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Jake was a guitar player. But the day a chemical explosion took his right arm, people stopped seeing Jake, the guitar player, and started seeing Jake, the guy who lost his arm. the proBlem was, that wasn’t the Jake he wanted to Be. so, he made the decision to fight for his identity — a Battle against stereotypes, preJudice and worst of all, pity. it was an impossiBle task, But somehow, he learned to play all over again in a way that could only Be done with a special prosthesis — and he didn’t stop there. eventually he got enough courage to get Back on stage, where audiences saw something Jake wasn’t sure they’d ever see again. Jake, the guitar player. it’s a story that inspires us, and serves as a reminder that the world needs more people like Jake. for more aBout Jake and other stories of people with the courage to step forward, visit taylorguitars.com
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CONTENTS
46 The Mouse that Roared Sweden’s Peter von Poehl goes all in on Big Issues Printed Small By Jason Glasser 49 Like a Hurricane Tommy Emmanuel blows through Acoustic Guitar’s offices By David Knowles 54 Southern Exposure How Rosanne Cash & John Leventhal created The River and the Thread By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers 61 SPECIAL FOCUS 62 New Gear 2014 A roundup of the year’s coolest new guitars and gear By Greg Cahill, Mark Segal Kemp, & David Knowles 68
Summer Gear Guide Directory MISCELLANY
10 FROM THE HOME OFFICE 12 OPENING ACT 97 EVENTS 98 MARKETPLACE 100 AD INDEX 101 GREAT ACOUSTICS
JUNE 2014 VOLUME 24, NO. 12, ISSUE 258 ON THE COVER RONIN GLORY JUMBO PHOTOGRAPHER HUGH O’CONNOR
Tommy Emmanuel p49 AcousticGuitar.com 5
CONTENTS
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NEWS
AG TRADE
15 The Beat Carter Family documentary debuts at SXSW 18 News Spotlight Ray LaMontagne starts anew on Supernova PLAY
21 Songcraft Valerie June sings and plays an otherworldly mix of music 25 Acoustic Classic The Jagger-Richards songwriting debut “As Tears Go By” (25); early Keb’ Mo’ blues with “Every Morning” (29); and the 1954 Elvis Presley rave-up “That’s All Right (34) 36 The Basics When it comes to a great blues solo, it’s all in the phrasing 40 Here’s How Five tips for navigating the guitar-store rollercoaster 42 Weekly Workout The essence of Western swing guitar
72 Shop Talk Folk Alliance International finds community in Kansas City 74 Makers & Shakers Bob Taylor calls himself a mediocre guitar player—but there’s nothing ordinary about Taylor Guitars 78 Guitar Guru Can a blindfolded guitar expert tell a guitar by its sound? 80 Review: Ronin Glory Jumbo The Northern California brand’s second jumbo is a redwood giant 84 Review: Ovation
Celebrity Standard Plus Earthy soundboard a fitting match for the guitar’s patented synthetic bowl-shaped body 86 Review: Fender’s
Acoustasonic 90 The little amp for the guitarist on the go MIXED MEDIA
Playlist 90 A ‘Blue Light’ special from Cassandra Wilson, plus the latest from Leif Vollebekk, Railroad Earth, Bryan Sutton, John Gorka, and Special Consensus 95 Books Rolling Stones Gear shines a light on the instruments of the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band; plus new song book marks Stones’ 50th anniversary Fender Acoustasonic 90 p86 6 June 2014
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If you love Acoustic Guitar magazine, you’ll go head over heels at AcousticGuitar.com—where you can view exclusive videos, listen to song premiers and screen interviews with some of the finest pickers on the guitar scene today. This past month, we premiered the video for Cahalen Morrison & Eli West’s “Voices of Evening”—and new videos are being posted regularly.
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8 June 2014
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FROM THE HOME OFFICE AcousticGuitar.com • AcousticGuitarU.com
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT Editorial Director & Interim Editor Greg Cahill Editor at Large Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers Managing Editor Jason Walsh Senior Editor Mark Segal Kemp Senior Editor David Knowles Production Designer Brad Amorosino Production Manager Hugh O’Connor Contributing Editors Kenny Berkowitz, Andrew DuBrock, Teja Gerken, David Hamburger, Steve James, Orville Johnson, Richard Johnston, Sean McGowan, Jane Miller, Greg Olwell, Adam Perlmutter, Rick Turner, Doug Young
INTERACTIVE SERVICES Interactive Services Director Lyzy Lusterman Creative Content Manager Joey Lusterman Digital Developer Breeze Kinsey Community Relations Coordinator Courtnee Rhone Single Copy Sales Consultant Tom Ferruggia
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Scott Law
T
his month, AG debuts an online performance series, Acoustic Guitar Sessions, a video-only feature that brings acoustic artists to your web browser. In recent weeks, the A G v i d e o s t u d i o h a s w e l c o m e d To m m y Emmanuel, Badi Assad, Ani DiFranco, Diego Figueiredo, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, and other gifted performers. All generously have shared a song or two (and sometimes more), as well as player and gear tips, while discussing their careers, life on the road, and their latest projects with senior editors David Knowles and Mark Segal Kemp. The result is an intimate showcase of some of the world’s best acoustic guitarists and singersongwriters. The series kicks off on acousticguitar.com with a performance by Scott Law, the talented Portland, Oregon, flatpicker who shared the story behind his Santa Cruz D-Law signature dreadnought. If you haven’t had a chance to catch Scott in concert, or if you haven’t heard his excellent new Black Mountain CD, you’re in for a real treat.
View Acoustic Guitar Sessions Presents Scott Law and other related performance videos on our website. Enjoy outtakes on our digital tablet edition. And look for a feature profile of Scott in next month’s Acoustic Guitar magazine. Also, I’d like to welcome our new managing editor, Jason Walsh, who’s already proved himself to be a valuable addition to the AG staff. Jason is a former editor of the Pacific Sun newsweekly and a longtime San Francisco Bay Area reporter and arts writer, who somehow finds the time to play his guitar when his nose isn’t buried in a pile of page proofs. —GREG CAHILL Corrections & Clarifications In our May issue’s transcription of Eric Clapton’s Unplugged version of the 1923 Jimmy Cox blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” we featured an image of Clapton seated with his navy blue OM-ECHF Martin. What we failed to mention was that the photo was taken by Kevin Mazur—who certainly isn’t “down and out” and definitely deserves to be “known” for the shot.
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10 June 2014
RETAILERS To find out how you can carry Acoustic Guitar magazine in your store, contact Alfred Publishing at (800) 292-6122. Except where otherwise noted, all contents © 2014 Stringletter, David A. Lusterman, Publisher.
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OPENING ACT
SHOVELS AND ROPE
PERFORM AT WILLIE NELSON’S RANCH AS PART OF SXSW 2014 LUCK, TEXAS MARCH 13, 2014 PHOTO BY JAY BLAKESBERG
12 June 2014
NEWS
Muriel Anderson 16
Willie Watson 16
Ray LaMontagne 18
THE BEAT
Mother Maybelle & the Carter Sisters, left; June Carter and Johnny Cash
The Source
‘The Winding Stream’ Carter Family documentary debuts at SXSW BY DAVID KNOWLES
A
The Winding Stream Directed by Beth Harrington
WATSON PHOTO BY MONKEYBIRD
s American musical dynasties go, it’s hard to top the legacy left by the Carter Family. In her new documentary, The Winding Stream, director Beth Harrington rightly posits the Carters as the musical source from which a thousand tributaries have subsequently flowed, despite a lack of popular recognition. “A lot of Americans don’t know the Carters’ name,” Harrington says, “but they do know their music.” The film, which premiered last month at the SXSW music festival, chronicles the Carter Family’s beginnings in Maces Spring, Virginia—from the moment that A.P. Carter happened to hear Sara Dougherty singing while on a walk, to the group’s first recording session in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1927—as well the various ways their descendants have sustained that musical heritage to the present day. Some of the more moving passages come courtesy of Johnny Cash, who
Harrington interviewed before his death in 2003. Cash, of course, joined forces with the famous family after marrying June Carter in 1968. “We interviewed him about three weeks before he passed away, and he spoke about June with great affection,” Harrington says. “That part didn’t surprise me, but what did was how much he revered Mother Maybelle. He talked about her in such glowing terms. He says at one point in the film, ‘She was the most VIP of the VIPs, and I’ve seen them all.’” Cash and several other musicians interviewed in the film gush over Maybelle’s signature fingerstyle innovation, in which melody and bass lines are played simultaneously. “Everyone pointed to the Carter scratch as being the foundational thing they learned when they were becoming guitarists,” Harrington says. “It’s something most people don’t even know where it came from. Rosanne Cash says in the film
that, out of necessity, Maybelle learned to play that way to fill in the sound of the group.” Harrington got the idea to focus on the Carters while making her previous documentary, Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly. “When I made that documentary I interviewed people like Wanda Jackson and Brenda Lee and Janis Martin and they all talked about the importance of the Carters,” she explains. The final push that Harrington needed, however, came from Welcome to the Club’s narrator, Rosanne Cash. “After the film had wrapped, she wrote to me and said, ‘I was down in Virginia recently and I kept thinking that you should be down here documenting the Carter family.’ I laughed and said, ‘Well, I was thinking of having you introduce me,’” Harrington recalls. Learn more about the documentary at thewindingstream.com
AcousticGuitar.com 15
THE BEAT | NEWS WILLIE WATSON RELEASES SOLO DEBUT
Goodnight, Good Morning
On Folk Singer Vol. 1 (Acony), former Old Crow Medicine Show member Willie Watson shows he’s ready to step out on his own. The debut solo record, produced by Dave Rawlings, turned out to be a rather organic creation. “When we got in the studio, I just played everything a couple times,” Watson says. “It reminded me of making OCMS, where a lot of times we’d just play songs and let Dave sort it out.”
O
n her gorgeous new concept album, Nightlight Daylight, guitarist Muriel Anderson offers the perfect bookends for a night’s sleep. “It came about very organically,” Anderson says. “My best friend and his wife had their first baby, and I thought, ‘Well, she needs her own lullabies,’ so I went about composing and recording an album as a surprise, only ever intending to press two copies. Then, he had a second baby a year later. So I thought, ‘Well, I have to do a second album of music to wake up to.’” Joining Anderson on the homespun project are some impressive names. “I had the opportunity to work with some wonderful musicians,” she says. “Victor Wooten, Tommy Emmanuel, Stanley Jordan, Earl Klugh, Danny Gottlieb, Beth Gottlieb, and members of the Nashville Symphony
Muriel Anderson
Orchestra. I really went all out. I wanted to give every song just what would make it come to life.” Aimed as much at an adult audience as at infants, the project also features groundbreaking cover-art design that utilizes fiber optics to generate stars, fireflies, a shooting star, and a lantern, all of which illuminate when the moon on the cover is pressed. “I found this great visual artist, Bryan
Allen, who did the artwork,” Anderson says, “and I worked with a designer in Silicon Valley to make the first CD cover that uses fiber optics.” The real highlight here, however, remains the rich musical expression of Anderson’s harp- and nylon-string classical guitar playing. “It’s optimistic music to wake up to,” she says of her 16th release, “and pretty music to go to sleep to.” —DK
NEW CARRIE ELKIN & DANNY SCHMIDT CD Solo recording artists Carrie Elkin and Danny Schmidt chronicle their romantic relationship on For Keeps (Red House), their first full-length collaborative effort. The album’s ten tracks were written by the Texasbased couple in 2012, when the two headed out on the road together. That courtship not only resulted in a solid record, but culminated with Schmidt proposing marriage to Elkin at 2013’s SXSW music fest.
Guitars in the Classroom trains, inspires, and equips classroom teachers to make and lead music that transforms learning into a creative, effective, and joyful experience for k-12 students from coast to coast and beyond.
Thanks to Martin Guitars and the C.F. Martin Foundation, Oriolo Guitars, the Bill Graham Foundation, and D'Addario & Co. for helping us launch the latest round of GITC programs!
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to learn more and check out GITC's first publication: The Green Songbook Available now from Alfred Music Publishing at www.GreenSongBook.com. 16 June 2014
PHOTO BY CHUCK WINANS
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NEWS SPOTLIGHT
No Apologies With an assist from Elvis Costello, Ray LaMontagne starts anew on Supernova BY DAVID KNOWLES
F
or most recording artists, when your latest album picks up two Grammy nominations, it’s a sign you’re on the right track and shouldn’t change the formula of your success. But then, Ray LaMontagne is not most artists. In fact, LaMontagne has decidedly mixed feelings about his critically acclaimed fourth record God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise. “The last record was tough for me, it was sort of bittersweet, because I was proud of it, but I felt like I was making a record that I’d been trying to make before,” LaMontagne says from his home in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. As he began working out the material for his forthcoming album, Supernova, the 40-year-old songwriter’s obsession with not repeating himself became so marked that he began shelving dozens of songs and questioning whether he could ever truly find creative acceptance. “When you’re first starting out you have so much to prove,” he says. “You get up on stage and there’s maybe 50 people in the audience, and 49 of them hate you, just hate you, and want you to get off of the stage, but there’s this one person who gets it. Every year the shows were getting bigger, but I’m still going out there as if I’m in the club where 49 of the 50 people in the audience hate me. That mindset was ingrained in me.” Battling the urge to ditch his music career altogether, he composed a long and rambling email to one of his heroes, Elvis Costello, asking for advice. “I need to talk to someone who has been through this,” LaMontagne says. “And I wrote this long exhausting email to Elvis saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know who I am in the music world, I don’t know if I’m
18 June 2014
Ray LaMontagne
relevant.’ And he wrote back this beautiful email that was so thoughtful and gave me a lot of advice and was so supportive and things turned around for me creatively.” After reading Costello’s words, LaMontagne turned to one of his favorite Costello albums for more inspiration. “I went and listened to This Year’s Model start to finish and thought, OK, let’s get to that place,” LaMontagne says. “I used it as a template. It’s fun, it’s super creative and playful, and Elvis never makes any apologies for what he’s doing—he just does it, as all my heroes do, like Neil Young.” When the songs started clicking, LaMontagne contacted producer and Black Keys guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach, with whom he had long hoped to work. The pair spent two weeks last fall cutting the tracks at Auerbach’s Nashville studio.
Along with his signature vocals, LaMontagne’s rhythm work on his Paul Reed Smith guitar anchors the record, but thanks to the generous layering of organ, electric guitar, drums, ukulele, and background vocals, Supernova is an explosion of new sounds. If that experimentation is too much for some of his fans, LaMontagne says, so be it. “There’s this core group of my fans, well, they call themselves fans, but they really hate me, but they love the first record, and they want Otis Redding,” he says. “They want me to make an Otis Redding record and every new record is a disappointment. But I’m a 160pound white guy, you know, I’m not a 250pound black man who was born wherever. I mean, come on. I never claimed to be a soul singer and I never wanted to be a soul singer. “I’m a songwriter.” AG
PHOTO BY SAMANTHA CASOLARI
PLAY
Valerie June 21
Rolling Stones 25
Keb’ Mo’ 29
That’s all right, Elvis, you’re still the king p34
AcousticGuitar.com 19
SONGCRAFT
Blurred Lines Valerie June sings and plays an otherworldly mix of ancient Appalachian folk, Delta blues, Motown soul & fuzzy indie rock BY JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS
B
ack in the late 2000s, Valerie June would busk every year at the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival, now known as the King Biscuit Blues Festival. The money was good—she could earn more in a day singing with her guitar and banjo than she did in a month at her day job in Memphis—and the feedback she got from passers-by made a big impression. “It was funny,” she recalls in her Tennessee drawl. “They were coming up, ‘You know, this is a blues festival, right? Well, that’s hillbilly music you’re playing.’ Then the next person would come up, ‘Um, that’s gospel—that’s spiritual music you’re playing.’ Another person would come up, ‘That’s old blues. I ain’t heard nothing that old on this street in a long time.’ I was like, ‘Well, what the hell is it that I’m playing?’ I was rather confused as well. “I just thought it was Valerie June music.” Spinning June’s fourth and most recent album, Pushin’ Against a Stone (Concord), you may well have the same confusion. Co-produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, Pushin’ Against a Stone clearly taps into Delta and Piedmont blues. But then there’s the Carter Family–esque gospel song “Trials, Troubles, Tribulations” (written by the late Virginia fingerpicker E.C. Ball), the old-time country waltz “Tennessee Time,” and the modern Motown of “Wanna Be on Your Mind.” Holding all these sounds together is June’s startling voice, which somehow combines Appalachian twang and the rounded tones of gospel and soul—blurring the color lines that have forever been drawn through American music. Realizing that her style just wasn’t easily categorized, June started calling it moonshine-roots music. “Everybody hears what they want to hear,” she says. “I just want people to have an open question mark in their minds, to receive it in the way that they want to receive it.” June grew up singing in church in Jackson, Tennessee, got started as a guitarist and songwriter in Memphis, and these days lives in New York—though with the international success of Pushin’ Against a Stone, she’s rarely at home. I reached her by phone during a tour across the South, shortly before she headed out for a long string of dates with the neosoul act Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.
