Name: Chaz Prymek aka Lake Mary
Occupation: Guitarist, composer, improviser
Nationality: American
Recent release: Chaz Prymek teams up with Jessica Ackerley, and Nick Turner for All Hope With Sleeping Minds, out via Full Spectrum. There is also a new Fuubutsushi full-length, Meridians, out via Cached Media.
Recommendations: Listen to Ross Gay & Bon Iver's Catalog Of Unabashed Gratitude; Read Angela Pelstner's Limber

[Read our Jessica Ackerley interview]

If you enjoyed this Chaz Prymek interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram.

For the thoughts of one of his collaborators, read our Patrick Shiroishi interviews about improvisation, and collaboration.



What were some of your earliest collaborations? How do you look back on them with hindsight?

I think it all goes back to the very beginnings, right? From the moment I could play three chords I started playing music with friends, writing songs. I think I put together my first band in 6th grade to play at our school’s talent show. Two guitars and a drum machine that my friend’s dad programmed for us.

I had the bug, and was lucky enough to find a group of friends in middle school who all were into writing and pushing themselves on their instruments and songwriting. We challenged each other, and pushed ourselves to write longer and more complex music together. It was an incredible fruitful time for us. Learning how to work together, how to set each other up for success, how to make space for each other’s voices.

That band stayed together until my late teens or early twenties. I learned so much from playing and sharing life with that crew, I couldn’t be more grateful to have had that time where collaborating was the priority, and we took time to learn how to do that for us.

Which spills right over into how I collaborate and write in the present.

There are many potential models for collaboration, from live performances and jamming/producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?  

For me, there is something really wonderful about spending an amazing amount of time with my friends (collaborators) when working through file sharing. I love to get to put on headphones and go for a walk and dream up ideas to respond to the music my friend sent over and then go into my studio and chip away at the ideas until I get it just right.

It gives me time to be question my process, what is my go to? Why? What if I did the opposite of that? What actually fits? What is the piece trying to say and how can I support that?

However, There is a magic that happens when you’re all in the same room that is unbeatable. When you can feel the energy moving between everyone playing, the moments where you’ve left your body and are listening and somehow playing what you are listening to at the same time. The room is glowing, and you start to move as an ever expanding unit. There is nothing quite like that.

What do most people say at the end of really immersive and intimate exchange like that?

I’ve never figured out a good way to conclude and cap that moment, so we all just end up saying ridiculous things like “woah sick!” “Wow, nice” or let out a laugh and around of high fives and then go have a smoke and talk about anything else.

I would like to sit in that space that we just made a little more and find a way to honor that thing that just happened better. We’ll see …

How did this particular collaboration come about?

Jess and Nick had been working on this record for a little while already, and they had the bones and a lot of the meat of it together when they reached out and invited me in.

Jess and Nick are two of my absolute favorite musicians and people, so I flipped when they offered.

What did you know about each other before working together? Describe your creative partner in a few words, please.

I’ve been an enormous fan of Jess’ music long before we collaborated. I think they are writing and playing some of the most interesting guitar forward music out there.

I still put on Jess’ music to get pumped up for a free-improv session or if I’m recording for Fuubutsushi. A wonderful, hilarious and intelligent human, a great teacher, the list goes on of good things to say about Jess.

I almost have the exact same thing to say about Nick. I think we found each other’s music around the same time. Not exactly sure who reached out to who first, or how we started yakking. But once we did, we became quick friends.

Nick has an incredible mind and heart, a deep deep thinker. He deeply cares for all the folks he has in his life, and it shows in collaborations I have seen him in. Always making space for others and setting things up for them to shine. He is a deep listener, musically, professionally, and personally.

I feel blessed to get to make music with such incredible people.

What do you generally look for in a collaborator and what made you want to collaborate with each other specifically?

The best collaborators to me, are deep listeners, compassionate, caring, and practiced players.

There seems to be an under current I have been lucky enough to fall into that most people I collaborate with understand that collaborating means working and flowing together, listening to each other, making room for one another and setting each other up for success.

A great collaborator will make space for adventure. And in the best collaborations, you all go somewhere you could only go together.

Tell me a bit about your current instruments and tools, please. In which way do they support creative exchange and collaborations with others?  

I am primarily a guitarist, but my toolbox is quickly expanding as I explore more sounds and ways to make sounds and my ideas around being a musician change. I have been playing lap steel for a few years now and that seems to be making it onto everything lately. It all depends on how I am feeling or what has been on my mind when going into a collaborative situation.

The last one I most recently did, I had a guitar and Pocket Piano mini Ogranelle thing. I saw Ben LaMar Gay and JayVe Montgomery perform as their duo Freddie Dougie recently and that changed something in how I view being a musician. They grabbed whatever was near it seemed and rather than play the instrument, they made whatever it was apart of them. It didn’t matter if it was a hose in the jar of water, a Cornett, a sax, their voice, percussion, synths, whatever it was, they were making music.



That clicked something in me. I got home and started diving into my theory harder than ever with the idea that hopefully whatever is in front I can just make music with.  

[Read our Ben LaMar Gay interview]

Before you started making music together, did you in any form exchange concrete ideas, goals, or strategies? Generally speaking, what are your preferences when it comes to planning vs spontaneity in a collaboration?

Jess and Nick had a lot of the record recorded when they invited me along, so the vibe and tone was set. I tried to honor that.

So far, I haven’ found a set way of doing things. I hope it stays that way. I’m having a blast trying things and learning how different ways of approaching sessions and shows can work.

Decisions between creatives often work without words. How did this process work in this case?

Trust

Was/Is this collaboration fun – does it need to be?

This was a delight to work on.

I don’t necessarily think it needs to be fun, but hopefully fulfilling.

Collaborating with one's heroes can be a thrill or a cause for panic. Do you have any practical experience with this and what was it like?

Know that if you find yourself collaborating with someone you’ve looked up to for a long time or has influenced you tremendously, you more than likely have worked hard to get there and deserve to be in that room. Trust what you do and how you do it.

My big takeaway from getting to play along with so many people I’ve admired for so long, is that it’s not necessarily that you are even the most adept at your instrument, but how you hear, listen, think about, and play that people are feeling the most.

Loren Connors, one of my all time favorite guitarists, and artists. Who has inspired generations of musicians to explore, play like your painting to make art out of your sound, in a recent interview said “I don’t know shit about playing guitar.”

[Read our Loren Connors interview]