BRYAN SUTTON | COURTNEY HARTMAN | JOHN FAHEY | NATALIA ZUKERMAN
SONGS TO PLAY ERIC CLAPTON
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down & Out
LED ZEPPELIN
Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You
CELTIC TRADITIONAL Bottom of the Punchbowl
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PORCHFEST GRASSROOTS MUSIC COMES A’KNOCKIN’
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inner demons.
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MIKE, A COMBAT-SEASONED MARINE, HAD ALWAYS BEEN BRAVE. BUT IT WASN’T UNTIL HE RETURNED HOME FROM HIS TOUR IN IRAQ, THAT HE REVEALED JUST HOW FEARLESS HE REALLY WAS. BECAUSE AS SOON AS MIKE STEPPED BACK ONTO U.S. SOIL, HE STEPPED OUT ONTO A HUGE LIMB BY WRITING AND PERFORMING SONGS THAT UNEARTHED THE KIND OF SUBJECT MATTER MOST RETURNING SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN NEVER WANT TO TALK ABOUT — REOPENING WOUNDS IN ORDER TO HEAL THEM. AND THOUGH MIKE REALIZED HE WOULD STIR UP A LOT OF ANGER, DARKNESS AND PAIN, HE ALSO KNEW HE COULD HELP HIS FELLOW SERVICE MEMBERS COPE WITH THEIR DEMONS IN A WAY THAT WAS A LITTLE LESS DAUNTING. THROUGH MUSIC, MIKE REMINDS US THAT WHETHER YOU’RE A GUITAR PLAYER OR A GUITAR BUILDER, THE WORLD NEEDS MORE PEOPLE LIKE HIM. FOR MORE ABOUT MIKE AND OTHER STORIES THAT INSPIRE US, visit taylorguitars.com
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CONTENTS
John Fahey p48
FEATURES
38 Home Style Porchfest goes from local New York oddity to national craze to your town BY KENNY BERKOWITZ
42 Her Year of
Living Famously Kacey Musgraves—a two-time Grammy winner—reflects on her whirlwind ascent BY DAVID KNOWLES
48 A John Fahey Primer The triumph & tragedy of Blind Joe Death BY DERK RICHARDSON
55 SPECIAL FOCUS: 30 UNDER 30 55 Talking ’Bout
Their Generation A roundup of 30 of the world’s best acoustic artists under the age of 30 BY MARK KEMP, DAVID KNOWLES & AMBER VON NAGEL 30 Under 30 p55
DEPARTMENTS 9 FROM THE HOME OFFICE 11 OPENING ACT 81 EVENTS 82 MARKETPLACE 84 AD INDEX 86 GREAT ACOUSTICS
MAY 2014 VOLUME 24, NO. 11, ISSUE 257 ON THE COVER: KACEY MUSGRAVES PHOTOGRAPHER: WASHINGTON POST/ GETTY IMAGES
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NEWS
13 The Beat On his forthcoming album, bluegrassguitar phenom Bryan Sutton takes the mic; remembering legendary flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía & more 15 News Spotlight Della Mae’s flatpicking guitarist Courtney Hartman is no shrinking violet
61 Shoptalk Fender’s hippest brand rolls out the latest models in its Roots Collection; capo man Milton Kyser dead at 80 & more 64 Guitar Guru Dana Bourgeois on how to determine the value of a high-end guitar 65 Kitbag Using a different set of strings can be an enlightening exercise for guitarists of all styles 66 Review: Hot Rod
Old Skool 12 PLAY
19 Songcraft Natalia Zukerman grew up in a family of classical musicians. Then she saw Suzanne Vega and her life was saved by folk ’n’ roll
Hot Rod recreates classic resonators with love, care, attention to detail—and ridiculously low price tags 70 Review: Epiphone
Hummingbird Pro 22 Acoustic Classic Eric Clapton’s “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”; Led Zeppelin’s famous intro riff to their classic “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” (p 24); the Celtic traditional tune “Bottom of the Punchbowl” (p 26) 28 Take It Easy Be bold: bring your guitar! 30 Here’s How 3 simple steps to building a strong rhythm hand 32 The Basics Enhance your Carter-style strum patterns to add authenticity to your sound
Epiphone plugs in the classic Gibson beauty at a fraction of the cost 72 Review: Ernie Ball
Aluminum Bronze strings New acoustic-guitar strings are a robust alternative to phosphor bronze and 80/20s MIXED MEDIA
75 Playlist Virtuoso Steve Dawson offers guitar analog to eccentric Van Dyke Parks–style Americana & other CDs 80 Books Book traces Martin from its earliest years to its status today as America’s iconic instrument AcousticGuitar.com 7
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t’s a place steeped in tradition, but always renewing itself. The acoustic-guitar world is grounded in the past, in the pioneering country- and folk-guitar techniques of the Carter Family and the American primitive solo fingerpicking style of the late John Fahey, for instance. But the trails blazed by those important historical figures are providing a path for a fresh crop of acoustic artists. This month, AG highlights not only a lesson in Carter-style strumming and a tribute to Fahey, as well as a nod to a Led Zeppelin classic and other time-honored material, but also a feature on 30 artists under the age of 30 who are helping to spread the gospel of acoustic-guitar music. These young singer-songwriters and solo guitarists are
building on tradition and helping to carry this music to a new generation, one that has embraced acoustic music in a big way in a culture saturated by digital media. Some, like Texas singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz, a Grammy-nominated veteran at the ripe old age of 22, may be familiar. Others, 23-year-old New Yorker Anthony da Costa, for instance, may be new to you. I hope you’ll take the time to listen to their music on iTunes or YouTube (our tablet edition includes performance videos of the guitarists). For each artist included in the “Talkin’ ’Bout Their Generation” article, there are 1,000 others worthy of your attention. Share your own discoveries on our Facebook page. —GREG CAHILL, INTERIM EDITOR
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describing the Earl Scruggs Center, failed to note that Scruggs was a guitar player as well a banjo player. Indeed, he played
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on an entire Flatt & Scruggs album of Carter Family songs. He also played several guitar breaks on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s landmark 1971 album Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Scruggs reportedly was one of Clarence White’s guitar heroes.
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NEWS
Paco de Lucía 14
Nickel Creek 14
Courtney Hartman 15
THE BEAT
Finding His Voice
On his forthcoming album, bluegrass guitar phenom Bryan Sutton takes the mic BY DAVID KNOWLES
“M Bryan Sutton Into My Own Sugar Hill
SUTTON PHOTO BY MCGUIRE
ost of the records that I’ve done up until now have been just guitar records, and my goal was to try and make something that included material that represented where I am,” bluegrass flatpicker Bryan Sutton says. That meant standing behind a vocal mic on his soon-to-be-released album Into My Own (Sugar Hill), and confidently delivering songs not just on the guitar. For the Grammy Award-winning picker who has been named the IBMA’s guitar player of the year six times, the decision to start singing didn’t happen overnight. “I started to get a little more serious about singing about six or eight years ago and have sort of reluctantly done it more and more,” Sutton says from his home in Nashville. “I really enjoy it and I felt like it is one of those things where, as a career guitar player who is always behind and around some of the greatest singers in the world, it’s easy to get intimidated. It sort of nagged at me a long time that if I’m going to do it, I need to do it. I don’t want to regret this and think in 20 years that I wish I had.”
While the bulk of the new record won’t rub traditional bluegrass fans the wrong way, a collaboration with experimental-jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, titled “Frisell’s Rag,” may come as a surprise. “I first heard Bill shortly after I moved to Nashville,” Sutton explains. “Back in the mid-’90s, he did a record here with Jerry Douglas and Ron Block and that introduced me to his world, and I was just inspired by his touch, his sound. “He’s not just a guitar player, he’s a deep musician who just happens to be holding a guitar.” At a time when serious bluegrass scenes continue to grow in such places as Boston and Brooklyn, Sutton sees more opportunity for collaboration and crosspollination. He hopes his audience will see him as more than just a guitarist. “My heroes—Béla Fleck, Bill, Tim O’Brien—those guys are just great musicians,” he concludes. “My goal is to always try to pattern myself after those guys. Essentially just trying to be the best musician I can be, whether I’m holding a guitar, a banjo, or singing.” AcousticGuitar.com 13
THE BEAT | NEWS
Paco de Lucía Dead at 66
NICKEL CREEK REUNITES FOR TOUR After disbanding seven years ago, the members of the Grammy Awardwinning bluegrass trio Nickel Creek have announced they will reunite this spring for a tour. Chris Thile (mandolin) and siblings Sara Watkins (fiddle) and Sean Watkins (guitar) will resume their infectious vocal harmonizing on April 18 at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, and conclude their tour at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival on June 22. For more info, visit nickelcreek.com.
P
aco de Lucía, one of the greatest flamenco guitarists ever to have walked the earth, has passed away at the age of 66. An innovator who helped bring flamenco-style playing to a global audience, de Lucía died on February 25 after suffering a heart attack while playing at the beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, with his children. A native of Spain, de Lucía started his career as a protégé of the legendary master Sabicas, and expanded the genre’s appeal in the 1970s by mixing it with jazz on popular collaborative albums with guitarists John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola. The trio’s live album, Friday Night in San Francisco, was regarded as an acoustic milestone, and went on to sell more than a million copies. “To have worked and played music with Paco is one the greatest
blessings in my life,” McLaughlin told the Associated Press. “In the place where he lived in my heart, there is now an emptiness that will stay with me till I join him.” De Lucía’s dexterity and skill on the guitar were second to none, and his influence extended well beyond nylon string players. With a repertoire that included classical, Gypsy, flamenco, and jazz styles, de Lucía performed
with passion, and many who saw him perform live likened his concerts to a spiritual experience. Hundreds of people gathered at de Lucia’s hometown of Algercias, Spain, to attend his funeral, stunned that the man regarded as the king of the flamenco guitar was gone. As his casket arrived from Madrid, mourners tossed red flowers upon it and chanted de Lucía’s name. —DK
201 0144
ANDY MCKEE TO RELEASE NEW EP On his forthcoming EP, Mythmaker, guitar hero Andy McKee is letting his fingers wander over to the piano. In addition to hearing his percussive fingerstyle acoustic playing, fans will also be treated to McKee tickling the ivories on two of the album’s four tracks. The EP also shares its name with McKee’s fledgling record label.
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NEWS SPOTLIGHT PHOTO BY TAMMY LAMOUREUX
Girl Power
Della Mae’s flatpicking guitarist Courtney Hartman is no shrinking violet BY DAVID KNOWLES
H
er band, Della Mae, didn’t win the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album this year, though it was nominated in that category. But guitarist Courtney Hartman isn’t complaining. After all, Hartman spent the better part of two months last year touring with members of the Del McCoury Band, the group that took home the trophy. “I love playing with those guys,” Hartman says when I meet her for coffee in Anaheim, California. Wearing a denim button-down over a casual green dress, Hartman exudes a laidback self-confidence that has only grown as the 24-year-old Berklee College of Music student has continued to rack up flatpicking contest victories and earned no shortage of plaudits for her work with Della Mae, which boasts an all-female lineup. Raised in Loveland, Colorado, by “hippie” parents, Hartman grew up surrounded by music and quickly gravitated to bluegrass. Bolstered by Hartman’s inventive lead lines—most notably on the group’s 2013 Grammy-nominated album, This World Oft Can Be—Della Mae has helped push the genre’s boundaries while attracting a new generation of female fans. How did you hook up with Della Mae? Kimber Ludiker started the band. She and Abigail Washburn were at this camp together
and they thought, “We should start this band and wear power suits and play hard-driving bluegrass.” I think there was one show that stuck with that idea, but after that they kind of realized that it could really be super fun. About three years ago I decided to join full time. I guess the idea was, in a fun way, to bring together women who were ridiculous pickers and had bluegrass as their background and showcase that.
‘I think our favorite thing in the band is when we see a line of little kids waiting to see us play, especially little girls—that was us!’ —COURTNEY HARTMAN
Tell me about your audience. Do you see a lot of young girls at your concerts? There’s an older audience for bluegrass, especially in the Midwest, but there’s also a huge surge of young people. I think our favorite thing in the band is when we see a line of little kids waiting to see us play, especially little girls—that was us! This year, at IBMA, we were part of Youth on
Bluegrass and we went into a room and played with a bunch of kids. I was blown away. There were a bunch of girls, 12 or 13 years old, and they were killing it! It was amazing to see that. For young girls coming up today, what’s the biggest piece of advice you give them to become guitar players? Especially in the festival and jam scene, I just tell them don’t be afraid. So often being timid makes you stand back from the jam, and at 13 that can be a big thing, and I struggled with it. How old were you when you started playing guitar? I started on fiddle when I was three, then I did some mandolin, and I moved to the guitar when I was 12. My mom was taking guitar lessons when I was a kid, and I’d go with her and just watch, then go home and play guitar on my own. I was relatively selftaught until I was 17 or 18, and loved playing melodies. I remember going to a festival and watching a guy’s right hand as he played and thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got to figure out how to do that.” What kind of guitar did you learn on? I had a little nylon string. It was little! Then I moved over to a steel string. AcousticGuitar.com 15
SPOTLIGHT | NEWS
A lot of parents wonder what kind of guitar is best to start a child on. Any thoughts? I’ve had a good number of younger students and that’s always a question that comes up. I don’t know if I have a set response. It depends on the student. It can go either way.
Alison Krauss on the cover, she was like eight years old. So I was listening to, like, the Johnson Mountain Boys and the Bluegrass Cardinals and Del McCoury and Doc Watston. Those sounds were around the house a lot because my parents loved them.
How did you get into bluegrass? I started playing classical violin, then transitioned to fiddle and started going to contests. From there, I went on to other instruments and started doing bluegrass festivals. I played for about six years with my siblings in a bluegrass band. But when I was six my first album was a Rounder Records collection, it’s the one with
You’re known for your flatpicking, but do you ever veer over into fingerstyle? Fingerpicking is a challenge. Working out individual fingerings and tone. Flatpicking is what my natural voice is on guitar. Do you use non-standard tunings? Mostly standard, some drop D. I do like
You play Bourgeois guitars. How did that come about? I have a Vintage D model. It’s one that came off the racks that’s kind of a custom guitar. Dana [Bourgeois] brought it to me and was like, “check this out,” and I loved it. There were some things I didn’t totally love, and he took it back and two weeks later he gave it back and it was brilliant— all of a sudden the high end was popping out like I wanted. He’s a brilliant builder. How’d you meet him? When I was 15 or 16, I’d sneak into his booth at IBMA and play his guitars. Then he started following Della Mae and we became friends. As fate would have it, I had an airline accident with my Taylor. It got cracked pretty bad in the body and was out of commission for a while.
Award Winning Master Of DADGAD Fingerstyle Guitar
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Was it in a hard case? Yes, well, Jet Blue [laughs]. Ultimately, though, that guitar breaking led me to have this Martin 1946 D-28. And I was going to go to Germany, and Dana came to a show and he said, “Hey, you know you can’t take that to Germany because of the Brazilian wood.” So, suddenly I was looking for another guitar and he said, “Let me see what I can do.”
in partnership with
and
experimenting with double drop D for old-time tunes because it kind of mimics the way that fiddles and banjos tune down, so you can create this kind of drone. So, that’s been kind of fun.
strings
How old were you when you realized you could make a living playing guitar? I was teaching privately all through high school and playing. When I was considering colleges, I think Berklee was the only place I finished my application to. Besides music, I didn’t really know what else to do. For a time, I considered becoming an herbologist. AG
WHAT COURTNEY HARTMAN PLAYS GUITAR Bourgeois Vintage D model PREAMP Headway EDB-2
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16 May 2014
PLAY
Natalia Zukerman 19
Eric Clapton 22
Led Zeppelin 24
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PRS Acoustics A Culture of Quality
© 2014 PRS Guitars / Photos by Marc Quigley
Born in our Maryland shop, PRS acoustics are heirloom instruments with remarkable tone and exquisite playability. A small team of experienced luthiers handcraft all of our Maryland-made acoustic instruments with passion and attention to detail.
The PRS Guitars’ Acoustic Team.
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Which Side Are You On?
Natalia Zukerman grew up in a family of classical musicians. Then she saw Suzanne Vega, and her life was saved by folk ’n’ roll BY JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS
TEXT © 2014 JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
N
atalia Zukerman remembers a pivotal moment in 1992 when, as a teenager, she went to a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in New York’s Central Park. The child of classical violinist Pinchas Zukerman and flutist Eugenia Zukerman was already deeply immersed in music and played classical guitar. Her older sister, Arianna, was a budding opera singer. But Natalia glimpsed something new at the Guthrie tribute when Suzanne Vega took the stage and performed “Tom’s Diner” and “Luka.” “I don’t think I’d ever seen one woman with one guitar before that day, and it was kind of scary,” Zukerman says. “It was, ‘Uh-oh, I think this is who I am.’” Through college and into her 20s, Zukerman combined her guitar chops with songcraft, and she’s grown into one of the most versatile performers on the singersongwriter circuit. With a clear voice and a deft touch on steel-string guitar, she segues from intricate fingerstyle ballads to sweet bottleneck blues (and lap steel, too, on a
vintage Rickenbacker), driving Ani DiFranco–esque folk rock, and Latin-jazz grooves. All of that is present on her stellar live album Gypsies and Clowns (Weasel Records), on which Zukerman is accompanied by kindred songwriting spirits (and ace instrumentalists), including Susan Werner, Trina Hamlin, Erin McKeown, and Willy Porter. Zukerman has particularly deep ties to Porter—he produced several of her CDs and released them on his own Weasel label. When Zukerman is not making music, she’s painting, and her visual sense sharpens the imagery of her songs. I caught up with her by phone from the Brooklyn painting studio she shares with another songwriter and painter, AG (Adrianne Gonzales), a frequent collaborator on both visual and musical art. You have a lot of drive to explore sounds and techniques on the guitar. Does that come in part from growing up in a family of classical musicians?
Oh, definitely. It’s my first love, and it’s my privilege to have come from where I’ve come from. I grew up playing guitar and came to the songwriting part of it much later. I’ve actually kind of gone the other way and simplified my guitar over the years, because I think I relied on the playing a lot as the catchy thing, and now I’m challenging myself to look at lyrics and forms much more. What were you learning on guitar before you wrote songs? Well, I learned some folk songs. I went to this school in Manhattan where we learned American history by learning Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie songs—it was pretty great. So, I got a guitar and learned some chords, but then I studied classical guitar in high school and a little bit in college. Were you learning traditional classical technique? Left leg up and all that—yup. I actually just went to study flamenco for two weeks in southern Spain, at this school named AcousticGuitar.com 19
SONGCRAFT | PLAY
WHAT NATALIA ZUKERMAN PLAYS
GUITARS Zukerman’s main guitar is a Guild Willy Porter signature model, with a spruce top, maple back and sides, and cutaway. In the past, she played a Goodall that was wrecked in a very strange way: She checked it for a flight to the West Coast, and when she arrived she found the truss rod cover removed and the neck splintered. Apparently the TSA removed the truss rod, put it back in, and then tightened it too far. The guitar has been somewhat repaired but no longer stays in tune, and Zukerman has sadly put it “out to pasture. Along with the Guild, Zukerman tours with a 1937 Rickenbacker lap steel.
AMPLIFICATION Fishman Ellipse Matrix Blend system, which combines an under-saddle pickup with an internal mic, plugged into an L.R. Baggs Para DI. She adds a touch of delay with a Dunlop Carbon Copy MXR pedal.
ACCESSORIES D’Addario phosphor-bronze mediums and a regular Shubb capo; another Shubb, which she cut to cover four strings; and the Kyser Short Cut three-string capo. Zukerman plays with her fingers and tries to keep long natural nails, which is a challenge given her other vocation as a painter.
