Kottke Finds a Voice Again After 8 Years of Pure Pickin’

Leo Kottke has spent most of the 1980s making records with his fingers, just as he did in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, when he established himself as an acoustic guitar virtuoso.

But with his strong new album, “My Father’s Face,” Kottke--who shares a bill with Lyle Lovett tonight at the Celebrity Theatre--is back to singing again on four of the album’s 11 songs--his first vocal recordings in 8 years.

In contrast with the original, idiosyncratic style and exceptional rhythmic drive he has brought to his best guitar recordings, Kottke’s gruff-voiced singing has always sounded a little creaky. But the new album’s vocal numbers are all first rate.

In fact, Kottke said in a recent phone interview, using lyrics and vocals enabled him to put into music philosophical notions that had been circling around in his head for a long time.

It all comes out in “Jack Gets Up,” an offbeat song that starts as a litany of complaints about the boredom of daily living but winds up an oddly moving anthem to the meaningfulness of everyday things.

“It touches me,” Kottke said of the song. “It just came out of a mood I’ve sustained the last few years. If I even attempt to describe it, it would be nothing but maudlin. What I like about the song is that I managed to convey the sense of it without being maudlin.

“The whole album has a lot of this feeling for me that I’ve kind of missed for the last few records. It didn’t concentrate on the production or the chops, but the feelings involved.”

On “Jack Gets Up,” rather than make high-blown pronouncements about his feelings, Kottke simply introduces us to a fellow who gets out of bed in a bearish mood and strings jumbled thoughts together in a grumbling stream-of-consciousness as he prepares to face another day. The ordinary details embedded in this crotchety anthem make it an affirmation of life in all its irksome, roll-out-of-bed-too-early dailiness.

“I think (being) down to earth is finally how you put up with the shock of seeing the curve, the big view” of life, he said.

Now 43, Kottke said his thinking has begun running toward the big view in the last few years: “You see the value of the immediate--things like lint (which Jack finds in his pockets) or how your kid’s face looks” (according to the song, “like a walnut from the ice cream,” a description that Kottke said reflects how his son, Joe, now 18, appeared to him as a small boy).

Kottke said he tried to address the ideas that come out in “Jack Gets Up” in a 1986 instrumental piece, “Ice Fields” but found that singing made it more complete.

“I think it has as much to do with just hearing a human voice as the actual words that make it work,” he said.

Even when he was devoting his albums exclusively to instrumental music, Kottke always sang a few tunes in concert.

“If I’m in my register, I’m real happy about my voice,” the Minnesota resident said in a deep, grainy speaking voice. “It took me a while to realize who I was vocally. I can’t just open my mouth and holler.

“Once I figured that out, I began to find a place for myself. I’m confident with it, but I’m not sure I have the kind of individuality when I sing that I have when I play the guitar. I’m really drawn to the guitar. The guitar is something I can’t imagine being without. Music is secondary.”

Kottke said he is struck by something that a friend who had studied in Spain told him: In Spanish classical guitar circles, there are separate words for a guitarist devoted strictly to a love affair with the instrument (a guitarrero ), and one who brings more perspective to the matter, seeing the guitar as a tool to make music, rather than as an end in itself (a guitarrista ).

While the Spanish classicists save their esteem for the guitarristas , Kottke confessed to being a confirmed guitarrero .

In the view of those classicists, Kottke said: “There’s something irresponsible about pigging out on the guitar, paying attention only to that and not to the broader field that it’s a part of. They want a complete and sober musician, as opposed to this addict.”

Addict or not, Kottke’s concerts are not one-dimensional showcases that would appeal only to guitar lovers. Besides nimble hands and a serviceable voice, he brings to bear a dry, offbeat sense of humor.

“It started one night when I was playing in Minneapolis in about 1967,” Kottke said, recalling how he learned the value of a joke. “I had been playing for a number of years and not saying one word. I couldn’t look up. But I found myself struggling with a gooseneck on the microphone stand, and it reminded me of the time I tried to kill a chicken and failed. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Kottke started talking about that childhood experience with the chicken, and his audience began to laugh. “I realized how much I enjoyed it, and I couldn’t help but notice how much the audience enjoyed it.”

He has pursued a humorist’s approach to performing ever since. “On the other hand,” he said, “a waitress in Santa Cruz the other night told me I talked too much.”

Kottke is winding up a 3-month tour with Lovett, one of the hottest and most critically heralded performers in country music. The two became friends and mutual admirers several years ago after they shared a bill in Texas. Now they share the same management company and booking agency, which Kottke said made a joint tour “almost inevitable.”

Kottke said it has been interesting to watch the buzz build around Lovett. As for himself, while he said the wry vocal numbers on “My Father’s Face” have a chance to win him his first substantial radio airplay in quite some time, he is content to keep his career on an even keel as a solo performer.

(Among the album’s assets are detailed but unobtrusive production by T-Bone Burnett and a star supporting band that includes David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on accordion and second guitar.)

“I’ve had more than I can handle of mobs and notoriety,” Kottke said. “I had a riot in Milan, Italy. It was about 1978, when there was a real wave of interest in the acoustic guitar throughout Europe.

“I took great advantage of that. In Milan, there were 4,000 people in the theater, and another 2,000 who couldn’t get in and decided they would get in anyhow. There were four doors caved in, traffic was stopped, people got into fights and there were broken windows down the street. I was hiding in a trailer behind the theater. It was very flattering.

“I still play Italy, but I don’t have riots anymore.”