Gitbox Culture

Musings on guitars, guitarists, guitar styles and approaches, technical matters and guitar design by a professional guitarist with a Ph.D in ethnomusicology. Also covering electric bass, lap and pedal steel guitar. And what the hell, banjo.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Experience Hendrix tour - Sony Centre, Toronto, Oct. 28, 2010 Part 3

Better late than never, here's the final bit of my sort-of review of the Experience Hendrix show last week in Toronto. After Kenny Wayne Shepherd had kind of torn up the house with full-on blasting and swagger, the duo of David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas seemed to be something of a low-key letdown.  But as I settled into their short set, I appreciated the burnished tones, effortless interplay and classy licks of these two Los Lobos veterans.  After running through "Can You See Me" and "Little Wing" Hidalgo and Rosas were joined by the Slide Brothers and Robert Randolph. Rob Quail worried aloud that three steel guitars would sound like a swarm of mosquitos, and he was not far wrong, despite the obvious talent of the musicians. A total of five guitars jamming on "Them Changes"? Not for the weak of heart.

The steel players stayed on stage to be joined by Living Colour for "Purple Haze," and then Steve Vai took the stage for his mini-set, which I found quite enjoyable despite his shredder tone and quirky phrasing. His sense of humour came through strongly on "Midnight" (from War Heroes), "May This Be Love," "Love or Confusion" and "Foxy Lady." The final song featured Billy Cox on lead vocals; he announced "Red House" as Jimi's favourite song, and admirably finished the night with Brad Whitford and Mato Nanji. There was no encore.

I was pretty impressed with the concert overall; it was certainly a great value for the money - we paid just over $100 per ticket, and that was the top price.  Not bad for no less than thirteen fine lead guitarists playing some of the greatest songs of Jimi Hendrix's career and paying tribute to his singular guitar style.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Experience Hendrix tour - Sony Centre, Toronto, Oct. 28, 2010 Part 2



Next out was former teenage blues phenom Jonny Lang, now 27. His was one of only two Teles seen that night - almost all of the guitars played were Strats. No one sported a Flying V, and in fact Gibsons were completely absent from the show; no wonder, since the tour is sponsored in part by Fender. Lang has a high-intensity style both on the guitar and vocally - he evinced a grittiness in the latter that was reminiscent of a young Steve Winwood. His very musical solos were largely executed with his right-hand thumb, a la Wes Montgomery.

Joining Lang, and looking three times as old, was the Aerosmith rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford. Whitford has played second banana to Joe Perry for at least two dogs' ages and judging by his performance this night, he has been hiding a solid blues-rock virtuosity. I've always loved the playing of "old guys" the best, especially when it comes to root-based music like blues and country. Brad Whitford had the assured style and tone that only comes from a few thousand one-nighters.

Lang and Whitford traded off on "Fire" and "The Wind Cries Mary," then were joined by Mato Nanji of Indigenous for "Spanish Castle Magic". Indigenous is a Native blues-rock band of some renown I gather, although I have not heard of them. I mentioned Nanji's brutal stage volume in the last post, and his relative inexperience was showing alongside Whitford, especially.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd and singer Noah Hunt were next out, and KWS evinced all of the charisma that Eric Johnson lacked. His blues-rock guitar style lies at the edge of hard rock, and his frequent cock-rock posing harkened back to a better time for guitarists of that stripe. Noah Hunt was hilariously pretentious, with a stentorian vocal style and dramatic gestures that would be masterfully parodied by a Will Ferrell or even a Jimmy Fallon. Kenny and Noah performed "Come On," "Voodoo Child" and "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)". I'm not sure that I can even hear "Slight Return" anymore - it's been run into the ground by too many bar bands.  But the slow, mysterious "Voodoo Child" was a highlight. Rob Quail noted with hilarity that I yawned during KWS's set, and I don't doubt it, though I must say that I respect his commitment to a somewhat discredited performing approach.

Part 3 soon to come.

Experience Hendrix tour - Sony Centre, Toronto, Oct. 28, 2010


I don't go to a lot of concerts these days - I work most evenings and it's hard to justify taking one of my rare nights off to spend $100+ on a show. But when I saw this concert advertised I was so impressed by the lineup that I decided to round up a couple of guitar freak friends and check it out.
The Sony Centre, formerly the Hummingbird Centre, formerly the O'Keefe Centre, is an acoustically excellent concert hall in downtown Toronto. Janie Hendrix, Jimi's half-sister and the administrator of the Hendrix estate, started the evening with a short speech, which we missed because we were in line to get beers. I regaled my friends, Rob Quail and John Davis, with stories of Experience Hendrix merchandising gaffes of the past, such as the Jimi Hendrix golf balls and the Jimi Hendrix red wine (one of the substances that killed Jimi in 1970).
We settled into our seats in the centre of the orchestra section, midway between the soundboard and the stage in the middle of Ernie Isley's three-song set. He was backed by Billy Cox (Band of Gypsys, Jimi Hendrix Experience) and Chris Layton (Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble). Isley played some Hendrix-like guitar and told a quick story about Jimi staying at his house in the early sixties when he was an Isley Brothers sideman. Isley played "Stone Free" and "Message To Love" with a nice touch but a ratty tone to my ears.
I believe that Living Colour was next - their second lineup with Doug Wimbish on bass. They did very good versions of "Power of Soul" and "Crosstown Traffic" - some of the best-rehearsed music of the evening. It was nice to see black musicians well represented in this show; it could easily have gone the other way, but curator John McDermott should be commended for a well-balanced and interesting lineup. Living Colour was not much changed from their late-80s heyday, though Corey Glover has put on a few pounds and his plaid sweater and cap ensemble brought the "Rerun" character from the 70s series "What's Happening" to mind for me. Vernon Reid played his trademark flurries of fast notes in every solo; Rob Quail commented something to the effect that when it comes to phrasing, VR just doesn't. It's a love-or-hate thing. I happen to enjoy what he does - there's a modernism to his playing that appeals to me.
Eric Johnson, the Texas guitar god, performed "House Burning Down," "Drifting," "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," and "Are You Experienced?" very faithfully in terms of arrangement and tones. When he let loose on his trademark wide-interval solos, the crowd of mostly male, ponytailed and mulleted baby boomers shouted their approval, along with entreaties for him to "turn it up." Johnson's guitar was not as audible as it could be; the sound crew had a hard time balancing the various guitar rigs on stage at times.  With some of the players, the amps were so loud on stage so as to obviate the need for the PA altogether, as was the case with Mato Nanji from Indigenous, a subpar player whose Marshall cabinet was hurting our ears right off the stage. In spite of his stiff image and hard-to-hear guitar, Eric Johnson made an excellent impression with his impeccable execution and musicianship. I especially appreciated his astounding reproduction of the backwards solo in "Are You Experienced?"