20 May 2014
Carmen de las Cuevas in Granada. I learned about it 15 years ago and thought, “Oh, I’ll go sometime when I’m an old lady.” Then I started applying for the Iguana grant, the small grant that comes out of Club Passim, and I got it this year, so I got to go. I thought with my classical background I’d be able to fudge my way through, but it was so different and incredibly difficult. I thought it was much more improvised, but it’s all written. There are so many different forms—they are called palos. I learned two of them. But it definitely reignited my love of being a student. I think I’ll always be studying guitar for my whole life, trying to improve. Were you looking to get something specific from flamenco? I just love the music. I always have. I think it probably started with John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola, and Paco de Lucía. I got their Live in San Francisco album sometime in college and was obsessed with it. Studying classical guitar, a little bit [of flamenco] creeps in sometimes. My teacher would sometimes reward me for learning some other stuff that I wasn’t as excited about. The style is such a mish-mash of cultures and rhythms. I was hoping to get a very basic start, and that’s definitely what I got. Flamenco breaks a lot of rules of classical guitar technique and also is so different from steel-string playing. How do you go from one to the other? My teacher was constantly fixing the rest [strokes] that you do in classical guitar. They are slightly different in flamenco, and you have your hand all the way down by the bridge, too, and never higher up, because it’s just a louder part of
the guitar. And [with classical technique] you don’t do any of those rasgeos, the flourishes of the right hand. But my fingerpicking mobility certainly helped, and also being able to read music. It’s surprising to me how few people [read music], because that’s our language—I don’t really know how you communicate otherwise. I feel really lucky to have that skill. It’s just a cool thing to have in your tool belt. A lot of guitarists who play by ear are baffled by the idea of reading music, but a lot of classical musicians are baffled by the idea of playing by ear. Oh, totally. Having grown up with classical geeks, it’s like they are terrified of sitting in a circle with people and trying to come up with music from nowhere. They have no idea how to do that. They look at me like I’m an alien. How did you get started with slide? Actually, I took a semester at the Ali Akbar Khan school [of north Indian classical music] out in California. I raised the nut of the guitar and played lap style. I think what I was trying to do was imitate the voice and make the guitar sing more—maybe because I was used to hearing violin so much in my life. It was after that I discovered bottleneck style. So you didn’t come to slide through blues? No. I came at it sort of backwards. I was a Bonnie Raitt fan, but I didn’t know where any of that came from. I didn’t know about Mississippi Fred [McDowell] and Sippie Wallace and all the folks that she listened to. Pretty early on, I actually got a 1972 recording of her at WXPN, and she’s playing live and talks a lot about
‘It’s surprising to me how few people [read music], because that’s our language—I don’t really know how you communicate otherwise.’ GUILD WILLY PORTER SIGNATURE MODEL
Elliott Capos Crafters of the
Mississippi blues. I wrote down everything that was in there and Googled it—or pre-Google, whatever it was. I went to record stores. How much of what you do now on guitar is in alternate tunings? I’d say about 75 percent. I do a lot of double dropped D [D A D G B D], a lot of open D [D A D F A D], a lot of open G with the C in the bass [C G D G B D]. It’s sort of like painting: if you put a wash of color over the canvas first, it’s easier to pull out images from that. I find that with open tunings, too: they have a vocabulary. You also use partial capos, right? Willy Porter got me into that—that’s a gateway drug, seriously. I started playing with a half capo, which I don’t use correctly. I know people use it to mimic an open tuning, but I just open tune and then stick it on and see what else happens. I like to get my brain out of what I’m doing when I’m writing, so I can’t rely on my knowledge as much. I’ve got to find it. If I know what I’m doing, then I think too much and I get boring. The singer-songwriter life can be so solitary, but you do a lot of collaboration, as can be heard on your live album. Is being part of a community very important to you? Yeah. Probably the main impetus is that standing on the stage by yourself is, a) really hard, b) really lonely. It’s not even the stage part; it’s the lifestyle—driving around the country and checking into hotels and navigating and all the things you do. It’s a lot more fun when you have a buddy. Just by who I’ve met, I’ve amassed this tribe of folks who are doing what I’m doing and are also collaborative and incredible musicians. So, yeah, the live record was definitely a celebration of all those relationships, and I do think music is a conversation. At least for me, it’s most enjoyable when shared with someone else. A lot of those songs were written over the time of getting to know these people out on the road, and I start to feel [the songs] are as much theirs as they are mine, because they add to them. Now I’m doing a lot of co-writing, too, with those folks, so it’s even gone further. What has your co-writing experience been like? You know, I think we get really precious as writers and artists that somehow our technique is a secret, or if we tell someone we’re not going to be able to do it again. So to turn it around is really revelatory. If you just do it a lot and with different people and in different incarnations, you find out that there are rules that you can follow and it’s not really magic. And when it is magic, to have somebody else witness it is pretty cool. AG
ON WRITING CHARACTERS
Elliott Pushbutton, Elite and “ The McKinney” by Elliott
Browse Natalia Zukerman’s albums and you’ll find “Howard Hughes,” “Johnny Rotten,” “Song for Ramblin’ Jack,” and other songs based on characters, real or invented. Her writing continues to steer in this storytelling direction. One of her new songs, for instance, is about Jane Avril, the can-can dancer depicted in Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge paintings. “I did some research about her,” Zukerman says. “Actually it came from a prompt from Willy [Porter]. We had a little songwriting group for a while, just the two of us, and the prompt was ‘feather boa.’ I had to write a song with ‘feather boa’ in it, and I thought of those paintings.”
Several of Zukerman’s other new songs are inspired by Burnin’ Vernon, a volunteer firefighter in the Woodstock area who in the ’90s was caught starting a series of barn fires. “I’ve become obsessed with him, writing metaphorically about his life,” she says. “I have three Burnin’ Vernon songs. It’s a pretty chewy story.” Over time, Zukerman says she’s lost interest in the “super personal kind of confessional songs that we all write in our 20s. That navel-gazey, angsty thing doesn’t appeal to me as a listener anymore, so I try to write outside my own experience. A lot of it is about combining my visual and musical life. My visual life is more about telling a story with objects, and I’m a mural painter, so I’m illustrating and telling stories that are not necessarily mine. “Also, my life’s just gotten a little bit boring, thank God,” she adds with a laugh. “It doesn’t have as much of the angsty drama.”
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AcousticGuitar.com 21
Randy California, center
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
Clapton Gets Down & Dirty Sure, you could dazzle your friends with ‘Layla,’ but . . . BY ANDREW DuBROCK
M
TV’s “Unplugged” series had been chugging along for several years by the time Eric Clapton appeared on the show in 1992, but his performance was perhaps the show’s defining moment. When the Unplugged CD— recently remastered and expanded—was first released, it sold more than 10 million copies, topped the Billboard album chart, and won six Grammies. “Layla” and “Tears in Heaven” netted most of the awards, but the album was solid from start to finish, and included the fingerpicked 1923 Jimmy Cox blues song “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” a song given new relevance by the recent recession.
22 May 2014
In general, Clapton bases his fingerpicking on a monotonic bass style—where the thumb picks out static bass notes underneath fingerpicked melodies and chord shapes. As you can see from the first four measures, this can get somewhat complicated rhythmically, but you can always simplify by keeping your thumb steadily thumping on the beat while your fingers pluck out syncopated chord stabs above, and it will sound fine. In this section, you can see that Clapton sometimes doubles up his thumb to play several quick eighth notes, and even plays some bass runs—like the one shown at the end of the fourth measure. Clapton also varies his chord shapes as he
Eric Clapton Unplugged
makes his way through the song. For instance, he thickens the D7 chord by sometimes wrapping his thumb over the neck of the guitar to grab the F note on the second fret of the sixth string (creating a D7/F chord), and he occasionally plays a full F chord by fretting the top five strings as a standard barre chord with the thumb again fretting the low bass note on the sixth string. The F dim chord is also worth a second look, because the notes of this chord are shared within a D7/F chord, and Clapton occasionally uses the D7/F shape in place of the F dim chord. Here, it’s referred to throughout as an F dim chord, since the overall harmony suggests that. AG
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
SONG TO PLAY Chords
C
E7
intro (first four measures)
C
A7 Dm
x 32 0 1 0 0 2314 0 x0 1113 xx0 231
F
F #dim
G7
C #9
xx3 21 1
32 000 1
& 44 ‰ œœœ œ œ J
D7
xx 421 x
xx0 213
C9
x 2133 x
x 21 3 3 x
B
3
Ÿ~~
E7
E7
A7
1 1 0 0 2 2 3
( 0) 1
0 3 2 1 2 2 2 0 0
0
F
Dm A7 Dm F F #dim C A7 D7
1.
E7
F
A7 C
A7
Took all my friends out for a mighty good time D7
2 2 0
C
2 2
0
3 3 2 2
A7
G7
We bought bootleg liquor, champagne, and wine
Dm
3 2
0
C
E7
A7
F #dim
F
Dm
A7
Dm
A7
D7
G7
E7
Dm
A7
Dm
When you’re down and out F
F #dim C
Repeat Third Verse A7
In your pocket, not one penny D7
G7
Nobody knows you when you’re down and out Guitar and Piano Solos (both over Verse progression)
A7
C E7
A7
Oh, nobody knows you…
G7
And as for friends, you don’t have many E7
A7
4. When you get back on your feet again
Lost all my good friends, had nowhere to go
C
D7
C
Then I began to fall so low
1 0 1 3 3 3 2 2 2 0 0 0 1 2 3
2 2 3 2 2 0 2 0 0
Repeat Fourth Verse D7
2.
œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œ Óœ b œ n œ œ
I get my hands on a dollar again
3. Because nobody knows you
Dm
F #dim
2 2 0 0
2 2 2 2
F #dim
C
Spent all my money, didn’t have any care
A7
I said it’s strange, without any doubt
A7
Once I lived the life of a millionaire Dm
Dm
I’ll hang onto it till that old eagle grins
G7
C
A7
j3 j œ œ œ œ œœ ‰ (œ ) # œ œœ œœ # œœ œœ # œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœ ‰ # œœ œœ œœœ œ œ œœ œ œ . œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ . œ J . J ‰ œ œ œ œJ œJ œ . Jœ J 3 J J Ÿ~~ 0 3 3 3 1 1 3 1
Intro C
BY ERIC CLAPTON WORDS AND MUSIC BY JIMMY COX
Dm
A7
Dm
Everybody wants to be your long-lost friend
F
Nobody knows you, nobody knows you D7
G7
Nobody knows you when you’re down and out N.C. (no chord)
B9
C9
© 1923, 1929, 1950, 1959, 1963 UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. COPYRIGHT RENEWED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD CORPORATION
AcousticGuitar.com 23
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
Misty Mountain Chops
Learn the opening riff of Led Zeppelin’s famous version of the folk classic “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” BY CHAD JOHNSON
W
ith their eponymous debut album in 1969, Led Zeppelin emerged with a near-fully developed style combining distorted blues with acoustic textures and catchy choruses with mythology-based lyrics. Even though the band refused to release singles in the U.K., instead focusing on the AOR (album-oriented rock) format, the Led Zeppelin album became a huge success, reaching No. 10 on the charts and immediately finding favor on both sides of the Atlantic—despite the many negative reviews by the critics. (Critics nowadays, with their 20/20 hindsight, seem to consider the material much more acceptable.) It was through Joan Baez’s 1962 recording of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” that guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant became aware of the song. Because Baez had no songwriting credit listed on her album, Page and crew assumed it was an old traditional song, crediting it as “Trad. Arr. Page” on the Led Zeppelin album. In fact, the song was written in the late 1950s by Anne Bredon, who received back royalties after becoming aware in the late 1980s of the Zeppelin version. Page performed this song in the studio on a borrowed Gibson J-200. In the key of A minor, the Zeppelin arrangement makes use of a common arpeggiated progression that uses a descending bass line, slowly moving from the tonic i chord (Am) down to the V chord (E). What really sets this riff apart is Page’s subtlety, as he alters the top note of each four-note pattern (with additional variation on the repeat in measures 5-8) to create a sort of melody within the accompaniment part. AG
Available at halleonard.com
A complete transcript of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” appeared, along with a discussion of Jimmy Page’s acoustic-guitar playing, in the April 2011 issue of Acoustic Guitar. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, 1972 24 May 2014
GIJSBERT HANEKROOT/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES
SONG TO PLAY Moderately
Intro
4 & 4
q = 134
Am
œ
œ œ œ
let ring
A 7sus4/G
œ
œ œ œ
0
B
2
0
A m7
&
5
œ œ œ
2 0
œ
2
0
#œ
œ œ œ
3
0
2
œ
T
D 7/F#
œ œ œ
1
0
2
3
œ T
œ œ œ
T
3
2
D /F #
nœ
œ œ œ
1
2
0
2
F
let ring
3
2
0
3
A m7/G
œ
œ #œ œ
let ring 2
1 2
1
D 7/F#
E
1
0
0
F
E
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ nœ œ T T T
3
B
1
D /F #
let ring
let ring
2
2
œ
BY LED ZEPPELIN WORDS AND MUSIC BY ANNE BREDON, JIMMY PAGE & ROBERT PLANT. ARRANGED BY ANDREW DUBROCK
A m7/G
œ
œ œ
Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You
0
2 0
2
3
2
2 3
0
0
2 3
0
0
2
2
3 0 2
2
1 3 1
let ring
2
1 2
1
0
0
© 1969 (RENEWED) FLAMES OF ALBION MUSIC, INC., AND CO-PUBLISHER. ALL RIGHTS (EXCLUDING PRINT) FOR FLAMES OF ALBION MUSIC, INC., ADMINISTERED BY WB MUSIC CORP. EXCLUSIVE PRINT RIGHTS FOR FLAMES OF ALBION MUSIC, INC., FOR THE WORLD EXCLUDING EUROPE ADMINISTERED BY ALFRED MUSIC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION
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AcousticGuitar.com 25
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
A Flatpicked Celtic Fiddle Tune Think Norman-Blake-at-a-ceili-in-the-Highlands sort of sound BY ROBIN BULLOCK
I
first encountered the lively traditional Scottish reel “The Bottom of the Punchbowl” on the Fairport Convention album Tippler’s Tales. On that recording, it was played by fiddler Dave Swarbrick, and I subsequently discovered that it’s one of the standards of Scottish fiddle repertoire. It occurred to me that it would make a fine flatpicking tune as well, and I eventually wound up recording it on my solo CD The Lightning Field (Dorian, robinbullock.com), flatpicked with rhythm-guitar accompaniment in my attempt at a Norman-Blake-ata-ceili-in-the-Highlands sound. As with many Scottish and Irish dance tunes, you can considerably speed the learning/memorization process by mentally
dividing each section into four quarters (two measures apiece) and looking for patterns of repetition. Sure enough, in this tune, the fourth quarters (the last two bars) of the A and B parts are exactly the same (a common pattern of repetition), and in the B part, the first (measures 17–18) and the third (measures 21–22) quarters are exactly the same (another common pattern of repetition). This means there’s less to learn than there first appears—always welcome news. This version falls somewhere between my recorded version and the way the tune is actually played by fiddlers. Pick direction follows the standard flatpicking rule of downstroke on the beat and upstroke
between the beats. I finger this tune in the key of C in standard tuning; as written here, however, I capo at second fret to put it in its traditional key of D. I strongly recommend this, as playing tunes in their “right” keys is an important part of Celtic tradition. “The Bottom of the Punchbowl” lies naturally on the fiddle fingerboard in D, in a way that it doesn’t in C, so fiddlers will expect the tune to be played there. And besides, it just sounds “right” in D. So get out your capo, and have at it! This article first appeared in the November 2004 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine. AG is revisiting the vault as part of our 25th anniversary.
The Bottom of the Punchbowl
SONG TO PLAY
TRADITIONAL ARRANGED BY ROBIN BULLOCK
Capo II A
C
Dm
x 32 0 1 0
≥
≥
≥
0
0
B
3
C
œœ œœ
1
1 0 2 3
3
≥ ≤
≥
1
1 0 2 3
1
3
≥ ≤ ≥ 0
0
3
≥ ≤
2
≤
0
≥
2
≤
0
≥
≥
0
1 0
2
3
≤
≥
≤
≥
3
1
0
1
œ
œœ œ
0
2 3 3
≥
≥
3
2
0
1
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
3
G
1
0
2
0
3
2
0
C
œ œ œ œ œ œ ≥
1
x 32 0 1 0
3 2 0 00 4
13 4 21 1
œ œ œ œ œ ≥
0
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
F
x0 231 0
& œ œ œ œ œ B
≥
Am
x 32 0 1 0
≥
3 2 0 00 4
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ
& 44 œ
5
G
xx0 231
≤
≥
≤
≥
2
0
2
0
≤
3
œ ≥
2
œ ≥
œ ≥
œ ≥
0 3
3
© 2004 STRINGLETTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
26 May 2014
Dm
G
xx0 231
3 2 0 00 4
A2
& œ ≥
9
≥
≥
1
0
B
œœ œ œœ
œ
œ
3
≥
≤
1 0 2 3
3
œ ≥
C
B
≥
0
≥
0
Am
≥
1
1 0 2 3
0
0
2
Am
3
1
0
≤
3
2
0
≥
≤
0
3
2
G
1
0
≥
≤
≥
3
1
0
≤
≥
2
0
≤
≥
≤
3
2
0
C
x 32 0 1 0
3 2 0 00 4
≥
0
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
1
2 3 3
Dm
x0 231 0
≥
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
B
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
≥
1
≤
1
F
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥
0
≥
13 4 21 1
œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ
≤
0
2
x0 231 0
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥
3
≤
1
œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ
13
≥
3
x 32 0 1 0
&
œ œ œ œ œ œ
2
0
2
≥
≥
≥ ≤
1
0
3
2
G
xx0 231
≥
3
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
3
1
2
0
1
2
3
3
C
Am
x 32 0 1 0
3 2 0 00 4
3
x0 231 0
œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 3 ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
18
0
3
0
3
1
0
2
B F
0
G
2
≥
≥
≥ ≤
3
3
1
3
≥
0 1 0
≥
≥
≥ ≤
3
3
1
3
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
C
3
1
2
0
1
2
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
3
Am
x 32 0 1 0
3 2 0 00 4
13 4 21 1
≥
3
0
1
0
2
0
Dm
x0 231 0
B2
3
xx0 231
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ≥
23
B
2 3 3
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
1
2
0
2
0
3
G
28
≥
≥ ≤
2
3
3
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
3
1
2
0
2
1
3
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
3
0
3
1
0
C
Am
x 32 0 1 0
F
x0 231 0
0
2
3
≥
2
G
≥
≥
≥
≥ ≤
3
3
1
3
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
3
1
2
0
2
1
3
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
0
3
3
0
1
0
2
0
≥
2 3 3
2
0
≥
≥ ≤
3
3
1
3
C
≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤
1
≥
x 32 0 1 0
3 2 0 00 4
13 4 21 1
œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 3 0 1 0
B
≥
1
3 2 0 00 4
&
≥
2
0
3
≥
2
œ
˙
3
3
≥
≥
AcousticGuitar.com 27
TAKE IT EASY
Guitar Week, July 27-Aug. 2, with
Beppe Gambetta, Tim Thompson, David Jacobs-Strain, Al Petteway, Sean McGowan, Stephen Bennett, Steve Baughman, Pat Donohue, Robin Bullock, Folk Arts Workshops at Vicki Genfan, Warren Wilson College Toby Walker, PO Box 9000 Scott Ainslie, Asheville NC 28815 Gerald Ross, 828.298.3434 www.swangathering.com Ed Dodson, Greg Ruby, Pat Kirtley & more. • Trad. Song Week, July 6-12 • Celtic Week, July 13-19 • Old-Time Week, July 20-26 • Contemporary Folk Week, July 27- Aug. 2 • Mando & Banjo Week, August 3-9 • Fiddle Week, August 3-9
Attached at the Hip
Does your guitar belong at the family reunion? Don’t think twice, it’s all right BY JANE MILLER
“S
hould I bring my guitar?” If you ever ask yourself that question, answer, yes. As often as possible. You identify as a guitar player. Be one. Here are some things that people bring along to all kinds of places: knitting needles and yarn, sewing kits, books, pen and paper, laptops, cameras, photo albums, portfolios, skis, surfboards, golf clubs, briefcases with carpet samples, insurance policy sales info, paint brushes, canvases, sketch pads, fishing gear, papers to grade, folding massage tables, tools, blueprints, food samples, business cards, brochures, chess boards, monopoly boards, gym bags, doctor bags, tennis rackets. These are the tools of one’s trade, or at least of one’s fun time. Be the one with the guitar. You can find time to practice. You can find time to play for people. Meeting up with the in-laws at Disney World? You’ll definitely want your guitar along for the trip. It’ll be great to see everyone, but it’ll also be nice to head back to the hotel and have some musical retreat time. It’s a healthy reward to give to yourself. When everyone gathers by the pool in the evening, you can head out to join them. You’ll have your acoustic six-string, your nephew will be bouncing around in the pool, your niece will have her head in her
28 May 2014
phone, Aunt Anna will have her macramé project. There’s no reason to hold back from being yourself and bringing what you love to the scene. And, what do you know: people are nodding along and smiling! That couple at the table with the fancy drinks are singing and asking if you know any Neil Young. Or Django. Or Chet. You never know who you’ll run into when you have your guitar in your hands. There’s a band in the lounge. They want you to sit in. Do it! That’ll be a great story to tell and a cool memory for you—maybe even a terrific playing opportunity. First, make sure you have a safe gig bag to throw on your back as you head out. Give it the back seat, the passenger seat, the trunk if you must. Put it in the overhead when you fly. Set it vertically by your feet in front of you on the bus. Lay it horizontally in front of you on the floor of a cab. Become an expert at going through revolving doors with your guitar. Play it. People will love it and feel privileged. Practice. You will feel rewarded and fulfilled. Stay connected to the thing you’d miss if you didn’t bring it along. And whenever you notice it’s not with you, ask yourself, “Where’s my guitar? Why didn’t I bring it?” AG Jane Miller is an associate professor of guitar at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
PATENT PENDING
HERE’S HOW
Ready, Set . . . Strum 3 simple steps to a strong rhythm hand BY OCTOBER CRIFASI
R
hythm. It’s at the heart of all things right hand (unless you’re a leftie), and maintaining it can be one of the bigger challenges for beginners and more advanced players alike. The important things to remember are consistency and patience. Using the three simple steps below, dedicate a part of
1
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO YOUR WRIST AND HAND Be sure your wrist is loose and relaxed as you play. If you’re strumming, the motion is similar to shaking water off your hand. The only place of tension should be the pinch between the thumb and the finger holding the pick. Your arm and shoulder should be relaxed. A straight-arm strum (like a window-wiper) limits your ability to play at faster tempos and can cause tension and strain in your neck, jaw, and shoulders. If you’re fingerpicking, keep the hand in a relaxed curved shape over the strings. Let the fingers do the work—your hand should remain in one spot and hover close to the strings.
