Tuck Andress: how St Vincent’s jazz master uncle inspired her to play guitar
When most aspiring guitarists are growing up and looking for a figure to idolise and mimic, you’ll often find them emulating the biggest names. The likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page still all reign supreme despite their careers dating back to the 1960s, and while there are plenty of modern guitar heroes, it’s hard to deny the influence that the former instrumentalists have had on the art of guitar playing. For Annie Clark, aka St Vincent, her idol growing up was a little more unusual.
Having picked up the guitar before her teenage years, she quickly formed an affinity for the instrument thanks to the teachings of her primary inspiration, Tuck Andress. While not a household name in the same vein as Hendrix, he was certainly as virtuosic as the legendary innovator. Moreover, as one half of the husband-and-wife duo, Tuck & Patti, alongside Patricia Cathcart, he became widely respected in jazz circles for his fingerstyle wizardry.
While Cathcart’s impressive mezzo-soprano range perfectly complemented his tricky fingerwork, it was his outlandish playing style that captivated a young Clark. His mix of fretboard tapping, flicking strings close to the bridge and using the thumb or palm of his hand to produce bass notes simultaneously with an intricate melody are all features that are sure to thrill an impressionable young fan. The biggest bonus for Clark was that she didn’t have to pay for tuition, as Andress just so happens to be her uncle.
Clark has spoken on a number of occasions about how her uncle’s influence shaped her own techniques and gifted her with a passion for playing the guitar. In fact, when you look at the ways in which she excels on both technical and innovative levels, a lot of her signature moves can be traced back to the techniques she picked up from her uncle. In her late teens, she regularly used to tour with Tuck & Patti as a roadie, and the exposure to his guitar playing undoubtedly rubbed off on her.
“I was really obsessed with guitars from the time I was young,” Clark explained to Guitar.com, before quickly steering towards talking about her uncle. “I remember when we were growing up, we had his old student guitar, which was a Kay, and the action was so high. I still can’t play it, the action is so high! It’s still in the closet somewhere at my mom’s house.”
In another interview for Noisey’s Guitar Moves series, Clark told host Matt Sweeney about some of the wisdom her “bonkers guitar player” of an uncle passed onto her, demonstrating some of his wildest techniques to a fascinated Sweeney. “I would watch him play, and I started playing with my fingers because he’s a total fingerstyle dude,” she explained. “The Hendrix thumb thing. I picked that up from him, he was really influenced by Hendrix.”
From his unwieldy methods of producing harmonics to allowing complete fluid motion in the fingers to play a combination of individual notes and chords, many of Andress’s finest techniques have bled into Clark’s output. Although she is far from a jazz player, mostly dabbling in art rock and pop styles, some of her avant-garde leanings are most definitely borrowed, and Andress’ brilliance lives on in his niece’s music.