part 2 to come...

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Walking in Toronto Part 2: More guitar iconography.

Part of the window display for a condo.

College Street lamppost

Queen Video, College Street. Nice Rickenbacker 4001 bass.

Amp-themed coffee cup. Gift shop, College Street

Magazine store, College Street


Lamppost, College Street

There's a guitar in there, I swear! Soundscapes display window.

Another poster in the window of Soundscapes.

Soundscapes window.


Soundscapes ukelele-themed window display, advertising the documentary film The Mighty Uke.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Deconstructing Luther Perkins

Learning some Luther Perkins licks today for a gig. Luther was Johnny Cash's guitarist from 1955 to Luther's death in 1968. He's a good example of a musician who noticeably develops and advances over the course of his career. One Johnny Counterfit writes on one of his webpages about Luther:

In conversations with Luther’s widow, Margie, I discover Luther had a never-ending desire to improve his guitar talents, including adding more intricate dimensions within his own creation.


His lead licks on early Cash sides like "Cry Cry Cry" (1956) were rudimentary but effective. By the time of the recording of At Folsom Prison in 1968, Luther was a fluid country player. He died tragically that year in a house fire at the age of 40.

Of particular interest for me at the moment are the lead guitar parts for "Cry Cry Cry" and "Get Rhythm". They're mostly boogie patterns, with occasional counter-intuitive moments. There's something stoic about Luther's early licks on these songs. That quality meshes well with Cash's doomy voice and stentorian songs.

Walking in Toronto: Guitar Iconography

Yesterday I resolved to take a picture of every image of a guitar that I saw on my walk through downtown Toronto. I guess you could say that I was engaging in some casual fieldwork on guitar culture. The interesting thing for me is the variety of ways that images of guitars are used to represent different ideas.

From the Metro free paper - a Royal Bank ad for student loans - the guitar is a luxury item, as opposed to the more necessary schoolbooks

The window display at Remenyi Music, a store catering to Royal Conservatory of Music and University of Toronto music students. The electric bass is nestled among more traditionally 'legit' instruments.
From the same window, an ad for the upscale Lowden acoustic guitars.
Shredding for change at Bloor and Yonge.
Pointy guitars have become a retro rock and roll symbol, suitable for belt buckles.
Window display at the weird, dusty music store on Yonge.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Away for a month and still hunting for a small amp.


It's been about a month since my last post and it's not really laziness that prompted this extended break from the bloggin'. In the time since I last posted, I played a whack of gigs, exchanged my new Marshall Class 5 (not enough volume to be useful in a lot of gigging situations) for a Traynor YCM-20 (which I'm about to return as well - the reverb feeds back on the lead channel and the amp is generally uninspiring), seen Mike Stern and Bill Frisell live in clubs and have generally had my hands full with a variety of time-consuming musical projects.
Mike Stern was especially inspiring.  I had never seen him play before, but I have been aware of him since the 80s, when he played in one of Miles Davis' late bands. My impression is that he just plays what he wants and doesn't worry too much about putting a label on what he does, or fitting in to current fashions.  He's really a classic fusion player, with a constant outpouring of ideas, beautiful phrasing, and a quite nice tone from a Yamaha Pacifica, a stereo solid-state amp setup including a Pearce amp (no longer available but I coveted one at the Guitar Clinic in Hamilton back in the day) and an old Yamaha amp that I can't identify, along with the 'doubling' effect on the old Yamaha SPX-90 digital effects unit (which comes out sounding a lot like chorus).
That Mike Stern was able to coax such lovely sounds out of solid-state gear has got me re-evaluating my fealty to tube amps. I just don't seem to be able to find a usable small tube amp in the price range that I'm working in. I'm looking at the ZT Club 12, which is a digital amp that weighs 22 pounds and puts out 200 watts. My good friend and musical partner Alec Fraser just switched to digital for his bass amp, and I have to say that he is achieving a convincing SVT tone with the tiniest of high-powered amp heads. I'll probably do the exchange tomorrow and report back.
Oh, and I still have my Strat. Long story involving Eric Clapton. Another time.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" - unpacking a classic guitar solo


If there is a piece of music that captivated me this week, it was Eric Clapton's solo in the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." I've been working on it again, and have found it difficult to master in its simplicity because of its unusual shifts and bends. It's only sixteen bars long, played over the verse chords and leading into a bridge in the parallel major key, A major. Here's a tab of it, transcribed by a man known only as Clark.