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30 May 2014
REMEMBER THAT THE METRONOME IS YOUR FRIEND Set your metronome to a tempo that’s comfortable. Tap your foot in time with the beat for a few counts before playing. When you are ready, hold down a chord and strum or pick quarter notes in time with the metronome. Increase the tempo and see how well you can keep everything in sync.
your practice routine to the development of good, solid time and control of your pick, fingers, and strum. You will hear and feel the rhythmic difference almost immediately. It also helps to be in possession of a dependable time-keeper, a metronome, for instance.
Repeat this process, using down- and upstrokes for eighth and 16th notes. Should your foot tap the upbeats as well, imagine a string tied from your hand to the tip of your foot. Hand and foot should move down on the downbeat, or “one,” and up on the upbeat, or “and.”
3
INSERT RESTS AND COMBOS TO BUILD CONTROL & PRECISION Inserting rests into a rhythm forces your hand to build control and precision in the strum/ pick hand attack. To silence a chord, bring the right side of the hand down in a diagonal line across the strings; if you’re playing a single string, rest the tip of your pick (or finger) on the string(s) just played. Experiment with combinations of quarterand eighth-note strums and incorporate rests on every other beat or every other measure. Use your friend, the metronome, in this exercise and listen for what interesting grooves and familiar rhythms emerge. AG October Crifasi is a professional guitarista, songwriter, and music educator in Los Angeles. She is founder and director of the Girls Guitar School.
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THE BASICS
Wildwood Roots
Enhance your Carter-style strum patterns to add authenticity to your sound BY DAVID SURETTE
This is the classic, alternating-bass, boom-chuck sound.
CARTER-STYLE GUITAR BASICS
ENHANCING CARTER-STYLE STRUM PATTERNS
Ex. 1
Ex. 2
G
3 2 0004
& 44
B
œ
Ex. 3
G
G
3 2 0004
œ œœ œ œ
œ œœ œ
œ œœ œ œ œ
œ œœ œ
3 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
0
3
C
3
2
œ
D
x3 2 0 1 0
3 2 0004
x x0 132
œ œœ œ œ
œ œœ œ œ
œœ œœ
3 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
0 1 0 2
0
3
3
œœ # œœ œœ œ œ œ œ 0 1 0 2
œœ œ œ
2 3 2
0
2 3 2 0
0
3
Adjust the bass/strum pattern for 3/4 time. By David Surette
The “Carter-Style Basics” guides are available at
Ex. 4
AcousticGuitarU.com or, as downloadable PDF
C
32
May 2014
C
x3 2 0 1 0
and videos, at store/AcousticGuitar.com.
arter-style guitar was named for Maybelle Carter, whose influential recordings with her trio, the Carter Family, helped define country music in the 1920s and ’30s. Maybelle Carter was easily the most influential guitarist—the first “lead guitar player”—in early country. Her guitar was the driving force behind the sparse sound of the original Carter trio, whose instrumentation on any given song consisted of just guitar, autoharp, and two or three vocals. Carter used her picking-hand thumb to play bass notes while her fingers brushed or strummed chords in the treble, but her style— sometimes called “boom-chuck” or “boomchick”—has since become the default approach to flatpicked rhythm guitar in bluegrass, country, and old-time music. Much of the Carter Family repertoire is now regarded as the standard for those styles, and echoes of Maybelle Carter’s approach can be heard in the music of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Gillian Welch, Valerie June, and countless others.
Ex. 5
C
& 43 œ B
3
F
x3 2 0 1 0
œœ œœ
œœ œœ
0 1 0 2
0 1 0 2
œ
3
œœ œœ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ
œœ œœ
0 1 0 2
0 1 0 2
0 1 0 2
0 1 0 2
3
G
xx 3 21 1
œ
3
AG’s instruction guide The Fundamentals of Carter-Style Guitar outlined the basics of Maybelle Carter’s approach: patterns featuring root bass notes followed by first-position chords played entirely with downstrokes. The simplest involved a simple pattern over a G chord in which you picked the root bass note on the low E string, and then strummed the chord with three downstrokes. That bare-bones style is capable of providing a solid accompaniment on its own and might be used in any number of musical settings, especially those with a focus on a simple, sparse sound. As you continue to explore the Carter style, however, you will be looking for ways to
3 2 0004
œœ œœ
œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œœ œ
œ œœ œ œ
0 1 0 2
0 1 0 2
3 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
3
1 1 1 1 2 2
1 1 1 1 2 2 3
œ œœ œ
œ œœ œ
3 0 0 0 0
3 0 0 0
3
add more variety and complexity to the music, while retaining the essential elements and oldtime feel. In this lesson, you will add alternating bass notes and upstrokes to the strumming pattern. ALTERNATING BASS NOTES Once you’re able to play an isolated root bass note along with first-position chords, the next step is to use a second bass note for each chord, in addition to the root. For Carter style, you’ll do your best to follow two guidelines when choosing bass notes: 1. Use notes of the standard open-position chord shapes as much as possible.
Try these fingerings for the F chord and bass/strum patterns associated with them.
Ex. 6a
Ex. 6b
F x
B
œ
the details make the difference
F
x 3 4 21 1
T 3211
3 & 4
The Original Guitar Chair
œœ œœ
œœ œœ
1 1 2 3
1 1 2 3
œ 3
œœ œ
œœ œ
1 1 2
1 1 2
œ 3
œœ œ
œœ œ
1 1 2
1 1 2
1
Echoes of Maybelle Carter’s approach can be heard in the music of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Gillian Welch, Valerie June, and others.
2. Limit bass notes to just the root and fifth of each chord. Start by looking at a G chord. Basic major and minor chords are made up of just three notes—the root, third, and fifth. In an openposition G chord, the root bass note (G) is found on the sixth string. The other two notes of the chord are on the two remaining bass strings: the B note (the third of the chord) is on the fifth string at the second fret, and the D note (the fifth) is the open fourth string. If you’re following our two guidelines, you can easily find both of the notes you want—the root and the fifth—in this basic open-position G shape. In Ex. 1, play a root bass note on beat one, a D bass note on beat three, and chord strums on beats two and four. This is the classic alternating-bass, boom-chuck sound, as can be heard in most bluegrass and country music of the past 75 years and on any number of Carter Family recordings, including the classic “Can the Circle Be Unbroken.” For the sake of comparison, try the same exercise with the B bass note on beat three instead of the D (Ex. 2). This root/third alternating bass is just as useful, but it’s the root/ fifth combination that is the primary sound associated with the style. Ex. 3 puts the root/fifth alternating-bass pattern to work under the G, C, and D chords. The patterns for G and D can be played out of
œ 3
œœ œœ
œœ œœ
1 1 2 3
1 1 2 3
the basic open shapes, but the pattern for C requires an adjustment. To play the G bass note on beat three, shift your ring finger from the fifth string to the third fret of the sixth string. Then move it back into place on the fifth string for the C note on beat one of the following measure. This move will quickly become second nature, but as you’re learning, take care to remain in sync with the rhythm of the song. Try waiting until right before each bass note is to be picked to move your finger; that will allow the previous bass note to ring into the chord strum as long as possible.
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ALTERNATING BASS IN 3/4 TIME The alternating-bass approach works great for music in 4/4 time, because each 4/4 measure allows for an even balance between two bass notes (beats one and three), and two chord strums (beats two and four). The bass/strum pattern needs to be adjusted for 3/4 time, because it has one less beat in each measure. For a reliable, basic strum pattern, play the root bass note on beat one of one measure, followed by two strums. If the chord lasts for more than one measure, play the alternating bass note on the first beat of the next measure, followed again by two chord strums (Ex. 4). Listen to the Carter Family’s “The Storms Are on the Ocean” to hear a 3/4 tune that uses a similar approach. Ex. 5 shows the same 3/4 progression in the key of C. Here, you are using the “basic” F-chord shape described in “The Fundamentals of Carter-Style Guitar,” with the ring finger shifting to grab bass notes just like you’ve practiced for the C chord. Ex. 6a and 6b show two other fingerings for the F and the bass/strum patterns associated with them. AG
This lesson is excerpted from “Carter-Style Basics: Enhancing Carter-Style Strum Patterns.” David Surette is a versatile guitar and mandolin player based in South Berwick, Maine.
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WEEKLY WORKOUT
Extended Play
Use more nuanced chording to add color to your acoustic-rock sound BY ANDREW DuBROCK
E
xtended and modified chords can leave you in a state of glassy-eyed confusion, but chords with complex names like A9sus4 and Dmaj7 11 weren’t invented for that purpose. They actually can sound great in the context of acoustic rock, and learning how to build them isn’t all that difficult. These chords found their way into pop and rock in the 1960s in such songs as the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and “Taxman,” and more contemporary acoustic rockers, like John Mayer, have continued the tradition. Mayer uses them in “Daughters” and “No Such Thing.” In this Weekly Workout, you’ll learn how to build extended chords. See where you can use them in your own songs.
Week One Ex. 1
C
Ex. 2
C7
C9
Ex. 3: Intervals and Chord Tones
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
& Interval:
root 2nd
Chord tone: root
3rd
4th
3rd
6th
WEEK ONE EXTENDED CHORDS
major 3rd
B
œ
ww ww
major 3rd
3 4 2 3
& 44 www w
œ
b www w
C m9
x 2134 x
minor 7th
minor 3rd
3 3 2 3
w b www w
œ
Ex. 6
C9 x 2134 x
major 7th
œ
œ
8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th (root) (2nd) (3rd) (4th) (5th) (6th) (7th) 7th 9th 11th 13th
note as the second (only one octave higher). This Week Two gives you the ninth, 11th, and 13th as extendedEx. 7 chord possibilities—once you reach the 13th, Cx2143 maj9 all seven notes C you’ve included of9the scale. x x 21333 Many different kinds of chords can include a ninth, 11th, or 13th, and it’s still those important first-octave notes (in particular, the third and seventh) that determine whether the chord sound is major, minor, or dominant. The next few examples show how this works with a set of chords rooted on C and featuring3 the ninth (D). 3 3 Add the ninth 4 to a Cmaj7 chord,3 and you get a 2 2 Cmaj9 chord (Ex. 4). In a major-seventh chord, 3 3 it’s the major third (E) and major seventh (B) notes that give the chord its unique sound. That remains true in a major-ninth chord. Finally, try adding an extended note to a dominant-seventh chord to get its dominant version. Ex. 5 shows a ninth on top of what would normally be a C-dominant-seventh chord
B
œ
Ex. 5
Cx2143 maj9 x
& 44
œ
7th
5th
Ex. 4
Extended chords are built on top of a seventhchord foundation, so start this week by looking at the combination of four notes you use to build seventh chords: a root, third, fifth, and seventh. The scale tone above the seventh is another root, so you might suspect the possibilities end there. They don’t. There are plenty of additional options for coloring the sound of seventh chord voicings using notes from the scale’s next octave. Chords that use these expressive notes are called extended chords. You build triads (standard major and minor chords) and seventh chords by stacking thirds on top of each other (using every other note in a scale, as shown in Ex. 1). Extended chords continue this process by stacking even more thirds on top (Ex. 2). Normally, you think of a major scale as having seven notes—the eighth note of a C-major scale is the C note that falls one octave above the root. When you look at the chords in Ex. 2, you’ll notice the highest notes in the voicings are even higher than that—the C9 has a high D note; C11 includes D and F notes; and C13 includes D, F, and a high A note. To create these chords, extend the scale into a second octave—that’s where you get the extra notes to build extended chords. Once you’ve reached the eighth degree, simply continue up the scale, calling the next note the ninth, and so on. As you see in Ex. 3, the ninth is the same
5th
œœœ œœœ œ
C 13
œœœ œœœ
b œœœœ œ
b œœ œœ
& œœ œ
C 11
w b b www
minor 7th
3 3 1 3
BEGINNERS’ TIP 1 If these extensions sound complicated, go back C2 xm11 C 13 and review or familiarize yourself x 341 1 x 2 3 4 x with seventh 6 fr. 8 fr. chords and all of their types (minor seventh, major seventh, dominant seventh, minor-major seventh, diminished seventh, etc.)
w w b b ww b ww (usually w just called C7), giving w you a C-domi-
nant-ninth chord (C9). If you add an extension to a minor-seventh chord, you get its minor 6 10 version—in this case, a C-minor-ninth chord 8 9 8 (Cm9), as shown in Ex. 6. 8 Over the course of this week, practice these 8 8 shapes until you have them under your fingers and you can recognize their sound when someone else plays them. Listen to your favorite songs and see if you can pick out any ninthchord sounds in them. (If you like jazz-inflected blues, you’ll hear lots of them!) AcousticGuitar.com 35
WEEKLY WORKOUT | PLAY
WEEK TWO SMALLER SHAPES, BIGGER RIFFS Look back at Ex. 4, Ex. 5, and Ex. 6, and you’ll notice they’re all missing something—the fifth. Extended chords have so many notes that it’s difficult to include every chord tone when playing them on a guitar. For example, 13th chords have seven notes, which means it’s impossible to play every note in any one voicing on a six-string guitar. Because of this, it’s common practice to omit some notes from these chord types. BEGINNERS’ TIP 2 If you find the barred ninth chord too tough (Ex. 7), position your middle and index fingers in the same places as the diagram shows and use your ring finger on just the third string. Then, place your pinky on the third fret of the second string and dampen the first string with the underside of your pinky. This shape is easier to grab, and you don’t need that note on the first string, since it’s the fifth of the chord.
Ex. 7 shows some common shapes for major-ninth, ninth, minor-11th, and 13th chords. Look closely at these shapes and you’ll see that most of them don’t include every chord tone (the C9 is the exception). The most common tones to leave out are the fifth, any extensions beneath the highest one, and (although it may seem odd) the root. In other words, when you choose how to voice these chords, you may select just the notes you need for the chord to keep its identity. In general, that means the highest-numbered extension along with the third and seventh—the three notes that give the chord its character. Other than that, feel free to leave out anything else. Warning: Leaving out the root can be a little tricky. If you’re playing with a bassist who is playing the root, or if you’re navigating a series of chords where the root can be heard implicitly, then it’s usually safe to leave it out. At other times, particularly when there are no other instrumentalists to help define the roots, it may be best to keep the root in your voicing to help define the chord. It’s harder to find examples of these chords in the acoustic realm (unless you’re a playing jazz), but practice these shapes this week and see if you can identify them in any of your favorite tunes.
WEEK THREE LUSH, JAZZY SOUNDS This week, apply what you have learned to other genres. Extended chords often add a jazzy feel to a song, which you can hear in Ex. 36 May 2014
3 4 2 3
B
3 3 2 3
Week Two Ex. 7
Cx2143 maj9 x
& 44 B
C9
1 x2 3 4 x
C 13
w b ww ww
b b www w
w b ww w
6 8 8
10 9 8
8
8
6 fr.
3 3 3 2 3
8 fr.
E9
x 21333
7 7 7 6 7
B
# & # 44 ≈ œj.
Ex. 9
C2 xm11 341 x
3 4 2 3
6 fr.
# # # # 4 n œœœ œœœ 4 ‰ œœ œœ &
B
x 21333
ww ww
Week Three Ex. 8a
Ex. 8b
3 3 1 3
D9
7 7 7 6 7
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œ
œœ œœ œœ n œœ Œ Ó œ œ
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
7 7 7 6 7
≈ œj. 4
5
j ≈ œ .
≈ Jœ .
≈ n œJ .
E0 1maj9 3 1 00
Œ
Ó
5
5
7
7 7 7 6 7
E0 1add9 4 1 00
11 fr.
11 fr.
# # # 4 # œœœœ Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û œœœ Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û & 4 œ œ œ œ 0 0 ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ 0 ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ 0 B
11 13 11 0
11 14 11 0
Week Four
8a—a passage that uses a ninth chord to create The major-ninth chord in Ex. 9 gives you a Ex. 10 11 E 7 # 9 B2 xm11 Efound 7 Ax09sus4 Dxx (like theEx. a 16th-note fill similar sound major-seventh x 2134 xthat is its 3300 to one 14 00 happierx 214 0 214 00 in James 6 fr. 7 fr. 5 fr. 4 fr. 6 fr. Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” Brown foundation) in a two-chord vamp similar to the was so fond of the ninth chord that he instilled opening of John Mayer’s “No Such Thing.” You its sound into many of his tunes. Ex. 8b uses a may wonder how moving just one note changes single-note lick similar to one found in “I Feel this chord from Emaj9 to Eadd9. After all, it’s Good” that perfectly outlines a ninth chord. actually doubling a note from the previous
## # # n n ww œœ œœ œœ & # 44 .. œœ Û Û œœœ Û Û n œœ Û Û œœœ Û Û .. # # ww œ œ œ 8 . 007 Û Û 007 Û Û 007 Û Û 7 Û Û . 7 7
6
5
4
6
B Ex. 10
0 0 11 13 11 0
Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û 00 Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û 11 14 11 0
B2 xm11 3300
E7
7 fr.
0 214 00
6 fr.
Ax09sus4 14 00
5 fr.
D
x 214 xx
4 fr.
Week Four Ex. 11 E 7 # 9
x 2134 x
# # # 4 . œœœ Û Û œœœ Û Û œœœ Û Û œ Û Û . # # # # . nœ œœ & 4 .œ œœ œ œ œ . 007 Û Û 007 Û Û 007 Û Û 7 Û Û . 6 5 4 .7 . 7 0 5 B 7 0 Emaj9 chord and only losing one note, D . But that omitted D actually changes what you call the chord—any maj9 chord must have the major seventh in it. Minor- and dominant-ninth chords both require a seventh as well, so whenever your chord has a ninth but no seventh, remember that you’re looking at an add9 chord instead of a ninth chord. BEGINNERS’ TIP 3 Remember that you must have a seventh in your chord for it to be extended (9th, 11th, or 13th). So if you have the 9th, 11th, or 13th tones without the seventh, they’re another type of chord, whether that’s an add chord (like an add9 chord), a sixth chord (the 13th and sixth are the same notes), an add4 or sus4 chord (the 11th is the same as the fourth), or something else.
Extended chords aren’t as common in pop and rock as they are in jazz. Pop and rock songwriters often come up with these chord shapes through experimentation or by following their ears, rather than consciously seeking them out. For instance, check out Ex. 10, which is similar to John Mayer’s “Daughters.” It features a set of moving lower voices while the little finger stays planted on the third string. The A9sus4 chord in measure 2 includes both the seventh and ninth, but instead of the major third you’d expect to find in an A9 chord, this chord has a fourth in its place.
6 fr.
n n ww ww 8 7 6 7
LISTEN TO THIS Jimi Hendrix Experience ‘Purple Haze’
WEEK FOUR SHARP AND FLAT EXTENSIONS You may already have seen a chord with a flat interval in its name—the m7 5, which is also known as a “half diminished” chord. Like the fifth, you can modify chord extensions like the ninth, 11th, and 13th by adding sharps or flats. One of the most common applications of this is the 7 9. Build this chord, shown in Ex. 11, from a dominant-seventh chord with the added 9, or sharp ninth. You may recognize its distinctive, brash sound from signature Jimi Hendrix songs such as “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Lady.” In fact, it’s often called the “Hendrix chord.” And it sounds just as good on acoustic guitar.
