KOTTKE: His Wit Keeps Pace With His Fingers : Kottke’s Wit Keeps Pace With His Fingers : Music: Many of those who flock to see the master of the 12-string tonight will no doubt be there as much for his droll humor as for his guitar wizardry.

“Heenh-heenh-heenh heenh-heeeeennnh . . . .”

It’s not often that a musician answers a serious question about the title of his next album with a fiendish laugh. Then again, Leo Kottke probably is the only guitar virtuoso who would name an album “Renfield’s Laugh,” after the hunchback in the film “Dracula.”

“Renfield was ol’ Dracula’s first real stooge,” explained Kottke by telephone last week from a hotel in Nashville, a three-day stop on the current tour that brings him to Humphrey’s tonight. The new album is due this summer.

“That laugh of his is an American icon,” he continued. “Renfield really gets into it when what’s-her-name faints, and he sees his first chance at human blood. See, up until then, he’s had to make do with eating flies and spiders. So he starts crawling across the floor toward her, and he’s going, ‘Heenh heenh heenh heenh heeeeennnh.’ “

Such off-kilter preoccupations, while they seem to belie his wholesome, cereal-box looks, are not uncommon of Kottke. If he were not already gainfully employed, he could do stand-up comedy or give syndicated columnist Dave Barry a serious challenge in the odd-yuks department. Indeed, one of the reasons people flock to Kottke’s concerts is to hear his witty anecdotes and droll, even peculiar asides.

“This is the point in the show where a performer usually shares some personal details with the audience,” he deadpanned at a Humphrey’s concert in 1988. “So, I should tell you that I almost drooled during that last tune.”

Kottke’s skewed humor is all the more effective because it acts to counterbalance prodigious musical skills. He first was proclaimed a lord of the frets with the release of “Six and Twelve-String Guitar” on the independent Takoma label 19 years ago. Since then, Kottke has won numerous awards and readers’ polls, and his work is the basis of a course at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.

Specifically, Kottke is a master of the 12-string acoustic guitar, and it doesn’t at all minimize his standing to say that his reputation can be attributed in part to his specialization. Articulating the typical six-string guitar is difficult enough; negotiating rapid, intricate patterns on six pairs of strings is like trying to finger-pick a tennis racquet.

Many proficient guitarists don’t even attempt to play a 12-string, at least not in public. Kottke, however, has so excelled on the instrument that he has become the musician most closely identified with it. His cultish renown is such that Kottke routinely sells out concerts, and his albums sell in very respectable numbers, perhaps because his catholic style places him at a juncture where fans of folk, jazz, new-age instrumental and adult-pop music converge.

Yet, Kottke’s psychology is no less multidimensional than his music. He admits that he’s not always a joy-boy, and that the disparate tempers represented in his hopscotching, 21-album discography accurately reflect his various moods, even if he’s not aware of them.

“I get to find out what I’ve been up to over the preceding year, emotionally speaking, when I record an album,” he said. “For example, when I released ‘Burnt Lips’ in 1978, people told me it sounded really depressed and dark and gloomy--and I thought I was in a great mood when I made it! But I guess I wasn’t. I used to cringe whenever someone claimed that a song can’t help but be autobiographical. Now, I feel it is at least partly true.”

As he spoke, the sound of a strummed guitar filtered through the receiver. Kottke verified the rumor that he seldom leaves his hotel room while on tour. “I usually don’t bring my wife or my manager on the road because they’d just want to sight-see,” he said, chuckling. “I don’t socialize much, I just sit and play guitar. Not to any particular purpose, mind you; I just noodle around. But I’ve learned that I need that--if I’m away from a guitar for a couple of days I really notice it.”

Kottke takes two guitars on the road--a six-string and a 12-string custom-made for him by Taylor Guitars of Santee. For two years, Kottke--who lives in Wayzata, Minn., with his wife and two kids--corresponded long-distance with Bob Taylor to achieve the perfect combination of the guitarist’s specifications and the artisan’s craftsmanship. The local firm began marketing the Leo Kottke Signature Model 12-string last fall.

“The Taylor I have with me is an early prototype of that guitar,” said Kottke. “I leave my production-run model at home. Frankly, I don’t want to risk taking it on the road; I love the thing.”

Taylor acknowledged Kottke’s almost unnatural affection for the instrument. “Leo’s a real artist,” he said last week. “Once, he told me, ‘Man, I like guitars so much I think there’s something wrong with me.’ And he’s genuinely modest. We were at a music trade show once, and store owners and musicians kept telling him how much they love his work, and he’s saying, ‘Really?’ I don’t think he realizes he’s Leo Kottke.”

If he seems to lack self-awareness, Kottke is acutely attuned to the genre with which he is associated. He got fairly serious when discussing the current vogue of using acoustic guitar music on television shows and especially in commercials--a trend that began with the theme to the popular TV series, “thirtysomething.”

“I sure have noticed it, and I get calls to do it, too,” he said. “Sometimes, I do commercials, but I’m learning that what I want to use is rarely what (producers) have in mind. Without mentioning the brand, I came up with some music for an ad that wasn’t that terrible country-muzak drivel they usually use. But they threw it away and hired someone else. Actually, it’s a little frightening, ‘cause when a particular sound makes its way into advertising, it usually means it’s about to die,” he added, laughing.

That’s not likely to happen to Kottke, judging by the demand for his music. “Last year was the busiest I’ve ever had,” he said. “I was out more than 80% of the year, which surprised me, ‘cause I was hot in the mid-to-late 70s, and I’m not hot now. And yet, to look at revenue and the amount of time I’m performing, it looks like I’m hotter than I’ve ever been. That’s great, ‘cause I love to play, and I’ve always preferred touring to recording. I like to go places.”

Even if it means sequestering in a hotel room?

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Kottke, chortling. “Maybe it’s the motion more than the destination that appeals to me.” Such apparent contradiction seems consistent with an eccentric, almost inscrutable nature that is part of his charm. Other examples:

Long ago, Kottke described his singing voice as sounding like flatulent geese on a muggy day, and he claims that his baby daughter’s first words were, “Daddy, don’t sing.” Yet, he insists on sprinkling his albums with vocals, and he will sing on all the tracks of “Renfield’s Laugh.” Kottke is an instrumentalist nonpareil, yet in conversation he is less likely to rave about other world-class guitarists than about an unknown amateur of lesser skills who once showed him a cool lick.

Kottke’s folksy style is rooted in the simple, clear-creek sensibilities of the American heartland, yet he fiddles with complex musical ideas the way a physicist toys with basic math. And he has this penchant for giving his albums titles that have little connection to the material thereon--titles such as “My Feet Are Smiling,” “Chewing Pine,” “A Shout Toward Noon,” “Regards from Chuck Pink,” and, of course, “Renfield’s Laugh.”

Lest one get the impression that his upcoming project has a Transylvanian theme, Kottke emphasizes that there is no song about Renfield on the opus. The spirit of the troll-ish man, however, permeates the new material. Sort of.

“On this album, there’s a lot of what I like to think was Renfield’s sense of humor,” said Kottke. “One song called ‘Nothing Works’ is self-explanatory. Lyle Lovett sings background on it. Another song, ‘I Was 29,’ is about most of us having to settle for something less than we expected. ‘Course, most of us don’t have to settle for spiders and flies.”

Certainly, not Leo Kottke.

Leo Kottke will perform one show at Humphrey’s tonight. The guitar-and-vocal jazz duo Tuck and Patti open the 7:30 concert.