29th Dec 2013
We often romanticize the blues - we can't help
it, people need heroes.
In fact, it's been shown that we'll create heroes out of almost nobody, if there aren't any real heroes around! Some people might take advantage of this in the blues world and call themselves a 'legend' (since when did Cory Harris become a legend?)
I have a great respect for a certain blues man, who I can't name, but suffice to say I drove
hundreds of miles to see him play live and maybe chat to him
afterwards, which I did.
Not at all what I expected. he didn't think much of the traveling blues man's life and would rather be at home doing something else. he also had a few beefs to air, such as the fact that he was fed up of British blues guitar players trying to teach Americans how to play blues.
A bit close to home that one, as it included me. I thought deeply about this over the next few days. we all need to be open and loving, towards everything and everyone - black, white and all the colors in-between. All guitarists think they are something special (Clapton once said he was the best guitarist in the world - maybe he was, but nowadays there are some that can run rings around him) but the truth is that, compared to the old guys, none of us are that special - need to remember that.
30th Jan 2013
Ever heard of Robert Johnson?
Well, I know it's a bit of a dumb question - who hasn't? Anyone that plays blues guitar and know anything about blues guitar music knows a little about this legendary blues man. Was the guy all that he was stacked up to be, or have we elevated him to a high position because we need heroes? His music is really intense, for sure - and his guitar fingerpicking technique is slick.
I don't agree with people saying that he was the greatest blues man of all time or that he was creative. I think he was very skilled at copying other people's work, or maybe adapting traditional songs to his wonderful style. For example, Sweet Home Chicago is a straight copy of Scrapper Blackwell's Kokomo Blues, a much more inventive and varied blues man.
For me, Johnson's appeal came from the stunning combination of his blues guitar and vocals. It's not easy to sing and fingerpick the blues at the same time, and inevitably, there has to be a rhythmic connection between guitar and voice. For the majority of performers, this link is obvious, but for some (like Gary Davis and Johnson) the voice seems completely independent. The guitar part carries on doing it's thing, which is unusual. Normally, the guitar picking tends to become simpler while the mind concentrates on the singing.
Johnson sold his soul to be the best blues guitar player ever? Hogwash! He just practiced like the Devil!2nd Feb 2013
We often hear about the blues coming from hard beginnings, but we can't really appreciate how it was, without actually being there. Imagine being dirt poor, maybe hungry a lot of the time, being second in society's queue for EVERYTHING and feel put down by most of the world. Maybe you'll start to get a feel for it.
A good way to feel the ambiance of those times is to listen to the lyrics of the popular blues songs. Here are two of my favorite slices, one from Whistler's Jug Band 'Folding Bed' and the other from Floyd Council.
Whistler's Jug - "Went down town to have a little fun, bought a razor and a gun ..."
Floyd Council - "Gonna buy me a razor and a blue-steel gun, cut her if she stands, shoot her if she runs"
Now, that's the blues right there.
1st Feb 2013
How
often do you change your guitar strings? Like a lot of things to do with
playing guitar, it's mostly a matter of choice and feeling - of course,
there are certain ground rules. Guitar strings absorb dirt and grease from you fingers and gradually become dull and lifeless - you generally know when it's time to change them.
Strangely enough, it's usually the G string that goes first, and it's tempting to keep a few extra G strings around to change just the one and get some extra playing time out of the others. A pro blues guitarist might change his strings every gig - it depends on how often he plays and also how hard he picks them.
I first started to lean on nylon strung guitar, which was great on the fretting and picking fingers, but it was tough to get a bluesy sound and almost impossible to bend them around, so I changed to steel (well, bronze wound light gauge Martin strings, to be exact.) At that time in the 70s, I was playing on the street and Metro in London and was probably performing about 4 hours a day - when you perform for that amount of time, you don't need to practice!
My picking style was always heavy and as I used a thumb pick and two steel finger picks, the guitar took quite a hammering. In these circumstances I changed the strings once a week in general. Over the years I used bare fingers more and more to play fast ragtime, so they last a little longer.2nd Feb 2013
The blues is made up of legends and myths so I though I'd throw a few anecdotes at you here. Story goes that Reverend Gary Davis set up to play in a tobacco town in the East and took out his guitar at the corner of a parking lot to play while the men came off their afternoon shift.Some children gathered and one of them was taunting the Reverend, shouting " You ain't nuthin' but a blind ole' man!" Gary Davis turned to the boy and quietly said "An' you ain't nuthin' but a foolish boy." The boy ran home and didn't come out from under his bed for half a day.
A news reporter once asked Big Bill Broonzy what are the blues? Big Bill just laughed and said, "If you've got to ask, then you'll never know"
Son House - 'The blues is a woman, plain and simple. And I should know, I've been married five times". Also from Son House, "Some young folk might play some jumped up little boogie and call it the 'this and that blues'. Well, it's not - there's only one blues - if you ain't got it, you ain't got it and you never gonna get it by wanting it."
"Nobody gets to be cool by wanting to be cool - you either are or you ain't" - Jim Bruce
6th Feb 2013
Maybe
for the 100th time I listened closely to an old Reverend Gary Davis
track and realized that I couldn't play it properly, which means just
like the old man did. It's not that I feel badly about this - after all,
we can't possibly learn to play in all the styles that we would like to
in exactly the same way as the classic blues men. However, it gives us a
bit of a problem to tackle - how to play the blues with the same flavor, give the
same feel and pay homage to this great blues music without busting our balls
over the fact that we can't hope to play it how we'd really like to?
First of all, I don't like fancy blues chords
or using a bar with my left hand ever since I had a stroke - my left
hand fingers just don't want to cooperate anymore like they used to. I
transcribe everything to simple chords, which is mostly combinations of C, G, F etc, and the tackle the tune in the following way. Knowing nothing about music helps a bit here!