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BEGINNERS’ TIP 4 Beware! Stringing too many extended and modified chords together often sounds like you’re trying too hard to come up with something interesting. So once you have these chords under your belt, use them sparingly. One altered or extended chord can go a long way.
Littleton, NH - May 2-3
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LISTEN TO THIS James Brown ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’
Experiment with this chord by modifying the fifth, ninth, or 11th. Raise or lower its pitch by a half-step, and you can also modify more than one extension at a time in a chord voicing. In the process, you’ll discover some pretty jazzy sounds. Have fun with your new chords! AG
Balzano, Italy - August 17-24 Carlo Aonzo Mandolin Academia
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www.flatpik.com 865-982-3808 AcousticGuitar.com 37
Porchfest goes from local New York oddity to national craze to your town
Home
By Kenny Berkowitz
ILLUSTRATION BY BRAD AMOROSINO
38 May 2014
T
he idea behind Porchfest is so simple that it’s hard to believe no one thought of it before Lesley Greene and Gretchen Hildreth. “My husband and I were sitting on our front porch one day playing ukuleles, when Gretchen walked by pushing a stroller,” says Greene, who lives in the Fall Creek neighborhood of Ithaca, New York. “She was our neighbor, so we knew each other, and we got to talking about how much we love outdoor music, and how there are so many musicians in our neighborhood that we could make a festival. “It could be a. . . a. . . . ” “A porchfest,” says Hildreth, sitting across from her at Greene’s dining table. “And it just seemed to make so much sense, and sound so easy, we agreed to be the catalysts to make it happen.” “Then every time we saw each other for the next few months, we said, ‘We really should do that. We really, really should do it,’” Greene adds. “So we did,” Hildreth says. That first Porchfest, held in the fall of 2007, started small, with 20 groups of musicians, mostly friends of the organizers, making acoustic music on their front porches. The Porchfest trend has since gone nationwide. My wife and I grabbed our bikes, strapped our four-year-old son into his seat, and pedaled to Fall Creek looking for handpainted signs. I remember watching a group of Tibetan musicians playing instruments I’d never seen before; a his-and-her duo of juggling and cello; a children’s chorus; a Senegalese kora player; two or three classic-rock cover bands; and a couple of old-time string bands. There was Dixieland jazz on Greene’s front lawn, a jam band playing to a packed backyard around the corner, and, ending the festival in style, a jam session and potluck supper in the park across the street. In the best tradition of front-porch picking, it was all completely free, and apart from a few dollars spent on photocopying, there was no money changing hands anywhere. It was amateurism in the best possible sense, even for the professionals who drew the biggest crowds, playing for the pure pleasure of making music. With sets that were an hour long, the performances were perfectly informal, the collaborations unpredictable, and the mood celebratory. And it was very family-friendly: If our son, Duffy, only wanted to listen to two songs, we listened to two songs before riding to the next house. If he wanted to dance in the street, he danced in the street. If he got bored, he rested on the grass, or ate a snack, or made a new friend.
AcousticGuitar.com 39
Lucky Old Sun perform on Cayuga Street in Ithaca
I
thaca’s Porchfest has added performers every year since then, and plans to host 120 bands at the September 14 event. As the schedule expands, so has the number of porches, the range of music, and the size of the crowds filling the neighborhood. This year, within just a few blocks, sampled a dizzying array of musical styles—country blues, hiphop, Celtic, Gypsy, Latin, folk, reggae, rock and roll, bluegrass, rockabilly, singer-songwriters, and classical brass, which was Duffy’s favorite. To help schedule the performances, which is the hardest part of the process, Greene and Hildreth added a third coordinator, Andy Adelewitz, while staying true to their original vision of having only as many rules as absolutely necessary: Start on time, stop on time, and don’t play too loudly. Meanwhile, people in other cities started organizing Porchfests of their own. According to Greene, a part-time Ithacan brought the idea to Cleveland, where it took root in 2009, followed by a like-minded festival in Belleville, Ontario. That officially made Porchfest an international phenomenon. In 2010, a visitor to Ithaca brought the concept home to Somerville, Massachusetts, where the local government was more than happy to call a public meeting to gauge interest. “We must have had 30 or 40 people show up, most of them musicians,” says Greg Jenkins, executive director of the Somerville Arts Council, which runs the event. “We already do tons of programming, including a day when artists open their studios, so Porchfest made perfect sense. And the aspect that was particularly interesting to us was that it was so decentralized, meaning we could deal with the politics of getting it approved, help set up a structure, and let it happen. That’s the beauty of
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it: it’s so decentralized. We’re not trying to control it, we’re trying to frame it, and let the community decide how they want to do it.” Instead of Ithaca’s hour-long sets, Somerville’s last for two, with Boston’s neighbor spreading its performances across the entire city rather than holding the event in a single neighborhood. I’ve lived in both places, and though their approaches to Porchfest are remarkably similar, each festival reflects the personality of own community. And that remains true, whether it’s in Napa, California (which started in 2011), Minneapolis (2012), Salt Lake City (2012), Westhaven, Tennessee (2012), Boulder (2012), Quincy, Florida (2012), Takoma Park, Washington (2013), Akron, Ohio (2013), Tucson, Arizona (2013), Buffalo, New York (2013), Hagerstown, Maryland (2013), Washington, DC (2013), or Carmel, Indiana (2014).
‘Our motto is, “Out of the garage and onto the porch.’” —Juliana Inman, Porchfest Napa
I
n Napa, a trio of Facebook friends read a post about Somerville’s first Porchfest, and approached the nonprofit Napa County Landmarks, which is dedicated to architectural preservation. Four years later, they’re fielding questions from other California towns while overseeing one of the biggest Porchfests in the country, with hundreds of musicians performing on close to 50 porches. “Our motto is, ‘Out of the garage and onto the porch,’” says Juliana Inman, who chairs Napa’s event. “That’s our attitude, that
communities should invite their musicians to come out and play for their neighbors, even if you start with just ten houses and 12 musical groups. Borrow this idea, give everybody a C place to play, and see where it takes you. Here M in Napa, lots of musicians have been able to showcase what they do, and it’s generated a lot Y of positive, warm community feeling.” CM Twenty-seven hundred miles away from that MY first conversation on Greene’s front porch, the basic structure still works. Every once in a while, CY there’s a neighbor who complains about the CMY noise, just like people occasionally do in Ithaca K or Somerville or at any other Porchfest, and Inman needs to handle the call gracefully. Organizers in Napa, who promote Porchfest through an easy-to-follow Google map, have 50 T-shirted volunteers to ease the flow of people from place to place, which is far more organization than you’ll find in Ithaca. And Napa encourages attendees to wear plenty of sunscreen, which folks don’t have to worry about here in Ithaca. But the spirit is similar, and as the movement spreads across the country, it’s likely to stay that way, with musicians relaxing at home while their audience travels from house to house. “It’s an amazing event,” says Adelewitz, whose long-departed heavy-metal band played an all-acoustic set in one of the most inspired performances I’ve seen in Ithaca. “My son had a gaggle of friends from school, they were all bouncing up and down Tioga Street, dancing and running around. Since we don’t have an allages bar in town, they don’t usually get to see music, which is one of the great things about Porchfest. It’s held during the day, so kids can come out with or without their families. They’ll run into friends, you’ll run into friends. “It’s an incredible social event, as close as this neighborhood gets to a block party.” AG
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MATT MCCLAIN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
42 May 2014
HER YEAR OF LIVING FAMOUSLY
TWO-TIME GRAMMY WINNER & CMA NEW ARTIST OF THE YEAR KACEY MUSGRAVES REFLECTS ON HER WHIRLWIND ASCENT
BY DAVID KNOWLES
AcousticGuitar.com 43
KACEY MUSGRAVES
THERE IS NO DENYING THAT KACEY MUSGRAVES’ ARROW IS POINTING UPWARD. Capping a breakout year in which the 25-yearold Texas native released her major–label debut album, Same Trailer Different Park (Mercury), and spent the summer touring with Kenny Chesney, Musgraves made the jump to bona fide headliner before raking in a slew of welldeserved honors. Last fall, the Country Music Association named her “Best New Artist,” and, at the 2014 Grammy Awards, Musgraves took home trophies for “Best Country Song” and “Best Country Album.” After growing up in the tiny town of Golden (population 600), Musgraves’ first big break came when she was chosen as a contestant on the reality TV singing competition “Nashville Star.” Though she finished in seventh place, the show put her on the map, and she soon moved to Music City and started writing songs in earnest. After a couple of years paying dues, she eventually landed a publishing deal, and made the contacts that would lead to her contract with Mercury. With its canny mixture of down-home traditionalism and what might be read as a socially progressive political stance, Same Trailer Different Park struck a chord with a younger generation of country-music fans. Still, Musgraves’ message may be a tad ahead of its time. At the CMAs, ABC-TV opted to silence her microphone during the performance of her hit, “Follow Your Arrow,” to censor out the lyric “roll up a joint.” Joint or no joint, Musgraves came away with the New Artist Award, and gave a self-assured performance that left the network looking out of step with the times. Now, as Musgraves prepares to hit the road with Alison Krauss and Willie Nelson, her success is finally starting to sink in. “It’s going to be a year of checking more things off my bucket list,” she says by phone from Milwaukee as she prepares to take the stage. I guess 2013 was a pretty good year for you. It was! A few cool things have happened. It’s been awesome.
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Looking back, what were the highlights? Oh, wow, well, it started off touring with Little Big Town, then I did the summer with Kenny [Chesney]. I got to go to Europe and the UK and played Bonnaroo—that was a huge bucketlist item for me—the Grand Ole Opry, so many things. It was the first year on the road really having my band and my bus. Just that whole thing has been awesome. I love my band and crew. They’re such great guys, great players. I’m just lucky! Yes, it has been kind of a blur. But it’s been a breeze in that I just get to be who I want to be, and make the kind of music I want to make and have creative freedom, and that’s all I could ever ask for. You seem to have an edge of defiance in your lyrics. Is that conscious? Not really. I just write things that feel good and that inspire me, which happens to be a huge array of either things I’ve experienced or someone around me has gone through. It all has to feel really real to me or I can’t sing it because it won’t be believable. So the defiance wasn’t really intentional, though I guess some people may see it that way. Whether talking about rolling up a joint, samesex relationships, or not buying into organized religion, there’s a libertarian streak to your songs. Have you caught flack for that, either at the CMAs or anywhere else? People have been really, really supportive of everything I’ve been about, especially the younger people. They’re really behind my views. And country music has been, in general, really welcoming, so it has been nice. Do you think country music has changed in that way? Would you have gotten the same reaction, say, five years ago? I do think it’s partly a generational shift, and realizing that it’s time for everyone to be considered equal. We’re all inspired by the same emotions and driven by the same feelings, no matter what we’re into. I also see it in a different way, too. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything crazy new. If you look back at Hank Williams or Willie Nelson or any of the country greats, they’ve been singing about real issues since the beginning.
Since you mention Hank and Willie, who are your biggest influences as a songwriter? I didn’t listen to a ton of radio growing up— because of my parents, really. Around the house, they always had a whole lot of Neil Young playing and a whole lot of Tom Petty and some Texas singer-songwriters, like Ray Wylie Hubbard and some female ones, too, like Jewel. So it was kind of a wide array. But then when I kind of moved out and started liking different things, I really got into John Prine. I am a huge John Prine fan. His conversational storytelling is just the epitome of songwriting to me. I’m also a huge Willie Nelson fan, and I love Alison Krauss—think she’s amazing. You’ve been writing songs for most of your life. Tell me about writing what you thought was your first really good song. It’s funny because at the time you think they’re good and then you hear them later and you’re all, “What was I thinking?” But I have this guitar teacher who really pushed me to write and cultivated that love in me for songwriting. I went to him when I was 12 and kept going until I was 16 or 17. He would give me my homework, which would be to write. He’d say, “I don’t care if it’s good, I don’t care if it’s bad, I just want you to write something and bring it back.” And he would critique it and make me a work tape. Whenever I would play him back songs he would question, he’d be like, “Why is this line here, and what were you trying to say? I think it could be more colorful.” So, it really sparked this interest with me. That’s when I started writing a lot of the songs that felt like, hey, I could be a songwriter. Then, after moving to Nashville, I wrote and wrote and wrote as much as I could, and I felt like I was getting better and better. I was figuring out what makes me tick. You had a pretty quick rise once you appeared on the reality show. Did you also have any hard times along the way? The “Nashville Star” thing wasn’t bad for me. I had just turned 18—it was my first time away from home. It was what it was, and great for certain reasons. I was living in Texas at the time and coming back and forth to Nashville when I
‘I’M IN LOVE WITH THE GUITAR THAT I HAVE NOW. I CALL HER “JANICE.” SHE’S A 1957 GIBSON J-45. SHE’S THE FIRST GUITAR THAT I PICKED UP AND PLAYED AND THOUGHT, I HAVE TO HAVE THIS.’
PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES
could afford to, and eventually about a year and a half later I decided to move there. I did little odds-and-ends jobs. I sang harmony for people for extra money, including back up for Rodney Foster for a while. One time, I dressed up for kids’ birthday parties as characters and singing and painting faces. It didn’t last too long. In terms of reality shows, they’ve influenced some notable careers—Carrie Underwood, Scotty McCreery. When you talk to young performers, do you advise them to steer clear of these shows or do you still see them as an opportunity? I don’t think that music is supposed to be about a certain panel of people judging you in front of America, but there are so many outlets today that it comes down to how good you are and
How did you feel about the ‘roll up a joint’ line being censored at the CMA’s during your performance of ‘Follow Your Arrow’? They told me that I would either have to change the lyrics or I would be censored, and I’m not changing the lyrics, so . . . .
The abiding message of ‘Follow Your Arrow’ seems to be ‘whatever makes you happy.’ Do you see yourself as a cultural relativist? I don’t know. I’m really not one to say. You know, it’s a positive message. You’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea and that’s okay. Society is always going to have an opinion or something to say about what you’re doing. At the end of the day, if it makes you happy then it shouldn’t matter.
Given that national polls show a majority of Americans favoring the legalization of pot, it seemed like a really weird choice to censor that line. I don’t really understand it. Like I said, if it’s a small compromise that I have to do in order to get the world to hear the song, then so be it.
You use an acoustic guitar on stage, in the studio, and in your videos. What kind of acoustic guitars are you using these days? I’m in love with the guitar that I have now. I call her “Janice.” She’s a 1957 Gibson J-45. She’s the first guitar that I picked up and played and thought, I have to have this. It looks like it has a
what you have to say. It comes down to your songs. If you make a good record it doesn’t matter how people found you.
AcousticGuitar.com 45
KACEY MUSGRAVES
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story to tell. It’s been through something. I got it at this place called Music City Pickers in Nashville. They always have a great selection of vintage instruments. She’s the first one I’ve ever gotten that was vintage. She’s a tobacco sunburst kind of thing, and the soundhole, somebody a long time ago took a red pen and wrote his name: Ted Keaton. Kind of makes me wonder where Ted Keaton is today. I’m in love with the guitar. It feels so good to play. Do you play a lot of guitar on your record, or did you use studio musicians? I played on “It Is What It Is.” I’m all over the record—harmonica, harmonies—but I don’t consider myself a crazy good guitar player, so I kind of let my favorite people do that. You’ve written songs for other artists. Now that you’ve broken into the business as a performer, is that something you think you’ll continue to do? Any songs that have been cut, they always start out as something that I’m writing for me. Somewhere along the line, I either feel that they work for me or they don’t, and that’s when we decide to pitch them. It just depends. Yeah, I would love to have more artists sing or cut my songs. I’ll just be writing anyway, and if something happens to work for somebody, we’ll just have to see. Another thematic thread on your record, and one you find in a lot of country music, is that you’re an ordinary, simple person. With your success, have you ever thought to yourself, am I going to be able to maintain this sense of who I am? Yeah. I think it’s important that from Day One I let people know who I am, so nothing will come as a surprise or a shock. I have people around me that really understand my goals. First and foremost, it’s the music and the songs. I think fame is kind of just a by-product of making music, and that’s never been my reason for making it. I love music and I love playing, but I do want to remain true to myself, and I think the people around me understand that. What’s next for you? Are you already planning your next album? I always have some sort of creative vein flowing, but right now I’m still kind of focused on this tour and what’s in front of my face right now. There are still a lot of songs on Same Trailer Different Park that I’m super excited about. I kind of want to stay in this moment for a while longer, but I’ve been writing a little bit here and there. You only get your first record once, so I want to make it last. AG
46 May 2014
DU 24 AU 31 MAI 2014
10e FESTIVAL DES GUITARES DU MONDE EN ABITIBI-TÉMISCAMINGUE
AcousticGuitar.com 47
A JOHN FAHEY PRIMER
THE TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY OF BLIND JOE DEATH BY DERK RICHARDSON
“T
he more I played the guitar the more I began to really love the guitar and to love virtually any kind of music that anybody played well on guitar,” John Fahey once told guitarist and interviewer Stefan Grossman. “In the music I was composing, I was trying to express my emotions, my so-called negative emotions, which were depression, anger, and so forth.” Thirteen years after his death, Fahey casts an even longer shadow over the solo fingerstyle guitar scene than he did during the more than 40 years of his recording career. The 75th anniversary of his birth—he was born on February 28, 1939, in Washington, D.C., and died on February 22, 2001, in
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Salem, Oregon—roughly coincides with the publication of a new biography, Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist, by Steve Lowenthal, and follows the late-2013 release of an hour-long documentary film, In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey. As if that were not cause enough for contemplation of the eccentric master’s legacy, consider this: When National Public Radio contributor Lars Gotrich identified “Five New Guitar Records That Would Make John Fahey Proud” for an episode of All Songs Considered, he culled from a list of more than 30 albums released in 2013 that fell into the American primitive guitar
genre. The birth of that genre is attributed to Fahey’s fingertips, eclectic musical tastes, and cosmic imagination. Of American primitive’s origins, guitarist Peter Lang, who made his recording debut on Fahey’s Takoma label in 1973 and coauthored the 1982 book 20th Century Masters of FingerStyle Guitar, has written: “The new age people call it folk; the folk people call it new age, but it is really neither. It’s transitional. The style is derived from the country blues and string-band music of the ’20s and ’30s; however, much of the music is contemporary. Fahey referred to it as ‘American primitive’ after the ‘French primitive’ painters, meaning untutored.”
FAHEY CARVED OUT A NICHE IN AMERICAN MUSIC THAT FROM THE HINDSIGHT VANTAGE POINT OF 2014 LOOKS MORE LIKE THE GRAND CANYON.
