AND WE DON’T HAVE TO SHARE HIM (YET)

(Published July 1988, Harmonium Magazine, Tucson, Az.)
 
 

Photo: Randy Lowery

BY BEVERLY CRAFT

There are many Tucson artists who, when heard for the first time, give one the immediate impression "What are they doing in this town?" They play, at times, to half-empty clubs, when they are every bit as talented and exciting as those who fill stadiums.

Rainer has had brief international attention, but circumstances worked against him. Known and respected for years by fellow musicians and music lovers in Tucson, he has not managed to break out of the local scene. Why he has not been signed by a major record company is a mystery to me. Maybe it's because Rainer does not actively pursue the so-called success that a recording contract signifies. At present he is content to repair guitars in the basement of the Chicago Store, play out occasionally, and wait for his bass player, Nick Augustine to return to Das Combo.

Rainer's musical career began in 1955 in a courtyard in East Berlin. He found an accordion and began to play while people threw candy and money at him. He was only four years old at the time. In 1956 his parents moved the family to the US, where they settled in a working class neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. Rainer, whose family could speak only German, had to learn English in school. He started to play the violin while in grade school. In the eighth grade he persuaded his mother to trade his violin for a guitar; then he set out to teach himself how to play it.

RAINER: "I would hear things on records that I would try to duplicate, but all my musical knowledge had been gained on the violin. On the violin you play only single notes. I knew nothing about chords or that they even existed. I would listen to a recording I had of "Gloria" and try to duplicate the chords by playing single notes. I'd play until my fingers started to bleed and I still couldn't get the right sound. It was very frustrating."

Rainer was in high school before a friend's brother told him about chords. Eventually he got a chord book and it was an incredible thrill for him to finally see all the chords laid out complete with pictures. This same friend also introduced him to two-stringing, a technique only used in blues rhythm guitar playing. Not long after this, the Rolling Stones came out with their first American-released album. It was through the Stones and other British bands that Rainer was turned onto the blues.

RAINER: "I would listen to their album and try to figure out what they were playing. It was a revelation to me to realize that a great deal of the time they were two-stringing. No matter what else is said about the Rolling Stones, they turned on a lot of Americans to what was right under their own noses all along."

It was also through the Stones that Rainer was first introduced to slide guitar, a technique that would later become his trademark and contribute to his unique sound. As a part of their 1969 tour, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards did a duo spot where Jagger sang an old blues song while Richards played bottleneck on an old National guitar. This event had a lasting influence on Rainer.

During this time, Rainer was practicing three to four hours a day. The neighborhood he grew up in was a rough one and a lot of kids joined gangs, but Rainer had no time for that. He was too busy teaching himself how to play guitar.

RAINER: "Learning to play a musical instrument is much like learning to play basketball or anything else. Desire is just as important as talent. At first you woodshed it; lock yourself up in a room and play all you can. If you have talent, a teacher can show you a few tricks to use here and there, but only you can develop it."

Rainer joined his first group, a blues and soul cover band, while still in high school. They played out only occasionally and they never got paid, but that really didn't matter.

RAINER: "We just wanted to get together and play loud. Those were the days when amps were amps and guitar players were men, or rather boys who wanted to be men. It was the size of you amp that counted."

In 1972, several of Rainer's friends invited him on a trip to Colorado. They then took a side trip to Tucson, where Rainer has remained ever since.

RAINER: "I decided that I wanted to live here. I knew if I stayed in Chicago that the neighborhood would eat me up."

He found a job at the U of A as a janitor, which entailed cleaning up the music building at night. This meant that he had keys to all of the rooms when no one else was around.

RAINER: "We used to hold little custodian concerts at Crowder Hall. There would be two of us in the audience and one up on stage. Eventually I got around to playing all the instruments."

Shortly after arriving in Tucson, Rainer also managed to secure a position as an apprentice at a guitar repair shop. It was there that he learned to fix guitars. After a year he was making enough money at the shop to enable him to quit his job as a janitor. For that past year, he had concentrated on learning the skills of a guitar repairman and had not been interested in playing professionally. Then one day, into the shop came an old National steel body guitar made during the 1920s. The owner sold it to Rainer for $75.

RAINER: "That guitar opened up a whole new world of playing for me. I was already familiar with Delta blues and Robert Johnson. Even though Johnson never actually played a steel body National, it was a contemporary of his. Just knowing that someone in the 1920s had played that guitar and had probably played blues on it allowed me to stretch out and think. Suddenly I could produce the sound that I had previously heard on records but could never figure out how the musicians got it."

Rainer's interest in playing had been revitalized. By 1978 he felt he had accumulated enough material to play out. He got a job playing weekends at Bogie's, where he did mainly Robert Johnson covers. It was around this time that he met drummer Billy Sedlmayr and bass player Dave Seger. They put in a call to Howe Gelb, who was then living in Pennsylvania, and the Giant Sandworms were formed. As the lead guitarist for the band, Rainer developed a renewed interest in playing the electric guitar. He was already playing slide guitar on his National, and he decided that he wanted to take this technique to his electric.

