One should hesitate before evoking the concept of a free spirited ‘60s musician, but in describing Leo Kottke  it’s almost appropriate: thoughtful, demur and beyond all of that talented in a fashion that is indescribable. John Fahey is a touchstone and someone that Kottke obviously admires, as evidenced by his comments here. But Kottke is beyond that comparison. He notes that Fahey was able to find an intersection of all musics. And while Fahey obviously dissected and re-assembled American Roots music, Kottke maintains a more specific voice – a personal style that is more unique then any re-assemblage would be able to hint at. His humor, depth of knowledge, literary and historical interests serve only to enrich his catalog. Sprinkled across his recordings are songs with titles like “The Prodigal Grave”, “The Brain of the Purple Mountain” and “Bean Time”. In speaking with him, the creative, yet reserved and humorous soul that this all pours from takes on an air of an American icon – a mantle that he would surely refute. But, regardless of that, if there was no Leo Kottke a considerable amount of American musical history would be absent from the cultural mountain our nation has created.

When listening to stories that Kottke expounds during concert appearances, listeners may begin to feel that talking to him might involve these same seemingly tangential ideas and situations. It’s true. Before being able to reach back towards a prepared question, Kottke is off examining another invariably interesting topic, making this interview more conversational and perhaps less about music than it was intended to be. But that’s why Leo Kottke can sit on a stage with a guitar and entertain hundreds of people.

I don’t ever read one thing and think it’s the gospel. I came to this realization when I worked for a paper in Cleveland, but there needs to be content for a publication to get ads. So to a certain extent, an editor of a magazine – I’m sure they care about accuracy and quality – but, the bottom line is that you need stuff in your magazine to put ads around, so you get paid at the end of the day.

That’s certainly true. My first major label contract - which is an odd thing to say, now that they’re all gone – was at Capitol and they had a publicist named Bob Gibson, who was a big deal. I was performing overseas and I was talking to him, this was about 1970 or ’71, about what [press materials] I was reading. It was mostly dreadful, including what I was saying. Often enough it had been altered, for space or whatever. And I said, this stuff really doesn’t mean anything. Why am I doing it? It bores me to death, I can’t imagine anybody would be interested in reading it. Essentially what he says was, ‘It’s about space. And if you get space, that’s all that counts.’ And I thought about it, and he was right. I’ll stop at something big, but I’ll run past something small often enough. It’s the same for advertising. One of the reasons large is better is that it must be something good to kick off all that ads that could have gone on that page. It’s really true. Radio is much the same way. It’s more about advertising than it is about what they’re broadcasting. It used to be a little better than that. None of this is a complaint, it’s just that this is the way it works.