PHOTO COURTESY OF VANGUARD RECORDS
F
ahey’s personal life was plagued with troubled relationships and ill health, including three broken marriages, a battle with alcohol in the 1970s, an extended bout with Epstein-Barr syndrome in the 1980s, a descent into poverty that had him living in welfare motels and Salvation Army rooms in the early ’90s, and the diabetes and heart disease that lead to the coronary bypass surgery that he did not survive at the age of 61. But along the way, he carved out a niche in American music that from the hindsight vantage point of 2014 looks more like the Grand Canyon. Fahey grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland, began playing steel-string guitar in
his early teens, and ignited his passion for country blues, it is said, upon hearing Blind Willie Johnson’s “Praise God I’m Satisfied.” In 1958, he made his first recordings for Joe Bussard’s Fonotone label, using both his own name and the pseudonym “Blind Thomas.” He cut a few more sides in 1959, pressed 100 copies of his first self-released album, and attributed one side of the disc to his alter ego Blind Joe Death. In 1963, Fahey moved to the West Coast and studied philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and folklore at UCLA, where he wrote a master’s thesis on the music of bluesman Charley Patton. After moving back to Berkeley, he and Ed Denson, a friend from D.C., established Takoma Records as an outlet not only for Fahey’s fingerpicked and slide guitar music, but also for that of the rediscovered bluesman Bukka White and such up-and-coming acoustic stylists as Peter Lang, Leo Kottke, and Robbie Basho, as well as pianist George Winston. Eventually, Takoma’s roster expanded in scope to include such diverse artists as Michael Bloomfield, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Maria Muldaur, and Canned Heat. Over the years, on albums issued by Takoma, Vanguard, and Warner Bros., Fahey broadened his musical palette to include Indian-inspired ragas, extended improvisations, and experiments with musique concrete and electric guitar. He also took up painting and, picking up where his extraordinarily imaginative liner notes left off, wrote two books: How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life and Vampire Vultures. In 1995, with an inheritance from his father, Fahey started Revenant Records, which issued music by guitarists Derek Bailey, Jim O’Rourke, and Richard Bishop, old-time banjo master Moran Lee “Dock” Boggs, avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor, and others. By then, after more than a decade of obscurity and disappointment, Fahey found himself “rediscovered” and championed by a
new generation of experimental musicians that included Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Glenn Jones of Cul de Sac. After Fahey’s death, his influence permeated the same “freak folk” movement that obsessed over the recordings of Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Vashti Bunyan, and the Invisible String Band. One important record label, Tompkins Square, built its now-wide-ranging catalog on a cornerstone of American primitive guitar anthologies (Imaginational Anthem Volumes 1–6, Berkeley Guitar, and Beyond Berkeley Guitar). And today, the list of guitarists who fell to some degree under Fahey’s spell seems endless, including Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band veteran Gary Lucas, British virtuoso James Blackshaw, M. Ward, the late AcousticGuitar.com 49
A JOHN FAHEY PRIMER
5
ESSENTIAL
JOHN FAHEY RECORDINGS
‘THE CHALLENGE FOR ALL THOSE AMERICAN PRIMITIVE GUITARISTS TODAY IS NOT THE HOW SO MUCH AS THE WHY. TO FIND YOUR OWN VOICE IS THE CHALLENGE FOR EVERY MUSICIAN.’ —GLENN JONES
John Fahey’s music has been anthologized on compact disc several times, including such worthy collections as The Essential John Fahey (Vanguard), Leo Kottke, John Fahey & Peter Lang (Takoma), The Best of John Fahey 1959– 1977 (Takoma), The Return of the Repressed: The John Fahey Anthology (Rhino), The Best of John Fahey, Vol 2: 1964–1983 (Takoma), Sea Changes & Coelacanths: A Young Person’s Guide to John Fahey (Table of the Elements), and Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You: The Fonotone Years 1958–1965, as well as a box set, The Transcendental Waterfall: Guitar Excursions 1962–1967 (4 Men With Beards) that brings together his first six Takoma albums on 180-gram vinyl LPs. Of the more than three dozen live and studio titles released during and after his lifetime, these five should provide an overview of Fahey’s music that, like his playing, is at once panoramic and sharply focused.
The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death (Takoma, 1965) The Yellow Princess (Vanguard, 1968)
America (Takoma, 1971) Of Rivers and Religion (Warner Bros. Reprise/ Collector’s Choice Music, 1972) John Fahey and His Orchestra The Epiphany of Glenn Jones (Thirsty Ear, 1997) John Fahey and Cul de Sac
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Jack Rose (of Pelt), William Tyler (of Lambchop), Bryce Dessner (of the National and Clogs), Matt Baldwin, Adam Snider, Bill Orcutt, Chuck Johnson, Daniel Bachman, Ryley Walker, Marisa Anderson, and Chris Forsyth, among others. “Fahey has created a universe of complexity, emotion, and exquisite otherness for acoustic steel-string guitar,” Byron Coley wrote in a 1994 feature for Spin magazine. “His musical inventions match those of John Coltrane and Harry Partch for sheer transcendental American power.”
I
f anything, that power has been amplified during the ensuing 20 years. “It’s great that people are still talking about Fahey and still listening to his music,” says Glenn Jones, speaking of Fahey’s influence and legacy, and one of only a handful who ever recorded with the notoriously thorny artist. “It suggests to me that he is still having the impact on young people now that he had on me as a teenager. It’s kind of scary when I see so many goddamned guitarists out there. When they were first talking about the American primitive revival, I was kind of happy to be part of that club. It was only a half dozen people or so. Now that there are a hundred people in the club, I’m not sure I want to be part of it anymore.” The 60-year-old Jones, who produced the 2011 five-CD box set of early Fahey recordings, Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You: The Fonotone Years (1958–1965), zeroes in on the conundrum that Fahey acolytes face. “When I was coming up, there weren’t clips on YouTube or all the DVDs and books to teach one how to play like Fahey,” Jones says. “The challenge for
all those American primitive guitarists today is not the how so much as the why. To find your own voice is the challenge for every musician. Fahey can be a great catalyst, but he ought not be the final stop for anyone. The problem with Fahey is that he’s so strong, and he’s so seductive to people who have the mind to be seduced by what he’s doing, as I did, escaping that influence is as difficult as understanding what he’s doing and absorbing it. “I was well into my 30s before I felt like I was composing in anything like my own voice,” Jones continues, “where I could say, ‘This is mine, I own this,’ and it wasn’t just a pastiche of John Fahey and other influences.” Sean Smith, who produced the Beyond Berkeley Guitar collection for Tompkins Square, and has recorded several albums of acoustic fingerstyle guitar, knows whereof Glenn Jones speaks. He came to the American primitive school through his fellow guitarist Matt Baldwin and was drawn into the rabbit hole by Peter Lang’s 1973 Takoma debut, The Thing at the Nursery Room Window. “I started to see that there was this vast opportunity for expression in that music,” Smith explains, “and then I bought the Fahey album America, and that’s when it really got me. That piece ‘Mark 1:15’ totally pulled me in. That took me down the road of complete obsession with John Fahey. I got my hands on as many albums as possible, and it was the only thing I listened to and the only thing I looked for in record stores. “I listened to everything and read interviews and got a better feel of where he was coming from—the classical compositional
approaches with American blues music, all under this umbrella of absurdity and weirdness and, above all, the opportunity for a single solo instrument to be the apex of artistic expression. The fact that one instrument could embody any emotion or thought or approach, and that you could play any style all within one style, seemed like the perfect way of playing. But once I got to a high level of technical expertise in this style and started being constantly referred to as a Fahey disciple, that’s when I needed to break away. I can always look back and thank him, because that’s always going to be there, this wide-open canvas of musical possibilities, but I had to go out on my own. Now I play solo acoustic fingerstyle guitar shows only maybe once or twice a year.”
W
hat is it in Fahey’s playing that exerts such an inexorable pull on guitar players who now come after him? “It was the mystery of what he was doing,” Jones said. “His music made me feel a certain way that I wasn’t able to put into words. I kept going back to the music again and again to try to understand it, and to try to understand how it made me feel. The more I listened, the more I wanted to understand. There’s a melancholy aspect to it, but it also drives so hard and is so
FURTHER RESOURCES Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop website features an extensive interview with Fahey. guitarvideos.com/interviews/ john-fahey The Fahey Tablatures offers transcriptions of Fahey material as well as a complete discography and information about the various tunings used on each album. johnfahey.com/tablatures
hard-assed at the same time, that there’s a determination that the melancholy is not going to overwhelm you, that you can rise above it, that you are stronger than the things in life that may get you down. Also, because I listened to a lot of Hendrix and the Doors and Love and Captain Beefheart, Fahey’s was the first music that I heard that exploded the myth that to play music you needed bass and drums and keyboards and guitars and somebody to sing and somebody to write lyrics. Here was someone who was saying something profound musically with just a single instrument.” Henry Kaiser, the prolific avant-garde improvising guitarist who has worked with Richard Thompson, Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, filmmaker Werner Herzog, and many others, recently released Requia & Other Improvisations for Guitar Solo (Tzadik), an explicit nod to Fahey’s landmark 1967 Vanguard album of the same name. “Even before I started to play guitar,” Kaiser says, “what I got from years of listening to John Fahey were three things. First, there’s the way his tempos were elastic and constantly modulating; slowing down and speeding up. Try to tap your foot to one of his longer pieces, and you will see what I mean. He’d gone beyond the rhythms of Delta blues dance music and into something else entirely. Second, it
seemed to my ears and brain that Fahey thought of the sliding scale between dissonance and consonance as a timbre, rather than as harmony, and that became the way I think of harmony and melody. Finally, Fahey put a very wide range of raw emotions into his playing. Of course, he took this from country blues and 20th-century classical music, but he would squeeze a range emotional colors into a single piece. I think of this as emotional modulation— using a wider range of emotions than one would expect to find in a popular song or an art song. All of those things from Fahey made an indelible imprint on what comes out of my guitar any time I pick it up.”
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uch to Fahey’s chagrin, his innovations in the late 1960s and early ’70s became inextricably associated with the advent of new age music. The connection was not just incidental. When guitarist Will Ackerman founded Windham Hill Records in 1976, Fahey’s influence (and that of Robbie Basho) was palpable—in Ackerman’s playing, in the overlapping association with pianist George Winston, and in the general solo instrumental aesthetic. For guitarist and composer Kaki King, celebrated for her mercurial fingerstyle and fret-tapping techniques, Windham Hill’s
‘LISTENING TO SOMETHING LIKE “BLIND JOE DEATH” MAKES YOU REALIZE LESS REALLY IS MORE. THERE’S MORE EMOTION AND SUBTLETY, A BIGGER STATEMENT, WHEN YOU’RE NOT TRYING TO SAY SO MUCH.’ —KAKI KING
The Delta Slider blog offers tips on playing Fahey’s songs as well as information about the late Fahey acolyte Jack Rose. delta-slider.blogspot.com
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A JOHN FAHEY PRIMER new-age branding was problematic. “In the 1980s, my dad was really into all the Windham Hill people,” she recalls, “and that was my first exposure to the genre of solo guitar music. Not just Ackerman and Alex DeGrassi and Michael Hedges, but Bill Mize and all the others—all that was in my ears when I was really young. But becoming a child of the ’90s, I bought into this wholesale rejection of anything new age. I loved the music, but I really couldn’t get into the philosophy. Then people started to talk about Nick Drake and Leo Kottke and John Fahey, and I was like, who are these guys? That’s when I discovered these waycooler players from the ’60s who had been doing this kind of music 20 years prior to the new age stuff. “Probably the first thing I heard by Fahey was America, when I was around 11 or 12. I remember thinking at first, ‘This is very simple, this is a little too basic.’ And then I stuck with it and I realized the genius behind it. There was a minimalism to it that was profound. I had started to become quite a note nerd. I thought the more notes you played, the better the music you were making. But listening to something like Blind Joe Death makes you realize less really is more. There’s more emotion and subtlety, a bigger statement, when you’re not trying to say so much.” If someone were to come to Fahey with virgin ears today, King, 34, would advise her to “listen for those interesting intervals and changes that Fahey drew from Debussy and Satie and those French impressionists. Hear those open tunings and the way in which he sets the tone with this basic fingerpicking you think you’ve heard before until something beautiful and surprising happens.”
LISTEN
TO THIS
Leo Kottke 6- and 12-String Guitar
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‘JOHN BROUGHT REPETITION OUT OF OBSCURITY, WHERE IT HAD LANGUISHED. AND IT SUITS THE GUITAR.’ —LEO KOTTKE
Perhaps no two musicians owe more to John Fahey in the long run than guitarist Leo Kottke and pianist George Winston. Kottke released his breakthrough LP, 6- and 12-String Guitar, on Fahey’s Takoma label in 1969, and it became both his bestknown album and Takoma’s best seller, moving more than a half-million copies. Winston recorded his debut, Ballads and Blues, for Takoma in 1972, modeled his career after Fahey’s in many ways, and remained a close friend of the guitarist over the next three decades. “John gave me my whole adult life,” Kottke says. “I had sent a demo tape with four tunes to both John at Takoma and to John Hammond at Columbia. John F. had a different reaction than John H. In both cases they wrote back, which was pretty surprising, but John Fahey said maybe they would want to put something on a Takoma sampler record. Then, sometime after that, he wrote again and said, ‘What else have you got? We might be interested in doing more.’ It took about a year, but he wrote again and said if I gave him a few tunes he’d put a record out. Off I went. I remember being astounded at that, and still am.” Kottke recalls hearing Fahey’s music for the first time at an ex-girlfriend’s house in Chicago when he was playing a then-new club called the Twelfth of Never. “Her husband showed me Blind Joe Death and put the record on. The two tunes that grabbed me were ‘In Christ There Is No East or West’ and ‘Sligo River Blues.’ I loved them. The only steel-string solo guitar record that I had heard before was by Dick Rosmini, when I was in high school. It didn’t have that thing that John had. I remember reading a piece on Franz Kafka
some time ago that talked about his ‘dark radiance.’ That’s what I heard in John, especially when he would throw in a couple of major thirds. He also had a way with repetition. John brought repetition out of obscurity, where it had languished. And it suits the guitar. That’s one of the things he identified that I still hear happening. One of the others is his way with harmony, which was certainly eccentric and something that no one had really heard on a guitar. It sounded crude, rough, and very visible. It was like a burglar walked in, armed, and then just lost track of why he was there. John popped up like [he was from] another planet. It was just not anything that belonged anywhere. And he didn’t reject anything in the musical spectrum, including Nat ‘King’ Cole or Charles Ives. He synthesized all that stuff.” Kottke recalls how passionate his mentor and friend was about the namesake creature of Fahey’s music publishing company, Tortoise Music. “At one time, John was affiliated with the guru Swami Satchidananda, and he told me he wanted to show me something on the society’s grounds somewhere in L.A.,” Kottke says. “We drove to this place, which had a huge expanse of grass and trees sloping down to a pond. John said, ‘This is the meditation pool, and the monks are being harassed by the snapping turtles in the pool. They asked me to catch the snappers, because they crawl up and scare the monks sitting on the grass. I’ve caught all of them but one.’ “We walked around the pond, and John said, ‘See, there it is,’ and he pointed out this huge lunker down in the weeds. ‘I thought they needed to have at least one turtle to keep them on their toes.’
PHOTO BY BOB CLEVENGER
“Then we turned around and went back to his house. He was willing to drive through L.A. traffic to show me one turtle and then drive all the way back. Who would do that? “I miss John.” George Winston’s relationship with Fahey parallels that of Kottke’s. Winston first heard Fahey’s music—“Old Southern Medley” on The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death—through a friend, Bay Area guitarist John Creger, around 1971. (Winston would later write the liner notes for the CD reissue of that album.) “I met John maybe a year later, after a show,” Winston says, “and he said, ‘Play me something.’ I had a cassette out in the car with one or two pieces on it. John listened and turned to [Takoma Records general manager] Jon Monday and said, ‘Sign him up for three records,’ just like that. I realized John was doing everything I wanted to do—he had his own label, he was writing his own tunes, and he was making records of solo instrumentals. “I didn’t even realize it could be done.” Winston ended up recording only one album for Takoma, in 1972. Eight years later, he would sign with Windham Hill,
record the label’s best-selling Autumn, and go on to a career as a platinum-sales recording artist, immensely successful solo touring musician, and record producer in his own right, issuing more than 30 Hawaiian slack-key guitar albums on his Dancing Cat label. But he never severed his intimate connection with Fahey. “In 1977, I was out in L.A. looking for used records, like John used to do, like we all used to do,” Winston says, “and I saw a record with no cover but with writing on it that said ‘America.” I thought, I know this record, but instead of four songs, like there were on the original release, there were a lot more. I bought it for ten cents, took it home, called John, and said, ‘I’ve got this thing called America. It’s you, but it has all these other songs.’ “‘Yeah, that was a real bad time in my life,’” he said. “‘It was going to be a double record, but I had to slash the second half.’ “Many years later, around 1995, I told John that Bill Belmont and the folks at Fantasy were reissuing a lot of his things, and I asked him, ‘What if I tell them about this other half of America? Is that OK with you?’
“He said, ‘Eh, sure.’ “So those extra songs of that version came from my test pressing, which fortunately I never played other than one time to tape it. It has these long, impressionistic pieces. He’d just taken things to another level that way. “The next album, Fare Forward Voyagers, had even longer pieces.” Winston absorbed musical strategies from Fahey—“I’m a pretty tonal player, but I got from John that there’s a time to use atonality like you’re playing tonal”—but he remembers the life lessons even more. “John and I stayed in touch until the end,” Winston says. “We both had this great love of cats. In L.A., I used to go to his house, and we would ride bikes looking for cats. That was just the greatest. He didn’t have a ringer on his phone. He just had a light. I’d call, and sooner or later he’d see the light. Maybe that’s something we should all think about. He might be a couple of centuries ahead of his time on that one. Maybe his most important legacy is that he just did his thing: do your thing your way. “There’s no better example.” AG AcousticGuitar.com 53
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TALKING ’BOUT THEIR GENERATION Young, talented, daring, and even brash, a new generation of guitarists is making its mark and helping to transform the
UNDER
way the instrument is being played around the world. From flatpickers to fingerstylists, classical virtuosos to self-taught YouTube sensations, AG has put together a sampling of 30 of the best new guitarists under the age of 30. If you haven’t heard these exceptional players tackle bluegrass, Bach, or the blues, visit iTunes or YouTube and get ready to be impressed.
A roundup of 30 of the world’s best acoustic acts under the age of 30 By Mark Segal Kemp, David Knowles & Amber von Nagel
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30 UNDER 30
Courtney Hartman, 24 Loveland, Colorado The staggeringly good flatpicking guitarist for the Grammy-nominated all-female bluegrass outfit Della Mae has also toured with the Del McCoury Band, the group that took home this year’s Grammy bluegrass award.
Ed Sheeran, 23 Framlingham, England It’s hard to believe that only three years have passed since Sheeran self-released his first album. Since then, the carrot-topped singersongwriter and Martin Guitarsponsored artist has been everywhere—from opening for Taylor Swift to sitting in as a guest mentor on “The Voice.” Given that his fingerstyle playing is every bit as emotionally powerful as his introspective songwriting, it’s no wonder he has become an international sensation.
Iren Arutyunyan, 25 Yerevan, Armenia One half of Le Chic Duo, Arutyunyan received a masters in classical guitar from the University of Southern California. With deft agility on the fingerboard, it’s no wonder that she has gone on to win several guitar competitions. 56 May 2014
Will McNicol, 23 Wimborn, England Describing his tastes as eclectic, “from Gypsy jazz to post-rock,” McNicol’s fluid fingerstyle work on both the steel and the nylonstring guitar is at once soothing and uplifting. While he has released recordings of his own compositions, the 23-year-old is no stranger to Bach.
Calum Graham, 22 High Town, Canada Another young fingerstlye guitar prodigy in the Candyrat Records stable, Graham is classically trained, but has since embraced a percussive technique on original material. With four albums already under his belt, his career is on the rise.
Trevor Gordon Hall, 28 Collegeville, Pennsylvania Merging the acoustic guitar and the kalimba, which he has affixed directly on the body of his Martin OMC-16E, Hall manages to add new flavor to the ever-popular Michael Hedges guitar style.
Gabriella Quevedo, 17 Gothenburg, Sweden This young fingerstyle guitarist began playing at 12, and quickly realized she wanted to become a professional. Her intricate fingerstyle arrangements of pop and rock songs have earned her a strong following on YouTube, with her arrangement of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” clocking in at over a million views.
Janet Noguera, 19 Hidalgo, Mexico A student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Noguera’s percussive fingerstlye approach has caught the ears of such esteemed players as Kaki King and Andy McKee, with whom she recently played several sold-out shows.
Silviu Octavian Ciulei, 28 Constanta, Romania Currently earning his doctorate at Florida State University, Romanian guitarist Ciulei brings extraordinary touch to both a classical and flamenco repertoire. Along the way, he’s delighted audiences and taken first prize in an impressive number of international competitions (he was First Prize winner and Gold Medalist three times consecutively in the George Georgescu International Music Performance Competition).
Sofia Gleeson, 23 Chicago, Illinois The other half of Le Chic Duo, the left-handed Gleeson also studied at USC, and has since become an official representative of Cordoba Guitars. While her playing is certainly bolstered by Arutunyan’s, Gleeson is a standout player in her own right.
Maneli Jamal, 29 Cologne, Germany Having released his first albums on CandyRat Records, Jamal struck out on his own in 2012 with The Lamaj Movement, a collection that showcases his Iranian heritage as well as the astonishing tone and dexterity that sets him apart from other fingerstylists.
Daniel Bachman, 25 Fredericksburg, Virginia A purveyor of what he describes as “psychedelic Appalachia,” Bachman plays the steel string acoustic guitar with a frenetic energy that is both captivating and beautiful. Now a signed artist, he got his start selling cassette tapes of his American primitive live recordings. Merel Van Hoek, 20 the Hague, Netherlands Van Hoek says hearing a Tommy Emmanuel recording inspired her to learn to play fingerstyle at 14. Over the next six years, Van Hoek built a solid following of her own for her intricate guitar work and compositions. As leader of the Van Hoek Trio, she also performs chamber jazz with cellist Angelina Engels and drummer Milan Pestel.