Listen to the fingerpicking bass pattern in Davis' music - more often than not thus is where
the secrets are. Is the alternating bass pattern reversing in any
place? Does he sometimes stay on one string for two beats instead of
moving on to the next strings, as we would expect? Does he syncopate by jumping his thumb across two bass strings in quick succession? And lastly, when does the thumb jump across to the treble strings to produce fast single string runs?
Once you work this out, add some of the more simple single string runs and
achieve that all important rhythmic quality and you're good to go. Oh,
and don't forget to use just one finger, or it won't sound right. Keep
it slow and dive straight in. Don't be timid, just go for it - the Reverend did.
7th Feb 2013
One of the problems with committing to keep a journal is that fear that we won't have anything to say one day! Well, this is mostly nonsense - none of us are so boring. Out minds are full of thoughts rushing around like demons - unfortunately, many of them are not too constructive. After encountering the famous 'guitarist's block' a few weeks ago, I found myself languishing a little. You know the feeling, just tired of playing the same old thing.Of course, we love blues music, but change is important. What to do when you hit the 'wall' ? Sometimes, I'll play tunes right out of my style, like old pop tunes or swing jazz (not that I can play it very well) and thing just might kick me out of the lethargy. Just lately I find myself going back to the roots of blues again and again. Even after playing complex ragtime guitar for many years, it's refreshing to listen to the old guys and hear again how it all started.
A few weeks ago I started to play a couple of old Reverend Gary Davis songs - then another, then another and I soon found my old enthusiasm coming back. What artistry! The old man's chord structure and picking patterns are very interesting and a challenge for all of us. I even found a couple of clips on Youtube featuring songs that I hadn't heard before - treasure indeed. Here's a clip of 'Feel Like Going On'.
8th Feb 2013
About 15 years ago I found myself living in Indiana working at a 'straight' job. Of course, this is necessary for musicians as
it's almost impossible to make a living at what we do. One day i was
desperate for some blues and I needed to play somewhere. I read that
there was live blues music at a bar in the town of La Porte, In so away I
went!
The bar was on the 'wrong side of the tracks' so exactly what I wanted! Buying a beer, I wandered off into the back room, where a Chicago band was blaring out typical electric blues sounds - not my bag at all really. There was obviously no chance at all to play (I had my acoustic guitar with me) so i sat down with an old guy at a table and chatted about nothing. Nice old guy.
The band had a break and announced that the legendary Pine Top Perkins would play a few numbers. Wow! I was going to hear a legend live and looked around for the great man. With a sigh, the little old fella at the side of me finished his drink and shuffled up to the stage, sitting down at the piano.10th Feb 2103
Seems like in the 60s just about everyone played guitar, or had tried to play one. Just over a century ago, they were not too common at all, and the ordinary working man just couldn't afford one, which is why the old blues men made their own out of old cigar boxes. These 'guitars' just had one or two strings and probably didn't make too good of a sound if not well made, or the boxes were cracked.
Saying, that some the cigar box guitars being played on Youtube make excellent music and it's become a whole genre of itself inside blues music in general. It wasn't until Sears introduced a cheap factory made Stella guitar at the turn of the century that they became affordable - the first basic models cost about a dollar, which might have been a month's wages for negro maid, for example; which brings to mind the self-expressed story of Elizabeth Cotton.
She worked as a maid for very low
wages, lodgings and food and she desperately wanted a guitar. After many
months of saving, she eventually got to send for a Stella Harmony guitar from the
Sears mail order catalog and she started to teach herself. Of course,
she'd heard the guitar sounds before, but she had never actually held
one - she didn't realize that they could either be left or right handed.
Elizabeth was left handed and she learned with a right handed guitar!
11th Feb 2013
One of the questions I'm asked very often is why do I choose to use a capo on the first fret? There are a variety of reasons. Firstly, I started off my playing career playing just ragtime guitar, which I found difficult without a capo, I suppose due to the pinky stretches involved. So it just became a habit at that stage.
Later on I
became interested in playing and singing some Lightnin' Hopkins songs,
often in the key of E and his voice is low, low, low!
Hopkins also tuned his guitar down a step or two sometimes. I decided
to keep the capo on the first fret and tune down a step. This way, when I
teach, I just tell people they are in the same
tune without a cap and it works OK. Another advantage of tuning down is
that the guitar strings are a little slacker and can be bent or pushed over
more easily.
12th Feb 2013
Now and again I'll use this spot to answers question that come by email.
Today's question is this - 'Is it best to use finger picks or bare
fingers?' For sure, there are people who use fingerpicks or bare fingers, like me and Stephan Grossman. I use bare fingers when I want to play something rather delicate, for example, or when triplets are required. This is when the finger rapidly pick the treble strings in quick succession, such as the ragtime playing of Blind Blake.
Incidentally, when playing Blake, I find it very difficult to roll those thumb basses when wearing a thumb pick so this is another reason I don't use them for this style. However, a master like Gray Davis could do all styles with picks. In the case of Davis, I always wear picks to try and capture his sound even more and I try hard just to use one finger, as he did.
Guitar finger picks are also a natural amplifier, so if you play somewhere with no amp and need a bit more sound, then picks often do the job. I notice that many players, old and modern, use a plastic thumb pick and bare fingers, which gives a nice 'thunk' sound on the basses, particularly when the basses are damped with the palm of the picking hand - think about the 'bum-chick' sound of the alternating bass prevalent in Travis picking. Many great players used or use this style (Tommy Emmanuel, Doc Watson).
At one time, I played with a plastic thumb pick and two steel finger picks almost exclusively. One day I lost one of the steel picks, but still used the bare second finger when needed. I intended to buy a replacement pick, but never got round to it so carried on like that - bizarre, but it works for me!