   (E)
e------------------------------------------|
B--------------------------13-b14--15-b17--|
G--(14)b17r14---12h14-b17------------------| 
D------------------------------------------| 
A------------------------------------------| 
E------------------------------------------|



Clapton's opening gambit focuses on an unusual three fret bend from A to C, a sound already established in earlier fills. This kind of ambitious bending was not at all common in rock in 
1968, though Buddy Guy and Albert King were known for wide bends, albeit less psychedelic.Clapton's secret weapon was light-gauge strings - Ernie Ball Super Slinkys I believe.

   (Am)            (Am7)                (D2)   (F)
e------------------------------------------------------------------------|
B--13--------------------------------------------------------------------|
G------14~~~--------12h14-b17-14b17~~~----------12h14-b17-14b17~~~-------|
D------------------------------------------------------------------------|
A------------------------------------------------------------------------|
E------------------------------------------------------------------------|


   (Am) (G)                          (D)                  (E)  
e-----------------------------------------15------------------>
B-------------------15-b17r15p13-15b17-------b17-r15--15--13-->
G--------12h14-b17-------------------------------------------->
D------------------------------------------------------------->
A------------------------------------------------------------->
E------------------------------------------------------------->
  
                                >--(15)b17--r---15b17--b17--|
                                >---------------------------|
                                >---------------------------|
                                >---------------------------|
                                >---------------------------|
                                >---------------------------|


Here Clapton breaks out of the A-C bend motif to gradually shift positions, climaxing 
early on the high A, bent up from G.
   (Am)           (Am7)                 (D2)                         (F)
e----(15)b17r15----b17---------------15-------------------15--------------|
B-------------------------17--15b17------b17r15--13h15b17-----b17r15--13--|
G-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
D-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
A-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
E-------------------------------------------------------------------------|


Backpedaling from this peak, he works in the 13th position with a series of permutations between C and G, the third and seventh of the A minor tonality.


   (Am)                                     (G)
e------------------------------------------------------------------>
B------------------------------------------------------------------>
G--(14)b17r14p12h14-b17--14b17---------12-------------------------->
D--------------------------------12h14----14--12p10-12---10h12-10-->
A------------------------------------------------------------------>
E------------------------------------------------------------------>


After a brief return to the A-C 'overbend', a series of hammered and slid note pairs returns the
line to the highest pitch.


     (C)                         (E)
  >------------------------------10h12--12/15--15-b17--b17r15--b17--|
  >----------------10h13--13/15-------------------------------------|
  >---------12h14---------------------------------------------------|
  >--12h14----------------------------------------------------------|
  >-----------------------------------------------------------------|


I learned this solo seven years ago for a Beatles show, but needed some serious 
rehabilitation when remembering it during my practice yesterday. The slides and hammers at 
the end in particular eluded me for a while - they're not in the common blues-rock lead guitar 
inventory. 

In the meantime, at one memorable gig around 2006 at the old Healey's club on Bathurst, Jeff Healey, Rob Phillips and I all wailed this solo in unison. A great night.


Sunday, August 8, 2010

Check out the new header!

I have a sweet new header courtesy of cousin Stephen. I guess he couldn't stand to look at my plain-jane template for one minute longer.

Thanks Stephen!

Marshall Class 5: my new amp.


I bought a new amp yesterday.

I've been using an early Fender Pro Junior for several years, lately with a Hughes and Kettner Red Box between the speaker and the amp so that I can run a signal out to a small powered PA speaker for more headroom on stage.  This setup has worked quite well for me, since the Junior doesn't really have the cut with a drummer on stage.  At the same time it's too loud for certain applications where I want a bit of breakup.

But all of that is in the past, because I stumbled on the Class 5 yesterday. The Pro Junior has been giving me a lot of trouble, necessitating expensive repairs every six months or so for the last two years.  First the input jack broke (it was plastic), then the tube sockets separated from the circuit board, then the tube sockets stopped engaging the power tubes. I finally decided after the latest mysterious crackling noise to retire it and get a new one, thinking that it was my only option.

When I saw the Class 5 in a local used guitar store, I thought that it must be some sort of hybrid solid-state Marshall and I wasn't really interested.  But the price was right and when I realized that it was a Class A all-tube amp, I gave it a run with my Tele, which I had brought with me. I couldn't believe how good the amp sounded. I can't recall playing through an amp that was so responsive to the volume knob on the guitar.  It's sweet and nasty at the same time. I really love a clear, transparent overdriven tone (like an AC30) and the Class 5 has that, but it also has an aliveness that reminded me somewhat of Neil Young's tweed Princeton tone.

At another store later in the day, I did a side-by-side comparison with a Pro Junior and the Vox 4 watt amp.  There was really no comparison in tone, though the Pro Junior is certainly louder.  It was not a pleasant loud, but it was loud, and I wonder if the Class 5 will cut through drums enough for me to use it on stage without the Red Box and the PA speaker. I certainly hope so, but I'm prepared to beef it up if necessary. The Marshall's tone is just so musical and I can't wait to put it through its paces in a variety of live situations. I'm bringing it to a 50s rock and roll gig today - I'll report back.

