Mike Stern is a fantastic guitarist. I’ve seen him live a couple times, and he was very impressive.  He has amazing chops, clearly the result of a whole lot of hard work.  He can handle very difficult chord changes with aplomb.  He is comfortable playing a variety of styles. He is a card-carrying member of the elite tiny clique of New York hot jazz players who are making a living.

Yet I don’t like listening to him anymore.  It all seems very skilled, but no longer seems to break any new ground.  After listening to him for quite awhile, it began to seem as though you could almost break down a Mike solo into a recipe:

Mike Stern Solo Recipe

• Begin with a clean, always chorused tone, and start the solo with particular simple blues phrases.
• Follow the blues phrases with lines that descend through a scale using 3-note motifs.
• Raise the heat slightly with longer bebop influenced and arpeggiated phrases.  Increase speed.
• To bring the solo to a boil, kick in the 20-year-old distortion pedal at this point. Play screaming rock licks in repeating patterns.  Dweedie-iddle-Dweedie-iddle-Dweedie-iddle-Dweedie-iddle…..!!!!! Bend more notes, and then sprinkle in more very fast runs, moving higher and higher in pitch. End the solo with a high-note bend, and one last blues riff.
• The End

Am I being a critical jerk?  Sure!  But it’s because I think that Mike is capable of a lot more.  Many players have the same trouble – to me, Eric Clapton’s best work was done 20 years ago, and the rest is all a boring recap.  Curiously, I prefer the guitar solos of Mike’s own wife, Leni Stern.  Though she doesn’t have the blistering speed that Mike has, her compositional sense is outstanding, and when she solos, she really seems to be thinking melodically, texturally, and creatively, and doesn’t have this predictable air about her playing.  She sounds like she’s making it new and fresh, searching for something that hasn’t been played before.

In some ways it’s understandable that Mike stays in the same soloing region all the time.  He’s successful and works with some of the best in the busines, a rare accomplishment.  Go with what you know, as it were.  Why change?  Yet many top musicians to continue to re-invent themselves without going broke.

Sometimes all it takes is an equipment change(!).  Pat Metheny, as great as he is, also can fall into the trap of quoting himself ad infinitum.  But even if he’s playing the same types of lines, if he picks up a classical guitar, or a synth, at least it has more of a fresh feel, and can change his phrasing somewhat.  These Berklee guys all seem to like the 2-amp stereo chorus thing, and are totally addicted to it.  John Scofield, another great player, is definitely a creature of habit – he’s played the same semi-hollow body guitar for decades, and he too fell into the 2-amp stereo chorus rut for a very long time.  But he finally put out some material with a straight, non-chorused sound, and I can remember how earthy and gorgeous his tone sounded, and it coincided with some fresh new compositional material.

I hope Mike will play something unpredictable again someday!  I just might buy it!