RAINER: "As I went along I sort of unlocked the fingerboard as I figured out how to get different chords out of the same tuning. Normally, when you are playing slide in major tuning you have to retune the guitar to play a minor chord. It wasn't until I started playing the electric guitar again that I realized that I could fret notes behind the slide and get different chords like a minor or a 7th or a 9th. The slide just makes contact with the strings. The majority of the chord is barred with the slide. The determining note of the minor or the 7th, etc., is made by fretting a note behind the slide. Previously, when I was Playing the slide, I always got the same sound because the guitar was always in that tuning and as I moved up and down the neck I would always get a major chord. All the interesting stuff was happening in the minor keys. I could now move from a major to a minor chord with ease."

He stayed with the Giant Sandworms for Close to a year, playing mostly original music written by Gelb and Seger. They then moved on to New York, where they eventually broke up. Rainer stayed behind.

RAINER: "I just didn't want to be involved in the pursuit of success. There's a whole other nine yards of playing in bars, dealing with club owners and constantly promoting yourself. I went back to the solo scene."

Another event occurred which had a strong influence on Rainer's decision to return to solo playing. John Mooney, an acoustic blues guitarist from Upstate New York who played a steel body National, came to town and took Tucson by storm.

RAINER: "He solidified in my mind that I was on the right track, that this was the avenue for me to take. He showed me that a blues player could come into a room and that the whole room could be lifted off the ground. This guy played like crazy and the music was so powerful it made me wonder what it must have been like to see Robert Johnson. The thing about this music is that it's so intense that you can't ignore it. Just one guy and one guitar, playing and singing his heart out. And for that one moment your whole life is altered."

Rainer, who was already becoming a master of the slide guitar, was pushed even further in that direction by a freak accident. One day while working with Bob Mick, the craftsman who makes all of Brian Bromberg's bass guitars, Rainer crushed the little finger of his left hand. He wondered if he would ever be able to play the guitar again. The solution was to use the slide even more.

A few months later, in 1983, he received a call from his old friend Howe Gelb. Howe told him that they had set up a gig for him at Nino's and that he'd better get a band together. Rainer contacted bass player Nick Augustine and drummer John Lowry, who now drums for Chaka Khan, and Das Combo was formed. Rainer, who had been writing music all along, started compiling material for a band.

RAINER: "My whole idea was to carry the Delta blues tradition of controlled danger over to my music. I've always wanted my music to sound like it could go anywhere at any time, that the song could end or change into another song at any moment. The power of the blues is that it's so spontaneous."

In 1984 the band recorded a cassette called "The Mush Mind Blues," which received a favorable review in Rolling Stone. The critical success of this cassette combination of originals and covers did not bring the recording contract the band had hoped for.

In 1985 the band went to Hollywood and made another recording of originals and covers which was picked up by Making Waves Ltd., a British-based record company. The album got good reviews and sold several thousand copies in Europe, but the record company folded after a few months. Rainer's hopes of touring Europe with Das Combo and selling enough records there to gain recognition in the States were dashed.

In 1985 Rainer did tour Europe as the lead guitarist for The Band of Blacky Ranchette. When they got to England he was asked for an interview by the BBC. Rainer and Das Combo, virtually unknown in the US outside of Arizona, were interesting stuff to the Brits.

Das Combo has had a succession of drummers--Lowry, Will Clipman, and Bruce Halper--but bass player Nick Augustine has been with Rainer since the beginning. When it became clear that Nick would have to take a temporary leave from the band, they decided to record more material before he left. They borrowed money and went back into the studio. The result was another cassette combination of originals and Delta style blues covers. Rainer has been sending copies to different record companies in renewed hopes of getting a contract.

Das Combo, however, has been put on hold until Augustine returns. Rainer has found the combination he wants with Augustine and Halper.

RAINER: "There is a chemistry between the three of us. Before Nick left we were all so in tune with each other that our playing would be loose and tight at the same time. We would feel each other through a tune and continuously take it to another step. My music is in a constant state of flux. Nick and Bruce are good enough that they can flow with it. If we play the same song the same way twice it gets boring. We move to different keys or change rhythms, things to keep the music moving. Playing so that the audience doesn't know where the music is going next is what appeals to me. Nick and Bruce are capable of playing that way."

So until Nick returns, Rainer will remain a soloist and play the music he loves.

RAINER: "I don't really like to be called a blues musician because of the connotations that go along with it, that whole racist and macho attitude that says the blues somehow promotes drinking, fighting, and mistreating women. Many people associate the music with that and that's wrong. Nothing I've written has been like that nor will it ever be. The most important thing about the blues is its musical attitude. There's so much power there and it's in the simplest thing. It's not like something you can pin down to a formula; rather, it's the attitude you play with, playing the note with more than just the note itself."

About his chances for success, Rainer is realistic. He has been right there on the edge before.

RAINER: "Right now I'm interested in success if it comes on my own terms, but I'm not pursuing it. I'm not interested in all the changes I would have to go through to be successful. I don't want anyone messing with my music. Music should be free and wide open; it shouldn't be hemmed in by hit formulas. Something rubs me the wrong way about trying to tell my story over and over to different club owners and so forth, but if a record company is interested in me as I am, then that’s great."

That's Rainer Ptacek, a man who is clearly ambivalent about his feelings for success. He would like to be famous but he's not sure that he's ready to make the changes that fame would require. He would like to be discovered but he doesn't want to continuously have to sell himself until someone finds him. Yes, right now he is content to repair guitars while he waits for Nick Augustine, and play in clubs occasionally, and then only when the owner calls him. I've heard him play. If I owned a club I'd call him.