This is my first Marshall - I've owned a succession of Fender amps - and I have to say that I am very impressed with the design, tone and build quality of this amp. It's also light as a feather and has badass white piping and silver grille cloth.

Monday, August 2, 2010

I am a solder monkey.

We did it! Greg Wyard and I rewired my Strat the other day, returning to its original three single coil pickups. There was a surprising amount of unsoldering and soldering between the pickups, switch, pots and ground, but success was achieved. We shared the soldering duties. We even did a little modification, changing the circuit to a master volume and master tone, rather than the usual configuration which provides tone controls to the neck and middle pickups but not the bridge pickup. As I'm still unable to read a schematic, we relied on the very clear wiring diagrams on the Seymour Duncan site, which nonetheless omitted the ground wiring.

 We did the job without understanding much about why a given wire went to a given terminal and so on, so I'm on a mission to clear away my ignorance by reading Craig Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians, which explains the theory behind basic electronics and provides directions for a number of projects, mostly of the stompbox variety. One item on the agenda for me is learning how to read schematics. Then, if all goes well, I'm gonna build something! I admit that I'm proud to have achieved this little rewiring project, and excited to build on this humble success.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

RIP Ben Keith

Ben Keith, a steel player known for his long association with Neil Young, has died of a heart attack at 73. Aside from his work on twelve Young albums and several tours, he was a Nashville fixture who played on innumerable sessions, including Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Pieces." Keith had a voice on steel that I would describe as minimalistic, almost lonely. I never detected a showboat approach in his playing, which probably appealed to Neil. I saw him play live in 2006 on the CSNY "Freedom Of Speech" tour. A great loss to be sure.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Fire up the soldering iron.

Engaging in some good old-fashioned DIY this week. With a bee in my bonnet to sort out my black Strat, I decided that I'm sick of paying surly techs at music stores to change pickups and otherwise rewire my guitars, and that I, a fairly capable man, should be able to do this work myself.

In bygone days I tried to do a bit of soldering but really had no idea what I was doing. But now there is YouTube. With a bit of poking around I found some videos on basic soldering and pickup how-tos from Seymour Duncan and Jason Lollar. Readable wiring diagrams were a little hard to find but I finally found a clear diagram on Seymour's site. His site is in fact a valuable font of information, in contrast to the DiMarzio site, which had basically nothing but marketing.

I have a date with a soldering iron at Greg Wyard's place on Friday afternoon - I'm going to change back from the single-single-double Rio Grande set to the original single-single-single set. I never could get with the Rio Grandes, and I'm not sure why. Oh, and I'm going to do a little modification, disabling the second tone pot to just have master volume and master tone. I'll tell you all about it when the deed is done.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Blind Lemon Jefferson, guitar symphonist

I've been working on Blind Lemon Jefferson's "One Dime Blues." It is a solo guitar/vocal performance recorded in Texas in 1927.



For quite a few years I've had a Stefan Grossman transcription book called Texas Blues, with tunes by Jefferson, Mance Lipscomb, Little Hat Jones and others. I learned out tune out of it when I was a teenager, "Bad Luck Blues" which has become transmogrified over the years.

Lately I've been focusing on Blind Lemon Jefferson's music a bit - he's one of my favorite blues performers. His voice is refined, his lyrics are droll, and his guitar playing is top-notch fingerstyle ragtime blues.

After working on the tune for a while, I took a look at versions on YouTube while my right-hand fingertips recovered. There is this excellent interpretation by "Freddie 12 String":


Damn close to note-for-note on the guitar. The vocal less so, unfortunately. But still nice to listen to and great for cribbing fingerings. Etta Baker's modern version, seemingly as famous as the original on the web, is a lovely gloss on the Blind Lemon arrangement, though it lacks the inventiveness of Lemon's performance - his weird little bass lines under the vocal, the use of an alternating root-seventh during the first solo. These little touches, and the almost orchestral use of a single downmarket acoustic guitar, really make Blind Lemon Jefferson's music worth checking out, in my opinion.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Rhythm guitar: the spackle of music?

In situations where two guitarists are in a band or on a pickup gig, it is often the case that one player is the designated "lead guitarist" and the other is the "rhythm guitarist." Much of the time, the rhythm guitarist is relegated to chord strums out of necessity, not choice. This is sometimes due to the demands of singing. John Lennon played strict rhythm in the early days of the Beatles, only breaking out solos on later recordings like "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "Get Back." His rare solos are not bad at all, but he clearly did much more singing than George Harrison, which would necessitate a clear division of lead guitar labor. Even Bryan Adams has been holding back all of these years, save for rare moments. But more often it's a lack of single-note fluidity that places a guitarist in the rhythm camp. In a way, it's a shame that rhythm guitar sometimes becomes an afterthought, the Spackle of musical texture.

I've always admired guitarists who cultivate rhythm guitar as an art in itself. The first time that I remember becoming aware of this was in a May 1982 Guitar World magazine article about Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist Bob Weir. Weir advocated using a large triangular pick and practicing with a "polynome" - a metronome that did polyrhythms. In fact, Weir occasionally played solos in the Dead - one example that comes to mind is the first solo in "Friend of the Devil" on the Dead Set live album.