Klara Söderberg, 21 Enskede, Sweden Guitarist and vocalist of Swedish sister duo First Aid Kit, Klara Söderberg blends mellow psychfolk fingerpicking and indie-pop sweetness to her Americana-heavy songwriting style. Since she and her sister, Johanna, began writing songs in 2007, they have gained international recognition, performing on Conan and The Late Show with David Letterman, making appearances at international music festivals such as Austin City Limits Music Festival and Berlin Festival, and recording a single with Jack White for Third Man Records.
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30 UNDER 30
Laura Marling, 23 Los Angeles, California A UK native living in LA, Laura Marling has become a superstar of the folk-music world. Her multidimensional fingerstyle, along with her gorgeously husky voice and impeccable songwriting, won her Best Female Solo Artist in the 2011 Brit Awards and multiple nominations for the Mercury Music Prize.
Parker Millsap, 20 Purcell, Oklahoma While his smoky Howlin’ Wolfinspired vocals may lure you to see Millsap play live, his guitar playing will surely keep you watching, especially when the 20-year-old pulls out his slide. His eponymous album was released in February.
Ryley Walker, 24 Chicago, Illinois This emerging psych-folk artist stunned music lovers in 2013 when he released his single “The West Wind,” a swirling, Pentangleesque fingerstyle tune that sounded like it came right out of the 1970s. Anthony da Costa, 23 New York, New York With his new beard and old thick eyeglasses, Anthony da Costa could be your therapist. He’s not. He’s just another excellent singersongwriter who puts a nuanced balance of strumming and fingerstyle picking to smart songs Loudon Wainwright III could have written—had Wainwright been a 23-year-old therapist-looking guy from Westchester.
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Sungha Jung, 17 Cheongju, South Korea You may not know who this smartdressed 17-year-old South Korean heartthrob is, but his 2 million Youtube fans are intimately familiar with the fingerstyle guitar prodigy. We’re pretty sure Justin Bieber couldn’t go guitar-a-guitar with virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel onstage—but Jung did before he even turned 13!
Newton Faulkner, 29 London, England A star in the UK, where his albums have hit No. 1 on the charts (his video to groove-heavy “Dream Catch Me” netted 4.5 million views on YouTube), Faulkner is a fingerstyle guitarist whose percussive playing leaves as much of a lasting impression as his signature dreadlocks.
Sean de Burca, 22 Royal Tunbridge Wells, England From harmonics to percussive slapping to agile fretboard dancing, this southpaw knows a thing or two about getting the most sound possible out of his guitar. On his three full-length releases on Bandcamp, the selftaught guitarist shows he isn’t afraid of taking risks.
Michael Kiwanuka, 26 London, England Kiwanuka’s Home Again was a big favorite among the Starbucks and NPR crowds in 2012, and for good reason: Not only does he sound like a combination of Nick Drake and Bill Withers, but he plays achingly beautiful fingerstyle and strummed guitar, also in the Drakeian vein.
Mariee Sioux, 29 Oakland, CA A self-taught guitarist, Mariee Sioux was inspired to learn to play at 17 while volunteering at a school for indigenous children in Patagonia. Her fluid fingerstyle compositions draw on her diverse Paiute and indigenous Mexican heritage, and her lush brand of psych-folk songwriting gets under your skin, whatever your background.
Chloe Charles, 28 Toronto, Canada Chloe Charles made some waves in 2013 with her stunning debut, Break the Balance, and her career shows no signs of slowing down. She’s a soulful singer and selftaught classical guitarist who is unafraid of taking stylistic risks, blending soul, pop, jazz, and classical music into her elegant, passionate fingerpicking style.
Jose Albela, 24 London, England Never mind that he’s worked with a wild range of pop musicians including British soul belter Adele and big beat electronic-music pioneer DJ Fatboy Slim, what’s special about Jose Albela is his hot fingerstyle playing. In 2011, Albela was one of five finalists in the UK’s Acoustic Guitarist of the Year.
Ben Beirs, 29 Haddonfield, New Jersey This just-under-the wire classical player, who turns 30 in June, graduated from Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory, where he gained attention for his stunning Bach renditions. Now a guitar teacher, Beirs’ original compositions are nothing to sneeze at either.
Dhruv Visvanath, 22 New Delhi, India Building a loyal following on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube and Facebook, this “completely self-taught” fingerstylist is not just a great guitarist, but a gifted songwriter. With a percussive flair, Visvanath could teach his own class on how to get around the need for a drummer. AcousticGuitar.com 59
30 UNDER 30 Robert Castellani, 26 Suffolk, England In a sweet bit of understatement, legendary Yes guitarist Steve Howe once said of Castellani, “Great playing.” Indeed. Castellani’s percussive acoustic style comes off like Eddie Van Halen playing Michael Hedges’ guitar. Barely into his 20s, Castellani was a finalist as Acoustic Guitarist of the Year in the UK twice in a row—in 2002 and 2003—and then again in 2011.
Sarah Jarosz, 22 Austin, Texas Jarosz’s first instrument was the mandolin, but her fingerpicking guitar work has flourished in recent years. On three charttopping bluegrass solo albums, Jarosz has shown herself to be a songwriter and player to be reckoned with (her tune “Mansinneedof,” from her 2009 debut Song Up in Her Head, earned a Grammy nomination).
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60 May 2014
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Ben Lapps, 19 Cincinnati, Ohio Not many people under 20 can boast that more than 10 million people have watched their YouTube videos (but, of course, one of his videos shows Lapps playing one-handed while bouncing a basketball before shooting a three pointer). Then again, few can demonstrate the fingerstyle chops Lapps makes look so easy. It’s no wonder his viral fame has led to a record deal and three impressive solo outings. AG
National Resonator 66
Epiphone Hummingbird 70
Great Acoustics 86
AG
TRADE Gretsch’s Jim Dandy comes in several limited-edition colors including blue and coral burst. This is the sunburst JD.
SHOPTALK Scott Baxendale
Gretsch-i-tude!
Fender’s hippest brand rolls out the latest models in its Roots Collection BY MARK SEGAL KEMP
W
hether you came of age in the 1950s with Eddie Cochran singing the “Summertime Blues” or in the 1980s watching Brian Setzer revive rockabilly in the music video for “Stray Cat Strut,” you probably remember the first time you saw a Gretsch. George Harrison played a Chet Atkins Country Gentleman model for the 73 million people who watched the Beatles invade America on The Ed Sullivan Show. Neil Young and Stephen Stills both played Gretsches on Buffalo Springfield’s 1967 youth-culture anthem “For What It’s Worth.” And in the ’90s and 2000s artists ranging from psychobilly rocker the Reverend Horton Heat to hip-hop blues band G. Love and Special Sauce have kept the Gretsch flag flying. What some guitar lovers may forget is that Gretsch also makes some pretty hip acoustic instruments. Just look at that G400JV Synchromatic blonde acoustic that
blues guitarist Jimmie Vaughan designed for Gretsch a few years ago. Pretty groovy, no? That’s why it was with much fanfare that the venerable guitar brand, once based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—and today under the Fender umbrella—unveiled the latest in its Roots Collection at the January NAMM trade show in Anaheim, California. “This is the Jim Dandy,” said Fender’s Mike Lewis, holding up a small coral-burst acoustic guitar that looks like something a kid might have found under her Christmas tree in the 1950s. With his vintage-style glasses, copious tattoos, and auto mechanic’s shirt with “Mike” emblazoned above the vest pocket, Lewis could be a member of So-Cal punk band Social Distortion, if he weren’t a vice president of product marketing for Gretsch. He strummed a few chords on the Jim Dandy and looked up: “It’s kind of a throwback to everybody’s first guitar.” Modeled on the Gretsch Rex, a parlor guitar the company produced from the
1930s to the ’50s, the Jim Dandy is an ideal starter instrument. In its day, the Rex was similarly inexpensive and sold alongside such other budget brands as Silvertones, Stellas, and Harmonys. But the Jim Dandy is not a note-for-note replica of the old Rex. “The main difference between this and the original is that [this one] has an adjustable truss rod, and it has X-bracing,” Lewis said, “so it actually sounds like a guitar.” The Jim Dandy was only one of many notable vintage-inspired instruments hanging from the Gretsch wall in the mazelike Fender showroom at NAMM. Lewis picked a little bluegrass on an updated Dixie banjo and kicked out some chunky jazz chords on a sunburst New Yorker archtop, which the company just brought back this year. “I got a hold of an old New Yorker and that’s what this is—it’s the modern New Yorker,” Lewis said. “It’s got that nice, dry sound. It’s great for writing songs. Put a pickup on it, play in a band with it. You can AcousticGuitar.com 61
NEW GEAR | AG TRADE
create all kinds of new music just because of the unique sound.” The instruments in Gretsch’s roots line are surprisingly affordable. Among the 14 new offerings, the most expensive item—a five-string resonator banjo—lists for $1,499, but sells at a street price of about $900. The New Yorker—with its solid spruce top, maple sides and back—lists for $799, but has a street price of less than $500. And the Jim Dandy, which lists for $239, comes at a ridiculously low street price of about $150. Also glimmering from the wall of Gretsches were a pair of all-metal
Broadkaster resonators, mahoganybody Boxcar Standard and Bobtail Deluxe resonators (both round-neck and square-neck versions), five new Rancher acoustics with triangular sound holes, and several models of banjos, mandolins, and ukes.
It’s kind of a throwback to everybody’s first guitar.’ —Mike Lewis of Fender
BRIEFS MARTIN’S ROOTS ARE SHOWING C.F. Martin & Co. has expanded its vintage-guitar lines with two new additions to its Authentic series (a 1937-style D-28 and 1921-style 000-28K) and two to its Retro series (the 000-18E and D-35E, which combine vintage detail with modern technology).
HOHNER LAUNCHES NEW LATIN ACOUSTICS Hohner, Inc. has announced a partnership with musician and luthier Hilario “Layo” Jimenez, known for his finely crafted Latin acoustic instruments. The H. Jimenez line includes eight bajo quintos, three nylon-string guitars, a vihuela, and a guitarron. “We are very excited about this fantastic opportunity to collaborate with a master craftsman and musician at the level of Mr. Jimenez,” Hohner product manager Rock Clouser stated in a press release. “Layo has great insight to traditional build quality, yet he adds his own player-friendly spin.”
Capo Man Milton Kyser Dead at 80
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mong the sadder news from this year’s Winter NAMM was the announcement of East Texas capo man Milton Kyser’s death on January 23, the first day of the trade show. Coincidentally, many members of the music industry who were mourning Kyser’s death had helped him celebrate his 80th birthday at the Summer NAMM in Nashville just six months earlier. In a tribute to Kyser on her Facebook page, singer-songwriter Janis Ian called him “a true Texas gentleman.” Kyser began tinkering with new ideas for making capos more than four decades ago upon retiring from Halliburton after 30 years as a metal
worker. It was a hobby that by the mid1970s produced what would become the most popular capo on the market— the quick-change capo—and lead to a $10 million a year business. At the time of his death, Kyser, who had little formal education, was selling a million capos annually in 50 countries around the globe. Ian remembered him as a generous man: “When I was broke and having tendon problems, his Kyser capos had just come out. I wrote to him saying they required too much grip strength for me, and out of nowhere, he sent me a dozen he’d adjusted personally so I could use them.”
Secretary of State Honors Taylor Guitars
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n January 20, Secretary of State John Kerry recalled his own experience as a guitar player before honoring Bob Taylor with a small-business award for corporate excellence. “This year, that award goes to a company that any serious guitar player—or any faux guitar player like me—knows well, and that is Taylor Guitars,” Kerry said. The joke got laughs from attendees in the Benjamin Franklin Room in Washington, D.C., even though it is a little-known fact that Kerry was in a pretty rocking garage band during his shaggy-haired youth. Kerry became serious when talking about Taylor’s commitment to environmentally responsible guitar making. The company, which has an ebony mill in Cameroon, has long been 62 May 2014
committed to using all of the ebony it harvests, not just the black ebony that acoustic guitar players have traditionally preferred. “Bob and Taylor Guitars have fundamentally changed the entire ebony trade,” Kerry said. “He has also gotten competitors on board, so that today guitar makers around the world are changing their definition of ‘usable’ ebony in order to help ensure that it will still be available for decades to come.” Taylor told the gathering that while his company’s “primary focus is to harvest ebony, we recognize our moral duty to act in the spirit of compassionate capitalism, to enrich the lives of our employees [in Cameroon], and to instill their ownership in the natural resources that their country offers us.”
DAISY ROCK LETS ITS ARROW FLY The world’s first female-centric guitar company celebrated the onset of 2014 with Valentine’s in mind. Although the love holiday has now come and gone, you can still pick up Daisy Rock Girl Guitars’ sparkly new Pixie Cupid Red Hot Love model for your daughter, girlfriend, wife . . . or adventurous husband or son. The Pixie Cupid comes with a heart-shaped sound hole and an angel hovering at the 12th fret. “It doesn’t get much hotter than that,” Daisy Rock founder Tish Ciravolo told AG’s David Knowles as he strummed the instrument at the January NAMM Show. “Especially when a guy plays it.”
D’ADDARIO FOUNDATION EXPANDS EDUCATIONAL REACH The non-profit D’Addario Foundation, which contributes to educational programs for underserved communities, announced three new grant recipients during Winter NAMM week: The Curtis Institute of Music, which provides scholarships to students based solely on artistic promise; the W.O. Smith/Nashville Community Music School, which offers reduced-cost music lessons; and Rock the Autism, which gives instruments to autistic children.
CHORDBUDDY MAKES ’TARS FOR TOTS AFFORDABLE Why spend money on cheap toy guitars for your pre-school kids when companies like ChordBuddy make real instruments for the four-to-eight set. The affordable ChordBuddy Jr. is a half-sized dreadnought that helps small children practice their strumming, rhythm, finger strength, and dexterity before advancing to more difficult maneuvers like forming chords. “Little kids need instant gratification and some beginning skills to help them adapt to the guitar,” ChordBuddy managing partner Travis Perry said in a company press release.
THE HARDEST WORKING GUITAR SIMON NEIL AND HIS PRO SERIES P7DC Photo: Neil Whitcher
See the entire line of Takamine guitars at takamine.com. ©2013 KMC Music, Inc. TAKAMINE ® is a trademark of KMC Music, Inc. All rights reserved.
GUITAR GURU
Q:
A: GOT A QUESTION? Uncertain about guitar care and maintenance? The ins-and-outs of guitar building? Or a topic related to your gear? Ask Acoustic Guitar’s resident Guitar Guru. Send an e-mail titled “Guitar Guru” to senior editor Mark Kemp at mark.kemp@ stringletter.com, and he’ll forward it to the expert luthier.
If AG selects your question for publication, you’ll receive a Kyser care package (with capo, strings, humidifier, and other care products).
HOW DO I DETERMINE THE VALUE OF A HIGH-END GUITAR
DANA BOURGEOIS
What exactly is the difference between a “handmade” and a “handcrafted” guitar? Furthermore, in the high-end market, what qualities should a player (not a collector) look for when evaluating the differences between, for example, a $3,500 guitar and a $7,500-plus guitar? —DAN LIECHTY, NORMAL, ILLINOIS
A
quick Google search finds that Martin, Collings, Kent Everett, and Kim Walker describe their guitars as “handmade”; Eastman, Froggy Bottom, Jeff Elliot, and yours truly are among those that use the term “handcrafted.” In practical usage, then, neither term reveals much about the method of manufacture or scale of operation. But that answer’s probably not very satisfying. Surely, how a guitar is made must have some bearing on quality, right? Unfortunately, that loaded question can’t be fully explored within the scope of this column. Perhaps, though, by riffing on your second question, some light can be shed on the first. I’ve always felt that a guitar should first be judged by its ability to make music in the hands of an accomplished player. Players, though, come in all levels of ability. I can’t play like Bryan Sutton,
but some guitars give me a shot at sounding something like him. For $3,500, then, I want a guitar that helps me sound like Sutton. Or whomever. And for $7,500, I want a guitar that helps me sound even more like Sutton. Other features, including elegant or sophisticated visual design, rare materials, individual customization, or a luthier’s skillful and painstaking use of hand tools, can add further layers of value. Like beauty, though, value is in the eye of the beholder. If non-musical features pluck your strings, you should include these in your overall assessment of value. But don’t confuse the icing with the cake. If you don’t feel qualified to fully evaluate the musical potential of a guitar, seek the opinions of the best players you know. So this kinda loops back to the handmade question. Some of the most valuable fretted instruments ever made were produced by so-called factories. A 1939 Martin D-28 or D-45, as well as a 1923 Gibson F-5 mandolin, were each built by many hands, using at least some heavy machinery and employing certain semi-automated processes. Today, these instruments have far greater market value than most other instruments of similarly beautiful design and similarly superb craftsmanship. This is because popular, influential, and culturally significant music was once made on them, and continues to be. I once wrote that I’ve never been moved to tears by an inlay, a fret job, a beautifully executed finish, or even a piece of wood. Music is an altogether different story. A guitar’s reason for being is to function as a musical instrument. It can also be an art object, but that’s a separate and, I would argue, secondary function. If you buy a guitar for playing music, make sure it provides you with enjoyable musical experiences. And that includes giving you, the player, something always to reach for, even if you’re Bryan Sutton. AG Dana Bourgeois is a master luthier and the founder of Bourgeois Guitars in Lewiston, Maine.
64 May 2014
KITBAG
Time to Fine Tune Your Sound
Using a different type of strings can be an enlightening exercise for guitarists of all styles BY JANE MILLER
G
uitar players have so many choices. You can play the C note in the third space of the staff in four or five places: first fret on the B string, fifth fret on the G string, tenth fret on the D string, 15th fret on the A string, and if reachable, the 20th fret on the low E string. A chord vocabulary buff could find 20 different places to play a Cmaj7, and that’s before we even get into adding tensions or extensions or substitutions. Then there are string choices: light, medium, heavy, bronze, silk and steel, nylon, nickel wrap, coated, wound third string or plain. Just as finding a new chord voicing can be the genesis of a new song or arrangement, trying out different strings can set a whole new tone for a weekend of quality time with your guitar. You know that inspired feeling you get when you try out—or perhaps buy—a new guitar? The inspiration that new strings can provide (sometimes even the exact same kind of strings you always use) can be a close second for about eight or ten dollars. Even if you end up going back to your old favorites, using a different set of strings can be an enlightening exercise for guitarists of all styles. Do you favor heavy-gauge strings for their projection and strength while strumming chords? It might surprise you how fast you can get around the neck while improvising a single-line solo using a set of lights instead. Are you a dedicated light-gauger? You may be inspired by the volume and power a set of mediums can pack. If you’ve always used phosphor bronze lights on your acoustic, see if an 80/20 alloy sounds different to your ears. You might notice that they feel different, too. Many jazzers prefer the warm tone and soft feel of flatwound strings on their hollow-body jazz box. If you’ve only used flatwounds, see if you like the extra edge and bite that nickelwrapped strings offer. Likewise, try flatwounds on your hollow or semi-hollow guitar and compare the tone and feel. Make a quick demo recording of each for a listening exercise. Beginners with sore fingers will appreciate the relative softness of silk and steel as
Changing your strings is just the beginning of establishing your sound, or perhaps changing up your sound to expand your tonal palette.
compared with bronze-wound on an acoustic. Even if all of those strings are the same gauge, you will hear differences as you experiment with tone and dynamics. To break in the new strings, give yourself a day or so of playing. You’ll have fun getting to know the newness of the gauge or brand or style you’ve chosen, and you’ll find that the harshness that can come with new strings will settle down after a few good jams and practice sessions. Typically, nylon-string guitars are not made to withstand the tension of steel strings. However, some can go either way. The Martin NY-16, strung with steel strings, for instance, was a guitar of choice for folk players in the 1960s. It makes for a wonderful crossover nylon-string guitar for players who do not want the width of a more traditional classical neck, but who want to play a little bossa nova on nylon strings. Be careful
here, though. It is safer to try nylon strings on, say, a parlor-size slotted headstock guitar typically strung with steel strings than it is to just go ahead and slap some steel strings on a delicate classical guitar. Check each guitar’s specs and manufacturer’s suggested string use before making any drastic changes that create added tension. Strings are a key part of your sound, and sound plays an important role in your playing. You might not realize it until something sounds wrong or uncomfortable to your ears. That distraction is just enough to throw you off your game. Your concentration and focus is no longer where it should be (on the music), but rather in figuring out how to battle the undesirable tone or balance. Of course, changing your strings is just the beginning of establishing your sound, or perhaps changing up your sound to expand your tonal palette. There are other considerations as well. For example, what kind of pickup are you using: Under saddle? Sound hole? Combination of under saddle and mic? Passive or active? Transducers behind the bridge plate under the top? And should you use a preamp? But those are questions for another column. Right now, time to go string hunting. AG Jane Miller is an associate professor of guitar at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
AcousticGuitar.com 65
NEW GEAR
HOT ROD OLD SKOOL 12
Kicking It Old Skool
Hot Rod recreates classic resonators with attention to detail—and low price tags BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
66 May 2014
N
ot long ago, my young son arrived at a family gathering and made a beeline for a resonator guitar that his uncle had recently acquired. I’m no less attracted to shiny metallic things than the typical two-year-old, but when I picked up the instrument, with its brilliant sound and easy playability, I was drawn to it for other reasons. What made things even more interesting was that the guitar was the work of a company that was not familiar to me. Hot Rod Steel Guitars is the brainchild of Lenny Gerthoffer, an expert on National and other vintage resonator guitars. After buying his
VIDEO REVIEW AT
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No frills nickel-plated brass body tastefully distressed for vintage appearance.