AcousticGuitar.com 21
What was the music like that you sang in church growing up? Church was three times a week and everybody sang. There wasn’t a choir. It was a thing where you walk in a door, you sit on the bench, you pull out the songbook, turn to the page number the song leader says, and everybody starts singing. It was very similar to the Carter Family’s music—“Anchored in Love” is a good song to listen to if you want to understand what I’m talking about. Imagine it without a guitar. There were never any instruments because it’s against God’s law, according to the Church of Christ. You had to learn how to use your voice in your way that felt good to you. It didn’t matter whether you sounded good or not. It’s like, get in there and sing, because that’s what God commands you to do. So did that experience give you confidence in your own voice? In a lot of ways it did. I felt confident in church singing. But then out in the world, where people are used to worldly voices, I didn’t feel
22 June 2014
so comfortable. Without my 500 companions singing next to me, I didn’t feel so comfortable either. Just out there naked, singing alone, it’s hard. There was a point where every time I sang I was like, I should sound better—I should sound more radio. I beat myself up that I didn’t sound like all the other singers that are popular. But then, when I did grow up and move out of my parents’ house and move to Memphis, I heard the Carter Family and Mississippi John Hurt and Orna Ball and E.C. Ball and I was just like, there’s a whole section of music that honors voices like mine. That was the time where I said to myself, “There’s nothing wrong with my voice.” Will it be on the No. 1 radio station? Probably not, but it is what it is. In addition to the vocal quality of those musicians from past generations, did you cue into the way they played their instruments? Yes. When I first heard Mississippi John Hurt’s guitar, I was like, “Oh, my God, that is
beautiful. How is he doing that?” He gets so much out of those six strings, and he does it so gently, so sweet and soft. He starts with that steady rolling thumb and then he sneaks in playing the melody. I fell in love with the Piedmont and the country-blues type of picking. But when I started trying to learn how to play exactly like he did, or exactly like Elizabeth Cotten, I got so discouraged. She started when she was nine and I’m freaking 20-something, and I’m never going to get it! So I just started playing the way that I hear it. At what age did you write your first songs? Well, when I was a young girl, I wrote lots of little songs. I made up songs in kindergarten with other kids. I just loved making up songs— about rainbows, frogs, anything, just singing to myself all the time, so much that my family would be like, “Shut up!” I also remember making up lyrics to somebody else’s song. I did it a lot with Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.” It was just so much fun—silly, though.
PHOTO BY BRIAN CHILSON
How did you progress from there to writing songs in a more formal way? I can remember when I moved to Memphis and I was singing and writing in a band, I was like, “OK, I’m hearing voices and I’m writing songs, but I don’t really know what I’m doing. If I really want to be a songwriter, shouldn’t I pick some of my favorite songs and write them down on paper and then learn the structure of these songs?” I remember writing down a few songs and looking at the lyrics and the rhyme scheme, things of that sort, and trying to learn if there was a pattern or a way to write a song. But I had to let that go, because songs can go so many ways. A lot of people who live in Nashville and write songs, they have a formula, and that’s a good thing, but I didn’t really feel like there was a pattern for what I was trying to do. I wanted to maintain the openness. Your guitar on ‘Workin’ Woman Blues’ has such a cool modal sound. What do you remember about writing that song? I moved to New York and got a job playing at a blues club. I lied to the guy: He said, “Can you play two hours of straight blues?” and I was like, “Yeah, I can do it,” because I needed the job. I was like, “OK, I’m going to have to go home and learn some blues, because I have one blues song.” So I sat down with my guitar, and [“Workin’ Woman Blues”] is what came out. But I think the influence in my subconscious mind was my years stalking Mr. Robert Belfour all around the South, watching him play and listening to the way he bends notes, and loving Mississippi Delta blues and the similarities between that and African music. I think the song has a lot of that in the guitar. Does ‘Shotgun,’ with its spooky slide, come from a similar place? It came from the same time period. I was trying to come up with blues songs. I opened myself up to that. I sat down, and I just got this vision with that song. It was pretty graphic, like I was watching a little movie, and I heard a voice too. That one’s pretty dark. It’s one of the darkest songs I think I’ve ever written. What do you mean when you say you heard a voice? That’s how I write. I just hear voices really, and I write the melodies and the lyrics that I’m hearing. Sometimes I hear humming and then the humming morphs into words. Sometimes I just hear the voice really clear, and then sometimes I play the guitar and I hear the voice singing over what I’m playing—“Workin’ Woman Blues” was like that. Not that many songs come that way though.
‘When I first heard Mississippi John Hurt’s guitar, I was like, “Oh, my God, that is beautiful. How is he doing that?”’
What was the process like co-writing with Dan Auerbach on ‘Tennessee Time’ and other songs? I have books and books of half-written songs, where I hear a voice and write down exactly what I hear. With “Tennessee Time,” I heard [sings], “Running on Tennessee time.” I wrote that down six months before I met [Dan], and then when I met him the rest of the song came. We were sitting there across from each other with guitars, and I started singing that part and he started playing something, and we started dialoging back and forth about the song and the story. It definitely had to be something that was felt by both of us, because not everything I sang did he feel, and not everything he played did I feel. So he contributed to the lyrics as well? In “Tennessee Time,” [the line] “Houston’s a hard town” was his idea, and then “New York’s not for mine” was my idea—I stole that from a Mississippi John Hurt song, “Avalon Blues.” And then he was talking about New Orleans, because he’d been on the road and he was just there, so [we wrote] “New Orleans hustle.” We went back and forth about which parts, which cities to talk about on that song. In the wake of Pushin’ Against a Stone, do you feel as if the music is carrying you in a particular direction? I don’t. I usually have a really strong vision and can tell what exactly is going to happen within the next few years, but right now I just have the vision of growing as an artist every day, a little bit more, and continuing to write. I don’t know where it’s going. This Townes Van Zandt song [“Waiting Around to Die”] keeps going in my head: Sometimes I don’t know where this dirty road is leading me Sometimes I don’t even know the reason why But I guess I’ll keep on gambling Lots of booze and lots of rambling It’s easier than just waitin’ around to die I feel like that song these days, because I’m living on the road a lot. AG
WHAT VALERIE JUNE PLAYS GUITAR Martin 000-15M. June compared three 000s at Nashville’s Gruhn Guitars and picked her favorite— then was stunned to learn that the last four digits of its serial number match the last four digits of her cell number. The guitar has an L.R. Baggs M1 soundhole pickup, and June uses extra-light Martin strings.
OTHER INSTRUMENTS Goldtone five-string banjo and a banjo ukulele built by Tennessee luthier Tommy George (georgebanjos.com). The banjo uke, a gift from one of her Memphis friends, has Val inlaid on the headstock.
AcousticGuitar.com 23
On Tour
Stephen Inglis Thomas Leeb Shawn Jones Three World Class guitarists team up for an unforgettable evening of acoustic guitar driven musical bliss
Handmade in Ireland
georgelowden.com
US West Coast June 2014 UK Autumn 2014 www.globalguitargreats.com
Randy California, center
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
When Bad Boys Go Soft The Rolling Stones’ ‘As Tears Go By’ launched Jagger and Richards’ entry as bona fide singer-songwriters BY MARK SEGAL KEMP
I
n 1964, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards desperately needed a hit that would offset the Rolling Stones’ image as just a bad-boy blues-rock cover band with an attitude. Their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, had a solution: The boys would write a pretty ballad—something asexual that an innocent young pop chanteuse could sing. Voila! “As Tears Go By.” The original version of this Stones classic, recorded by then-unknown 17-year-old singer Marianne Faithful and released 50 years ago, began with 12-string guitar, light percussion, and a prominent oboe part, with a swelling string section creeping in after about a minute. With its slight Spanish feel and melancholy lyrics about feeling trapped in a bubble of depression, the song was like nothing Jagger and Richards had ever come up with—and it was a smash. Faithful’s version
shot to No. 9 on the British pop charts and reached No. 22 in America. By the time the Stones went into the studio to record their own version, their rivals, the Beatles, were riding the success of a similarly downcast acoustic-guitar ballad with strings, “Yesterday.” Not to be outdone, the Stones underscored the 12-string guitar part in their own arrangement of “As Tears Go By”—released on their 1965 album December’s Children (and Everybody’s)—and did away with the percussion altogether. Beginning with Richards’ spare and crisp, fingerpicked 12-string intro, the Stones’ fairly stripped-down version is more immediate and intimate than Faithful’s—and more Baroque folk than Baroque pop. For a full 40 seconds, you hear nothing but Richards’ guitar and Jagger’s aching vocals. When the strings do come in, they sound much like the string quartet
that accompanies Lennon and McCartney’s “Yesterday”—subtly, but surely, keeping the emphasis on the acoustic guitar. “As Tears Go By” represented a dramatic turning point in the Rolling Stones’ development—from American blues/R&B wannabes to full-fledged singing and songwriting pop stars able to compete, toe-to-toe, with the Beatles. Within a year, the Stones would be cranking out even more acoustic-based Baroque pop and folk ballads, including “Lady Jane” and “Sittin’ on a Fence.” Within three years, they’d be recording entire albums based around such folk-, country-, and bluesrock songs as “No Expectations,” “Dear Doctor,” and “Factory Girl” (Beggar’s Banquet), “Country Honk” and “You Got the Silver” (Let It Bleed), “Sweet Virginia,” “Torn and Frayed,” and “Sweet Black Angel” (Exile on Main St.), among others. But it all started with “As Tears Go By.”AG
As Tears Go By
SONG TO PLAY
BY THE ROLLING STONES WORDS AND MUSIC BY MICK JAGGER & KEITH RICHARDS
Intro
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AcousticGuitar.com 25
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©1964 ABKCO MUSIC, INC., 85 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003. Renewed U.S. ©1992 and all Publication Rights for the U.S. and Canada Controlled by ABKCO MUSIC, INC. and TRO-ESSEX MUSIC, INC., New York, NY. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. International Copyright Secured
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“I love the sound of vintage guitars. I’m always the guy in the front row, enjoying performances of the great acoustic guitarists of our time. I’ve devoted a career to exploring nuances of guitar design, the intricacies of voicing, infinite colorations of tonewoods, and the way a guitar sounds in the hands of a gifted player.
H-5 Mandola
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AcousticGuitar.com 27
Beauty parlor. Introducing the TW40-P-AN parlor model.
This small-bodied beauty is the newest addition to our Sundance Historic Series – a collection of simple, understated, 1940s-style solid-top instruments, designed in the UK under the stewardship of our master luthier Michael Sanden.
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Randy California, center
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
Keb’ Mo’ Song Brought the Soul of the Blues into the ’90s
‘Every Morning’ turns 20 this month BY MARK SEGAL KEMP
T
wenty years ago this June, guitarist Kevin Moore, who had been recording and playing since the 1980s with such artists as Jefferson Airplane violin man Papa John Creach, put out his official debut album as Keb’ Mo’. Released on the revived Okeh Records—the vintage American label responsible for some of the earliest so-called race records beginning in the 1920s—Keb’ Mo’ kicked off with a simple, spare, and gritty country-blues tune called “Every Morning.” What distinguished this particular recording—just basic blues in D—from your average ’90s Delta-blues update was the way Mo’ positively inhabited the dusty country-blues tradition that dates back to Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt. Not one to take a scholarly, chin-stroking approach to vintage music and
instruments, Mo’ fingerpicks and percussively strums his way through the first three verses on the original recording. He then slashes into a meaty slide solo, returning for a fourth verse, and then repeating the first before bringing it all to an end. It’s no-frills acoustic blues that you should be able to easily pick up with a little practice. Use your thumb to pluck the downstemmed notes while your fingers pick the up-stemmed ones. Arrows in the notation and tablature indicate strums (use your fingers in the direction indicated). Keb’ Mo’ frets most of the verse backup with his fingers, contrasting that sound by switching to a slide for the solo. “Every Morning” has become such an essential part of the blues lexicon that it continues to make its way into great
SONG TO PLAY Open Tuning: D A D F # A D, Capo IV Intro D
# & # 44
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collections, such as the gargantuan 1999 box set Sony Music 100 Years: Soundtrack for a Century and Daemon Records’ 2008 Beginner’s Guide to Blues Music. AG
0 0
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AcousticGuitar.com 29
0
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30 June 20147
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© 1995 WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. and KEB’ MO’ MUSIC. All Rights Administered by WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission. Reprinted with Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
0 35
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Guitar Solo
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D
4.
D
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The way you love me through and through
G
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D
And when I’m with you it feels like heaven G
But baby I’ll be there whenever you call, ever you call, cause
D
And you’re an angel holding me A7
Repeat Verse 1 D
Your sweet, sweet loving, it sets me free
A7
Gadd9/B
3.
D
And in my wildest imagination G
D
I could never imagine you A7
D
Loving me as much as, as I do you
32 June 2014
D
The way you love me through and through D
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ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
Elvis Is in the Building
‘That’s All Right’ was a lip-curling, hip-shaking calling card BY GREG CAHILL
R
ock ’n’ roll was still in its infancy when Elvis Presley released his cover of blues singer Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right, Mama” (Sun Records eliminated “Mama” from the title of Elvis’ version of Crudup’s 1946 recording). But “That’s All Right”—which hit the racks 60 years ago, on July 19, 1954—galvanized popular music, due in
no small part to the singer’s swagger. The single sold 20,000 copies, reaching No. 4 on the Memphis radio sales charts to become Elvis’ first commercial hit. The B-side was Elvis’ take on bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Due to its broad country appeal, the Monroe song eventually outsold “That’s All Right.”
SONG TO PLAY Intro Intro Intro
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11
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34 June 2014
ma ma
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Intro
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6 6
BY ELVIS PRESLEY COMPOSED BY ARTHUR “BIG BOY” CRUDUP
A
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That’s All Right
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The rest, as they say, is rock ’n’ roll history. Celebrate this milestone in the genre that swept the music world. And have fun with this lively blues in A—note that the intro and coda add an alternating bass line. Listen to guitarist Scotty Moore’s electricguitar solo to fashion a rockabilly lead. AG
for you
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B © 1947 (Renewed) UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC. and CRUDUP MUSIC. All Rights Administered by UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission. Reprinted with Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
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Well then you won’t be bothered with me hangin’ round your door D
D
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Now that’s all right, that’s all right E
E7
E
A
E7
A
That’s all right, now, mama, any way you do
That’s all right, now, mama, any way you do
A
A
Well, my mama she done told me, papa done told me, too A7
“Son, that gal you’re fooling with, she ain’t no good for you”
4.
Ah, da da dee dee dee dee, dee dee dee dee Dee dee dee dee D
D
I need your loving, that’s all right
But that’s all right, that’s all right E
I’m leaving town now, baby, I’m leaving town for sure A7
A7
That’s all right, now, mama just anyway you do
2.
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That’s all right, now, mama, any way you do
E
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That’s all right, now, mama, any way you do
Guitar Solo (over verse progression) AcousticGuitar.com 35
THE BASICS
Am I Blue? These red-hot blues licks will make your solos weep
Play pentatonic scales in the key of A in five different positions.
Ex. 1 Pattern B
Pattern A
BY PETE MADSEN
E
ver wonder how Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Gary Clark, Jr., Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and so many other blues-inspired players, create such memorable solos? Sure, it involves technical expertise, great sound, and experience, but equally important are the phrases they choose to play. In this lesson, you will use pentatonic scales to create some nice licks and phrases. You’ll then use those licks and phrases to create three separate 12-bar solos. NUANCE & DYNAMICS In your daily speech, you have many different ways of expressing yourself: you make definitive statements, ask questions, use exclamations, and pause at just the right places. The meaning of your speech comes from both its content (the words, phrases and expressions you use) and the inflection of your voice. For example, a whisper implies secrecy—its softness makes listeners prick up their ears, as if something important is being said. A scream, on the other hand, implies urgency. I often tell my guitar students to play louder, but what I’m really asking them to do is play with dynamics. Play loud, then play soft— alter your attack and you will notice how much your audience is really listening. Nothing is worse than guitarists who know all of their scales—forwards, backwards, and very fast—but play solos that sound like scales and every note has the same attack, voicing, and rhythmic duration. Have you ever listened to a lecture by someone who speaks in a monotone? It could be the most interesting subject in the world, but the speaker’s delivery is putting you to sleep! Public speaking is an art, and so is soloing. You don’t have to be the fastest or most knowledgeable guitarist on the planet to play interesting solos. A few well-chosen phrases will have more impact than a million notes played with little thought or emotion. CREATE A DIALOGUE Having a good guitar “vocabulary” is essential to good soloing. And having a good vocabulary means knowing a lot of licks, which are essentially the same for guitar players as phrases are for writers and speakers. Licks are mainly derived from scales. (They also can be derived
36
June 2014
& 44 B
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œœœ œ œ œ Ó œœœ œ œ œ 5 8
5 7
5 7
5 8
5 7
5 8
8 10
Pattern C
8 10
8 10
Pattern D
œ œ œœœ œ 4 œ Ó & 4 œœœœœ B
7 10
7 10
7 9
10 12
10 12
10 12
9 12
1013
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Pattern E
& 44 B
œ 3
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3
5
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3
5
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Now pick, slide, hammer on and pull off.
œ œ œ œ 4 Ó & 4
Ex. 2
8 10
B
8 10
œ œ œ œ 8 10
8 10
Ó
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8 10
Ó
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10 8
Ó
Play the same thing as above an octave lower.
Ex. 3
& 44 œ œ œ œ Ó
B
5 7
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5 7
œ œ œ œ Ó
5 7
5 7
5 7
œ œ œ œ Ó
5 7
7 5
7 5
Play these double-stops two strings at a time.
œœ œœ 4 Œ & 4
Ex. 4
8 8
Ó
10 10
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Œ
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5
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B
Now, try these double-stops.
œœ œ # œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ # œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ # œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œœ & 4
Ex. 5
8 8 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 9
10 10 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 11 11 11
8 5 8 5 7 5 7 5 7 5 7 5
7 7 7 7 5 5 5 5 7 7 7 7 5 5 5 5
B Practice these chromatic runs, and a whole-step bend.
