Charlie Hunter Is Getting Ahead

Has this always been your method of operation – playing it by ear as you go on?

Yeah, more or less. A lot of the times you really don’t have the choice. Back when I had a record deal, they want it when they want it. When you’re young, you can generate that stuff. People haven’t seen your curve ball and your slider. At this point I have to work that knuckler out.

Interesting metaphors. Have you ever played the National Anthem at a major league baseball game?

I have not. I just don’t know, I think it would be too much of a non-sequitur for me to do that. If I was backing up a singer, I’d be happy to do it. But just me getting out there and doing it? No. 1, I’d be terrified. And No. 2, it would be a non-sequitur, people would be saying, “What the hell is this guy doing and why is he here?”

What haven’t you done but would like to accomplish?

I don’t know. I mean, I feel like I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do with the music. I don’t have any regrets about that. The only thing I have issues with is just … the economic downturn. But everyone has that problem, now. I really can’t complain. I feel that I’m in one of the few professions, that even though it’s the farthest thing possible from a meritocracy, if you work really, really hard, you can eke out a real honest living and work with awesome people. I’m just happy for that, to be totally honest. Anything else, if I can make just enough to pay all the bills, I feel like I’m ahead of the game. Anything else that comes down the pike would be a fantastic bonus at this point.

What can you tell us about the title of the new album – Not Getting Behind Is The New Getting Ahead?

It’s the story of today. How slowly, slowly an entire society … or 99 percent of that society’s mentality shifts from this kind of attitude of “The American Dream” to “Not getting behind is the new getting ahead.”

I spent 25 years driving around this country playing every nook and cranny in it. A part of me feels like maybe a pretty decent reflection, or reflector, of that. The songs are kind of about that without really getting political. It’s not meant as a political statement. It’s just meant as a reflection.

You’ve toured a lot over the years. What changes have you noticed during your travels?

Twenty years ago, you could go to these towns and for better or for worse there was no Starbucks, no Walmart. There were downtowns, there were people who owned businesses you could walk into. Your conversations with them were not dictated by some lofty corporate protocol. You really felt everyone’s community was different. Although there were some similarities, obviously they had a different thing. Next time you’d go through town, you’d see the same people again. There was a general kind of prosperity to that. Now you go and these places don’t exist anymore. In a lot of these places, the job opportunities are very, very small. When they do get them, your interface with them is completely dictated by some corporate protocol from far, far away.

The whole grassroots way of somebody like me being able to roll into a town and create a couple hours of intellectual, visceral kind of distraction … gets a little harder. You go to towns like Detroit that I saw basically rebuild from 20 years ago, and you go to other places in whatever you want to call the “rust belt” and stuff is hard. These are people that most of them did not get to take part in the dot.com boom yet they’re baring the full blunt of the bust we have right now. You see that stuff and it’s real. It’s no joke, it’s no sit-com, there’s no laugh track. This is real, these are real people’s lives.

I don’t want to get too heavy about it because that’s not what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be providing those people with a distraction. But it is what it is.

If you could send a message back to the Charlie Hunter in the early 1990s who was preparing to release the first album, The Charlie Hunter Trio, what would you tell him?

I would say, “Anything I would tell you now, you would ignore and you’d be a total asshole about it. You’d be so arrogant that you wouldn’t be able to hear any of what I have to tell you. So I’m going to tell you nothing and watch and enjoy your youthful exuberance. That’s what you can enjoy from that.”

It’s like that whole axiom where the Truth comes to your door and you say, “Go away. I’m looking for the truth.”

You know what I’m saying? That’s the only thing I could say. That and “Why don’t you try to eat a little healthier?”