Some great rhythm players who rarely or never took solos? How about Freddie Green (Count Basie Orch.), Catfish Collins (James Brown, P-Funk), James Hetfield (Metallica), Scott Ian (Anthrax), David Knopfler (Dire Straits), Al McKay (Earth, Wind and Fire), Ed O'Brien (Radiohead) and Keith Richards (Rolling Stones). Who am I missing?

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Tonequest - the musical, or, barking up the wrong swamp ash tree

Playing my dead-sounding Highway One Strat at a theatre gig the last few days got me thinking about ways to try to resurrect this guitar, which I bought about two years ago for the rock shows I was doing at the time. I was trying to find a workable Strat for about a thousand bucks, and was enticed by the classic features of the Highway One, and the nitrocellulose finish, which is all the rage these days.

I've already changed out the pickups, dropping in a set of Rio Grandes in a SSH (single-coil, single-coil, humbucker) configuration and no dice.  The guitar still sounds like ca-ca. I'm not sure why I didn't hear it earlier, but this guitar just lacks presence, sweetness, lows, highs, mids...at the theatre gig I eventually just started using my much-better-sounding Mexican Telecaster, which I've had for over ten years.

My friend Rob Phillips changed up his late-80s Strat by switching out the body altogether, using a new body from Guitar Mill.  The body, with a custom sunburst, took months to show up but he's very happy with the guitar now.  Could a new body be the cure for my Strat's near-terminal suckiness? I can't help thinking that the guitar somehow enters a new stage of existence with a new body - every other part is subject to change and it's still THAT guitar.  But change the body and you change the guitar.  I'm not sure why this notion persists in my mind, but it does. But Leo designed his guitars to have easily replaceable parts, like a Ford Model T. It makes repairs much simpler and has also led to a culture of user modifications stretching at least as far back as Hendrix's white Strat with a Tele neck.

And what of options? Say I go with a swamp ash body ($185), humbucker rout for the bridge pickup (+$20), string ferrule installation (+$35) and Olympic White nitro finish (+$225).  Total is $510.00 plus shipping, duty, and currency exchange. And I still might hate the guitar.

Having played guitar now for almost 29 years, I've gotten extremely picky about my instruments, yet I find my tastes hard to articulate. My feelings about a guitar can take many months to settle, and I've bought and sold many, many electric guitars over the years trying to find the elusive tone and feel that I like. It's a bit of a sickness, and unfortunately for me modifications rarely do the trick.  There's something about the gestalt of the total guitar that has to be right, or I'll never be happy, it seems. Or maybe it's just a matter of research.

Monday, July 5, 2010

No Sco, but O.

I never did see the Scofield show. He wasn't going on until nine, and I had a gig. Typical.


I've been reading Jas Obrecht's Otis Rush interview with great pleasure. Otis is another upside-down lefty, which seems to be a recurring theme on this here blog. From the interview:
JO: You and Albert King both put your string sets on with the skinny ones nearest the ceiling. This must cause a different sound on bends, since you're moving the strings the opposite way from most players.


OR: A right-hand man try to push the little E up, where I ain't got nothin' to do but just pull it down. And it's more easier to pull something down than to push it up. Just like this building – you can tear it down in a second, but to put it up takes a few months.

Friday, July 2, 2010

John Scofield's New Orleans-gospel-jazz-rock-blues thing.

Amongst my friends and students, I'm not known to be a great follower of newly recorded music. I find there to be so much to discover in old music that it keeps me busy enough. And there's something about the old ways of playing and singing that resonate with me so deeply.

It's always nice to find something that is current that I actually connect with. In these last couple of weeks I've taken some time off of the blog and used the extra time to check out some recent guitar-related releases. I mentioned the new Jeff Beck in an earlier post. In a related vein, I'm just been listening to John Scofield's Piety Street from '09. Not his latest, I know. From what I've read Scofield had been itching to record a straight blues album but found the field too overcrowded; he turned to black gospel music, played in a funky New Orleans style. The core band for Piety Street was Jon Cleary, a keyboardist/singer who plays very tasty and authentic piano and organ and contributes several vocals; on bass George Porter, Jr., who has a long list of credits including the 70's NOLA funk legends the Meters, and on drums Ricky Fataar, who was a member of both the Beach Boys (he played on "Sail On Sailor"!) and the Rutles as Stig O'Hara (George Harrison). Fataar plays in Bonnie Raitt's band, along with Cleary.


I'm no Scofield expert, but some of the qualities that I identify in his playing on this record are:

1. A deep knowledge of blues licks, many of them extended into odd little harmonic places. Scofield seems to really be at home playing earthy New Orleans style gospel. His phrasing and sensitivity are really outstanding on this record.

2. An interest in tone manipulation through articulation - pick angle, velocity - and tricks like playing close to the bridge for a trebly, bell-like attack.

3. The sound of heavy strings. I hear a bell-like "inharmonic" sound in some of Sco's notes, which suggest that he is using a plain G string that has been made so thick that it has taken on the harmonic properties of a metal bar - upper harmonics are out of tune, which gives the notes a slight chorusing sound. He does in fact use a set of strings that begin with a .013 high E and a plain third. I've experienced this myself by experimenting with heavy gauge strings. Rock and blues guitar after 1967 needs a plain third string - the wound G strings just don't bend right. The outcome of all of this is that Scofield has that rare thing among jazzers: an awesome tone.

The band sounds really quite great - Porter Jr., Fataar, Cleary and Scofield cook effortlessly, and the singers add a different kind of performing frame and, oh yes, the lyrics to these songs, which include "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" and "His Eye Is On The Sparrow." The singing is a bit faceless for me on first listens, but it's not distracting either. This album was recorded in New Orleans in 2008, just after Hurricane Gustav.