œ & 44 œ # œ œ œ # œ Ó 3
3
œ œ œ œ œ J ‰ Œ
Ex. 7
Ex. 6
œ œ #œ œ œ #œ 3
3
Ó
1
10 10
B
5 6 7
5 6 7 3
4 5
3
4 5
8
10
from chords, but since chords are derived from scales, I’ll start our discussion with scales). Here are a few licks: Ex. 1 shows five positions for playing pentatonic scales in the key of A. Try to memorize those scales. In order to create licks, or phrases, you will isolate a portion of the second-position scale. Ex. 2 takes four notes from the secondposition A-minor pentatonic. You can then play those notes in different ways: picking, sliding, hammering-on, and pulling-off. These may or may not be new techniques for you, but beyond learning the physical aspects, try to pay attention to how these different techniques affect the phrasing. Slides can sound whimsical or drunken. Hammer-ons and pull-offs can be played very quickly, which can add an element of bravado to your solos. Ex. 3 takes the same notes from Ex. 2 and plays them an octave lower. As you will see in Ex. 8 and Ex. 9, playing licks and moving between two octaves can be an elegant way of creating a musical discourse. Ex. 4 and Ex. 5 are double-stops. A doublestop is simply playing two strings at the same time. This can be an effective device to use in creating a “bigger” sound. They also can add a bit of harmony to your licks. Ex. 6 consists of chromatic runs—notes move up or down, one fret at a time—that you play with double hammer-ons. These runs also can be played in a speedy triplet fashion. In Ex. 7, you perform a whole-step bend, which means you must bend the string high enough to sound like the note played two frets up (e.g. tenth fret to the twelfth fret). I suggest using three fingers on your fretting hand to push the string up. CALL & RESPONSE In Ex. 8, take the notes from Ex. 2 (played at the eighth and tenth frets on the first and second strings) and turn them into a phrase. Slide from the eighth to the tenth fret on the first string, and then go back to the eighth fret—bounce back and forth between the eighth and tenth fret on the second string; and finish off with a halfstep bend on the first string. This makes for a nice, succinct and potent phrase that you can refer to as the “call.” Now, play those same notes an octave lower [Ex. 3], slightly altered to create a corresponding phrase that acts as a “response” to the previous “call.” Notice that you use similar notes but you’re altering the phrasing a bit—the chromatic run on the fourth string is different—and the bend on the third string/fifth fret is allowed to descend as you add some vibrato. In Ex. 9, try this again in a lower octave, playing a simple lick on the sixth and fifth strings (which encompasses the fifth position
AcousticGuitar.com 37
THE BASICS | PLAY
pentatonic). Then play an octave up (first position) and finish off with a nifty whole-step bend/release and pull-off. Make sure to use your third finger for the bend and release, and have the first finger behind on the fifth fret/ third string in order complete the pull-off. THE SOLOS In the following solos, the rhythm should be a standard 12-bar shuffle in A, using A, D, and E chords. For Solo 1, your first complete 12-bar solo in A, you expand on the ideas presented earlier. Starting with a simple slide on the second string and finishing with the C note played on the first string at the eighth fret, you create a very simple phrase. Play the same lick backwards in the lower octave. These two licks set up your call and response. Notice that as you progress through the solo, you keep coming back to the original lick (the call)—the response will change slightly from time to time (e.g. measure 4 and 8). A simple approach like this will help as you start to build your own solos; just a couple of notes played tastefully can make for a profound musical statement. Many guitarists, when they start to solo, feel obligated to play fast licks with a lot of notes. But, if you come out swinging with both arms, you will soon exhaust yourself. Lay back, build momentum, and your playing will become powerful. In Solo 2, you extend the lick over two bars. The first two measures establish the phrase. The second two measures alter that phrase just slightly, resolving on G instead of A. You don’t move to the lower octave until the chord change in the fifth measure to D, where you play the same four-bar phrase that you opened up with, but in the lower register. Solo 3 uses double-stops almost exclusively—two strings played at the same time. These phrases tend to follow the chords. For example, underneath the D chord, the two notes on the seventh fret are actually a partial D chord—as they descend down to the fifth fret, they become a partial D9 chord. Same thing applies to the E chord. Learning new scales, licks, and riffs will add to your soloing prowess. But if you keep in mind that your soloing should emulate the spoken word, then you’ll be well on your way to creating not only a musical dialogue within the framework of the song, but a dialogue with your audience that will reap huge sonic rewards. AG Pete Madsen (learnbluesguitarnow.
Turn the notes from Ex. 2 and Ex. 3 into phrases that call and respond.
Ex. 8
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~~~~~~~ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ #œ nœ. Ó J
call
& 44
response
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1/2
8 10 8
10 8 10
8 5 7 5
June 2014
(5)
5
Ex. 9
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7
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He performs and teaches at the Freight
38
6 7
Do the call and response in a lower octave, then move up and finish with a bend.
based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
books of guitar instruction.
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B
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com) is a guitarist, writer and educator
and Salvage and has authored seven
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nœ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ ˙ # # # 4 n œj œ & 4 A
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5
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Solo 3
5
3
j nœ
~~~~~~ œ # œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ. œ œ ~~~~~ 1/2
5 7
5
7
5
7 7 6 5
3
5
3 5
A
5 7 5 7
8 9
3
3 5
3
3 5
D
# # œœ œœ n œœ n œœ œœ .. œ œ œ œ œ œ n ˙˙ & # J 3
5 7
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7 7 5 7 7 7 5 7
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“You don’t have to play a bazillion notes to sound really good. B. B. King could tear the house down with two or three notes.” Every guitarist wants to be able to improvise an ear-catching solo in a blues jam and really say something. This lesson is as good a place to start as you’ll find anywhere. Toby shows you how to find your root note and the three or four others you’ll need to get started. By adding some vibrato and bends (the “sauce”) you can make a whole lot of great music. You’ll learn how to place those notes within the chords that are going by behind you so it all works smoothly with the 12-bar blues chord changes. “Less is more,” as Toby emphasizes, but you can really say something with those few notes and phrases. He shows you how to find root notes in various positions up the neck so you can really jam on a lead solo. With Toby’s clear and engaging teaching style and impeccable technique, you’ll be playing along in no time.
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E
9 9 7 9 9 9 7 9
with Homespun’s Toby Walker and Happy Traum
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B &
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IMPROVISE BLUES SOLOS
9 9 7 9 9 9 7 9
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HERE’S HOW
Love for Sale
5 ways to navigate the guitar-store rollercoaster BY OCTOBER CRIFASI
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uying your first guitar can be a lot like buying your first car. You need to do your research, brush up on your powers of negotiation, and when possible, enlist someone knowledgeable on the subject to join you for the test drive. While the process may seem daunting in the beginning, there are a few things you can do to make your first purchase stressfree and enjoyable. 1. KNOW YOUR BUDGET Determine your absolute maximum and stand by it. Ask the salesperson for the best instruments you can buy within your budget. Stating this at the outset can prevent the inevitable upsell from many commission-based stores and give you a solid starting point for getting a good deal. Ask for the sale price, even if there isn’t one listed on the tag, and be prepared to negotiate. Find out what else can be included to sweeten the deal—like a guitar case, capo, picks, tuner, and strings. And when deciding your budget, remember to include an additional $45 to $75 for basic setup of the neck, as most guitars will need it. 2. STRUM IT Ask to sit and play the guitar. A salesperson demonstrating his or her fancy finger work on your potential purchase provides nothing for you in terms of your own experience on the guitar. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to play much yet—it’s more important to get a feel for the neck and how the instrument fits your stature. Chords like C major (widest stretch across the neck) or A major (most fingers in a single fret) are good gauges for how the neck fits your hand. Test different body shapes as well. While a dreadnought can offer a big sound, the wide waist and larger body can be uncomfortable for some players. If seated, your elbow should sit comfortably on the body of the guitar, just below shoulder level. 3. PIZZAZZ DOESN’T EQUAL PLAYABILITY Don’t be swayed by the decorative details of a guitar, especially for instruments under $500. What you’re paying for in flash could
40 June 2014
McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California
Find a guitar shop where you feel comfortable asking questions and are treated with respect. cost you in quality and sound. That fancy finish could be camouflage for the all-laminate guitar underneath it. Your money is better spent on a higher-quality, possibly more basic, solid-top model that will sound and play better in the long run. There are many quality beginner solid-top models on the market that average between $200 and $400. Find out what type of instrument the salesperson is showing you and be honest with your needs. If you don’t plan to play live, you can probably skip the built-in pickup for now. 4. AVOID THE INTERNET If the deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. As enticing as an online bargain may seem, you need to hold and play a guitar before purchasing it. According to Louis Galper of McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California,
almost half of the guitars that come in from an online purchase are in need of some sort of setup or have problems that they are unable to fix. If an ad claims a guitar is vintage, Galper suggests you take it to your local shop to verify its authenticity before the final sale to avoid being sold false goods. “We actually had somebody come in with a guitar advertised as an old Martin when really someone had just put a Martin sticker on the peg head,” Galper says. 5. SHOP AROUND Take time to visit a few stores before making your final decision. Price should not be the only determining factor. Your guitar will need routine maintenance after you bring it home, so you want find out what follow-up services the shop can provide and how much they charge for it. You also want to find a guitar shop where you feel comfortable asking questions and are treated with respect. If you are ignored or talked down to, best to invest your dollars elsewhere. AG October Crifasi is a professional guitarist, songwriter, and music educator in Los Angeles. She is founder and director of Girls Guitar School.
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WEEKLY WORKOUT
Play All Night
Use these rhythm and lead tips to knock ’em dead in late-night Texas roadhouses BY SEAN McGOWAN
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ringing together elements of early popular and country music, swing jazz, blues, and rural dance hall traditions, Western swing is pure vintage American music. Pioneered in the 1930s—most notably by Milton Br o wn and B ob Wi lls—and de v e l op e d throughout the ’40s in the Southwest, the sound featured an abundance of great rhythm and lead guitar styles. In the ’30s, the driving rhythms and playful, exuberant songs offered a temporary respite for dance hall participants hit hard by the Great Depression. Western swing thrives today in bands ranging from the ’70s-formed Asleep at the Wheel to more contemporary acts such as the Texas-based Hot Club of Cowtown and Southern California’s Cow Bop, featuring ace guitarist Bruce Forman. In 2011, Texas designated Western swing its state music. In this Weekly Workout, you’ll explore some essential facets of Western swing rhythm and lead guitar.
WEEK ONE Start out by getting the basic feel for the music and the most common approach to rhythm playing in this style. You’ll notice in the two examples that the guitar plays quarter-note rhythms throughout the tune. Of course, different players incorporate rhythmic variations and fills, but the function of the rhythm guitar is to drive the swing feel of the song, while outlining the essential harmony of the progression. Other forms of swing music—namely the Kansas City jazz of Count Basie’s band, as well as Gypsy jazz—also incorporate this driving quarter-note rhythm. However, the feel of Western-swing rhythm, also known as Texas- or contest-style rhythm (named for the style of guitar backup played in swing fiddle competitions) features more of a bass-chord approach. Generally, the bass note is played on beats 1 and 3, and are longer in duration than the quick, snappy chord voicings strummed on beats 2 and 4. This is in contrast to the style of longtime Basie guitarist Freddie Green, who strummed compact, even voicings on all four beats of the bar, and also to the heavy, aggressive sound of Le Pompe favored in the Gypsy style.
42 June 2014
Ex. 2
Week One Ex. 1
&
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3
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A7
D7
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B &
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8 7 5 7
3
4
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5
A m7 D 7
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7
5 7 6
G6
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8 9 7 8
3
1 0 2
8 9 8 9
8 9 9 10
BEGINNERS’ TIP
7
1
Practice lightly bouncing the fingers of the fretting hand, playing the chords in the examples to achieve a short, tight, staccato effect. In contrast, the bass note (usually played with the index finger) will stay held down for a smooth, legato effect.
8 6 8
5 5 5 5
5
3 5 4
5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5
4 5 3 4 4 5
3 3 3 3
2 3
5
ww w w
3 5 4
.. . .
The first bar of the progression illustrates a G chord moving to a G/B inversion, which connects to the following C chord quite naturally. Measures 3, 6, and 8 also feature inversions of the G chord. Classic Western-swing rhythm guitar blends a good moving bass line with colorful chord voicings.
WEEK TWO Try playing just the first bar of music and use a pick to play the bass note followed by the chord. Both are typically played with downstrokes, and the chord should sound short, snappy, and slightly accented. You achieve this articulation by releasing pressure, or “bouncing,” in a subtle way, with your fretting-hand fingers. Now, work through a chord progression. Western-swing rhythm guitar features a lot of moving chord voicings, but the progressions are usually simple in terms of the actual number of chords. It sounds like there are more chords due to guitarists employing different inversions of the same chord—meaning the third or fifth is featured in the bass—instead of staying on one static chord voicing.
Now, work through another common chord progression in the key of G. In addition to chord inversions (note the first two measures in the music on page 43 feature inversions of G), you’ll find passing chords. Passing chords connect two chords in the original progression, often with a chromatic approach (a half step above or below the “target” chord). Measure 2 features a passing D dominantseventh chord (resolving down to C6), while the third beat of bar 7 features a C diminishedseventh chord, also resolving to C6. Passing chords are commonly dominant or diminished in quality, but always use your ears as guides— minor-seventh chords sound great chromatically approaching other minor sevenths. In this, as well as the previous week’s
example, you’ll notice the use of major-sixth chords, as opposed to basic major triads or more complex major-seventh chords. This is an integral sound in Western swing—check out the voicings for G in bars 1 and 7. You can also use major 6/9 chords such as the lush, Westernsounding voicings in bars 9 and 10. The chord voicings are typically smaller and more compact than the larger voicings used in bluegrass or folk. This is especially true in uptempo songs, and most guitarists use two- or three-note voicings, played primarily on the middle D, G, and B strings.
BEGINNERS’ TIP
2
Practice each example slowly, and make sure to form each chord voicing completely before you pick/strum it (as opposed to fingering the bass and then the chord).
C 6 C /E
C 6 C #7
9 7
9 7
4 2
B
7 5
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3
7
G6
10
10 9 9
8
C6
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10
8 9 8
8 9 7
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5 5 4
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8
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10 10 9 9 10
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Week Three Ex. 4: Eldon Shamblin Rhythm Style
This week features another chord progression in the key of G, in the style of Eldon Shamblin. He was a great guitarist and arranger, and had a tremendous influence on the sound and musical development of Bob Wills’ band the Texas Playboys, and subsequently, Westernswing guitar. The first half of the example features all of the bass notes on the low E string, and all of the compact chord voicings on the D and G strings. This approach takes advantage of the mid and low registers of the guitar; bass notes are round and fat, while the chords can cut through a full band. Note, for example, how his voicing for a D7 chord uses an A in the bass (second inversion) with the third and seventh on top—you don’t even need to play the root of the chord.
3
If string-skipping with the pick between the bass notes and chords is too difficult at first, try playing the examples fingerstyle or use the pick for each bass note, and the fingers of the picking hand to grab the two- and three-note chords.
D 9/F#
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WEEK THREE
BEGINNERS’ TIP
G /D D b7
Week Two G 6 G /B Ex. 3
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6
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9
C /E
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G /D
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8
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G
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C 69
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2
3 2 2
the passing notes of the bass, implying some wonderfully sophisticated harmonic substitutions common in jazz. Notice the G chords in the final two measures are voiced as 6 and 6/9 chords, retaining the Western flavor.
WEEK FOUR The second half of the example illustrates a common descending bass chordal figure, featured in standards such as Bob Wills’ “Stay All Night.” Each chord voicing changes to adapt to
Now, it’s time to explore playing lead guitar in the Western-swing style. Early lead players, such as Shamblin and Junior Barnard, were close in sound and style to such early jazz and
T-Bone Walker
AcousticGuitar.com 43
WEEKLY WORKOUT | PLAY
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys The King of Western Swing
Check out Texas-based Hot Club of Cowtown with guitarist Whit Smith
Week Four Ex. 5: Charlie Christian-Style Christian Style Lead Lines Lines
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8
11
8 10
8
8 9
10
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4
F7 C /G D m7 G7 œ F m6 œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ (œ) œ 3 8
8 10
8 10 8
9
10 7
B C
& Ó
8 10 12
8 10
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Am
10
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D m7
9 10
8
8
8
11
G7
C
11 10 8
8 10
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Am
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B F6
F m6
C
12
4 5 4 5
B 44 June 2014
4 5 4
5
4 5 4 5
4 5 4
5
8 9
8 10
8 9
D m7
j #œ
j œ
8 10
G7
œ œ Œ Ó
89
10
œ j #œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ bœ nœ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ Œ & #œ œ œ œ C
10 8
9 10
8
8 10
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8
8
blues guitarists as Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker. The electric guitar was still relatively new in the late ’30s and mid-’40s and was treated as novelty in the context of traditional string and horn bands. This week’s example is in the style of Christian’s work with the Benny Goodman sextet. Rooted in swing and early blues, Christian’s lines were especially influenced by horn players, and exhibited a rhythmic drive that propelled the song forward. This example mixes common blues vocabulary (measures 1-4) with more vertical, arpeggio approaches (measures 6-7). Notice how the major-sixth interval (in this example, A in the key of C major) is accented in the same way as the chord voicings. The first three phrases all start with an emphasis on the sixth approaching the root. Measures 13 and 14 actually outline a C6 chord (C-E-G-A) using a chromatic approach below each chord tone. This is a great device you can add to any solo in a swing or roots-blues style.
BEGINNERS’ TIP
4
This may sound obvious, but listen to Western Swing! Particularly recordings by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. This will help to get the sound inside your head and hands.
EXTRA CREDIT
8
œ œ œ bœ œ ‰J‰J
7 8 8
LISTEN TO THIS!
