Artist Features
Jack West, Bay Area Explorer of New Guitar Sounds
JGT contributor Joe Barth talks to guitarist and composer Jack West.
Above photo credit: Mitch Tobias
Jack West has carved out his own sound and approach to jazz-fused, Americana music. In addition to being a great guitarist and composer, West is an inventor having patented new musical instruments and solar technologies. Having recently released his Guitars On Life album with fellow guitarist Walter Strauss, I sat down to get to know him better.
JB: Before I ask about the new album, could you tell me a little about yourself? Were you born in Alabama and grew up in Savannah, Georgia? Did you start playing guitar in Savannah? In those early years, what was most helpful for your personal development as a guitarist?
JW: My family history is many generations in the Deep South, the last several hundred years in northern Alabama (with many musicians in the lineage). My Dad & his brother (a jazz pianist, and my original musical inspiration) left their hometown of Piedmont, AL, and moved to Savannah, GA, where I was raised. I played a little piano as a young kid, but when I discovered guitar at age 14, I went deep into music and started a rock band that played all around Savannah.
My uncle played by ear and could play a huge catalog of jazz tunes, so I followed in his footsteps in this regard, never studying music formally, but just dropping the needle on every song I liked and trying to figure out what they were doing. So, I would say that learning guitar by ear and following the sounds that moved me was definitely the most helpful thing I did when I was young. I eventually learned music theory in my 20’s, but starting out by having to struggle and experiment to figure out what my musical heroes were doing—all by ear—instilled a confidence and a drive to experiment.
JB: What are three of the most influential solo guitar albums to you and your personal development as a guitarist, and why?
JW: Michael Hedges – Aerial Boundaries
I had only been playing guitar for 2 or 3 years when my Dad—who was a big audiophile—brought home this record. And it was around the time that I was deep into REM’s album Murmur that was blowing up in a huge way in Savannah (since they were from Athens, GA). So, when I heard Hedges, I had already gotten my first acoustic guitar, but at that point, I was just doing simple fingerpicking and strumming. Hedges blew my mind! It would be 10 years later that I truly started playing acoustic guitar percussively, but this album sewed that seed, and looking back, it is definitely one of the biggest influences on my music.
Leo Kottke – 6 and 12 String Guitar
Like most aspiring fingerpickers during that time, Leo Kottke was super inspiring. For me, his focus on a super-tight rhythmic drive was unlike anything else I’d heard, and so I started learning how to play some of his songs immediately when I first heard this record. I still play The Fishmerman off this record from time to time. Amazing song!
Mississippi John Hurt – The Best Of Mississippi John Hurt
I heard this record when I was maybe 18 or so, and immediately learned how to play a bunch of these songs—not for the vocals—but for the fingerpicking. John Hurt was really special and not like any other acoustic blues player. Still very inspiring to me today.
BTW, the first two of these were easy to choose, but slot #3 really could have had about 10 different albums…but in the end I chose this—which is technically not a solo guitar album as you asked—but there are a lot of sections in these tunes where the guitar is solo.
JB: Talk about the impact of guitarist Michael Hedges on you.
JW: As I said earlier, huge! He really opened a whole new door for me (and many others) by reminding us that acoustic guitars are great drums! That said, I only learned how to play one of his songs back in the day, not because I don’t love Aerial Boundaries, but because my inclination is to always try to find my own way and follow the music I’m hearing. So, as with all my favorite artists, I learned just enough about what they were doing to understand it, then got back to my own exploration.
JB: What do you appreciate most about the years you recorded with violinist Jenny Scheinman?
JW: Jenny was my girlfriend for 5 years (the first half of my 20’s, when I had first moved to CA). We basically grew up together and learned a ton about music together. And I learned a ton from her. She had a passion and drive to improve at her instrument. And she had a seriously badass approach to rhythm. Those last two sentences are what I appreciate the most. She and I wrote a lot of music together and performed with several bands (a large dance band and an acoustic duo).
JB: When did you move to the San Francisco Bay Area? Was it because of a music opportunity?
JW: 1992. Jenny & I had been living together in Santa Cruz, playing around that area as a duo, but then we decided that we wanted access to a bigger scene, so the Bay Area was the logical next step. We didn’t have any gigs. We just found a place to live in Oakland and started making things happen.
JB: Your new album with Walter Strass, Guitars On Life, is mostly original music for the acoustic guitar duet. Talk briefly about your composing process.
JW: We ended up in a house in Florida, in a swamp, for a week, and most of the music was written during that week. We basically played all day and late into the evening. Most of the songs started with me writing the bass/rhythm/guitar parts (which I play simultaneously), and sometimes a melody for Walter to play (in other cases, he wrote the melody). Then we’d play together and co-write the remainder of the tune.
When I say “write,” I should also note that I am illiterate musically, and do not write things on paper (other than basic chord changes); and I do not compose things away from my instrument. But rather, I pick up my guitar and start to play, and things just happen. I am an improviser at heart, and so as I’m improvising, I hear things that I like and then refine those into the songs.
JB: Talk about your band, Curvature, and the album Essential Curvature.
JW: Curvature was an evolving band that I had from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s. Each album was a slightly different version of the band. But the band, for me, was a way to develop the style of music I was hearing, which was fundamentally acoustic guitar-based, with a rhythmic focus and a focus on melody and improvisation. I call it acoustic groove music. But it doesn’t groove in a conventional 4/4 kind of way. For some reason, I frequently hear unusual rhythms, so a lot of the music in Curvature is based on grooves in odd time signatures. For example, one tune on my first Curvature record that is based on a 6 over 9 polyrhythm just happened when I was improvising at rehearsal. I stopped the song we’d been working on, and my drummer and I spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out what this weird rhythm was that I was hearing.
Essential Curvature is a collection of the best tracks from the five albums I made with Curvature. We completely remixed and remastered the music to bring it up to modern audio-quality standards, and I’m very happy with how it all turned out. A lot of it had been recorded with early-generation digital recording technology that just doesn’t hold up very well sonically, so we actually mixed everything on an SSL analog console down to half-inch analog tape, and it sounds amazing. The vinyl was pressed straight from the analog tape masters.
JB: Tell us about the new thumbpick you invented.
JW: It’s similar to conventional thumbpicks in that it wraps around my thumb, but it’s much smaller and allows me to slap it against the top percussively as well as play both up and down strokes—two things that are hard to do with a normal thumbpick.
Watch Jack and Walter Strass perform “More Guitar” from Guitars On Life….
JB: Talk about the gigs you do in California and elsewhere, and how you make a career in music and inventing work for you.
JW: I just finished a west coast tour, and my agent is working on booking several more tours for later in 2026, one in the northwest and one in the northeast. When I’m not out performing, my time is split between inventing songs and inventing products. It turns out that I’ve had some success with the latter, so I don’t have to rely so much on the songs for my living.
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