This record does not evince a traditional gospel approach, although there are many elements in common - the hard swinging, the use of combined piano and organ and tambourines (both used sparingly on Piety Street). Fataar's drumming has something of a West Coast coolness which keep things from getting bombastic. My overall impression is that Piety Street is that it must have been a blast to record, with some of the top musicians in the U.S. coming together to re-interpret an old repertoire of black gospel, drawn from the recorded output of singers like Mahalia Jackson.

This band (with Terence Higgins replacing Fataar) is in fact playing tonight at the Toronto Jazz Festival, and I'm heading down there to do a Talkback segment with JAZZ FM at six. I'll report back.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Clapton-era Yardbirds: the rough guide.

Educating myself on Clapton-era Yardbirds today.  Join me, won't you?

"Boom Boom" by the Yardbirds. A nice document of the band as a cohesive unit. Some of the live clips on YouTube are rather dire.  The weak link, to me, is Keith Relf, the singer/harmonica player of the band. While his limitations as a singer are readily apparent in the live clips, his harmonica playing is somewhat better.

The British blues rock boom yielded, in my opinion, few truly great native English blues singers. Those few that come to mind for me are Van Morrison (though he's technically Irish) and Mick Jagger. And by blues I don't mean necessarily the blues form or the blues repertoire, but the mode of singing practiced by certain African-American musicians starting around 1900 that was derived from slave work songs, and Islamic prayer chanting before that, in the Muslim areas of West Africa that supplied the slave trade. We're talking about a significant degree of cultural difference from suburban England in the 1960s. As a blues singer, Relf is just passable, but as a more waiflike version of Brian Jones, he's got the look of English rock in the mid 60s.


The Yardbirds again, with "Louise" from 1963.  Clapton is fleet with a variety of authentic blues licks, yet his performance is somewhat mannered - there is flash lick after flash lick, but little of his later restraint.

And the one that according to rumor served as the final straw to Clapton's dissatisfaction with the musical direction that the Yardbirds were taking. The main issue seems to have been that the tune was composed by pop hack Graham Gouldman, who also wrote for Herman's Hermits and the Hollies. The trendiest element of the record is the harpsichord, here represented by Jeff Beck's acoustic guitar with metal soundhole pickup. Other than that, it sounds structurally at least like blues-rock-pop of the London ilk, circa 1965. There's a good documentary clip here, featuring surviving Yardbirds Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty and Eric Clapton.








"All Your Love" from the Bluesbreakers' 1966 album, nicknamed "Beano". Clapton was featured in this band, and better represented than ever before. His cult in London had built up to this point, fed by his studied virtuosity and cool charisma. Clapton had by now traded his Tele and Vox AC30 for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul and Marshall combo.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Neil Young's Old Black: by request

My cousin Stephen, who incidentally suggested that I write this blog in the first place, sent some requests for posts the other day. One of them caught my eye - for a piece on Neil Young's "Old Black" Les Paul, the one he's used more or less constantly since 1969.

Dave Hunter wrote a fine piece about the guitar in 2008 on the Gibson Lifestyle site.  The article is from the series "Get That Tone" and while the article on Neil's heavily modified 1953 goldtop (apparently crudely painted with black matte paint) is informative to the extent that the guitar's provenance and modification history is known, the promised instructions for getting that tone are disappointing:
Short of modifying two pieces of prized vintage gear and building your own Whizzer, run a bright but powerful guitar into a simple, low-output tube amp and give it all the gusto and emotion you can muster. That, in the end, is what’s at the heart of the Neil Young guitar solo after all.
 I think that a microphonic Firebird pickup and a Bigsby help a lot too, along with a handwired, hot-biased low-wattage tube amp.

From an interview with Neil Young roadie (or is it roadeye?) Larry Cragg:
Cradled in a stand in front of the amps is the fuse for the dynamite, Young's trademark ax Old Black, a '53 Gold Top Les Paul some knothead daubed with black paint eons ago. Old Black's features include a Bigsby wang bar, which pulls strings and bends notes, and a Firebird pickup so sensitive you can talk through it. It's a demonic instrument. "Old Black doesn't sound like any other guitar," said Cragg, shaking his head.

Link: Neil Young - Rockin' In The Free World (Live SNL 1989)
And here's Neil himself speaking at length about his gear, including the famous Whizzer.

Gibson has no doubt taken note of the sales potential of a Neil Young model Les Paul, perhaps an exact copy of Old Black, relic'ed. And no doubt that Neil won't let it happen in his lifetime.

Of course, one-offs by individual builders can fly under the radar, like this beautiful replica of Old Black built by Juha Mäntymaa of Finland.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Guitar Player magazine again.

I just finished reading the interviews on rockcritics.com with various Guitar Player principals, including Jim Crockett, Tom Mulhern, Tom Wheeler, Joe Gore, Steven Rosen, James Rotondi and Michael Molenda, the current editor. I'd love to hear from Bud Eastman, the creator of the magazine back in 1967. But all of these men have something interesting to recount about their time working on the magazine. Each seems to have their own version of Guitar Player's so-called golden age, as is to be expected when reminiscences are on the menu.