8
11 10
Ex. 6 and Ex. 7 (next page) blend chord voicings and use them in a lead style. The first four-bar example shows a lead line using double-stops, which emphasizes the major sixth (A) as well as chromaticism throughout. This line is reminiscent of the classic twin leads found in Western swing—played on two guitars, a guitar and steel, or two fiddles. The last example is in the style of jazz guitar great Barney Kessel—like Herb Ellis, Christian, and Shamblin, Kessel had deep roots in Oklahoma and Texas, and could easily transition from jazz to Western swing. This example is
5
BEGINNERS’ TIP For the “twin lead” style in the Extra Credit section, try learning and playing just one lead line at a time before putting them together in double-stops.
essentially a blues line (the top notes), harmonized in “block chords.” This creates the effect of three or four horns in a big band playing sophisticated, yet blues-drenched solos in a shout chorus. Practice this slowly and then try taking it to other keys so you’ll be able to use it in your repertoire. Playing lead chord breaks is a great way to add contrast to your leads and conclude a single-note solo. The last chord is a B dominant-seventh with a 9th and 11th, which colors the ending with sophisticated flair. AG
Extra Credit Ex. 6: Twin Lead Double Stops
œœ # œœ œœ # œœ œœ n œœ b b œœ n œœ œœ œ œ œ # œ n œ # # œœ n œœ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ & 44 œ # œœ œ œ C6
B
8 9 8 9 9 10 9 10
˘œ œ # œ œ # œœ œ œœœ Ó ‰ &
4
Sean McGowan (seanmcgowanguitar.com) is a jazz guitarist based in Denver, where he directs the guitar program at the
B
University of Colorado.
8 9 10 10 8 9 9 9 10 10
8 7 7 8 10 9 8 9
8 11 12 8 10 12 13 8
11 10 8 11 10 8 10 10
7 8 5 8 9 5 5 4 7 5
Bœb7
Ex. 7: Barney Kessel Chordal Lead Line
œ œ b œœœ b œœœ n b b œœ n b œœœ b n œœœ œœ n œœ œ œœ b œ n œ ˘œ œ œ œ œ b œœ b œœ b œœ n n œœ n œœ Œ b œ bœ n œ 13 11 13 12
12 11 12 11
11 10 11 10
9 8 9 7
10 6 9 6 10 8
8 6 7 5 8 6
6 6 5 6
4 3 4 3
5 4 5 4
6 5 7 5
4 5 4 5
U
œœœ œœ
5 5 7 5 6
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T
THE MOUSE
THAT ROARED
he first time I saw Peter von Poehl play live was in a large stone church in Vendome, a town in the middle of France. The other groups on the bill that evening were too loud for the space, their performances cursed by blustery reverb and renegade bass frequencies. Then, mercifully, von Poehl took the stage with just an acoustic guitar and proceeded to charm the audience with his personal and disarming pop songs. He sang his catchy melodies in a pitch-perfect voice that skipped easily into falsetto and his guitar playing was sparkling and clear. Between songs he spoke to the audience in a halting whisper, “Hello, and um, good evening,” he began. “I recently stayed with a friend . . . who had a mouse in his wall . . . .” The punchline to the story was that the friend ended up tearing down the wall with a sledgehammer to get to the mouse, who was nowhere to be found. Von Poehl’s melodies are a lot like that little mouse—gently making their presence known and slyly avoiding brute force. Born and raised in Malmo, Sweden, von Poehl was 30 when he moved to Berlin, where he recorded his acclaimed 2006 debut album Going to Where the Tea Trees Are (Bella Union/UK, World’s Fair/US). On his second record, May Day (Tot ou Tard), von Poehl honed his delicate brand of pop with arrangements featuring guitars, soft-sounding drums, and chiming keyboards. On his new album, Big Issues Printed Small, von Poehl takes his music to an adventurous new place. This time, in addition to the trademark earthy rhythm section and delicate singing, there are also woodwinds, lots of them, and a vibraphone. The record was recorded live by 20 musicians, and highlights von Poehl’s skill as a composer and arranger. The
SWEDEN’S PETER VON POEHL GOES ALL IN ON 46 June 2014
musical effect is at once intimate and grand, elegant and rough, modern yet ancient. I recently spoke with von Poehl at his home in Paris, where he lives with the writer and musician Marie Modiano and their son. The orchestral aspects of your new record remind me of Nick Drake, Brian Wilson, and Sufjan Stevens, but I’m curious to hear what artists influenced you. To be honest, before this album, I couldn’t really find something that sounded like what I wanted to hear. Orchestral arrangement mixed with rock music is not always a very happy combination; there is often a kind of macho thing that I really didn’t want. Someone called this album a “lo-fi orchestra record.” I wish I had come up with that.
I read in the liner notes that you recorded the whole thing live. How long did that end up taking? Um, 12 hours. Wow! But it took three years to prepare the score for it, which is obviously ridiculous! The songs were all written on guitar and Venezuelan quarto, but then I had a proposal to play with an orchestra for a music festival, so I started collaborating with an arranger (Martin Hederos) in Sweden. He and I then sent ideas back and forth. We did several concerts over the past three years with orchestras, with up to 40 musicians on stage, and each time the arrangements evolved. The score for the record has everything written down, even the triangle parts, so I guess that is why it went so fast.
I noticed that you are approaching the songs differently live. Recently you played as a duo, just you and your special-looking acoustic guitar and a cello player. The idea of the “unplugged” outfit came perhaps as a reaction to all this. Once the album was done, I was looking for something different on stage. Suddenly playing these songs as a duo (with New York cellist Zach Miskin) in a very improvised manner—deliberately going for off-beat locations like museums, churches, a baroque castle, a carpet factory or even a court house—was very liberating. As for the guitar, I was finding that I needed to play high up on the neck to play the parts I had come up with on the quatro, so I bought a Gibson CF 100, which has a cutaway, and it sounds better than most of the modern cutaway models that I tried. Gibson only made about 1,000 of them, if I remember correctly. Where did you find it? On a guitar forum. A gentleman in Baltimore had six of them. Apparently he’s good friends with Jackson Browne, who owns 30 CF 100s. You’ve moved around quite a bit in your life, do you think there is something that remains specifically Swedish about your music? I think so. My first record was like an archeological dig into my musical experiences growing up in Sweden, but none of the reviewers seemed to catch that. Where I grew up there was a Salvation Army band that used to play every Saturday in the city center and there was really something fascinating and depressing about them. I think my use of wind instruments really comes from that. I also use a lot of harmonium, and in Sweden every classroom has a harmonium to start off the day with choral singing. If the
BIG ISSUES PRINTED SMALL
‘Someone called this album a “lo-fi orchestra record.” I wish I had come up with that.’
Protestant religion is very boring compared to other religions, at least all their kids learn how to sing in tune. What do you foresee in your future? I continue to tour with this album throughout 2014. I have also been commissioned to write the music for a dance piece (premiering in Umea in the north of Sweden in November). The lineup is electric guitar—which will be me on a Chinese baritone guitar, fitted with a few extra bass-guitar strings, along with a pile of stomp boxes— along with a 54 piece symphony orchestra. Hey, do you remember the story about the mouse that you told at that concert in Vendome? Did your friend ever get rid of it? Even after tearing down the wall? I don’t think so. One morning I woke up there and saw it staring at me from the foot of my bed. AG
BY JASON G LASSE R AcousticGuitar.com 47
LIKE A HURRICANE
TOMMY EMMANUEL BLOWS THROUGH ACOUSTIC GUITAR’S OFFICES BY DAVID KNOWLES
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TOMMY EMMANUEL
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arrying a suit bag in one hand, his guitar case in the other, Tommy Emmanuel, the 58-year-old Australian guitar god, enters the Acoustic Guitar offices at 10 a.m. on a Friday morning ready to get to work. “Coffee would be good, thanks,” he says with a boyish smile. On tour to promote The Colonel and the Governor, an album of guitar duets with Martin Taylor, Emmanuel puts on a blue paisley button-down shirt, removes his Maton from its case, sits down under the studio lights and absent-mindedly lets his fingers loose on the fretboard as the coffee is fetched. Renowned the world over for his astonishing dexterity and his ability to simultaneously hold down bass, rhythm, and lead lines, it’s easy to see why Chet Atkins bestowed Emmanuel with the coveted title of Certified Guitar Player back in 1999. Just as fluid as his playing, however, is his ease with conversation, especially when talking about the instrument that has defined his life. When I ask about his song “Welsh Tornado,” one of the more dizzying tracks off his 2010 album Little by Little, Emmanuel reaches for a capo. “‘Welsh Tornado,’ eh?” he replies. “Well, I haven’t played that one in quite a while. Let me see if I can remember it.” What follows is a blizzard of notes, all accompanied by a spot-on bass line, to which the only apt response is a reverent shake of the head.
You must get the ‘How do you do that?’ question a lot. I can break it down for you if you like. Absolutely! First of all, let’s say, the technique in order to do that was something I developed by listening to Chet Atkins and Merle Travis when I was a kid. I started out playing the guitar with a straight pick like most people do. As a guitar player, my first job was to be the rhythm player for my brother, who did all the melodies. So we were listening to the Ventures and the Shadows. The Shadows were the big band—they were bigger than the Ventures in Australia. Their
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music was so fabulous, and still is—you can listen to their music today and it still stands up. It’s beautiful. So, I started out as a rhythm player and there was some kind of what I call a happy accident in my early life in that I didn’t know anything about bass guitar. I didn’t realize there was a bass guitar on records. I thought the rhythm guy covered the bass. Because me and my brother, Phil, were learning songs all the time, and we were just ear players—we’re like the Indiana Jones of guitar players, my brother and I. We’re listening to records on the radio, or if we’re lucky enough to get a record, we’re listening to it over and over to work it out.
Listening and working things out by ear, it gives you a different perspective. It also makes you work hard on identifying things, like when you hear a song you go, “Oh, that’s D,” and you start to know what D is. Then you hear the Beatles come out with “Yesterday” and you know it’s F. Things like that . . . you start to recognize those sounds. So, we start working out songs from records and I’m providing the backing. That’s how I started out my musical life. So, when I heard Chet, I immediately recognized, “Well he’s playing the bass part, there’s some chords in there, and then there’s the melody on top, which sounds very separate.”
WATCH A VIDEO PERFORMANCE BY TOMMY EMMANUEL AT ACOUSTICGUITAR.COM
WHAT TOMMY EMMANUEL PLAYS GUITAR Maton 808 “I got my first [Maton guitar] in 1960. So, it was a while ago, back when I still had hair and teeth! My first real good guitar was a Maton, which are made in Australia. You’ve got to remember that back in those days we were a little country a long way from anywhere. So, unless you had some big money and you were in the big city then you could find a Gibson or a Fender or a Gretsch. I didn’t even see a Fender guitar until I was 14 or 15. I dreamt about them, and I’d look at Chet Atkins records with him and his Gretsch, but the Maton was my first electric guitar and years later I switched to a Telecaster. What I do nowadays is play this model, a BG 808. I have two of these on the road. “The moment I pick up one of these guitars I’m at home. I’ve played them for so long. In the studio, sometimes I vary my guitars. I love Larivee guitars. I know everybody in the business, I know Chris Martin and Bob Taylor and the people from Gibson—we all know each other. I do have Gibson acoustic guitars and Martins and some beautiful handmade models as well, but this guitar [the Maton] is my guitar of choice because no other guitar has the same sound. And, really, when people say to me, you should play such and such guitar because of the acoustics, I say, ‘Well, I don’t really care about the acoustics, I care about the electrics. I care that the PA is good enough, that it has enough power and it has a beautiful tone because what people are going to hear is not the hall, people are going to hear the PA.’ “It’s a different ballgame these days.
IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY CHET ATKINS BESTOWED EMMANUEL WITH THE COVETED TITLE OF CERTIFIED GUITAR PLAYER BACK IN 1999.
In Australia, we were very cynical. Most people I met were very cynical about American recordings and were like, “Oh, those Americans with their recording tricks, don’t take any notice to that.” And I said, “No, no, I think he’s playing everything at once.” What was the first Chet Atkins song you heard? “Windy and Warm.” I was about eight. It was in C minor, and most of the guitar players I know were trying to work it out with the record, and were like, “It’s so hard to bend that note with your little finger.” It was so difficult and somebody said, “Oh, he probably used a capo.” And
“But in the studio, I like to vary the acoustic guitars, and all of my Matons actually sound great just with a microphone on them. It depends what kind of texture I’m looking for. Some songs really suit the sound of a Martin or the sound of a Larivee, but when you’ve got to play a show and you’ve got to get out there and go from song to song, feel to feel and genre to genre, nothing comes close to this guitar. That’s why I use them.” —TOMMY EMMANUEL
we were like, “No, Chet, he’s a god, he would never use a capo.” When I met Chet the first time in 1980, I said to him, “Now, Chet, ‘Windy and Warm.’” And he said, “Yeah, capo, third fret.” [Laughs] You’d been playing the guitar for four years when you heard that song. How long did it take you to get to the point where you could actually play it? I can’t remember. All I can remember was that once I heard it I had one of those epiphanies where I said, “Whatever that is that’s what I’ve got to do.” I knew that was what I wanted to do. I had to make that sound, because it was so
incredible, you know? And Chet told me years later, he said when he was living on a farm down in Columbus, Georgia, with his father he tuned in the radio and heard Merle Travis and he had exactly the same moment. What it is was everything being played at once. If you listen to that carefully, you can put it beside honky-tonk piano or stride piano. It has come from the same place. It’s come from New Orleans and traveled up to Kentucky. People like Arnold Shultz—we owe him a great debt, because he was an itinerant worker who played guitar in the street, he worked in the coal mine part time and then when it got really cold he’d go down to New Orleans, he’d
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TOMMY EMMANUEL
I wanted to play it, I had to practice with a click and get used to playing that fast. So I worked it all out and then I set the click and I played it for a few days like that, and then every time I’d come back I’d move the click up more until I got myself to that [speed]. I had to get every note and make it sound musical and feel great, but because the song was called the “Welsh Tornado” it had to come through and whitewash us all. I had to work toward that and have that vision. You’re not a sight reader and you don’t notate your songs? No, and I don’t use tabs. It’s way too slow and cumbersome for me. I can do it much quicker by ear.
‘I SAW A SIGN ONCE THAT READ: “LIFE BEGINS JUST OUTSIDE OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE.” I THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD STATEMENT.’
play down there and then he’d bring that music back to Kentucky. And it was because of him, handing it on to people like Ike Everly, the father of the Everly Brothers, and inspiring a young Merle Travis, who said wherever Mose Rager was playing, he’d try to be there and he would watch what he did and then he’d go home and try to do it himself. Merle Travis turned out to be one of the cleverest people who ever played that style of guitar because he was a great writer. Not only was he a wonderful player, but he was a great writer and he could sing, he was clever, he was a great entertainer. He made it funny, he made it interesting. You’re taking these forms that have come before and you’re using them in your own compositions, and trying to push things forward. And now people hear you and they have that same kind of moments of epiphany. I’m hoping that when young people these days discover me, because I’m already the greyhaired guy who has been playing guitar for a long time, I’m already the previous generation and I feel as young as my children. I’m hoping that people will discover things through me, and that they will take the time to go back and listen to the people I listened to and find out where this comes from and why it’s important for us to keep it going. I think the difference between me and previous players is the times in which I have lived. All through the late ’60s and all through the ’70s, I really listened to
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singer-songwriters. I was really into Elton John, Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, but prior to that Gordon Lightfoot, Don McLean. You know Don McLean’s first two albums were so big and important in my life as a writer. I think I soaked so much of that in, that it affected how I play the guitar. I’ve heard you speak about being fearless when it comes to playing the guitar. I guess what you’re talking about is taking risks and chances, but also not being locked into a certain mode of guitar playing. Yes, being willing to jump in and learn from others. Being willing to take what you have and have that attitude of “I’m going to contribute, I’m not going to jump all over you, but I’m going to contribute, and what I’ve got to say, I really mean. And I’m not trying to show you that I’m better than you.” It’s about being real about it. A lot of people are afraid to do that because they like being in their comfort zone. I saw a sign once that read: “Life begins just outside of your comfort zone.” I thought that was a good statement. It’s terrifying out there, but it’s never stopped me, whatever I don’t know hasn’t stopped me from making use of what I do know. That’s why I’m a bit of a sponge around people. Is there a song off your recent albums that epitomizes that fearless attitude? “The Welsh Tornado,” in fact. It’s full of stuff that I had to think about. I was writing the song and I thought, “I really want to say this, but how do I go about doing it?” At the tempo that
Your designation by Chet Atkins as a CGP, you’re only one of a handful of players to have been named that—what does that mean to you? There are three of us. Steve Wariner, John Knowles and myself. There was a fourth, Paul Yandell, but he passed away, and there was Jerry Reed. It means Certified Guitar Player, and to trace it back, a long time ago, Chet Atkins said, people like me spend our life trying to enhance peoples’ lives and bring people together with music and to tell the story of where we come from in our music and in our culture, and he had really effected the whole world. He said, there are these people that go to college for four years and get these letters after their name and they put the thing up on the wall and people pay a lot of money to hire their services. So he says, why don’t we, who have no school to go to learn what we have learned, have some sort of letters after our names as a kind of recognition for what we’ve done? So what they did was to ask the governor of every state in America if this should be decreed and laid upon Chet. They all signed off on it. I saw the original paper, it was this thing in a huge frame. It was all very proper. That Chet had done so much for the peoples of the world and for his home country and all that. Jerry Reed was given his award for his contribution, his compositions and his recordings. On my award it says, “for lifetime contribution to the art of fingerpicking.” I guess it’s somewhere along the lines of “for your body of work.” Teaching, for me, and handing stuff on is such an important part of my life. It’s a joy to see people getting turned on to music. Chet did say in an early video, “I think you’re lucky in life, if, at an early age, someone puts a guitar in your hand and you get dedicated to it like I did.” AG
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THE AG INTERVIEW
ROSANNE CASH
BY JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS
54 June 2014
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“WE PAINTED IT TOGETHER,” writes Rosanne Cash in the liner notes of her new album The River and the Thread (Blue Note), thanking her co-writer, producer, and husband John Leventhal. With Cash writing the lyrics and Leventhal composing the music, what the couple painted on the album is a vivid portrait of the South— from the hardscrabble childhood home of her father, Johnny Cash, in the Sunken Lands of Arkansas; to her own birthplace of Memphis; to Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River, haunted by the deaths of Robert Johnson and Emmett Till. Mixing family history and present-day scenes with flights of the imagination, The River and the Thread is an extraordinary travelogue in song. The fact that Cash and Leventhal have teamed up for a concept album about the South is more than a little ironic, considering that they first connected in New York City in the early ’90s when Cash made a clean break from the Nashville music business—and from her marriage to songwriter Rodney Crowell. It was a time when, in search of a new artistic direction, Cash made a break from commercial country. And yet The River and the Thread is a natural extension of what preceded it. Her 2006 album Black Cadillac reflected on the loss of Cash’s father, mother (Vivian Distin), and stepmother (June Carter Cash). On 2009’s The List, Cash sang selections
JOHN LEVENTHAL
from a list of 100 essential country songs her dad gave her when she was 18. The River and the Thread, inspired, in part, by Arkansas State University’s project of restoring Johnny Cash’s boyhood home, ties together her past and present in a complex and satisfying way. The album even includes what must be a rarity in the annals of songwriting: a song (“When the Master Calls the Roll”) co-written by a songwriter, her current spouse, and her ex. For his part, Leventhal has been an A-list producer, co-writer, and guitarist, particularly for singer-songwriters, ever since he coproduced Shawn Colvin’s Grammy-winning debut, Steady On, in 1989. His credits include many co-writes with Colvin (including “Sunny Came Home”) and guitar work with the likes of Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, and Paul Simon. For The River and the Thread, Leventhal created gorgeous melodies and arrangements with a battery of acoustic and electric guitars, evoking classic Southern styles, from thumpy Merle Travis picking and mountain ballads to swampy blues and Stax soul. Cash and Leventhal still live in New York with their teenage son, Jake, and often perform as an acoustic duo. I caught up with them by phone during a stint at home between tour dates.
