I met you in the early ‘80s when you were teaching classical guitar at Lewis and Clark College with Ian Mitchell. I know you’ve had many adventures since then including winning some international guitar competitions in Europe and more recently performing in and leading treks to the Lost Cathedral in the Copper Canyon in Mexico, an adventure which has inspired your new cd, Music of the Lost Cathedral. Let’s start with how you found yourself in Mexico and how the cd came about.

Most of my life I’ve spent working outside of academic institutions, except for my stint at Lewis and Clark. I love the wilderness, and spend as much time as I can hiking in beautiful places. Combining the two -- performing on guitar and hiking in wilderness came together for me recently and one of the results is my new cd.

Almost four years ago I came back to United States after about ten years in Europe. When I first came back I felt incredibly out of place. I had an accent; everyone asked where I was from. It took a few months to get my bearings and begin to make a living. I settled in the Bay Area where I have family. As beautiful as it is here, it’s so congested, it wasn’t long before I started wanting to be in the wilderness again. I had been spoiled by the many winters I’d spent on the Canary Islands hiking and back packing when I was living in Europe. By chance I read a book about the Copper Canyon in Mexico. Copper Canyon is actually a system of canyons which join together to form the deepest and largest canyon in North America, quite a lot larger than our own Grand Canyon and spectacularly beautiful. It sounded like a good place to go. In the back of the book was an address for the Copper Canyon Lodges, a resort at the bottom of the canyon. I thought maybe they’d like some music down there, so I sent them my promotional packet with a couple cds and mentioned being fluent in Spanish and having lots of back-country experience. I never thought I’d hear from them. But about a year later, just out of the blue, Skip McWilliams, the owner of the lodge called. He said, “We’re looking for a trail guide.” I said, “I’ve never done that before, but if you’d like to hire me, I’d sure like to give it a try.”

So I headed to Mexico for four months. As part of my trail guiding, I was taking people down to the Satevo mission, also known as the Lost Cathedral, a beautiful 18th-century Spanish mission, way down in the bottom of the canyon, which now is the site for many community activities including several yearly Tarahumara Indian festivals. One day I thought, “I bet the acoustics are great down here” and so next time down I brought my guitar and played for the group I was guiding. The acoustics were fantastic, it was a big hit with the tourists, and an instant tradition was born. Groups came down there already having heard about it, already asking for a performance. I thought it would be nice to play some Mexican music down there, although Bach’s “Air on the G String” was always a huge success. I started to do some research into Mexican Baroque music and found the Michael Lorimer book that has a facsimile of the original manuscript in Baroque guitar tablature of the music of Santiago de Murcia, which was composed in Mexico. Santiago de Murcia was born about 1683 in Spain. It’s clear from his compositions that he was greatly influenced by his travels all over Europe and Latin America, including the African slave music he encountered in Latin America. He played on a five-course Baroque guitar which I believe sounded very much like my own eleven string.

I was also interested in the indigenous Tarahumara Indian music. I started going into the back country listening to their music and ceremonies, and pretty soon it dawned on me that this music would make a nice cd. In June I went back to Brussels, where I recorded my earlier cds, and made the new recording with the same engineer, Jarek Frankoski.

The cd is mostly the music of Santiago de Murcia with some Tarahumara Indian pieces?

About two-thirds of the cd is by Santiago de Murcia. I’ve also included a couple Mexican folk songs, and yes, some music of the Tarahumara Indians, which has been described as sort of a combination Celtic and Tibetan sound. One of my Tarahumara friends is a fine violin maker and also plays at a lot of the ceremonies. As a one-time woodworker myself, I was fascinated with how he made such wonderful instruments with very few tools or materials. He takes his burro and heads into the mountains where he has a little cabin. He cuts down dead snags of juniper and pine trees, saws them into planks, loads them on his burro, and takes them back to his canyon home. His tools are few, although he has more than most violin makers down there, who usually have only a pocket knife and bits of broken glass for scraping. He has a set of knives and a hand plane as well, gifts from Americans, and occasionally he has a bit of sandpaper. I wanted to include him playing on the recording, so I took a mini-discman with me to Mexico last winter and recorded him playing in the mission. I had no idea if the quality would be good enough to use on the recording. I took the mini-disc with me to Brussels, and my engineer was able to use it. So a few minutes of my friend Patrocinio playing one of his violins is included on the cd. Someday I’d like to do more of this sort of thing, and maybe dub guitar parts over it. It was a lot of fun, too. I end the recording with the “Air on the G-String,” by Bach because it’s such a favorite of the people in the canyon and it sounds so great in the mission.

In your Portland concert, how much will you be playing from the cd?

More than half. I plan to play all the Murcia dances from the recording, as well as the wonderful “Sonata.” I’ll also play some of my favorite Celtic Turlough O’Carolan pieces and some music by Henry Purcell.

Great. I’m really looking forward to your concert. Can you tell us some more about your guitar?

It’s an eleven-string arch guitar made by Gary Southwell of Nottingham, England. I played a regular six string classical until about 1990. I met American arch-guitar player Peter Blanchette when he was busking in Antwerp. (Busking or playing for money in the streets is a tradition in Europe that goes back to the Middle Ages. If it’s done with quality and in the right places, like in a beautiful setting near a cathedral for example, it is recognized and appreciated, and a musician can do quite well financially.) He played beautifully, had wonderful recordings, and a spectacular eleven-string arch guitar. I invited him to stay in my apartment in Brussels. I was very inspired by his example, although I had a slightly different idea about what I wanted -- a cross between a guitar and a lute. I had been playing more and more Celtic music and early music. About that time, my recording engineer, Jarek Frankowski got a six string from Gary Southwell, and it had a lot of the qualities I was looking for. So I met with Gary and we drew pictures and talked and a couple months later he came back to Brussels with a design he’d drawn, and we refined that a little further. It has eight strings on the fingerboard and three off, an idea that comes from theorbos and lutes. On Peter’s the fingerboard extended under all eleven, but I wanted a lighter instrument. I figured I could tune it in such a way that I really wouldn’t need the fingerboard under the lowest strings. The first six strings are typically tuned like a regular guitar except one-half step higher. I often tune the third string down a half step, which makes a Renaissance tuning. The seventh, eight, and ninth are B, D, and A respectively, the D and A being the octave below the fourth and fifth strings. The tenth and eleventh strings are typically G and F# respectively, the G being the same as the 3rd fret on the sixth string. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh strings are often tuned a half step up or down depending on what key I’m in.

What are your plans for this season? (Fall 1998)

I’ll be heading back down to Mexico in October for a two-state tour in Sinaloa and Sonora sponsored by the University of Sinaloa. Then I’ll be touring in the Northwest, including my concert in Portland. In February I head back down to the Copper Canyon Lodge, where I’ve been invited to perform for a month in the Lost Cathedral. This time I won’t be guiding at all, just performing.

It occurs to me that you’re a kind of modern-day troubadour.