I was surprised by the rancor shown in reader comments, if not a little from the commentators, towards Michael Molenda. Molenda defends himself by pointing to the increasing subscriptions and newsstand sales, and Guitar Player is navigating the choppy waters of the print magazine business admirably. But for some, something has been lost in Guitar Player's change of ownership to large corporations heavily focused on the bottom line and thus encouraging a low-risk editorial policy.

I still buy the magazine from time to time and I think that aside from some clearly commercial cover story choices (the Matthew Bellamy cover this month has inspired some criticism on GP's Facebook page) the content is still reasonably diversified and the writing and editing are still of high quality.  To an extent, I don't really care who's on the cover - my favorite parts of the magazine are the fiddly bits in between the big articles - the lessons, the gear reviews, the spectacular (and sometimes spectacularly odd) advertisements. I can't imagine a time when I'll never pick up an issue.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Interview: Joe Gore.

Joe Gore is that rare thing, a relentlessly creative and successful guitarist (including credits on seminal Tom Waits and PJ Harvey recordings, as well as work with Courtney Love, DJ Shadow, Aimee Mann, Tracy Chapman, Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches, the Eels, Les Claypool and John Cale) who also excels at a number of other pursuits. These include journalism - he was the senior editor of Guitar Player magazine for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s - and large scale creative projects, like the gargantuan Clubbo website, a fictional record company with a deep back catalogue, all fake. I've admired Joe Gore's guitar playing and writing for many years, and am grateful that he agreed to answer a few of my questions via email.

You have a new project coming out this week - can you tell us something about this?

Mental 99 is a new band with my pal, drummer Dawn Richardson. We'd been wanting to do something together for years, and we finally got around to it. It's an instrumental duo, exploring the question of how much racket two players can create. 

There are a couple of things that I find exciting about the project, beyond the pleasure of playing with such a cool and creative drummer. 

1. Phantom bass syndrome. For various reasons, many of the projects I've been involved with for the last decade have had no bass player, and I've gotten increasingly into the idea of playing the bass and guitar roles simultaneously. Not necessarily in the Ted Greene/Charlie Hunter sense of true multi-voice counterpoint, so much as creating parts that straddle those two roles. I've played bari-guitars, or just low-tuned regular guitars, for ages, especially on the records I did with Tom Waits and PJ Harvey. Along the way, I just started hearing less in terms of bass vs. guitar, and more in terms of low/dark vs. high/bright. (Having said that, Dawn and I got to play a show recently in a quartet with Tracy Chapman and Flea, and it was exhilarating to play with a bassist again, especially one that talented!)

2. Pure sound fixation. For the last few years I've been geeking out on guitar sound — pure sound — to an unhealthy degree. I've done consulting/development work for various audio companies, some of which involved scrutinizing classic guitar tones. To better understand how those things work in the digital realm, I started building analog stompboxes and amps, and that became a parallel obsession. But it got to the point where I felt like a painter who had learned to mix amazing pigments, but never got around to painting anything. So one motivation for Mental 99 was to actually use some of the tools I'd worked on. 

3. Those who can't sing, don't. Playing instrumental music has always been a can of worms for me. I was a classical musician till my early 20s, and I still love classical music, though I don't play it. And while I dig jazz and have played it with some amazing artists, I've never really been a jazz musician. Plus, the jazz I'm drawn to tends to be highly arranged/composed stuff — I've always responded more to Ellington than to bop. (And I sincerely hate Real Book blowing sessions with round-robin soloing.) On the other hand, I love lots of kitschy instrumental music, like surf, easy listening, and Euro-cheese soundtracks. But my ear is too dissonant to play that stuff in a literal way. So I guess Mental 99 sounds at times like the Ventures playing Ellington, or Gang of Four playing the Ventures. Basically, people attempting music they have no business playing, sometimes with cool results. 

Anyway, I play everything on one guitar, a standard-scale James Trussart tele tuned down to CGCFAD (like regular dropped-D, transposed down a whole-step), into a laptop running Apple's MainStage. There are no amps or stompboxes, though the signal runs through a hardware looper before it reaches the mixing board/PA. I've done a zillion digital guitar recordings, but this is the first time I've been dumb enough to try it live. 

Here's a free song if anyone's curious. It was cut live in the studio with no overdubs — just drums and guitar/laptop going straight to disc. Though we did actually play a few minutes longer and edit out the boring bits. (Hey — Miles did it too!)

Could you talk about the Clubbo project from a guitar perspective? Specifically, how do you approach the faking of outdated guitar sounds?

Well, Clubbo was an over-ambitious project I co-created with Elise Malmberg, a great singer, composer, engineer, and audio geek. It alleges to be a web site documenting the half-century history of Clubbo records, complete with music, album art, biographical essays, and various "historical" debris. It's all fake, of course. (BTW, here's the secret page with the real credits.) The site is hundreds of pages deep — even many of the "external" links are faked, leading to other bogus websites we made.

Guitar-wise, it was fun, because it was an excuse to play everything I never would have been caught dead doing under my own name. Southern rock? Shred metal? Jam band noodling? No prob! 

As for the recording techniques, 90% of it created in software — mimicking various historic recording chains via digital distortion, EQ, compression, and effects. One secret trick: heavy use of impulse-response reverbs made from quirky/crappy old gear.  

You recorded seven albums with Tom Waits, a musician with a singular aesthetic - did he give you any directives about what he wanted from you?