Action that is not too high, but not so low that it discourages slide playing.
Slotted headstock with closed gear tuners and logo featuring a 1932 Ford Coupe.
Mahogany neck and bound ebony fingerboard.
AT A GLANCE BODY Nickel-plated brass body with hand-spun Continental cone and 12th-fret neck junction. NECK Mahogany neck with slotted headstock. Ebony fretboard and maple saddle. 25-inch scale. 1.75-inch nut width. 2 3/16-inch string spacing at saddle. Closed-gear tuners.
MISC Featherweight hardshell case. Available left-handed. PRICE $949 direct as reviewed. $799 direct without aging (Classic 12 model). Add $40 for left-handed. Hot Rod Steel Guitars. Made in China and the USA. hotrodsteel.com
STRINGS D’Addario phosphor-bronze medium strings (.013–.056).
first resonator in 1990, Gerthoffer—thanks to his earnings as a real-estate broker—spent 15 years accumulating an impressive collection of more than 70 vintage Nationals, constantly swapping up as he found more pristine instruments. In 2005, he officially started a business—Vintage Nationals, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California—that specializes in the guitars. As Gerthoffer broadened Vintage Nationals to include new and budget resonators, he became familiar with the shortcomings of those imported instruments that exhibited
poor build quality and setup. Identifying a gap in the market, Gerthoffer in 2011 began designing and importing resonator guitars under the Hot Rod Steel name. Hot Rod now produces 27 different vintage-inspired models in China, as well as 12-string and baritone tricones custom-built in the United States. When the company receives the goods from the East, Gerthoffer’s team gives each instrument a thorough tweaking and setup, inside and out, resulting in such high-performance guitars as the Old Skool 12 model I received for review.
NO FRILLS Hot Rod’s Old Skool 12 is a loving tribute to the early-1930s National Style N, a roundneck guitar with a single-cone resonator, basically a plainer version of the Style O, which featured additional sandblasted decorations. While the original Style N had a nickel-plated German silver body, the Old Skool has a nickel-plated brass body, along with the traditional mahogany neck and a bound fingerboard made of ebony (uncommon for an imported resonator instrument). AcousticGuitar.com 67
NEW GEAR | AG TRADE
Like its benchmark, the Old Skool is a simply appointed, but handsome guitar with minimal ornamentation. Twin flat-cut f-holes give it a cool, old-fashioned appearance, as does the slotted headstock, whose tuners have subtle floral motifs on their plates. Having the classic perforated diamond pattern, the cone’s cover plate—with the help of the sculptural tailpiece— lends an Art Deco feel. Practically the only obvious indication that this is a new guitar is Hot Rod’s metal emblem, which graces the headstock in the form of a 1932 Ford Coupe. The review model, featuring Hot Rod’s proprietary aging treatment, appears tastefully
distressed. The nickel plating is dulled a bit and the body is slightly dented in a few strategic locations—forearm wear has been simulated on the lower left bout, the handrest, and the tailpiece revealing a hint of the brass under the nickel plating. On the headstock are the occasional nicks one would expect to find on an 80-year-old guitar. (For players wanting a flawless new instrument, Hot Rod also makes a nondistressed version for $150 less.) The craftsmanship on the Old Skool review copy is superb, thanks to a comprehensive treatment by Hot Rod luthier Hans Pukke, who, among other good things, leveled the guitar’s
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pan and cone, completed the fretwork and rolled the fretboard edges, for a played-in feel. Pukke also replaced the factory saddle with one he built from scratch, using ultra-dense, 200-year-old maple from the bed of a river in Canada. It’s uncommon to find this caliber of work and such attention to detail on an imported guitar of any type. SUPERB SOUND & PLAYABILITY With its ample C-shaped neck and unimpeachable setup, the Old Skool is a deeply satisfying instrument to play. The action on the review copy is comfortable, but not too low as to discourage slide playing. The notes ring true and clear in all regions of the fretboard, and the guitar is free from the unwanted rattling and buzzing that afflicts many resonators both vintage and new. Resonator guitars have been most closely associated with blues, bluegrass, and slide playing, and the Old Skool accommodates all of that territory. In both standard and alternate tunings—played with and without a slide, with a plectrum, or with the fingers—the guitar has a clear sound with excellent note separation, an effusion of harmonics, and a wash of reverb. And this warm-toned instrument has an exciting projection without sounding in the least bit shrill. Pioneered in the 1920s by John Dopyera, resonator-type guitars were originally built not to suit the requirements of a particular style but to be sufficiently loud in brass-heavy ensembles. So it seemed only natural that I would subject the Old Skool to music not normally associated with this type of instrument. I played jazz pianist Thelonious Monk’s great waltz “Ugly Beauty,” and found that the guitar sounded right at home in this setting—well suited for complex chords and hornlike lines alike. Purists might recoil at the notion, but I even read through some J.S. Bach arrangements and found the Old Skool’s clarity lent itself nicely to this polyphonic setting. A PERFECT GIG GUITAR Even the best vintage resonator guitars are sometimes plagued by problems with action, intonation, and ghostly noises. With its Old Skool 12, Hot Rod has corrected these problems in a smart guitar with an aged appearance, modern playability, and a positively winning sound. The instrument would be perfect for a range of musicians, from the traditional slide player who’d prefer to avoid gigging with a valuable old instrument, to the specialist in other styles who’s in search of inspiring new sounds. At under a grand, this awesome resonator is a real steal. AG
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NEW GEAR
New Hummingbird Flutters to Life
Epiphone plugs in the classic Gibson beauty at a fraction of the cost BY MARK SEGAL KEMP
Shadow ePerformer preamp and NanoFlex pickup system.
Rosewood fingerboard 24.75-inch scale. 1.68-inch width at nut.
Nickel Grover tuners.
AT A GLANCE
EPIPHONE HUMMINGBIRD BODY Square-shoulder dreadnought body with 14-fret neck. Solid spruce top. Select mahogany back and sides. Ladder bracing. Faded cherry sunburst finish. NECK Slim taper select mahogany neck. Rosewood fingerboard and bridge. 24.75-inch scale. 1.68-inch width at nut. Nickel Grover tuners. STRINGS D’Addario Phosphor 12-53 PRICE $499 list; $299 street. Made in Indonesia. Epiphone.com
70 May 2014
I
n late 2013, Keith Richards told the Wall Street Journal how he came up with the right textures for one of the Rolling Stones’ most famous riffs: the intro to “Street Fighting Man.” He’d been experimenting with open tunings, recording his ideas on the fly on an early Philips cassette machine. But he had to use an acoustic guitar, because the little stick mic on the primitive recorder couldn’t handle the volume of an electric. When he finally got the riff he wanted, he pulled in Charlie Watts, who brought along a simple high-hat and tambourine. “I had Charlie sit right next to the mic with his little kit and I kneeled on the floor next to him with my acoustic Gibson Hummingbird,” Richards said. “There we were, in front of this little box, hammering away.” He laughed. “After we listened to the playback, the sound was perfect.” It only makes sense that I would test-drive Epiphone’s new Hummingbird Pro acousticelectric by tuning it to an open G, just like Keith did, and hammering away on “Street Fighting Man.” While the tone doesn’t have the velvety warmth of the classic 1965 Gibson Hummingbird I owned as a teenager, this budget Epiphone sounds perfectly good for its highly affordable price point. And when you plug into an amp and fiddle with the settings—no need
to worry about blowing out a cheap cassette machine these days—you can make a bright racket that’s pretty close to the chiming butterscotch Telecaster Richards uses when the Stones play “Street Fighting Man” live. A COSMIC CLASSIC The Hummingbird has hovered over the rock, cosmic cowboy, alt-country, and even jazz worlds like the capricious bird it was named for since Gibson introduced it in 1960. It was the company’s first big, square-shoulder dreadnought, designed to compete with the popular D-series Martins. With its rosewood bridge and fretboard, pearl inlays, and tortoiseshell pickguard whimsically engraved with flowers, birds, and butterflies, the Hummingbird should have been a favorite among Nashville’s Nudie suit-clad country stars of the era, like Porter Waggoner or George Jones. Instead, it quickly caught the fancy of Richards, and later his American country-rock guru Gram Parsons, as well as other British rockers such as Jimmy Page and T. Rex’s Marc Bolan, who used these acoustic guitars on their gentler, folk-based songs. Remarkably, jazz-fusion pioneer John McLaughlin put a pickup in a Hummingbird to play his wailing parts with the adventurous late-’60s power trio Tony Williams Lifetime, as well as the spacey noodling he did on Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way.
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Gibson’s Epiphone division offers a remarkably high-quality Hummingbird that looks and sounds great, but won’t break your bank account.
Since then, Hummingbirds have found spots in the guitar collections of artists ranging from heartland rocker Sheryl Crow to alt-country troublemaker Ryan Adams. It’s a good thing, then, that Gibson’s Epiphone division offers a remarkably high-quality budget Hummingbird that looks and sounds great, but won’t break your bank account. The guitar—one of three acoustic-electrics released under the Pro line—has a solid spruce top; select mahogany neck, back, and sides; and a rosewood fretboard and bridge, although the woods are not of the high grade that Gibson uses for its Ferrari version. Like the Gibson classic, the Epiphone Hummingbird comes in cherry sunburst, but the yellows and reds appear to have been sprayed on and are lighter and less rich than the colors on the original. When I strum hard on a few open-position and barre chords, the Pro’s sound is bright and balanced, with good intonation and plenty of low-end heft for rock riffing, but with a clear and crisp twang that also would play well with fiddles and pedal-steel. The action at the nut is nice and low, but where the neck meets the body, it loses power and is hard to play leads. It’s likely that a new Hummingbird Pro would need a good set-up before you use it. AMPED-UP ON AVIAN NECTAR Plugged into a Fishman Loudbox 100 amp, this guitar really comes to life, the brights even brighter and the low-end deeper and meatier; yet it still has the ring and chime of an acoustic. Like many Epiphone acoustic-electrics, the Pro comes with a Shadow ePerformer preamp and NanoFlex pickup system carefully hidden away inside the sound hole, picking up the strings’ vibration just under the saddle. You can easily man the controls—volume, treble, bass, mute, and dynamics—on the upper bout, and change the CR 2032 batteries without having to reach inside the guitar. Best of all, the electronics are so unobtrusive that, from the stage, the guitar retains its vintage Hummingbird look.
While the similarities to the original Gibson are striking, there are notable differences. The Gibson’s neck is 1.72 inches wide at the nut; the Pro’s neck is slightly narrower at 1.68 inches. The Gibson has real pearl inlays; the Pro uses a plastic imitation. More significantly, the current Gibson Hummingbirds are handcrafted at the company’s Bozeman, Montana, facility, using the highest quality woods; the Epiphone Pro is manufactured in Indonesia at a fraction of the cost. While it’s important to consider the ramifications of those differences, one thing is for sure: The Epiphone Hummingbird is a fantastic bargain at around $300 compared with the Gibson’s sticker price of more than $3,000. AG
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AcousticGuitar.com 71
NEW GEAR
New Alloy Boosts String Projection
Ernie Ball’s Aluminum Bronze acoustic-guitar strings are a robust alternative to phosphor bronze and 80/20s BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
I
t’s generally less thrilling to audition a new set of strings or a small accessory than it is to spend time with a stunning new guitar. At least, that was my outlook when I opened a parcel containing two sets of Ernie Ball Aluminum Bronze strings. But these are not standard wires, and I was delighted to find that they added new sonic depths to the guitars I strung them up with. AN ALTERNATIVE ALLOY A few years ago, the specialists at Ernie Ball set out to create a brand-new string, an alternative to phosphor bronze and 80/20 (a blend of copper with zinc or tin). After experimenting with 150 different alloys, and getting feedback from masterly guitarists, including fingerstylist Andy McKee, the company found the magic of aluminum bronze, the same material used by heavy industry and the US military on its ships and aircrafts. This alloy is unfriendly to corrosion. Even more importantly, it sounds at once vibrant and warm. IMPROVED PERFORMANCE To test the performance of the strings, I first used a custom Martin OM with medium-light phosphor-bronze strings. After replacing those with the mediumlight Aluminum Bronze (12 16 24 32 44 54), I was pleased to find the strings required less stretching than others to maintain their pitch.
72 May 2014
With the guitar tuned up, I strummed a handful of open chords. The strings didn’t have the typical bright, new-string sound, but rather something a little warmer. What’s more, the guitar seemed to have a slightly augmented projection. Playing through some scales across all six strings revealed them to sound similarly enhanced across the sonic spectrum, from a tauter bass to punchier mids to clearer highs. When I fingerpicked the freshly strung guitar in the Travis style, it seemed to take a little less effort than normal, and all of the notes rang together with great clarity, in standard tuning as well as DADGAD and open-C. Chord voicings containing close intervals seemed a little clearer than normal, with each member discernable. I tried the other medium-light Aluminum Bronze set on my “beater”— an old budget 16-inch Gibson L-50 archtop that has not been babied like the Martin. Strumming some chordal fragments in the Freddie Green style found the guitar to have a more robust presence than normal, as it did when treated to some single-note swing and bebop lines. SATISFYING RESULTS With its Aluminum Bronze line, Ernie Ball has called a new alloy into service with very satisfying musical results. The strings will add subtle enhancements to the tone and projection of any acoustic guitar.
The one small complaint I have is that these strings are lacking the color-coded ball ends I’ve grown accustomed to. However, I do appreciate that Aluminum Bronze strings each come in packaging that the company says is designed to reduce waste. One thing is certain: the strings sound great. AG
AT A GLANCE
ALUMINUM BRONZE COMPOSITION Military-grade aluminum-bronze alloy. GAUGES Medium (13 17 26 34 46 56), Medium Light (12 16 24 [wound] 32 44 54), Light (11 15 22 [wound] 30 42 52), Extra Light (10 14 20 [wound] 28 40 50) PRICE $7.99. Ernie Ball Strings and Accessories. Made in the USA Ernieball.com.
Beck 76
Books 80
Events 81
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Yvette Landry p 81 AcousticGuitar.com 73
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Add ten popular rock rhythms (and their variations) to your strumming vocabulary. n
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74 May 2014
Acoustic Rock Essentials ALL THE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES TO UNPLUG YOUR ROCK AND ROLL Download the video lessons store.AcousticGuitar.com.