PHOTO BY CLAY PATRICK MCBRIDE
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ROSANNE CASH & JOHN LEVENTHAL When you first worked together, on The Wheel, what brought you together as collaborators? Cash I had heard the work he had done with both Jim Lauderdale and Marc Cohn, and Shawn Colvin of course, and I just really loved his sensibility. I loved his melodic sense, I loved his guitar sound, and it sounded modern as well as with a real old-school sensibility. Also he loved Southern music. He was basically a roots musician. All of that package really appealed to me—not to mention he was tall, dark, and handsome. John, what did you initially think you could bring to Rosanne’s songs as a producer? Leventhal Rosanne had already staked out a pretty sizable career, so I was flattered and happy that she asked me to work with her. She was navigating away from a commercial country market and trying to make a statement outside of that realm. So it was a tiny bit daunting, but it sort of intersected with the world I had been working in. I always feel like whatever I do doesn’t fit neatly into anyone’s idea of a genre, which, of course, I’m happy about, but the industry and critics seem to have a hard time with it. We were both set in our ways in how to make records, and we had a fair amount of friction. But it was good creative friction, and I think [The Wheel] is a demonstration of that. My gut feeling is that Rosanne and I have been getting better and better over the last two decades. To be completely honest, I feel finally we have found our sound as a creative couple on this last record. ‘When the Master Calls the Roll’ and other new songs obviously go far outside your own experience. Do you feel unsatisfied these days writing in an autobiographical mode? Cash Definitely. I mean, at this point, to write a navel-gazing song about just my feelings [laughs], it would be like wearing a really short miniskirt. That’s not what this record is about. Leventhal We were trying to create a world. Cash A world, yeah—there are characters, a really strong sense of time and place, and situations that are completely outside of myself. Having said that, of course, our experience runs all the way through it. These songs may not be autobiographical, but they feel personal. They have emotional resonance. Cash And that’s the part of songwriting that you can’t quantify. That’s the part of any kind of
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Did the earlier lyrics relate to the Civil War story you tell? Cash It was a completely different story. We kept the first four lines that Rodney had—it was an actual 19th-century personals ad. I wanted to keep that and then turn the rest of it into the Civil War song. It’s based on two of my own ancestors. I researched them, and we wrote it together. He came over to my house, we wrote part of it at the table, and then we wrote part of it by email. Was it challenging to tap into that archaic language? Cash Yeah. I’m glad you picked that up— nobody has asked about that. The use of the word whence, for instance— Leventhal —initially made me wince [laughs].
art that you can’t quantify—that mystical element of why it resonates. When you were working on these new songs, did you write words completely without music, or did the process vary song by song? Cash It did vary song by song. For instance, “Night School,” I gave the lyrics to him complete, and he wrote the melody. With “Modern Blue,” I had the chorus written and he wrote the melody, and then I wrote the rest of the lyrics. Leventhal My personal preference is for Rosanne to write the words first. I think on all but two or three songs on this album, the lyrics came first, and I would write music to the lyrics. It’s very inspiring when she gives me her lyric or part of the lyric first. It forces me out of my box as a composer. Cash “When the Master Calls the Roll” was a little different, because it was [previously] a completely different song. We kept John’s melody, and Rodney [Crowell] and I completely rewrote the lyrics. Leventhal So that was a melody I actually had for a long time. Well over a year ago, Rodney mentioned to me he was doing an album with Emmylou [Harris], and I said, “Man, I have this great melody that would probably be good.” I played it for Rodney, and he loved it. He wrote a set of lyrics to it, which were decent, but I don’t think either one of us felt they were great, and Emmylou passed on it. Rosanne loved the melody and she liked elements of Rodney’s lyric, but she improved it exponentially.
Cash That was tough for John when I gave it to him. I said, “No, this is historically accurate.” I wanted to keep all of it that way, to create a landscape and almost like a cinema feeling, so that we could see where they were, the James River. Rodney and I talked at length about what [the character William Lee] would have in his hand besides his father’s rifle. I finally said, “Yeah, he would have her locket. It would be either her picture or her locket.” Those little details became really, really important. We obsessed about it. I dreamed about these characters. I couldn’t get them out of my head. Leventhal I think I was not initially as convinced about delving into, for lack of a better term, antiquated language, because I felt the music had a visceral, emotional pull that I didn’t want to lose. I didn’t want to put any distance between that and the listener. But I have to say, it didn’t take me long to come around. I really thought it was extraordinary, the arc of the story. When you are writing words and there’s no music yet, do you hear a melody in your head? Cash Sometimes. And then if I get attached to that melody and he wants to change it, we butt heads about that sometimes. Sometimes he’ll keep an element of a melody I have in my head or even a feeling of a melody I have in my head. Sometimes he just changes it completely and I end up coming around in the same way he ended up coming around with something lyrical that he at first disagrees with. For instance, “Night School,” I didn’t have the melody in my head when I wrote the lyrics, but I knew it was really sad. He could not have made that a more aggressive melody and had it serve the lyric. On “A Feather’s Not a Bird,” I
PHOTO BY CLAY PATRICK MCBRIDE
had a melody for the chorus in my head, and I played it for him and he really hated it [laughs], and then I ended up hating it. What he wrote was so much better. Leventhal That was an interesting song because I wrote the melody away from an instrument, and I actually like that. Like any writer, I really try to break out of my habits. It’s easy to fall into certain paths or habits, particularly when they have worked in the past and you’ve gotten good results. I am continually trying to force myself not to do things repetitively, like go to a guitar or even a piano. So that’s a case where I just searched for a melody that I thought was really singable without anything, almost like a field holler or chant, independent of a harmonic progression. You mentioned ‘Night School,’ which really stands out from the rest of the album. It’s like a 19th-century parlor song. Cash Yeah, well, there’s a lot of Stephen Foster in that song, and maybe some Johnny Mercer. John has a very wide palate. In the beginning, I thought both “Modern Blue” and “Night School” were way outside the landscape, and now I think the record couldn’t exist without those two.
I have to say, the first time I heard that song, the phrase ‘night school’ came as a complete surprise. Cash For John, too. He did not like the phrase “night school” when I first gave him the lyric. I stood my ground with it. I just felt it was a great metaphor for sex and romance. Leventhal I think we’re both particularly proud of that song, because it was a bit of new ground. It’s nice to draw upon a pre-rock ’n’ roll tradition and have it still feel real somehow and not like a corny pastiche. Tell me about ‘The Sunken Lands.’ That delves into some family history, right? Cash The lyrics are about my grandmother, Carrie Cash. Her life was so, so hard—she raised seven kids, and she picked cotton in this area of Arkansas called the Sunken Lands. They called the soil the gumbo soil—I actually put “gumbo soul” in “A Feather’s Not a Bird” to reference that. Arkansas State University was restoring my dad’s home, and going there, you know just really taking in how hard life was, that’s where that song came from. Another level to the song is that [Carrie Cash’s] last name was Rivers, and my oldest
daughter’s middle name is Rivers. [The lyrics include the lines “A river rises / And she sails away.”] So that, going along with the title, was special to me. I know of a few instances on the album where lyrics use snippets of actual conversation, like the lines about learning ‘to love the thread’ in ‘A Feather’s Not a Bird’ and ‘What’s the temperature, darling?’ in ‘Etta’s Song.’ As a writer, do you always have your antenna up for things like that? Cash Oh, constantly. Sometimes I don’t even get it until later. There’s a line in “World of Strange Design” that says, “We talk about your drinking but not about your thirst.” That’s [based on] a Scottish saying. I wrote that down when I first heard it. I just thought, that is so great; I have to use that in some way. But my antenna is up everywhere. In “Money Road,” that line about what you seek is seeking you—that’s directly from a Rumi poem. There’s a line in “World of Strange Design,” too: “I’m the jewel in the shade of his weeping willow tree.” The jewel in the shade is from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I just feel like if you steal from really wellknown places, it’s OK.
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AcousticGuitar.com 57
THE CASH & LEVENTHAL
GUITAR STASH
58 June 2014
Rosanne Cash did not play guitar on The River and the Thread—given Leventhal’s six-string mastery, she says, “Why should I?” But onstage and in writing songs, her go-to guitar is her Martin signature model, an OM-28 made with rosewood and Adirondack spruce. “It has perfect balance,” she says. Cash’s signature model is equipped with a Fishman/Martin Gold+Plus Natural 1 pickup system. She uses light-gauge D’Addario strings and medium Fender picks.
Drake) and a Gibson circa-1950 LG-2. On The River and the Thread he also played a Martin 00-21 and a Guild F-30 (both from the early ’60s), a 1956 Gibson J-45, and a new dreadnought by Swedish luthier Thomas Fredholm. In general, Leventhal favors acoustics that have a strong fundamental, without a lot of overtones or brightness. That kind of sound, he says, “gives the acoustic guitar a place in the track that it can own pretty easily. I like to be able to hear everything.”
At home, Cash and Leventhal have several guitars that belonged to Johnny Cash, including an 1890s Martin 2-27 and a 1939 sunburst Martin D-18 that was a 50th birthday gift to Leventhal.
Live, Leventhal plays a Collings OM1A with a Fishman soundhole pickup and a Schertler Bluestick undersaddle pickup. The Fishman signal runs through a small Fender amp, with some tremolo and delay, while the undersaddle pickup goes direct. He mixes the two 50/50 for a hybrid acoustic/electric sound.
In the studio, Leventhal plays mostly vintage acoustics, and an array of Telecasters. Two of his favorite small-body acoustics are a 1964 Guild M-20 (the mahogany model associated with Nick
Leventhal uses D’Addario strings of “every conceivable variety”—typically medium gauge on his acoustics. He raves about the XH flatpicks made by Folkway Music in Guelph, Ontario.
These songs evoke so many styles of Southern music. Were you thinking consciously about those as you wrote? Cash Yeah, of course. It’s not that we wanted to have a pastiche of these genres on the record, but we talked a lot about the influences we would draw from, whether it was blues or Appalachian or, with “The Sunken Lands,” how rooted that was in a boom-chick-boom sound. We talked so much about the different influences and styles and what we would draw from—not mimic, but draw from—that when we did “Modern Blue,” I said, “That’s just too pop. It shouldn’t be on the record.” The way I reconciled myself to it is that [“Modern Blue”] actually references my own early work [laughs]. There’s a little of “Seven Year Ache” in that.
Cash Well, in the same way I pushed the South away and then ended up writing a record about it, I pushed that music away—it’s so dated, it’s so synthesized, it’s so this, it’s so that—until Sony wanted to put out the Essential collection, and I had to go to the mastering lab to listen to all those songs over again while we remastered. I was really struck by the fact that they were all representative of where I was musically in that time of my life. It was all true, even parts now where I cringe and go, “Oh, God, what was I thinking?”—it was true to the time and to who I was. I’ll listen to “Seven Year
Ache” now, or play it live, and think, wow, this has had a life. I’ve been playing this song for over 30 years. The meaning has changed to me over time; some nights it feels like a song my daughter could have written, or my daughter did write, and that’s very sweet. I think of the body of my work now as a person: in the early part of the relationship you’re all flush with this kind of unconscious romance, and then in the middle part, it’s really difficult and you don’t want to deal with it. Now I feel like it’s all part of the whole, and even the bad part is still part of me. AG
John, are you also consciously referencing Southern guitar styles here, too, like the Merle Travis feel of ‘The Sunken Lands’? Leventhal If you heard the first demo, I don’t think it would seem quite as Merle Travis-y or Chet [Atkins] or Sun Records as [the final track] sounds. Once I realized it was there, maybe I replayed the electric guitar to emphasize the boom-chick. But that doesn’t happen on every song. Like “A Feather’s Not a Bird,” that just flowed out. I’m operating in the land of Pops Staples and John Fogerty and Reggie Young—those are all guitar players that I know fairly intimately and love, and I have over the years kind of internalized their voices. I don’t want ever to sound like any of them. It’s like any player who’s been doing it for a while: you’re just going to process your influences, and if you’re lucky, it comes out at the end of the day with your own voice. Rosanne, your last two albums were so deeply shaped by your father’s music and legacy. Do you see The River and the Thread in that light, too? Cash Well, not as directly as Black Cadillac and The List, because [The River and the Thread] is more about shaking off the identities we create for ourselves—keeping the ones that fit and letting go of the ones that don’t. That sounds kind of vague and abstract, but it’s about my connection to the South and all the ways that means. Of course it means my ancestry, the musical connections I have, and the characters and the extended family and the food and what a vortex the Delta is, spiritually and musically. It was a landscape I really wanted to explore. You mentioned a connection between ‘Modern Blue’ and ‘Seven Year Ache.’ At this point, how do you look back on your music from the 1980s?
LEVENTHAL PHOTO BY WES BENDER
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AcousticGuitar.com 59
Doyle Dykes Signature Rosewood
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NEW GEAR 2014
Takamine GN51-BSB
The year’s coolest new guitars & gear are grounded in tradition, but packed with advanced technologies BY GREG CAHILL, MARK SEGAL KEMP & DAVID KNOWLES
YOU CAN’T MOVE FORWARD without looking back. That seems to be the overarching dictum for acoustic-guitar makers and gear manufacturers this year. A whiplash of influences, both reliably old and futuristically new, makes the year in gear reminiscent of an old album title by the Moody Blues: Days of Future Past. On one hand, several deeply rooted American guitar companies have reissued some of their classic beauties—Martin’s little 000-28 and Gibson’s L-00, Gretsch’s dusty old New Yorker archtop, Regal’s shiny RC-1-N Resonator. On the other hand, not only is a lot of sweet new technology creeping inside some dependably great guitars—for example, an updated Expression electronics s y s t e m i n Ta y l o r ’ s f l a g s h i p 814ce—but wholly new materials are transforming the way we think about acoustic instruments. Take McPherson’s line of carbon-fiber guitars, sold under the Kevin Michael Carbon Fiber brand— they were designed by aerospace engineer Ellis Seal, an actual rocket scientist who worked on the development of the space
shuttle. And carbon fiber is everywhere now, used to make guitars that not only sound great, but come at affordable prices. What’s more, some old new materials are making a comeback: Fender Instruments this year has relaunched the Ovation line with its jet-age composites, parabolic body, offset soundholes, and oodles of ’60s mojo. Affordability may be the most exciting news of all in 2014. Gone are the days when cheap guitars meant . . . well, cheap guitars. From budget lines to budget brands, lowcost instruments are looking and playing better than ever. The rather striking Takamine GN51-BSB, with a solid spruce top and rosewood back and sides, for instance, can be had for a street price of $349. Other trends this year include a return to an emphasis on made-in-the-USA instruments, more and more smallbody guitars, and more instruments aimed specifically at women and young children. So, take a look at some of the exciting and interesting new guitars and gear we’ve run across so far this year.
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GRETSCH
HONEY DIPPER
GIBSON
1937 L-00
MARTIN
D-45E RETRO
Your Roots Are Showing EASTMAN NEW TRADITIONALS Two throwback acoustic models from Eastman may be the start of a whole new tradition. Part of the company’s Traditional Series, the E1000 (MSRP $1,375) and the E2000SS (MSRP $1,500) are both constructed from solid woods and based on pre-World War II designs. With playability central to the concept behind each guitar, both the 12-fret parlor-style model and its 14-fret slope-shoulder kin are worthy of a test drive. GIBSON 1937 L-00 With its back and sides made of Honduran mahogany, the sound of this Gibson update is arguably as rich as the original. Picker Lee Roy Parnell, in fact, says the remake sounds “better than my original.” A rosewood fingerboard, and an Adirondack top round out the 19-fret throwback’s handsome presentation (MSRP $5,499).