The direction is continuous — he directs every part, sculpting your performance with his facial expressions, body language, and amazing turns of phrase. ("Make it sound more poor." "Not bluegrass banjo — death banjo!"). He never suggests particular notes or parts, but directs the proceedings so completely that it always comes out sounding like Tom Waits music. Example: I was thrilled to bits to track a couple of Tom's song with Stewart Copeland on drums. Tom had Stewart play one of his fucked-up old circus drums, and coached him on the performances. In the end, Stewart sounded pretty much like the drummer on any post-Swordfish Waits album — which is to say, fucking amazing! Almost all Waits recordings are first or second takes. He hates when it starts sounding too rehearsed, or like you've worked out the perfect part. Better to sound like you've never played it before, mistakes and all. And not using a tuner is a definite plus.

I've heard some of your looping with the Apple MainStage software - what are the advantages to working with software, rather than a standalone device like the JamMan or the Boss looper?

I did some work for Logic, GarageBand and MainStage. (For those who don't use the software, I'll explain: Logic is Apple's pro recording software, sort of competing cousin to Pro Tools and Live. GarageBand is a light version of Logic, based on the same audio engine, that comes installed on most Macs, though sometimes GarageBand innovations trickle upstream into Logic. And MainStage is a Logic spinoff optimized for live performance.) 

The latest version of MainStage includes a powerful looping tool, but I haven't worked it into live performance yet — I use a hardware Boomerang III looper instead. The all-software looper is more powerful and open-ended, but I find it difficult to drive onstage, in large part because no one has made an ideal hardware controller for it. (Apogee's GIO is a great-sounding I/O that performs fantastically onstage, but it doesn't have enough footswitches to operate several loops simultaneously AND switch programs.) I prefer the Boomerang to all other options because of its great ergonomics — creator Mike Nelson put a lot of thought into creating a device you can truly pilot in real time. I also use a Kenton Killamix — basically, just a row of controller knobs and switches. Summary:  I loop with the Boomerang, switch programs and toggle effects with the GIO, and tweak virtual knobs with the Killamix. It's all very awkward, and it's taken me six months to obtain the vaguest hope of making it through a song without screwing up.   

I find it a bit ironic that I'm even talking about looping. Like many musicians I know, I've moved away from looping over the course of the last decade. Today's zeitgeist just seems to be more about imperfect, realtime playing. It's been years since I used a drum loop on anything (except maybe Clubbo tracks making fun of bad drum loop music). 

Still, I find that looping presents huge challenges — both hugely exciting and hugely daunting. The biggest problem is that looping tends to lock you in a specific musical structure: Play a part. Add counterpoint. Get thicker and thicker, then go silent or fade out. You can compile stunning textures, but the process gets tiresome. It's harder to make stop-on-a-dime changes, alternate between contrasting sections, introduce variations, or deviate from the itinerary on the fly. Those are the things I work on these days. I haven't mastered any of them, but I'm slowly improving. Or so I tell myself.  

Your tenure at Guitar Player magazine, from the late 80s to the mid 90s, represents some of the most interesting guitar journalism of the magazine's long history. Yet you told Steven Ward in 2008: “In retrospect, I was probably a bad fit for the gig. I hated the music industry. I hated guitar heroism. I hated guitar collectors. My passions were music and culture, where guitar occasionally plays a role. I love making music on guitars, but I have no sentiment about them. They’re hammers and nails to me." Are you proud of your work there? For you, what is missing from mainstream guitar journalism?

Well, I stand by those words. But at the same time, I loved working at the magazine and always felt extremely lucky to have been part of it. It was amazing to get paid to do so much stuff I probably would have done for free. I don't reread my work unless I have to, but I suspect that if I did, I'd be of two minds: I'd wince at how self-important I sounded, but I'd probably give myself a bit of credit for documenting some great music while it was being made. 

What do I dislike about mainstream guitar journalism? The same thing every guitarist hates about it: It's doesn't always reflect my personal taste! But I feel the editors at the top mags are doing a stellar job in the face of the dual declines of the music industry and the print medium. Theirs is not an easy gig!

If I did anything valuable, it was being a conduit: exposing readers to something great they might not otherwise have encountered, be it a new player, a forgotten one, a great stompbox, or a cool tuning trick. Fortunately, players can now obtain all those things more easily than ever online. It's a trade-off — the "experts" usually can't make a living writing for consumer music mags these days, so we must rely on the amateur fanatics. The things we encounter online might not be especially well written or edited, but they're passionate and intense—and often shockingly good. 

Here's a personal example from when I started building stompboxes a couple of years ago. I didn't know electronics, yet I fancied myself an expert. I'd reviewed hundreds of pedals. I had access to amazing collections of museum-quality gear. I knew the big-name manufacturers and got paid to scrutinize their latest creations. I owned a formidable collection myself, and had used them in great studios with great artists, engineers, and producers. So I ventured into the DIY community with the most condescending of attitudes. I thought it would be, "I built me my very own Tube Screamer, and it's durn-near good as a store-bought one!"

Needless to say, I was a fucking idiot. 

I learned far more about stompboxes from the collective wisdom of the DIY community that I would have learned in 50 years at a guitar magazine. That's no swipe at the magazines — it's just that old-school print can't rival the depth of such a large and vibrant virtual community as the one at, say, freestompboxes.org. And I can't believe some of the amazing labor-of-love websites, like beavis audio and gaussmarkov! They're packed with great info, beautifully presented. So while it's bad time to make a living dispensing that information, it's a great time to consume it!

My thanks to Joe Gore for taking the time to answer my questions.