PLAYLIST
Moving Beyond American Primitive Virtuoso offers guitar analog to eccentric Van Dyke Parks-style Americana
Steve Dawson Rattlesnake Cage Black Hen
BY PAT MORAN
W
hen country-folk contrarian Townes Van Zandt quipped that there are only two kinds of songs, the blues and zip-a-dee-doo-dah, he could have been talking about Rattlesnake Cage, wherein fretboard virtuoso Steve Dawson weaves those two skeins— songs of joy and sorrow—into single slipknot, shape-shifting instrumentals. With flavorful titles like “Flophouse Oratory,” the rust-colored patina of turnof-the-20th-century murder ballads and fly-blown medicine shows clings to Dawson’s mischievous compositions. On “Blind Thomas at the Crime Scene,” Dawson
alludes to John Fahey’s nom de plume while summoning Fahey’s contrapuntal fingerpicking on a Larrivee jumbo sixstring. Attacking and cajoling “The Flagpole Skater Laughs from Above” with his Taylor 12-string, Dawson merges the percussive classicism of Leo Kottke with the rasping bottleneck slide of Blind Willie Johnson. Dawson folds fingerpicking and steelstring techniques into tempo-jumping, meditative pieces that ping-pong between silken and guttural tones. Yet this set is not Baroque or overstuffed. Instead, Dawson delights in American primitive
stylings, and he doesn’t stop with nods to Fahey, Kottke, Ry Cooder, and Mississippi John Hurt. He also recorded these unadorned, yet detailed, tracks on a vintage tube mic discovered in an old Detroit theater. Adding a Weissenborn and a National Tricone to his toolkit, Dawson applies jazz elasticity, ragtime minstrelsy, and the proto-C&W whine of Hawaiian steel guitar to folk, blues, and bluegrass forms. The result is a guitar analog to the eccentric Americana of Van Dyke Parks—a pensive, fluid, blind-siding, and melodic song cycle that slides along a whiplash curve. AcousticGuitar.com 75
PLAYLIST | MIXED MEDIA
Guitar Strings
with Nylon or Super Carbon 101 Trebles Guitar Guitar Strings Strings Guitar Strings with with Nylon Nylon oror Super Super Carbon Carbon 101 101 Trebles Trebles Delivers: Guitar Strings
with Nylon or Super Carbon 101 Trebles “Finally, a string that has it all, “Luthier strings have Outstanding Tone outstanding tone, Superb actionNylon or Delivers: Delivers: outstanding tone and long life” with Super CarbonRich 101 Trebles Delivers: “Finally, “Finally, a string a“Finally, string that that has has it all, it all, “Luthier “Luthier strings strings have have stringlife” that has it all, “Luthier strings have and along Precision Tuning Outstanding Outstanding Rich Rich Tone Tone outstanding Outstanding Rich Tone Paco delife” Lucia outstanding tone,action Superb tone andtone long life” outstanding outstanding tone, tone, Superb Superb actionaction outstanding outstanding tone and and long long life” Delivers: Jorge Morel and long life” “Finally,and aand string that has it all, “Luthier strings have Precision Tuning long long life” life” Superb Action Paco dePaco Lucia Precision Precision Tuning Tuning Paco dede Lucia Lucia Outstanding Rich Tone outstanding tone, SuperbJorge actionMorel outstanding tone and long life” Superb Action Jorge Jorge Morel Morel Long Life Superb SuperbAction Action and long life” Precision Tuning
Paco de Lucia
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Perfect Balance Long Long Life Life Perfect Balance Superb Action Perfect Perfect Balance Balance Luthier Music Corp. Manufacturer ofhigh Luthier high quality strings Long Life Luthier Music Corp. Manufacturer of Luthier quality strings 44thststNYC NYC 10036 • T: •
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[email protected] • www.luthiermusic.com Perfect Balance Luthier Luthier Music Music Corp. Corp. Manufacturer Manufacturer of of Luthier Luthier high high quality quality strings strings Jorge Morel
341341 W.W. 44th 44th st NYC st NYC 10036 10036 • T: • T: 212-397-6038 212-397-6038 •
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[email protected] • www.luthiermusic.com • www.luthiermusic.com Luthier Music Corp. Manufacturer of Luthier high quality strings 341 W. 44th st NYC 10036 • T: 212-397-6038 •
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Beck 3/5/13 3:51 PM
Morning Phase Capitol
Beck builds castles in the sand on a sturdy structure of acoustics
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With 2002’s Sea Change, Beck transcended his junk-culture-trawling hipster image. Yet, that thumbnail sketch of jaunty, crate-digging cool stays stubbornly stamped on our cultural cortex, due to his foundation-shaking, antifolk/hip-hop calling card, “Loser.” The specter of “Loser” reappeared in 2009, when it was rumored that Beck was working on two projects: a return to the ramshackle, genre-jump ing of 1997’s Odelay, and a stripped-down acoustic-guitar album. Morning Phase, Beck’s first album since his move from DGC/Interscope to Capitol, is neither of those. This album dips into the somber, chamberpop well of game-changer Sea Change, but digs deeper into that disc’s trove of sun-dappled psychedelia, ’70s Laurel Canyon songcraft, and cosmic-cowboy country. The uneasy orchestral sweep of Scott Walker and the hazy malaise of Love’s Forever Changes are touchstones, and like those forebears, Morning Phase builds its castles in the sand on a sturdy structure of acoustic guitars. Beck’s guitar ranges from delicately strummed folk-jangle to dulcet fingerpicking to the raspy, string-rattling honky-tonk of the Bakersfield Sound-by-way-of the Byrds. His fretwork lays the foundation for layers of skipa-beat percussion, booming bass piano chords, distant cantering banjo, shimmering mandolin, cascading Leslie-fied guitar, and orchestral washes arranged by Beck’s father, David Campbell. Grounded in an Americana transformed by the Golden State, Morning Phase is gorgeous, grandiose and haunted. It is Beck’s “California Dreamin’,” a vision of Americans perched at the edge of the continent with nowhere else to go. —PM
76 May 2014
CONNECT WITH US
Blue Highway The Game Rounder Fiery progressive bluegrass band wins another hand One of the hottest acts on the progressive bluegrass circuit, Blue Highway has released a string of consistently strong studio albums since 1995, and continues to dazzle with its powerful live performances at festivals and other venues. The group’s tenth recording kicks into gear on a lone, scratchy dobro string that sounds like an engine cranking up, with multi-instrumentalist Shawn Lane putting his finest highlonesome moan to the title track—a classic, edgy gambler’s lament. The song’s an apt metaphor for a group that’s been taking risks and winning hands for two decades with an original lineup—Lane (vocals, mandolin, fiddle), along with Tim Stafford (vocals, guitar), Jason Burleson (banjo, mandolin, guitar) Rob Ickes (dobro), and Wayne Taylor (vocals, bass)— that’s remained intact. Lane is the ace songwriter and storyteller of the bunch, and his sweet, wistful “All the Things You Do,” Appalachian-infused “Where Jasmine Grows,” and blue-collar ode “Just to Have a Job” are among the highlights here. Vocally and instrumentally, the group is in perfect lock-step on “Talk is Cheap,” with its sweet high vocal harmonies and full-throttle solo turns on guitar, banjo, mandolin, and dobro. The Game closes with gorgeous shapenote harmonies on the traditional “Hick’s Farewell,” the only non-original on the set. The somber, bittersweet finale is perhaps a tribute to recently deceased Doc Watson, who sang this song so well. —MARK SEGAL KEMP
NEW & NOTEWORTHY Look for these other notable releases:
Andy Revkin & Friends A Very Fine Line veryfinelines.com
Claudia Schmidt New Whirled Order Red House
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On The Campus of Maryville College in Maryville, TN - 17 mi. So. of Knoxville, TN. Old Time and Traditional Week - June 8-14: Flatpicking: Dan Crary, Roy Curry, Jim Hurst, Roberto Della Veccia and Steve Kaufman, Fingerpicking: Clive Carrol, Pat Kirtley, Todd Hallawell; Old Time Fiddle: Brad Leftwich and Stacy Phillips; Old Time Singing: Evie Laden; Mt. Dulcimer: Joe Collins; Old Time Banjo: Jim Pankey; Hammer Dulcimer: Linda Thomas Bluegrass Week - June 15-21: Flatpicking: Mitch Corbin, Mark Cosgrove, Chris Jones, Mike Dowling, David Keenan, Chris Newman, Wayne Taylor, Doug Yeomans; Mandolin: Carlo Aonzo, Steve Smith, Bruce Graybill, Barry Mitterhoff, Roland White, Radim Zenkl; Bluegrass Banjo: Eddie Collins, Gary Davis, Murphy Henry, Ned Luberecki; Dobro ™: Stacy Phillips, Jimmy Heffernan; Bass: Rusty Holloway, Missy Raines, and Steve Roy; Songwriting: Kate Campbell; Bluegrass Fiddle: Becky Buller, Josh Goforth, Annie Staninec; Bluegrass Singing Class: Sally Jones and Don Rigsby; Jam Instructors On Staff
Your $850.00 Paid Registration Includes: All Classes, Housing and Meals plus ~ Organized Morning and Afternoon “All Level” Jams Highly Focused Afternoon Instructor Sessions Ensemble Work, Band Scrambles, Admission to All The Nightly Concerts Open Mic Time and Nightly Jams Voted "Best Camps" Airport Shuttle Service from Knoxville Airport (TYS) Plus much, much more. Call for info. Each Year Since 2002
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AcousticGuitar.com 77
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Eliza Gilkyson The Nocturne Diaries Red House Singer-songwriter ventures into heart of darkness Like fragments of a dream, uneasy images bubble to the surface in The Nocturne Diaries, Eliza Gilkyson’s journey into the heart of darkness: The cold hardware that divides us in “No Tomorrow,” swirling floodwaters in “The Ark,” and a locked gun case with a key in plain sight in “An American Boy.” Delivered in Gilkyson’s dusky alto, these thumbnail sketches are as pensive and restless as a sleepless night, but the overriding message is one of compassion. Gilkyson sees salvation in the love of those we hold close. To that end, The Nocturne Diaries is something of a family affair. Many of the tunes were written on a 1956 Martin D-21 that belonged to her father, singer/songwriter Terry Gilkyson. Eliza’s son, Cisco Ryder, provides background vocals, loops, and percussion throughout this set, and “Fast Freight,” a Kingston Trio chestnut penned by her father, is transformed by Gilkyson’s percussive 1932 Gibson L-00 into chugging folk-noir, as black as a locomotive stack. Not all is moody and relentless. The sunny two-step “Eliza Jane” rides Gilkyson’s shuffling 1965 Gibson J-45 to a cantering banjo hoe-down with sawing fiddle and slipknot mandolin. “The Ark” views the Biblical flood through today’s prism of climate change, but tempers angst with Gilkyson’s bright, brisk Celtic guitar, backed by a Middle Eastern combo of jangling santour, thundering daf, and slippery oud. —PM
NEW & NOTEWORTHY Look for this other notable release:
78 May 2014
Rodney Crowell Tarpaper Sky New West
Each 6" x 9" book includes complete lyrics, chord symbols, guitar chord diagrams, and short melody cue. Folsom Prison Blues Melody:
Words and Music by John R. Cash
I
Intro Verse 1
B7
E
hear
the
train
a com
-
in’;
(Capo 1st fret)
B7
E
E
2 13 4
2 31
A
123
I hear the train a-comin’; It’s rollin’ ’round the bend, And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when. A
I’m stuck at Folsom Prison E
And time keeps draggin’ on. B7
But that train keeps rollin’ E
On down to San An-tone. Verse 2
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E
When I was just a baby
Steve Miller 00701146 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.99 Modern Worship 00701801 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $16.99 Motown 00699734 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $16.95 The 1950s 00699922 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.99 The 1980s 00700551 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $16.99 Nirvana 00699762 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $16.99 Roy Orbison 00699752 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.95 Peter, Paul & Mary 00103013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.99 Tom Petty 00699883 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15.99 Pop/Rock 00699538 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.95 Praise & Worship 00699634 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.99 Elvis Presley 00699633 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.95 Queen 00702395 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.99 Red Hot Chili Peppers 00699710 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $16.95 Rock Ballads 00701034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.99 Rock ‘n’ Roll 00699535 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.95 Bob Seger 00701147 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.99 Sting 00699921 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.99 Taylor Swift 00701799 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15.99 Three Chord Songs 00699720 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.95 Top 100 Hymns Guitar Songbook 75718017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12.99 Ultimate-Guitar 00702617 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $24.99 Wedding Songs 00701005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.99 Hank Williams 00700607 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.99 Neil Young – Decade 00700464 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14.99 My mama told me, “Son, Always be a good boy;
Don’t ever play with guns.” A
But I shot a man in Reno
© 1956 (Renewed 1984) HOUSE OF CASH, INC. (BMI)/Administered by BUG MUSIC All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
52
GUITAR CHORD SONGBOOK
BOOKS
This Old Guitar
Book traces Martin from its earliest years as a copy of a German luthier’s style to its status today as America’s iconic instrument BY MARK SEGAL KEMP
W Inventing the American Guitar: The Pre-Civil War Innovations of C.F. Martin and His Contemporaries Robert Shaw and Peter Szego, editors Hal Leonard
PHOTOS BY JOHN STERLING RUTH © BY C.F. MARTIN & CO., INC., FROM INVENTING THE AMERICAN GUITAR PUBLISHED BY HAL LEONARD BOOKS
80 May 2014
hen he arrived in New York City in the 1830s, German immigrant Christian Friedrich Martin began making guitars based on the instruments of Viennese luthier Johann Stauffer, under whom Martin had apprenticed as a teenager. With its curved, violin-like headstock, and moustache-style bridge with little teardrop hearts on each side, Martin’s first American guitars looked very different from the X-braced flattop instruments with slotted headstocks that the company would become famous for within a mere two decades. A handsome recent coffeetable book, Inventing the American Guitar: The Pre-Civil War Innovations of C.F. Martin and his Contemporaries, traces the dramatic evolution of the acoustic guitar in the United States. With meticulous research of available Martin documents and studies of
dozens of actual vintage guitars— most of which were unknown before the start of the project— editors Robert Shaw, Peter Szego, and an impressive team of experts have pieced together an exhaustive history of the development of the American guitar. Perhaps most excitingly, the book uncovers a crucial missing link in the evolution of Martin guitars from Stauffer-style European instruments into the modern flattop. That link is the early Cadiz-style Spanish guitar, popular on New York stages during Martin’s early years as a guitar maker in the United States, and most likely seen and heard by the pioneering luthier. Not only does Inventing the American Guitar take up where Philip Gura’s more biographical 2003 book, C.F. Martin and His Guitars: 1796-1873, leaves off, but it assembles five guitar
scholars—Richard Johnston, David Gansz, David LaPlante, James Westbrook, and Arian Sheets—to contribute essays on particular periods in Martin’s development. Best of all, you can see the guitar’s dramatic transformation in hundreds of photos and illustrations across these 308 pages, including full visual profiles of 45 instruments. “This project has yielded a more substantial understanding of the early history of the American guitar that would have been impossible to achieve without the ongoing collaboration of the contributors,” Szego writes in the preface. “While each had a unique area of knowledge, many of the insights that resulted in this book emerged out of a continuous dialogue through two conferences, ongoing correspondence, and nonstop sharing of material, discoveries, and insights.” AG
EVENTS
Run Boy Run
May Tucson Folk Festival Tucson, Arizona MAY 3–4 tkma.org
Thinking of spending some time in the desert this spring? The Tucson Folk Festival may be an event to add to your calendar. This year’s headliners are the Sonoran Dogs and Run Boy Run, perfect for music fans looking for a bluegrass fix in the Southwest. Plus, the festival provides ample time for you to share your own music, including the open-mic-style Acoustic Showcase and Ballad Tree songwriting circle.
Holmfirth Festival of Folk Holmfirth, England MAY 9–11 holmfirthfestivaloffolk.co.uk
If you find yourself exploring the English countryside, you may want to head out to Yorkshire for the Holmfirth Festival of Folk. It has all the charm of a small-town festival (including decorations handcrocheted by locals) with tons of acoustic talent. This year’s lineup includes Martin Simpson, Fay Hield, Tom Attah, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, and a slew of other
great acts. The theme highlights French music and dance, since the Tour de France is coming through Holmfirth in July.
River Roots Music and Folk Arts Festival Madison, Indiana MAY 16–17 riverroots.org
If you’re into great folk music, craft brews, and gourmet food trucks, the River Roots Music and Folk Arts Festival has you covered. This year’s music lineup will include Wild Ponies, Jennie Devoe, Shiny and the Spoon, Yvette Landry and Richard Comeaux, and more. The beer and food lineup looks mighty tempting, too.
Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival Cleveland, Ohio
MAY 30–JUNE 1 classicalguitarsint.com/guitar_festival The Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival—North America’s oldest of its kind—hosts a wealth of incredible classical-guitar talent every year, along with workshops, master classes, lectures, exhibi-
Petra Polácková
tions, and more. This year features performances and master classes by Petra Polácková, Nigel North, Matteo Mela and Lorenzo Micheli, Robert Gruca, and Jason Vieaux. And for those interested in guitar making, luthiers Cyndy Burton and Jeffrey R. Elliott will be giving a free lecture on their craft and the state of their art. AcousticGuitar.com 81
M A R K E T P L AC E
ACOUSTIC CONNECTIONS.
Microphones and pickups for guitars, violins, mandolins, banjos, and other stringed instruments. Brands include: MiniFlex 2Mic Soundhole Microphones; GHS Soundhole mics; McIntyre, L.R. Baggs, and B-Band pickups; Elixir strings and Homepsun Tapes. International orders are welcome. On the Web at www.acousticon.com
KATHY WINGERT AcousticConnections.indd 1
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82 May 2014
M A R K E T P L AC E
WILLIAM“GRIT”LASKIN Guitarmaker since 1971
• Originator of the “Armrest” body-bevel • Co-originator of the Sideport Soundhole • Original AwardWinning Inlay Art
(416) 536-2135 www.williamlaskin.com
SHOPS
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.COM PLAYER TIPS. GEAR REVIEWS. BREAKING NEWS.
AcousticGuitar.com 83
MARK KNOPFLER | SUZANNE VEGA | JOHN HAMMOND | 2014 SUMMER EVENTS GUIDE
SONGS TO PLAY SPIRIT
‘NATURE’S WAY’
J.S. BACH APRIL 2014
Music, Musicians, & Instruments That Matter. Don’t miss a single story. AcousticGuitar.com/Subscribe
‘BOURRÉE’ IN E MINOR
LESSONS TO LEARN BASICS SMART CHORDS THAT CAN EASE YOUR PLAYING
WEEKLY WORKOUT
HOW TO SOLO OVER MINOR CHORDS
ROADSIDE AMERICANA THE BOB DYLAN WALKING TOUR & 49 OTHER MUST-SEE PLACES
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25
TH
ANNIVE RSARY
YEAR
ADVERTISER INDEX Acoustic Guitar Guides, store.acousticguitar.com . . . . . . . 78, 84
Hal Leonard Corporation, halleonard.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12, 79
Pierre Bensusan, PierreBensusan.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Acoustic Guitar Subscribe, acousticguitar.com/subscribe . . . . 72
Hill Guitar Company, hillguitar.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
RainSong Graphite Guitars, rainsong.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Alvarez Guitars, alvarezguitars.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Homespun, homespun.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Bourgeois Guitars, pantheonguitars.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Huss & Dalton Guitar Company, hussanddalton.com . . . . . . . . 69
Bread & Roses, breadandroses.org. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Johnson String Instrument, johnsonstring.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Breezy Ridge Instruments, Ltd., jpstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Juststrings.com, juststrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33, 78
California Coast Music Camp, musiccamp.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Steven Kaufman Enterprises, Inc., flatpik.com . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 77
Elixir Strings, elixirstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Kyser Musical Products, kysermusical.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Shubb Capos, shubb.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Elliott Capos, elliottcapos.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Levy’s Leathers, levysleathers.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Soloette, soloette.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Ernie Ball Music Man, ernieball.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
L.R. Baggs, lrbaggs.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Stewart-MacDonald’s Guitar Supply, stewmac.com . . . . . . . . . 28
Festival des Guitares du Monde, fgmat.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Luthier Music Corp., luthiermusic.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
G7th, Ltd., g7th.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Mandolin Bros., Ltd., mandoweb.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Gibson, gibson.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
C.F. Martin & Co., Inc., martinguitar.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Guitar Center, guitarcenter.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Masecraft Supply Co., masecraftsupply.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Guitar Foundation Of America, guitarfoundation.org . . . . . . . . . 14
McPherson Guitars, mcphersonguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Guitar Workshop Plus, guitarworkshopplus.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Music Emporium, themusicemporium.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Taylor, taylorguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Guitars in the Classroom, guitarsintheclassroom.org . . . . . . . . 30
Paul Reed Smith, prsguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
USA Songwriting Competition, songwriting.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Original Guitar Chair, originalguitarchair.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Red House Records, redhouserecords.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Saga Musical Instruments, sagamusic.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Sheppard Guitars, sheppardguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
The Swannanoa Gathering, swangathering.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Sweetwater Sound, sweetwater.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Takamine, takamine.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
84 May 2014
Tanglewood Guitar Co., tanglewoodguitars.co.uk.com . . . . . . . 60
GREAT ACOUSTICS
Wealth of Detail
Early Martin Renaissance-style model shows clash of influences, from European to Spanish
L
avishly decorated guitars such as this one suggest that 20 years after [C.F. Martin’s] arrival in New York, the reputation of Martin guitars was attracting extremely wealthy customers who wanted far more than just a high-quality musical instrument. Although other guitar manufacturers would successfully compete with the Martin Company decades later, in the years leading up to the Civil War, Martin was clearly the most prestigious brand of what was emerging as an American style of guitar distinctly different from the instruments made in other countries. Pearl bordering comprised of repeated small shapes was something Martin used
quite often in soundhole rosettes, but it is highly unusual to see that same technique also applied to the perimeter of the guitar’s top, especially in the [company’s] post-New York years. The wealth of detail lavished on this instrument is remarkable, but how it was decorated is even more telling. There are no ornamental flowing vines, flowers, or butterflies; instead, all the pearl, ivory, and marquetry is adornment of the guitar’s form and structure. While the guitar is clearly of presentation grade and expense, it is not known exactly when it was constructed or for what purpose.
While unusual, the shape of this guitar is not unique. Other, plainer examples that are also size 1 have survived, as have smaller versions with the same outline in size 2. The top has the same hybrid of fan and X-pattern bracing as [a] guitar made for Madame de Goni [prior to 1843], and the back bracing shows similar Spanish influence on what is otherwise a very nonSpanish Martin guitar. Excerpted from Inventing the American Guitar: The Pre-Civil War Innovations of C.F. Martin and his Contemporaries, edited by Robert Shaw & Peter Szego, and published by Hal Leonard Books. See our review of the book on page 80.
JOHN STERLING RUTH © BY C.F. MARTIN & CO., INC., FROM INVENTING THE AMERICAN GUITAR PUBLISHED BY HAL LEONARD BOOKS.
Acoustic Guitar (ISSN 1049-9261) is published monthly by String Letter Publishing, Inc., 501 Canal Blvd., Suite J, Richmond, CA 94804. Periodical postage paid at Richmond, CA 94804 and additional mailing offices. Printed in USA. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Pitney Bowes International Mail Services, P.O. Box 32229, Hartford, CT 06150-2229. Postmaster: Please make changes online at AcousticGuitar.com or send to Acoustic Guitar, String Letter Publishing, Inc., PO Box 3500, Big Sandy, TX 75755.
86 May 2014
R H R where roots meet the here and now
ELIZA GILKYSON
THE THE NOCTURNE NOCTURNE DIARIES DIARIES
The first new album in three years from this dynamic member of the Austin Music Hall of Fame. Musically rich, lyrically thought-provoking and socially conscientious, The Nocturne Diaries is a journey through the dark night of the soul that ends at the light of dawn with a sense of gratitude, renewed commitment and a stubborn little ray of hope. Guest appearance by RAY BONNEVILLE. “Gilkyson doesn’t pull any punches. She graces the music with her lush and passionate voice; a dark and lonely sound, hope and satisfaction, and edgy lyrics with piercing imagery round out the whole. whole.” — NEW YORK TIMES
JOHN GORKA
BRIGHT BRIGHT SIDE SIDE OF OF DOWN DOWN
The first release in over four years from the acclaimed songwriter widely regarded as “one of contemporary folk music’s leading talents” (Vintage Guitar), Bright Side of Down marks a high point in a discography that has earned him generations of devoted fans! All 12 songs are personal, universal, immediate and timeless – a quality John has made his signature throughout his career. With guest vocals by LUCY KAPLANSKY, ELIZA GILKYSON, CLAUDIA SCHMIDT, AMILIA K. SPICER, ANTJE DUVEKOT and MICHAEL JOHNSON! “one of the supreme singer/songwriters on the modern folk scene, few write songs with such style, grace and emotive power.” — ATL T ANTIC TL ANT CITY TY PRESS
CLAUDIA SCHMIDT NEW NEW WHIRLED WHIRLED ORDER ORDER
This album heralds the happy return to the national limelight of legacy artist and chanteuse Claudia Schmidt! With her stunning multi-octave voice, she seamlessly blends folk and jazz idioms into a genre all her own, like Nina Simone did in her day. With guitar hero DEAN MAGRAW and an ensemble of great players, New Whirled W Order rder is a showcase for her terrific songwriting and instrumental prowess as well. A fan said it best after seeing her perform recently, “You are a shaper of space and time.” “Schmidt comes at you straight from the shoulder, letting the listener feel the full impact of sheer delivery, leaving nothing behind.” — ALLABOUTJ TJA TJ JAZZ.COM
www.redhouserecords.com www.redhouserecords.com
800-695-4687 800-695-4687
000-18E Retro
Why you fell in love with us in the first place.
martinguitar.com