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GRETSCH ROOTS COLLECTION Emulating the company’s parlorguitar models of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, Gretsch has released a slew of new and reasonably priced models. Among the new Roots Collection offerings are the handsome G9550 New Yorker archtop (MSRP $799), the G9515 Jim Dandy (MSRP $239), and a shiny, all-metal body G9201 Honey Dipper Round-Neck Resonator (MSRP $879).
MARTIN RETRO Sticking with the back-to-the-future theme, Martin also debuted four new models at winter NAMM the company says are “reminiscent” of past hits. Utilizing new advances in guitar making, the updated D -18E Retro (MSRP $3,399), OM-28E Retro (MSRP $4,499), HD-28E Retro (MSRP $4,499), and the D-45E Retro (MSRP $11,999) all blend the company’s storied craftsmanship with the latest plug-in technological updates.
MARTIN AUTHENTIC Meet the new traditionalists—C. F. Martin & Co. has released five replicas of the company’s classic models, ranging from a top-of-theline reworking of its 1936, 14-fret, large-body D-45S (MSRP $59,999) with a Brazilian rosewood shell, to an update on 1933’s OM-18 that features an ebony truss rod and Adirondack top (MSRP $6,499).
REGAL RC-1-N RESONATOR With its triple nickel-plated body, the (MSRP $595) really springs to life, especially when played with a slide. A mahogany neck and rosewood fingerboard, the duolian also features die-cast, sealed gear tuners to help you stay on track while performing. As its manufacturer suggests, the RC-1-N is a veritable blues machine—but at a price that won’t give you the blues.
MARTIN
ERIC CLAPTON NAVY BLUES
Am I Blue? The third collaboration between Martin Guitar, Eric Clapton, and designer Hiroshi Fujiwara is sure to give you the blues. Dubbed the OM-ECHF Navy Blues, the guitar is colored deep blue and fitted with a longer neck than its predecessors, the black “Bellezza Nera” and white “Bellezza Bianca,” released in 2003 and 2006, respectively. “We are very fortunate to be unveiling the next signature edition in our ongoing collaboration with longtime Martin player Eric Clapton,” Chris Martin, C.F. Martin & Co. chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “Martin Guitar GM Fred Greene and the Custom Shop team are proud of its excellent history creating some of the most exceptional guitars on the market, and partnering with some of the most illustrious players in the world.”
With an overall scale length of 25.4 inches—almost a full inch longer than the previous models—the new, 20-fret guitar (MSRP $6,999) offers ample room for fingers to travel and, according to Martin, offers “added string tension and tonal projection.” The guitar’s sides and back are made from East Indian rosewood, and the top is European spruce. Inside, the guitar bears a Martin label signed by Clapton, Fujiwara, Martin luthier Dick Boak, and Chris Martin. Added electronics will up the price, but the company is happy to make a left-handed model at no extra charge. While Roger Waters favors the black version of this guitar, and Van Morrison the white, it remains to be seen what top strummer will take up the Navy Blues. If you want the Navy Blues, though, you’d better act quickly: Martin is making only 181 of them, in honor of its 181st year as a company.
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The Price Is Right
FENDER
TELECOUSTIC
SEAGULL
MERLIN NATURAL SG
CORDOBA
C10 PARLOR
D’ADDARIO
PLANET WAVES NS ARTIST CAPO
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QUALITY CONTROL From bowl-back Ovations to more traditional budget-line acoustics by Alvarez, Ibanez, Seagull, Yamaha, Epiphone, and others, to the Gretsch roots collection and Regal Resonator, inexpensive guitars have never looked and sounded so good, or been made so well. Among the many under$500 highlights this year are Alvarez’ popular AP70 parlor guitar, Ibanez’ AC240EOPN acoustic-electric, Epiphone’s striking Hummingbird and Dove acoustic-electrics, and Seagull’s Excursion Walnut Mini Jumbo. GIBSON J-15 This new round-shoulder model boasts a J-45-style body, quality tone woods, and construction details usually found on models that far exceed its $1,499 (street) price. This affordable beauty is handcrafted from North American solid woods, including Sitka spruce and American walnut and constructed in Gibson’s Bozeman, Montana, plant. The 24.75-inch scale J-15 acoustic-electric features a dovetail neck-to-body joint secured with hide glue to ensure unequaled resonance transfer from strings to body, a radiused body with scalloped bracing for projection and clarity, and a hand-sprayed nitrocellulose lacquer finish that allows the tone to mature with age. It comes equipped with L.R. Baggs Element electronics. DIRTY ’30 Recording King dug deeper into the vintage-guitars act this year with a great line that won’t put much of a dent in your wallet. For less than $200, you can get a cool Single 0 railroad-car guitar that will go pretty much anywhere with you. Also in RK’s budget oldschool instrument series are a dreadnought (the RDH-05) and a Triple 0 (the ROH-05), both under $300. (The series includes some pretty sweet banjos, too.)
FENDER SIGNATURES In addition to its funky new electricguitar-shaped acoustic models (the new Telecoustics and Stratacoustics, both under $500), Fender has released a couple of new budget signature models. Last year, the c o m p a n y u n v e i l e d i t s Av r i l Lavigne Newporter acoustic-electric, and now Fender has released signature models for a skateboard legend (the Tony Alva Sonoran SE acoustic-electric) and a radical Detroit rocker (the Wayne Kramer Dreadnought acoustic-electric), both under $400. GRRLS ONLY Several companies told AG that they are more actively trying to reach out to women and girls in their marketing this year, but one c o m p a n y, D a i s y Ro c k G i r l Guitars, has been cranking out colorful instruments designed especially for girls—at affordable prices—for more than a decade. For less than $300, your rocker girl (or adventurous boy) can pick up DR’s striking new Sophomore Butterfly in Purple Flight. It’s a lightweight instrument with a slim mahogany neck and rosewood fingerboard. Best of all, it’s more purple than Prince, and has butterflies fluttering up the neck.
DAISY ROCK GIRL GUITARS
SOPHOMORE BUTTERFLY
Various & Sundry MADE IN THE USA From Bedell to PRS to Cordoba, and Martin to Taylor, guitar companies this year are sounding the “Made in the USA” bell louder than ever (even some of those aforementioned relaunched Ovations are Made in the USA), touting affordable guitars constructed with wood from domestic forests and/or manufacturing from American workers. The results are impressive: Breedlove’s Legacy series parlor guitar, for instance, is made at the company’s factory in Bend, Oregon, using hand-selected hardwoods, including a Sitka top and solid walnut back and sides (it also has an L.R. Baggs pickup system). It sells for $2,799. SMALL IS (STILL) BEAUTIFUL Santa Cruz’ Single 0 and Cordoba’s new C10 parlor models are just two of a growing number of small-body guitars joining the Baby Taylor, Little Martin, and other diminutive instruments to pick on. But the smallest creature of them all has to be Seagull’s new Merlin Natural SG, the four-string diatonic acoustic dulcimer-like instrument that Godin Guitars is so proud of. Even Breedlove’s impressive Premier Series Auditorium Rosewood model is billed as offering the benefits of a larger guitar without the bulk.
Lyrical Sound STRINGS & THINGS From Elixir’s new HD Lights to the return of Martin Monels, new acoustic-guitar strings are everywhere in 2014, but perhaps the most exciting development is Ernie Ball’s new string alloy Aluminum Bronze (reviewed in the April issue of AG). Not only that, but one company known more for its strings has a cool new capo, co-designed by Ned Steinberger, (the D’Addario Planet Waves NS Artist Capo), and, of course, there’s that capo company with strings (Kyser’s A10, A11, and A12 lights and mediums). ONSTAGE Among the more exciting stage accessories are Fishman’s redesigned acoustic preamps: the Platinum Pro EQ, which you can stomp on without worry of breaking it, and the Platinum Stage, which comes with a nifty belt so you can attach it to your hip. Dunlop has issued the Echoplex Preamp stomp box, an homage to the classic 1960s delay preamp that acoustic guitarists once coveted for its ability to sweeten tone and control feedback. And Digitech has put out two Vocalist stomp boxes for singing guitarists who can use a little help reaching all those notes while running around a stage: the Vocalist Live FX includes 65 other effects, and the Vocalist Live Harmony adds two additional harmonies to accompany your pretty little voice—just like, as the company brags, “a virtual team of backup singers.”
VOCALIST
LIVE FX
L.R. BAGGS L.R. BAGGS’ LYRIC CLASSICAL IS NOT YOUR AVERAGE ACOUSTIC-GUITAR MIC L.R. Baggs’ Lyric Acoustic Guitar Microphone has earned rave reviews, including in Acoustic Guitar, for its ability to reproduce the natural sound of steel-string guitars. Now, the company has released a Lyric mic for nylonstring guitars: the Lyric Classical. Like its predecessor, the Lyric Classical microphone’s TRU•MIC technology works like this: a tiny, extremely light mic mounts unobtrusively to the underside of the bridge plate on your guitar just 3mm from the soundboard surface. It uses noise-cancelling technology that filters unwanted reflective sounds coming from the acoustic chamber, letting the microphone work as though it were on the outside of the guitar. The Lyric Classical pairs TRU•MIC technology with a hi-fi preamp designed specifically for nylonstring guitars. All of Baggs’ Lyric microphones provide the benefit of having an external mic in live settings, but without the pesky feedback associated with mic’ed acoustic guitars. The mic is quite sensitive—a real plus for guitarists using percussive finger tapping on the soundboard— and the sound overall is balanced and natural.
LYRIC CLASSICAL
AT A GLANCE • Uses TRU•MIC noise-canceling technology • Analog signal conditioning • Discrete mic preamp • Volume control in soundhole • Microphone presence control • $289 (MSRP), $199 (street)
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Wherefore Art Thou, Ovation? THE WEIRD-LOOKING GUITAR IS NOW A FORERUNNER OF INNOVATIVE DESIGN & ENGINEERING When Ovation built the legendary folk singer and civil rights activist Josh White one of the company’s earliest instruments in 1967, it was the first time an AfricanAmerican musician had ever been honored with a signature guitar. It was a progressive move on Ovation’s part, but it was only one aspect of the company’s forwardlooking philosophy. Ovation, of course, would go on to change the way we see and hear the acoustic guitar—its bowl-shaped back, constructed of synthetic materials, provides a punchier sound than traditionally shaped guitars. It would also change the way we think about what goes into the making of acoustic instruments. Today, as most other big guitar companies tout their latest synthetic alternatives to scarce woods, Ovation quietly continues the work it’s been doing since 1966. That’s when a team of engineers and designers assembled by founder Charles K aman—an aerospace engineer who also played the guitar—came up with the novel idea of using parabolicshaped guitar back and sides made from a high-tech composite of glass filament and bonding resin in place of the traditional flat back constructed from natural woods. It was a radical idea that drew skepticism from the world of guitar makers, even as it captured the imaginations of acoustic-guitar players everywhere.
BY MARK SEGAL KEMP
“The format was perceived as being novel, but the truth is, the underlying bedrock of Ovation’s guitars has always been guided by sound. It’s about doing what’s best for the player,” says Ovation’s Jason Barnes. He was at the 2014 Winter NAMM early this year, next to a wall of brand-new models, including revamped affordable Celebrity and Applause series as well as a remarkable high-end limited edition Proto Adamas SRX. Barnes reports that an upcoming line—the New Hartford Artist series, made in the same Connecticut factory Ovation has been using since its earliest years—represents “a new aesthetic that cohabitates” with Kaman’s original philosophy. “We’re still trying new things,” Barnes says. “We’re still looking forward . . . picking up the baton that Charlie left us years ago.” Ovation enjoyed a dizzying heyday from the late 1960s until well into the ’80s, when countrypop singer and ace guitarist Glen Campbell, singer-songwriter Cat Stevens, jazz guitarist Al Di Meola, experimental-guitar wizard Robert Fripp, and even the late, great Bob Marley all played them. But by the ’90s and 2000s, the Ovation guitar’s unique design was no longer so head-turning, and fewer players were prominently publicizing them. Enter Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. When Fender acquired Ovation’s parent company, Kaman Music Corporation, in 2007, things began to turn around. To be sure, Ovation guitars never really went away—but suddenly, new
OVATION
CELEBRITY STANDARD PLUS
models are popping up, older versions are being revisited, and musicians are getting excited about the guitars again. “ Fe n d e r a n d p r e - Fe n d e r, Ovation has always tried to push forward and do things differently,” Barnes says, though he stresses
that the essence of the sound and design is the same, and the company still uses the same patented Lyrachord material for the guitars’ rounded backs. “But we’ve been moving in new directions. We’re changing some of our factories, looking at the best new
‘We’re still trying new things. We’re still looking forward . . . picking up the baton OVATION CS24
66 June 2014
that Charlie left us years ago.’ —JASON BARNES
Tech Couture materials. We’ve kind of poked under the hood and captured the essence of what the old Balladeer or Elite was, going back to look at bracing patterns, moving things a little here, a little there.” The new Celebrity Standard acoustic-electric models all come in the classic mid-depth Lyrachord cutaway body style with scalloped X bracing. The basic Celebrity Standard (CS24; $529.50 list) has a solid spruce top with pearloid microdots on a rosewood fingerboard, a pearloid rosette, and Ovat i o n ’ s O P- 4 B T p r e a m p a n d Slimline Pickup; it comes in sunburst gloss, natural gloss, black gloss, or red gloss. The Celebrity Standard Plus (CS24P; $649.50 list) adds figured tops and abalone appointments on the rosette and fretboard. They come in quilt maple, burled maple, flame maple, or figured koa. The Celebrity Elite and Elite Plus come with multiple offset sound holes. New models in Ovation’s entrylevel Applause series—the Applause Balladeer and Elite— are equally striking, though they come with laminate spruce tops and in different colors. The Balladeer comes in standard acoustic, acoustic-electric, and 12-string versions. The Applause Elite, like the Celebrity Elite Plus, has multiple offset sound holes. The way those multiple sound holes came about, says Barnes, was just another one of Charles Kaman’s brilliant whims. “Charlie was looking at the top one day and said, ‘You know, if the whole goal is to increase top vibration, why is there a big hole in the most mobile part of the instrument?’ So he tried putting the hole in the upper edges of the bout where vibrations occur the least. That allows you to brace the guitar in a lighter way.” That’s just the way Charles Kaman thought, and while his ideas have spread to other guitar companies over the past half-century, there’s still only one Ovation.
Taylor 814e with Expression System 2
USB GUITARS Two decades after Intel developed the Universal Serial Bus, USB ports are everywhere—in cars, aircraft seats, hotel rooms, new buildings. In 2013, some ten billion USB products were in use, with three billion new ones being shipped every year. It shouldn’t come as much surprise, then, to see more and more acoustic guitars this year with USB ports for on-the-fly recording, from budget models such as the affordable Ibanez AEG240 to Luna’s Heartsong series to Martin’s pricier RSGT Road Series. PICKUP TECHNOLOGY Guitar techs continue to improve the sound that amplified acoustic instruments make on stage. Taylor’s retooled Expression System 2, for example, uses body and string sensors, and a preamp, to bring out the warm tones of natural acoustic guitar wood, working more like a microphone than the kind of pickup that makes your acoustic sound like an electric. WOOD SUBSTITUTES What will your new guitar look like in 50 years, when wood becomes ever more scarce? Guitar makers continue to experiment with durable substitutes that sound as warm and pure as natural wood. One small step in this direction has been carbon fiber, pioneered by Rain Song and others. Now, McPherson’s new Kevin Michael Carbon Fiber line takes a giant leap into this technology, recruiting former space shuttle engineer Ellis Seal, founder of Composite Acoustics. “Being part of the McPherson team has allowed me to really take the carbon-fiber guitar to a whole new level,” Seal has said. AG
TAYLOR Taylor Guitar product designer Dan Hosler with the Expression System 2
EXPRESSION SYSTEM 2
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2014
SUMMER
GEAR GUI D E
Acoustic Remedy Cases Handmade in the USA by Amish craftsmen, each case is constructed from domestic/exotic hardwoods and designed to keep your instrument protected, displayed, and properly humidified. Low maintenance humidity control is achieved by using Planet Waves Humidipaks and an airtight seal. Available in floor, wall, and custom models. (715) 864-1569 acousticremedycases.com
Clinically Fit Inc. Specifically designed for a musician's hand because the last thing musicians need are stronger, tighter gripping muscles. The Xtensor Hand Exerciser works in the exact opposite of all other grip strengtheners creating faster more flexible fingers to improve performance, grip and hand/wrist longevity. Order Online and save 10%. Code: Hands. (631) 881-0820 clinicallyfit.com
Let Your Guitar’s Voice Ring True
You are Now Free to Play
D’Addario’s breakthrough EXP Coated Technology produces strings with the natural tone and feel of uncoated strings, with at least 4 times more life. EXP's allow a guitar's voice to ring true. With the creation of our new EXP Wire manufacturing facility, we have invested in wire-coating machinery which allows us to fully control and develop advancements in coating technology for wound strings that are second-to-none in the guitar-string industry. daddario.com/exp
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THIS SUMMER’S WAVE OF MUST-HAVE GUITARS & GEAR
Planet Waves’ NS Artist Capo raises the bar on raising the pitch. This new capo features a front-facing design, which alleviates interference with the fretting hand. It also features an adjustable tension micrometer to let you finely modify the tension of the capo, allowing for buzz-free, in-tune performance at every fret. You are now free to play. #yearofthecapo daddario.com
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
ACOUSTIC GUITAR June 2014
Elixir® Strings
Deering Goodtime Banjo
NEW Elixir HD Light Strings with NANOWEB® Coating deliver bolder highs and fuller lows with a balanced voice across all the strings making them ideal for narrow-bodied guitars. Available in Phosphor Bronze and 80/20 Bronze, they offer a balanced hand feel and extended tone life expected from Elixir Strings. elixirstrings.com/hdlight
Professionals and teachers alike recommend the Goodtime because it is lightweight, easy to play, has great tone, and is proudly made in the USA. goodtimebanjos.com
Loudbox Performer
SA220 Portable, powerful performance in a lightweight, easy-to-use system! 220W line array system equipped with two mic/ instrument channels, each with 3-band EQ, phantom power, reverb, and feedback-fighting notch filter and phase controls. List Price: $1,538.00 Street Price: $999.95 fishman.com
Re-designed with more power and features in a lighter, more efficient design. 180W of transparent bi-amplified acoustic sound; two channels with 3-band EQ, feedback-fighting controls, and a new effects section; integrated kickstand with 50-degree tilt-back for better projection. List Price: $1185.00, Street Price: $769.95 fishman.com
G7th Performance 2 Imagine G7th's most advanced capo yet. Almost half the size, half the weight of the original and without losing a single ounce of tone. With easy, near-infinite adjustment, make tuning problems a thing of the past! Truly one-handed operation and easy peghead storage makes this the ultimate capo for songwriting, stage, and studio. g7th.com
June 2014 ACOUSTIC GUITAR
Guitar Intensives Mainely Guitar Week Bar Harbor, Maine August 10 - 16 Mike Dowling, Martin Grosswendt, Andra Faye, Scott Ballentine, and more! Guitar, Slide, Mandolin, Fiddle, Bass, Band Labs, and more! All levels - all styles! Significant others welcome!
