THE CHARLIE WATTS JIM KELTNER PROJECT

THE CHARLIE WATTS
JIM KELTNER PROJECT
DRUMS AND BEYOND

To truly appreciate Watts and Keltner’s efforts, you have to know the history of the project. This could have very well been one of those many well-meant efforts that end up collecting dust on a shelf in an anonymous storage vault or suburban garage. Luckily that didn’t happen, but with the disc being released three years after the initial sessions, it came damn close. “It grew into what it is,” the always-reserved Watts says from his home outside of London, England. “It was Keltner’s idea to begin with, then I carried on.”

Jim Keltner (left) and Charlie Watts (click for larger view).

Keltner, who has played with an incredible array of artists of every style through the years, was recruited by the Stones as an additional percussionist on their sessions for the Bridges of Babylon CD in 1997. This association with the Stones led to his collaboration with Watts. “I didn’t want to mess with any of [Watts’] grooves at all,” Keltner comments from his home in Los Angeles, in respect to the sessions. “[The Stones] wanted to know if I wanted to play double drums, and Charlie was into it. But I refused. First, it’s not something I like to do, and secondly, it would be a crime to interfere with somebody like Charlie’s groove. It would almost be sacrilegious. So basically, I’d sit back and play around his stuff on part of a drum-set without a bass drum or snare.”

During breaks between the sessions at Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood, the drummers sometimes had long down periods. To amuse themselves, they would often jam and then listen to the results on tape. Taking advantage of the situation, Keltner thought it would be a great time to experiment. “He asked me to play on some of these ‘things’ that he’d done,” Watts recalls. The “things” that Watts refers to were Keltner’s sequences made from his collection of samples. “I started back in ’85 collecting samples,” Keltner says, “anything from a metallic shelf that you find in a basement to a fish steamer. I mean anything, but I don’t use other people’s samples. I have things I transferred from a cassette tape that I’ve had for 10 years. Then I sampled them into an SDS-7, then later into sequencers. I don’t actually have many drum sounds; I do have a real bass drum in there somewhere.

“Also I have a lot of sequencers. One of my favorites is still the old E-mu SP-1200. I would throw [the samples] together in a groove, but they aren’t loops. I’m careful about doing those, because they’re very boring. Anybody can do a loop, basically. I live by the ‘Song Mode’ on my sequencer. What I created are songs that go from a verse to chorus to a bridge. They don’t come off that way to the average listener unless you have a vocal or a strong melody. The ones I brought down weren’t completed with a melody, but structurally they were. So I just wanted to see what it would be like to have Charlie’s drums on there.”

Upon first hearing the sequences, Watts didn’t know what Keltner had in mind. “So I asked where would I come in or if I could just climb in,” Watts recalls. “Jim’s a drummer, and a very fine one, so I said, ‘You do them.’ But he said, ‘I want you to play on my little songs.’ So I said fine; we had the opportunity and did it. I personally play the same drums and the same way that I play with the Rolling Stones, except that the songs I’m playing to are electronic instead. The selections are a bit more than jams, however, because of Jim’s sequences. But it wasn’t like we came in every day strictly to work on this; it was actually rather loose.”

Keltner, who at the time of this interview was working on a similar solo CD, affirms, “The Stones and Charlie aren’t very precious about the stuff they do. They’re very spur-of-the-moment.”

One interesting aspect of the CD is that all of the tracks are named after various distinguished jazz drummers. “I like all the tunes,” Watts points out. “I used the drummers’ names because Tony Williams had just died that week, and his was the first cut. That gave me the idea to call all the rest after drummers. Jim titles [the samples/sequences] by where he recorded them, and what he used on them. ‘Elvin’ [after Elvin Jones] is actually structured to be Africa, Airto is Brazil, and the others are all around.”

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Reprinted with permission from