Under the Influence – Bernie Williams
BY CHRIS O'BYRNE

Bernie knows baseball, Bernie also knows guitar, and not just in the casual way in which many sports stars and celebrities know the instrument. He can really play – so well, in fact, that to qualify his ability with statements like “for a baseball player” would be not only unfairly dismissive but also inaccurate. Need proof? Check out his debut, The Journey Within (GRP/Verve), on which Williams – with the all-star cast of Bela Fleck, David Benoit, and Ruben Blades, among others – digs into a superb set of original Latin jazz tunes and a few smart covers, including a spirited rendition of the Kansas classic “Dust in the Wind”.

“Most of these songs are developments of ideas from the last 10 years,” says the native Puerto Rican, who grew up on the sounds of salsa and meringue as well as 80’s rock. “When I was younger, the Latin music didn’t have much guitar, so the only avenue I had was America rock like Van Halen, Journey, Yes, and Boston. If I had had more time, I would have included more rock on this album.”
As centerfielder for the New York Yankees, however, Williams’ time is limited. “The guys on the album knew that this isn’t what I do for a living,” he says, “But I tired to raise my skills to their level.” He recently showed these skills during an all-star break gig, at Chicago’s House of Blues. “It’s one thing to play in the studio, where you have 100 times to get it right. But live, you only have the one chance to nail it.” Before the show, Williams, who routinely snags warning-track drives and delivers clutch hits in front of 50,000 fans, actually had the butterflies.

“Basically, they won’t give me a lot of bars to play with!” he quips, with an easy laugh. “But even if I don’t get all the notes right, at least I’ll be expressing my emotions through the guitar. My chops aren’t where I want them to be yet, but I want to show people that music is an important part of my life, too.”

ARTIST Scott Henderson “The first time I heard him I said, ‘I wish I could play like that,’ And next I said, ‘It’s going to take me a lot of years to do that!’ As far as the way the guitar sounds, and where I’m looking to elevate my skills to, Scott Henderson is it. He’s so technically skilled, but at the same time he’s always trying to say something when he plays. When he plays blues, he can make that guitar scream, but he can also play jazz and make sense of all those scales. He just has so many things he can do on the guitar that he can express himself in a way that few people can.”

SONG “Conceierto de Aranjeuz” Joaquín Rodrigo “In high school, the big thing was to be able to play this piece. We listened to people who played it; Julian Bream, John Williams, and Andrés Segovia. In the early ‘80s, the school was very conservative, and the good students, or the teachers’ favorites, were the ones that stuck with classical music. And then you had the rebels [laughs], who listened to Ozzy Osborne and Judas Priest. So growing up, I had that disparity. But I’ve learned that you can have that same high skill level, and that the music doesn’t have to be classical; that was a revolution for me. You can play your Strat out of a Mesa/Boogie and still play skillfully crafted music.

October issue of Guitar One