[email protected] guitarintensives.com
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
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New from Homespun! Mike Dowling's Roadmap to Creative Guitar Arranging: Simple Concepts for Advanced Playing. 80 Minutes. DVD $29.95. Download $24.95. Learn to create compelling guitar arrangements for blues, country, swing and Latin tunes using a variety of techniques that will inform and inspire you. Great musical insights for players at all levels! Songs include See See Rider, Evenin’, Deep River Blues, Maria Elena and more. homespun.com
Venue DI All-In-One Acoustic Pedal The Venue DI gives you complete control by combining a full-isolation DI output, five-band EQ with adjustable low and hi-mid bands, variable clean boost, and a chromatic tuner all in one acoustic pedal. Street price: $299 lrbaggs.com
Private Stock Alex Lifeson Thinline Acoustic "I'm very happy to announce that I have collaborated with PRS to develop an Alex Lifeson Signature model based on this superlative platform. If you're like me, you won't be able to put it down." —Alex Lifeson, Rush prsguitars.com/alexlifeson
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Perfect Gift for Traveling Guitarists The Overhead collapsible guitar is engineered for airline carry-on constraints and boasts the best features, playability, tone, and volume for the traveling guitarist. Designed with a Manzer Wedge,©™stainless-steel hardware, premium underbridge passive pickup, and full-featured backpack.
[email protected] journeyinstruments.com
Luthier Strap for Classical and Flamenco Guitars Easy setup, safely secure your instrument. No alterations, no modifications to the instrument required. Reversible for right- and left-handed players. Can be used as support instead of a footstool.
[email protected] luthiermusic.com
SE Angelus The PRS SE Angelus is made with high-quality components and comes standard with a PRS pickup system, highlighting the instrument's rich tone. The SE Angelus shares the same proprietary bracing pattern and several construction features with PRS's Maryland-made acoustics. prsguitars.com/seangelus
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
ACOUSTIC GUITAR June 2014
Custom Guitar & Music Stands Take a Stand creates guitar and music stands that will exceed your expectations. Handcrafted from exotic hardwoods, precision machined metals, and supple leathers and suedes, our stands are the perfect gift for any musician. takeastandinc.com
Breedlove Legacy Parlor Don’t be fooled by the Parlor’s compact size: Breedlove’s Legacy Parlor is a serious-musician’s instrument. Inventive bracing allows for a thinner graduated top, allowing the soundboard to move more freely, providing warmth, clarity, and balance with dynamic midrange. Amazing sound in a small body. breedlovesound.com
Tony Vines Guitars
Bedell Summer of Love Guitars The Summer of Love dreadnought delivers the sound, feel, and aesthetics of the most timeless instrument of the folk-rock era. Built with fully legal Brazilian rosewood/ Adirondack spruce, this guitar brings back the ‘60s sound we all know and love. Download our lookbook. bedellguitars.com
Chocolates, roses, and diamonds sold separately. tonyvinesguitars.com
Washburn Guitars Washburn announces a performance ready acoustic/electric Warren Haynes Signature model. The WSD5240SCE adds a cutaway for superior upper fret access and a Fishman Isys+ tuner/ preamp for exquisite amplified acoustic tone. The WSD5240SCE is based on our 1937 Solo Deluxe featuring a solid spruce top and rosewood back and sides. (800) 877-6863 washburn.com
Music, Musicians, and Instruments that Matter. Don't miss a single story, subscribe today. acousticguitar.com
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
MAY 2014 | 25TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR | ACOUSTICGUITAR.COM
HER YEAR OF LIVING FAMOUSLY
GEAR THAT GROOVES ERNIE BALL ALUMINUM BRONZE STRINGS HOT ROD RESONATOR HUMMINGBIRD PRO
LESSONS TO LEARN ADD COLOR TO YOUR ACOUSTIC-ROCK CHORDS
PORCHFEST GRASSROOTS MUSIC COMES A’KNOCKIN’
3 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR RHYTHM HOW TO STRUM LIKE MAYBELLE CARTER
June 2014 ACOUSTIC GUITAR
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TRADE Singer-songwriter Michaela Anne
SHOPTALK
Kansas City, Here They Come With its move from Memphis to Missouri, the Folk Alliance International Conference promotes community and diversity BY PAT MORAN
“F
or us, folk music is anything that comes from tradition, anything that becomes part of a culture and community,” Louis Meyers, executive director of Folk Alliance International, said during the organization’s 26 th annual conference held February 19–23 in Kansas City, Missouri. The diversity of music at the conference, which ranged from straight bluegrass to a mix of bluegrass and hip-hop to singersongwriters both young and old, reflected Meyers’ sentiments. “I come from this world. This is my tribe,” said veteran song man John Gorka, who added that he’s always amazed by the talented new acts and younger musicians he encounters at
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the event. “I’m seeing evolution right before my eyes.” He wasn’t the only one. Some 2,600 devotees of folk music—including more than 240 acts performing in 11 concert halls and on three hotel floors—descended on this Midwestern city for the first time since Folk Alliance announced it would be moving from its previous host city, Memphis, Tennessee. Meyers called the 2014 event the organization’s most successful conference yet, kicked off by an impassioned climate change presentation by former Vice President Al Gore that attracted thousands to the city’s Westin Crown Center. Much of the credit for the growing success of this music conference—among
‘This is my tribe. I’m seeing evolution right before my eyes.’ —John Gorka the five largest in the United States—lies with Meyers, who also was one of the founders of the annual South by Southwest Music Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas. On the morning after the final day of FAI, Meyers was working alongside the breakdown crew, fitting a collapsed pop-up tent into a canvas bag. “It looks like we had a few folk stop by,” he said.
BRIEFS HEALDSBURG GUITAR FEST POSTPONED TO 2016 Citing the high number of staff hours it takes to put on the beloved Healdsburg Guitar Festival, the Luthiers Mercantile, Intl. has announced it will postpone the biennial event, previously scheduled for 2015 until 2016. “After having taken a closer look at our investment, especially in the amount of hours which could have been focused on expanding [festival organizer Luthier Merchantile, Intl.] core business, it became obvious that our ‘labor of love’ had many intangible costs, especially to our overworked staff. For this reason, we have made the tough decision to postpone the next festival to 2016,” Chris Herrod, director of the Healdsburg Guitar Festival said in a statement. The decision does not appear to have been made for financial reasons, and Herrod noted that 2013 was the organization’s “most successful festival ever.”
Railsplitters
GUITAR MAKERS GALORE Earlier in the week, the FAI exhibit hall was packed with vendors, ranging from Big Muddy Mandolin Company to Wyatt Violin Shop, and numerous guitar makers sprinkled in between. Taylor Guitars’ David Kaye showed off the company’s new Grand Concert model, part of the recently revamped 800 series that includes such innovations as interior side bracing. “The Taylor is [made for] this kind of crowd,” Kaye said. “These are the people who do the heavy lifting—real musicians.” Bayard Blain, owner of Bayard Guitars from Fayetteville, Arkansas, echoed Kaye’s sentiments. “This is the community that knows my work better than anyone,” he said. “I love to come here and see my instruments being played in showcases.” Those instruments, along with the inspired players who make music on them, filled the concert halls. Leaning over his ever-present Martin OM 28 VR, Gorka played gentle songs that swirled like light snow. At the opposite end of the spectrum, New York City’s Gangstagrass set the Shawnee Room jumping with its collision of keening Appalachia and blistering hip-hop beats. Gangstagrass’ one-named founder, Rench, credited the Folk Alliance gathering with instilling a sense of community among folk musicians, regardless of style. “The conference removes all the barriers, so people are able to sit and play and enjoy each other,” he said.
After the main floor of the conference shut down each evening, the music would venture upstairs to three levels of hotel rooms. It was a movable musical feast as crowds spilled out of elevators and dropped into rooms festooned with colored lights. “You walk down the hallway and see room after room exploding with music,” said Gangstagrass banjo player Dan Whitener. Those explosions included acts like Michaela Anne, a gossamer vocalist from Brooklyn, New York, and the bluegrass-tinged pop-smiths of the Railsplitters, from Boulder, Colorado. Railsplitters’ singer and guitarist Lauren Stovall was grateful to see fans latch on to her band’s sound. “It’s cool to see the same people come to more than one show, and stay the whole time,” she said. CERTIFIED FAIR TRADE With music ranging from the wickedly funny, yet heartfelt Canadian country ballads of Del Barber to the free-jazz-meets-Arabic-folk of Gordon Grdina’s Haram, the Folk Alliance conference continues to expand the definition of folk music in all directions while pulling all of these disparate musicians together. “The music’s strength comes from sharing— people sitting down and playing together,” said Meyers. “In that way, the conference is about empowerment. It’s showing people that they are not alone in the world.”
The news of a year delay will no doubt rankle guitar enthusiasts who have flocked to the festival in droves. “No doubt this will come as difficult news to many of you. It has not been an easy decision to make and we understand the ramifications,” Herrod said.
LUTHIER R.C. ALLEN PASSES AWAY AT 80 Famed Los Angeles luthier R.C. Allen died on March 2, one day after turning 80. A contemporary of Paul Bigsby, Leo Fender, and Lowell Kiesel, Allen’s designs from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s were widely admired, and the great Merle Travis toured with one. His instruments included archtops, hollow bodies, banjos, and double-neck electrics.
CORT UNVEILS NEW ACOUSTICS The Illinois guitar maker Cort is adding two new guitars to its Earth Series. The 300V (MSRP $535) features a solid Adirondack spruce top and bracing, rosewood fretboard, and comes with a mahogany back and sides. The 300VF (MSRP $645), meanwhile, features the same wood choices, but comes with a Fishman Sonitone EQ and Sonicore Pickup system. Both models include Grover vintage tuners. AG
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MAKERS & SHAKERS
If He Had a Hammer . . .
Bob Taylor was a mediocre musician who liked to make things out of wood. It just so happens that one of those things became one of the world’s finest guitars BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
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hen Bob Taylor was in high school, he built three guitars that failed to meet his expectations. With a teenager’s flair for effect, the future cofounder and president of Taylor Guitars concluded that final modifications would be necessary. “I just destroyed them,” Taylor says, “Lord of the Flies-style. I put an M-80 in one and exploded it, and the other I ran over with my car. They were pretty much useless guitars, and I didn’t want to be judged by them later on.” Taylor’s name and his eponymous guitar company have come to be known over the last 40 years for innovation and pristine craftsmanship. Easily adjustable bolt-on necks and ultra-natural sounding electronics are common features on a range of Taylor guitars rendered to perfection by a combination of CNC machinery, laser technology, and old-fashioned handwork. “I’ve always had a kind of monastic philosophy,
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constantly looking for the best solutions to build consistently high-quality guitars that a player will only have to buy once, no matter the price,” Taylor says. The roots of Taylor Guitars reach back to 1973, when Taylor, having freshly graduated from high school, started working at American Dream, a tiny guitar shop in Lemon Grove, California. It was there that Taylor had his first workbench, and where he met his company’s co-owner and CEO, Kurt Lustig. Within a year, the two had bought American Dream and eventually renamed it Taylor Guitars. The goods built out of this enterprise were not necessarily the refined instruments Taylor produces today. “Just last week, I was reacquainted with the first guitar I built and sold 40 years ago,” Taylor says. “It played and sounded good, but it was kind of big and ugly. Compared to the guitars we make now it was like an Edsel or a 1959 Cadillac.”
Taylor now builds 135,000 guitars a year at its factories in El Cajon, California, and across the border, in Tecate, Mexico. On a visit to the company’s El Cajon headquarters, I walk around the sprawling, 145,000-square-foot production facility with Jim Kirlin, Taylor’s affable editorial manager. With its innumerable partitioned workspaces buzzing with activity both human and robotic, the space feels more like a village than a factory. Kirlin takes me by golf cart to the far end of the complex, where I meet 59-yearold Taylor, a tall and casual man with a calm presence. His office, small and modestly decorated with pictures of natural scenes, contains no evidence that it is in a guitar factory, other than the quiet presence of a banjo case, a mini-guitar gig bag, and a swirly brown chunk of tonewood—which I later learn is ebony—leaning against a bookshelf. Over a soft background of nearly continuous iMac and iPhone alerts, Taylor
speaks thoughtfully and with unerring focus about his life in guitars. What music inspired you first to learn guitar and then to make one? Most people my age listened to Cream, Iron Butterfly, and other rock groups, but I loved Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, Peter, Paul and Mary, and the Kingston Trio. When I was in 11th grade, the movie Deliverance came out, and thanks to its soundtrack I got hooked on bluegrass. I learned to play the banjo, and I made one in woodshop, along with my very first three guitars. Fresh out of high school, what were your early guitar-making days like? Every day I got up and made guitars. I was happy, but living a pauper’s existence, sometimes living in my car and sometimes living with friends, surviving on tomato soup and liver, because they were so cheap—17 cents for a can of soup and 50 cents for a whole serving of liver. That and Saltines. I’d occasionally earn money on the side by using a big band saw to cut some wood for somebody—I’d find an old guitar, get it for free, do some horse trading, and sell some things to make a hundred bucks. I didn’t have much money, but I didn’t need much money. How long did it take you to make a comfortable living? Years. My partner, Kurt, and I were three or four years into it before we even paid ourselves, and our first paycheck was 15 bucks a week. I got married several years into the business, and my wife was a teacher, so she supported us for a while. It took another four years before my income turned into anything meaningful, and by that I mean a couple hundred bucks a week. But I was doing what I loved to do and didn’t want to do anything else. I would have paid to be making guitars. Were your early guitars patterned after any specific instruments? Not so much. I’d heard of this company called Martin and bought a brand new D-18 for $450 with some funds I came into by selling a motorcycle. I resolved to someday make a guitar that was as well-built as that Martin. But I didn’t exactly take it apart and scrutinize its construction. I didn’t know how the neck was put on—I didn’t know anything about traditional guitar building and didn’t care. That was not my problem. I had to make guitars in the way that made most sense to me. So I decided to build bolt-on necks.
WOODSHEDDING
TAYLOR TALKS ABOUT THE PRACTICE OF RESPONSIBLE GUITAR-MAKING In what ways are you working to source wood responsibly? We have a community of partnerships in Honduras where we’re basically the sole customers—we’ve been working really closely with plantation mahogany growers in Fiji, where the British planted trees that are now harvestable. I’m looking into the idea of growing maple—wood that I’ll never see a stick of—in effect setting up a trust for future generations. But the biggest thing is that we bought an ebony mill in Cameroon, in Africa, and we’re now the largest producer of legal ebony in the world. We’ve got 75 employees there and have daily interactions in a Third World country that’s been exploited and which operates on multiple layers of corruption. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done—ever. Because the mills have long functioned illegally, running a completely legal one involves a constant uphill battle. What have you learned about the wood itself? Now that I own the mill, I see the forest and the real picture. The ebony used on guitar fretboards and bridges has traditionally been the inky black stuff. But it turns out that only a
small portion of ebony is this color—the rest is streaky brown and has so often gotten thrown out on the forest floor. Maybe that was fine once, but it’s no longer acceptable to eat the heart and throw away the rind, just like plastic bottled water was fine when it first came out, but now that it’s known to have such negative impact on the environment, there’s just something very wrong with it. Now that the streaky ebony has found its way onto your guitars— everything from the 800 series, which doesn’t have any black ebony at all, to the GS Minis—how do you plan to get customers to appreciate it? It’s very easy to ask customers to pony up and pay more for what they’re used to, because it’s rarer now. That’s not my task. I’m asking customers to change their minds about what they thought was beautiful. That’s a way bigger ask, but it’s the ask that’s needed, and I’m brave enough to do that from my bully pulpit. Ebony used to come from a lot of countries, but we’ve used it all up in Madagascar, in India, in Gabon, in the Congo, and now it’s all with us in Cameroon. What are you going to do, use up all that remains? Not on my watch.
