain and founded on the region’s musical folkloric traditions. Cook was born across the border in France. Paris, specifically.
He performs at Wealthy Theatre on Friday (March 31) with a five-piece band. The show begins at 8 p.m. and tickets are $40 in advance, available online here, or $45 on the day of the show.
Though his memories from those formative years are few, he does recall (or rather he says his mother recalls) a young Cook trotting around the house with a toy guitar.
The Latest Album: “Libre”
“I had this little guitar in Barcelona that I used to strum walking around the apartment,” Cook says.
“Those sounds must have had some kind of influence because when we moved to Canada, I just kept finding myself drawn to these flamenco records that my parents had brought back with them.”
When Cook was 2 years old, his family relocated to Barcelona. Then they moved across the Atlantic to Toronto, where Cook was primarily raised and currently lives. It’s the conglomeration of each of these places, along with Cook’s prolific musical voice, that he’s built a sound of his own. And a career.
“As a musician, when you’re interested in world music, you keep rubbing shoulders with people who make other kinds of music around the world, and all you want to do is mix it together and see what you can come up with. My whole journey musically has been sort of pursuing different kinds of hybrids, different points of intersection between these different cultures.”
The musician, producer and composer’s most recent album, 2021’s “Libre,” was hailed by Tinnitist as continuing Cook’s “trademark musical explorations, combining his iconic Spanish guitar flair with Algerian multi-instrumentalist Fethi Nadjem, modern trap rhythms and 808 beats.” Smooth Jazz Daily says the album springs from “that feeling of yearning for freedom.”
EMBRACING CINEMA, CREATING HIS OWN VIDEOS AND STAYING HEALTHY
Cook’s skillful hands aren’t limited to the neck of a guitar. His parents were both filmmakers professionally, and in the past few years, Cook has taken to writing and directing his own music videos.
He recalls flying home from Europe one day and watching an in-flight film directed by Anton Corbijn, one of his favorite music photographers and filmmakers. He was inspired by Corbijn’s transition from photography to film and began directing his own music videos.
“I remember thinking, ‘I could do that.’ So I just started going from taking still pictures to making videos. Many of the early music videos that were made for me by other people didn’t really resonate in a personal way,” he says.
“I just felt like what the director wanted to say had nothing to do with what my songs were saying. I always felt very disconnected from those videos.”
While directing a recent video, Cook and his team found themselves in Arizona on the last day of a tour. They hiked up into the desert foothills with their instruments to film scenes on top of a mountain overhang. The following day, they shot a video in his hotel room. Cook also directed the 2019 PBS film, “Beyond Borders,” a concert film that took him 18 months to edit.
On His ‘Tempest II Tour’: Cook is celebrating the anniversary of his first album. (Courtesy Photo)
“When I started making my own music videos, it became a lot simpler. It was really just about us being in a certain location, playing a piece of music. For the most part, those are the kinds of videos I want to make. I try to keep it simple,” he says. (Scroll down to watch two of his videos, one that’s been viewed more than 3.3 million times.)
An avid fan of cinema, Cook and his son have been revisiting the works of Ridley Scott: “Gladiator,” “Alien” and other action-packed classics are among the movies they’ve recently watched. In addition to an appreciation for film, Cook enjoys reading non-fiction.
Recent titles he’s read include “Strongmen,” by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Will Smith’s autobiography, “WILL” and “The Great Jazz Interviews,” a compilation of interviews aggregated from the DownBeat archives. He was surprised by the many antics those musicians found themselves wrapped up in.
I ask if Cook has any wild tour stories of his own. He pauses, then jokes: “Not any I can talk about.”
We laugh. Then he reigns his answer back in, noting that things don’t get that wild for him and his band these days. They save the wildness for the stage.
“I’ve been touring for so long, that I find over the years, it’s almost like being in training. When you go on the road you’re just trying to keep your chops healthy and keep yourself healthy. It’s all about being conditioned to do the show,” Cook says.
Our conversation concludes with a question about his favorite flamenco artists. Where should someone who is unfamiliar with the genre begin their listening journey, I ask.
This is the part where he tells me that flamenco is often misused as a genre label;. Its traditional origins lie in Southern Spain and consist of a series of verses called copla, tercio and letras, which are then accentuated by guitar interludes.
Cook lists a pair of his favorite flamenco artists, Vicente Amigo and Paco de Lucia.
Swimming through the catalog of these influential guitarists is a portal to another world, one where the cadence of an acoustic guitar leads sweet vocal melodies in a hypnotic dance.
It’s a dance that Cook has carried with him across both borders and oceans.
VIDEO: Jesse Cook, “Azul”
VIDEO: Jesse Cook, “Once”
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