Fifteen Minutes With Ottmar Liebert
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Richard
Mahler An edited transcript of our conversation follws: How did you get to New Mexico in the first place? In April of 1986, I decded to go along with a frined from Santa Fe who said he was driving out to New Mexico with a van and a trailer full of belongings... (My brother and I) thought we'd stay a couple of weeks in new Mexico. Instead we've stayed here for more than 11 years. What's Santa Fe been like for you? It's been an interesting catalyst for me, because I hae a lot of divergent musical interests before I came here that I was really never able to fit together. When I lived in Boston and in Germany they had been separate entities. Somehow the exerpeicne of Santa Fe affected me deeply - the culture, the landscape, the openesss with which people mix things. When you look at the work of painters here - Anglo, Hispanic, or Indian - the amount of influences they take from other painters all over the world is pretty astounding. You were an art student at one time. Is part of the attraction of Northern New Mexico the famous quality of light, the spaciousness, and the landscape? Yes, definately... The light is bsolutely spectacular, probably due to a combination of the altitude and the clean air. Things have a sparkel and a re in focus in wasy that you don't see anywhere else... Every time you cross the border coming here, whether it's from Arizona or Texas, you can tell almost immediately that you're in New Mexico. Where did you play in Santa Fe when you were a struggling musician? The very first job a I ahd was a new Orleans-style restaurant advertising for a guitarts... I borrowed a horribly out-of-tune nylon guitar and started playing there at night... I did jobs like these for about 18 months. I was surprised to learn that you didn't take any flamenco guitar lessons until 1988, after you'd lived in Santa Fe for two years. Yes, although I'd had three or four years of classical training in Cologne when I was a teenager, and that helped... I took a half a year's worth of lessons in Santa Fe... and then in January and February of 1989, I was able to record some songs. Do you like living in Santa Fe proper? Yes, i think I'd feel less connected if I lived farther out of town. And I really like the fact that where I am on the East side is so quiet. When friends come from Europe or the eastern US they often can't sleep at night because they're not used to the quietness. yet I can be on the plaza in five minutes, so I have the best of both worlds. You've said that you really admire people who reinvent themselves, and there's no shortage of people like that in New Mexico, is there? I think the most wonderful thing that has happened in that sense was seeing a journalist from Hamburg who came out to intervew me a few years ago... You have to realize that, especially with in the media, Germans tend to be ver, very cynical. he was also of that group that had been through the 'roaring Sixties,' and those Germans tend to be even more cynical. Yet at the end of his four days here, he made a confession: "I thought all the things people said about new Mexico was a bunch of b.s.,' this reporter told me, 'but now that I've been here I have to admit that there is really something special about this place. I can't say what it is exactly, but it is powerful.' And I know that was not an easy thing for him to say. Many people like Santa Fe because it ahs the amenities of a big city, but the friendliness of a small town. Before I came here, I'd always lived in big cities. I was born in Cologne, which has about 1 million people... Having been here for more than 11 years now, I really like the fact that I know people and run into them in restaurants and in stores. There's a knowledge that when I go and get a cup of coffee and smaill, people will smile back. If I make a joke, people will laugh. You do that in New York City and people will think you're insane. Can you be anonymous here? I'm probably stopped on the street more in San Francisco than I ever have been here. I think in Santa Fe nobody cares at all about celebrities. It's almost the opposite thing here... I've never seen people come up to someone famous and say, "Oh my God, it's you!' Nobody pays any special attention to them when they're out in public. Does new mexico feel like home to you? Absolutely. And the strange thing is, it's the first place that ever has felt like home. I left Cologne when I was 18 and up to that time I'd never felt that it was 'my place'... Yet when I came to Santa Fe, I said to myself, 'I want to get a house here, I want to put some roots down in this place.' So it always feels good to come back here? Oh yeah. part of it is the chile. you get addcited to it. After a few weeks on the road I really begin to crave it... I need my chile fix! The members of the band and I are going to start freezing it and taking some with us when we tour. What's next for Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negra? We'll pretty much have all of 1998 to work on our new CD for Epic... This next album will be very summery. I want it to come out when everybody's mood changes, around thetime that the weather starts to get warm and you don't have to wear a jacket anymore. That will probably be released in early summer of 1999. |