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Andy Powers, left, with Bob Taylor
How were your bolt-on necks received? They were polarizing. Before 1973, there was no discussion about the merits of dovetail joints. Only after I started making guitars with bolt-on necks did dovetail joints become the best thing in the world for transferring sound to some ears. Now, you can Google “dovetail versus bolt-on” and find many heated discussions that go on forever. I started that argument. You’ve made many innovations since then, no? Our guitars have always been radically different in terms of design and construction than any other acoustic guitars on the market. They might not look all that different, but underneath the surface, they’re quite dissimilar. We’re always developing new thought processes for how things can work. About 15 years ago, we developed the NT system for straighter and more stable necks. More recently we completely redesigned our Expression System pickup—we moved the crystals from their traditional place under the saddle to behind it, for a more natural sound. At the same time, we’ve revamped the whole 800 series both structurally and cosmetically, which is something that [master luthier]
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‘I believe [master luthier Andy Powers] will become the most influential person in the guitar industry.’ Andy [Powers] took charge of. He’s a real brainiac when it comes to making guitars. How long have you been working with him? For about three years now. He’s young, only in his early 30s, and a genius. He’s not just the best guitar builder I’ve ever met, but one of the best players, which, surprisingly, is an uncommon combo. His talents will help migrate the tonal qualities of our guitars down the path. I’ve made great-sounding guitars but Andy makes even better-sounding guitars. How would you characterize yourself as a player? I’m the mediocre player who likes to play for fun—I can hear chord changes and play rhythm nicely in your worship team or country-rock band, but overall the fretboard eludes me.
WATCH AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDY POWERS ON THE AG YOUTUBE CHANNEL
What guitars do you play? I had an 810 that I made in 1978, but it migrated to our museum, and now I play a 20th Anniversary 14 Series Grand Auditorium. I also own about 20 Taylor guitars that I don’t play: nice little mementos, special things that we’ve made throughout the years. But I’m not a good collector of things. In fact, those 20 guitars are really bothering me right now. It would be weird for me to sell them, and it’s a huge emotional and mental problem for me to keep them around. Why is that? I don’t like having a whole bunch of anything I don’t use. I collected watches once. I’ve got a dozen really nice ones, and I just don’t like having them anymore. I only need one to keep track of time. I think it’s great when someone has ten guitars and they play them all, but all I need is one guitar, and the truth is, right now it can almost be any one. What does the guitar mean to you today? I’m not so in love with guitars that everything that I do is related to the guitar. I was at one time—it consumed every waking minute of my day while I was learning how to make them, how to get a factory running. But now it consumes me in another way. I like making things more than I like guitars. Do you still build guitars? I haven’t built a guitar in 15 years. I don’t need to. I’ve done it with my hands tied behind my back, upside down, poor, rich—built way more guitars than I can count. It might make you feel good to know that I have a shop and build furniture, but it’s a waste of my time to build guitars now. I’m way more useful doing other things. What sorts of other things? Building the tools to build guitars—building ways to get wood sustainably, forever. Building a business; building jobs for people. There are 800 Taylor jobs here and around the world, and to me, that’s huge. I also live to watch Andy soar. It’s a great joy to do everything I can for him—I believe he will become the most influential person in the guitar industry. That’s so fatherly. Do you have children? I have two daughters, who are 32 and 27. They own a clothing boutique and hair salon down in the San Diego Gaslamp district. They’re not involved with guitars in any way, which is completely fine with me. I never viewed this as a family thing. This is the way I wanted to spend my life, not my dad’s and not my kids’. AG
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GUITAR GURU
Q:
A:
CAN YOU HEAR THE DIFFERENCE IN TONEWOODS
If somebody blindfolded you and gave a first-rate guitarist 20 of your guitars to play, of all different sizes, with various tonewoods, would you be able to tell what model was being played at a given time? Could you tell East Indian rosewood from Madagascar or Brazilian rosewood? —STEVE YARBROUGH, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
T
he short answer is: sometimes. I might be able to identify a model made from classic wood combinations, or pick out exceptional woods or oddball species. And the short explanation is that different models and different woods can have confusingly overlapping sonic qualities. To my ears, a good set of Brazilian rosewood has a ring-y, mildly metallic (vs. woody) tone with even lows, mids, and highs, and a slightly wet, or reverby finish. When I tap a set, I like to hear a “gong” and a “ping” at the same time, with good sustain. But not all Brazilian fits this description. A set having a somewhat less gong-y bass and slightly drier finish might be more reminiscent of
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).
Tony Rice
78 June 2014
DANA BOURGEOIS
Madagascar rosewood. And tone is, of course, produced not only from the back, but also from the top, and probably in some way from every other part of the instrument. What the listener ultimately hears is the sum of complex interactions among combinations of various tonewoods. Similarities among models can be confusing, too. Many years ago I asked Tony Rice to critique several of my dreadnoughts. His response was invariably polite though not always encouraging. On one occasion he asked to see what was in another case I had brought, so I handed over an OM I hadn’t intended to show him. Tony’s comment opened my ears and, to this day, guides my career: “Make your dreadnoughts sound like this one, man.” So what’s the inherent difference between the sound of an OM and a D? Well, it depends on the instrument. To fully appreciate differences among guitars, you really need to be the player. A good player often makes adjustments not always apparent to the listener—in dynamics, timbre, or inflection— to compensate for overly prominent or marginal qualities in an individual guitar. Or simply for effect. I remember once watching a favorite player dump out a bag of picks, then work through various combinations of picks and guitars before settling on a certain sound. In that case, the sound was probably more about the pick than the wood or the model. But it was mostly about the player. Even if I knew all the guitars in advance, I might only be able to pick four or five out of 20. At first, this sounds discouraging. Why, then, do we need all these guitars? The best answer I can think of brings to mind a line from one of my favorite Doc Watson songs: “Any ole’ town that I ramble all around in, there’s more pretty girls than one . . . . ” AG Dana Bourgeois is a master luthier and the founder of Bourgeois Guitars in Lewiston, Maine.
HEAD & SHOULDERS ABOVE THE REST.
IT’S A BOLD STATEMENT, BUT THERE IT IS. Every detail of an Alvarez guitar is the culmination of tireless research, development and innovation in pursuit of a superior player experience.
alvarezguitars.com
NEW GEAR
RONIN GLORY JUMBO 18.5-inch wide body
A Redwood Giant Ronin’s Glory jumbo is not your average beautifully handcrafted boutique guitar BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
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N
Salvaged redwood top
o trees are more majestic than those in the Sequoioideae family. Native to California and Oregon, these redwoods—as they’re more commonly known—can live thousands of years and grow to incredible heights. While the trees are not generally associated with guitars, some luthiers are finding redwood’s splendor translates to uncommonly good sound. One of the biggest proponents of this alternative tonewood is Ronin Guitars, which makes predominant use of salvaged old-growth redwood in a line of handmade electric and acoustic guitars.
VIDEO REVIEW AT
acousticguitar.com/gear
Medium C-shaped neck
Honduran mahogany neck with ebony fingerboard
1.6875-inch nut width
Waverly tuners
AT A GLANCE BODYJumbo body. Salvaged redwood top with Sitka spruce X bracing. Figured koa back and sides. Thin nitrocellulose lacquer finish. NECK Honduran mahogany neck. Ebony fingerboard and cocobolo bridge. 25.4-inch scale. 1.6875-inch nut width. 55.6-millimeter string spacing at saddle. Waverly tuners.
BUILT IN THE REDWOOD FOREST Founded in 2008, Ronin is a collaboration among the luthier and designer John Reed, the guitar maker and repair expert Izzy Lugo, and Reed’s father, Jack, who also builds instruments. The three spend part of each year in the rainforest of Humboldt County, in Northern California, building instruments using salvaged wood from a dozen acres of protected redwood forest the Reed family owns. Ronin has access to an additional 2,000 acres that belong to a family friend, and all of the wood the company uses comes from trees that fell more than 80 years
ago. Ronin also has reclaimed redwood from the barrels of a decommissioned wine factory. The guitar company first used redwood to create a line of vintage-inspired electrics now played by such greats as experimental guitarist David Torn and longtime Conan O’Brien house band leader Jimmy Vivino. And now, having prototyped acoustic guitars for two years, the company has introduced a line of redwood models, including jumbo, dreadnought, 00, and parlor guitars. This year, Ronin plans to build no more than 20 acoustics. One of those rare instruments is the Glory, Ronin’s second jumbo.
EXTRAS Martin SP strings (.012–.054); Ameritage hard-shell case. PRICE $7,800 as reviewed. ($7,000 without koa.) Handmade in California. roninguitars.com.
GLORIOUS TONEWOODS, LOVELY DESIGN This guitar is built from a nice complement of woods. The soundboard, fashioned from a 1,000-year-old billet of old-growth redwood stashed away in Ronin’s private stock, is finely grained and devoid of any irregularities. While some of the company’s parlor models feature redwood back and sides, those on the jumbo are made from AAAAA-grade koa, stunningly flamed and richly colored. The neck is carved from Honduran mahogany and capped with a fretboard of the inkiest black ebony, also used
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NEW GEAR | AG TRADE
for the headstock veneer. A nicely swirled piece of cocobolo (made from a hunk of wood that Jack Reed bought 30 years ago) was used in creating the bridge. An autumnal-hued sunburst finish on the top and neck enhances the beauty of the Glory’s woods, and the guitar is trimmed with the most tasteful ornamentation. The classical-style rosette and back strip lend an old-world feel to the guitar—on the body, neck, and headstock, a three-layer binding of tortoise and crème outlines the instrument with a subtly sparkling effect. HAND BUILT As with all Ronin guitars, this Glory was made entirely by hand, with no CNC machinery used at all. It is assembled in an old-school fashion, influenced by the many 1930s and ’40s flattops that the Reeds and Lugo have checked out in an intensive study of the instrument. Everything is carved as thinly as possible and the bracing is appropriately light. The neck sports a handshaped dovetail joint, a labor-intensive process that results in what many regard to be a superior means of transferring tone. The guitar boasts superb craftsmanship. Its StewMac 152 frets are impeccably dressed and seated, and the bone nut and saddle are perfectly notched. Free from the tone-robbing plasticizers standard in modern finishes, the nitrocellulose lacquer is buffed to a sumptuous gloss and applied so thinly one can almost feel the grains in the wood.
THE FEEL & SOUND With its extra wide body—18.5 inches compared to Gibson’s Super Jumbo at 17 inches—the Glory is one giant guitar. When I unlatch its Ameritage case, I expect to be overwhelmed by the instrument, especially given my preference for smaller-bodied guitars. But that doesn’t happen. Because of the delicacy of its components, this review model weighs a mere four pounds, nine ounces, and, despite its size, feels comfortable and balanced when played in seated and standing positions. I repeatedly pick the low open-E string. The note sounds so powerful and majestic that I spend a good five minutes luxuriating in it. When palm-muted, it has an especially satisfying thump. Strumming some basic open chords, I find the guitar has a bold, stentorian voice, not to mention great clarity and note separation—it’s a sound that’s warm and rich with harmonic overtones. It’s a pleasure to play this guitar—almost effortless for barre chords and single-note runs alike, thanks to a perfect setup on a medium C-shaped neck. This doesn’t come as a surprise, though, considering that Lugo happens to be an expert repairman whose clients include several big-name players. While jumbo guitars tend to be bass-heavy, perfect for booming country accompaniment, the Glory has a much more balanced sound than most, with ample midrange and a present treble. The boom-chuck style does sound great on the instrument (thanks to a booming low E),
Figured koa back and sides
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but the Glory also lends itself to the most delicate fingerpicking. Jumbos tend not to record as well as smaller-bodied guitars, but the Glory is an exception. This guitar would make a perfect allround studio instrument, as you can hear on a series of clips that the jazz guitarist Adam Rogers prepared for Ronin’s SoundCloud page (soundcloud.com/roninguitars). HEIRLOOM QUALITY Ronin’s Glory is a fine new addition to the world of boutique instruments, a jumbo guitar with an uncommonly balanced voice and versatility, with beautiful cosmetics, playability, and sound—not to mention the uncommon appearance of a redwood soundboard. With a base price of $7,000, the guitar will inspire sticker shock in some guitarists, but considering the materials and handwork that goes into the making of Ronin instruments, as well as its limited production, this heirloom-quality guitar is actually a good deal. AG Contributing editor Adam Perlmutter transcribes, arranges, and engraves music for numerous publications.
NEW GEAR Includes an OP-4BT preamp with Ovation’s slimline pickup.
Nato neck with satin finish, and rosewood fingerboard
Figured koa top
1.6875-inch nut width
Chrome die-cast tuners
High-Tech Treehugger
The earthy koa soundboard on Ovation’s Celebrity Standard Plus is a perfect match for the guitar’s patented synthetic bowl-shaped body BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
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instruments are not just for the extreme virtuoso. Ovation’s Celebrity Standard line, which includes this CS24P-FKOA, offers instruments accessible to any type of player.
FROM COPTERS TO GUITARS The first Ovation was born in 1966, when the engineer Charlie Kaman introduced a guitar with a parabolic back made from a glass-fiber material, patented as Lyrachord, which he had originally produced for helicopter parts. He found that the material enhanced the projection and sustain of a musical instrument. Kaman and his company would eventually help advance the amplification of acoustic guitars by incorporating undersaddle piezo pickups and, later, onboard preamps, equalizers, and tuners. The country picker Glen Campbell was an early adopter of Ovation, and the company has enjoyed an impressive roster of endorsers. Yngwie Malmsteen, Al Di Meola, and Kaki King are among the players to rely on signature Ovation models to keep up with the demands of their highly pyrotechnical styles. But these
ATTRACTIVE WOODS & SMART BRACING Like all Ovation guitars, the Celebrity Standard Plus features the Lyrachord body (mid-depth on this example) with a smooth cutaway. The neck is made from nato, a common mahogany substitute that is widely available in Asia. Other guitars in this series have solid tops, but as solid koa would have been prohibitively expensive, a laminate was used for this soundboard. Rosewood makes an appearance for the fretboard, bridge, and headstock veneer. The specimens used on the review model will please the connoisseur of tonewoods. The koa is dramatically figured, with a lot of wavy horizontal and vertical action and a nice range of colors, from pale brown to deep chocolate. On the fingerboard and bridge, the rosewood is homogeneously dark and evenly grained—not the streaky, light-brown wood often found on budget guitars. Inside the guitar, the bracing is made from traditional spruce in a modified version of the scalloped-X pattern. In creating the bracing, Ovation worked through nine different patterns, shifting things a few millimeters in each
ith its high-tech bowl of a body, the prototypical Ovation guitar is not exactly a celebration of tonewood. So, I was surprised to find this Ovation Celebrity Standard Plus, CS24P-FKOA, had a soundboard of the loveliest koa. After putting the guitar through its paces, it is evident that the prized Hawaiian wood is a great companion for this instrument’s synthetic body, adding both visual and sonic warmth in a high-performance, but inexpensive instrument.
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AT A GLANCE
OVATION CELEBRITY STANDARD PLUS BODY Mid-depth cutaway body. Figured koa top with natural gloss finish. Lyrachord back. Scalloped-X bracing. NECK Nato neck with satin finish. Rosewood fingerboard and bridge. 25.25-inch scale. 1.6875-inch nut width. Chrome die-cast tuners. ELECTRONICS OP-4BT preamp with Ovation Slimline Pickup. STRINGS D’Addario EXP11 Coated 80/20 Bronze Light Acoustic (.012–.053) PRICE $649.50 list/$449 street Made in China. ovationguitars.com
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design, to arrive at the configuration that provides the best clarity and projection in tandem with the rounded back. DESIGN & BUILD The Celebrity Standard Plus is a handsome guitar, trimmed with simple appointments that don’t distract from the beauty of the woods. The fretboard has simple microdot markers; the neck and body are wrapped in a clean crème binding. An abalone rosette lends a touch of elegance, and the black-and-crème rings that surround it are echoed nicely in the soundboard’s purfling. The guitar feels solid and is overall well built. Its frets are tidily crowned and polished, and the ABS nut and bridge saddle are cleanly notched. The soundboard has a buffed gloss finish that’s free from imperfections. There are, however, bits of sloppiness to be found, like rough binding on the fretboard where it meets the soundhole, and a hint of sawdust inside the bowl. But these details don’t have any impact on the instrument’s outstanding performance. EXCELLENT PLAYABILITY & VERSATILITY With its thin C-shaped neck at a 25.25-inch scale and 1.6875-inch nut width, the Celebrity Standard Plus plays incredibly well right out of the box. Thanks to a silky low action, it’s comfortable to play barre chords and single-note lines for extended periods in all registers without
experiencing any fret-hand discomfort. What’s more, string-bending is much easier on this guitar than on a standard steel-string acoustic. On the wound G string, I was able to bend notes as wide as a whole step with relative comfort.
A handsome guitar, trimmed with simple appointments that don’t distract from the beauty of the woods. A good dreadnought might encourage bluegrass runs, while an orchestra model begs for some fingerpicking in DADGAD. The overall sound of the Celebrity Standard Plus, on the other hand, might be best described as a blank slate. Its clear and balanced tone—with just a hint of unexpected warmth, likely owing to the koa top—is suitable for exploration in any style, from campfire-type strumming to fingerstyle blues. What’s more, the sound remains consistent in all registers—the timbral differences between, say, a fifth-fret D-major chord and one played at the tenth fret are much subtler than on most guitars. The guitar sounds as good in slackened tunings like open-D as it does in standard. THE ELECTRONICS As with all of the guitars in Ovation’s Celebrity Standard series, this review model came with
the company’s slimline pickup and OP-4BT preamp. The pickup sits under the saddle and the preamp and its battery compartment are mounted on the bass side of the bowl—not the most aesthetically appealing arrangement, but kind of hard to get around. Meanwhile, the guitar’s single, quarter-inch output jack is tucked away discretely on the back of the bowl. The preamp includes an electronic tuner, a gain control, and sliders to control the bass, middle, and treble frequencies. It is a little hard to make out the indications on the tuner, which flash in red LED letters on a little screen, but it’s nice to have an onboard tuner nonetheless. Played through a Fender Acoustasonic, with flat settings on both the guitar and amp, the Celebrity Standard Plus has a warm natural acoustic sound, without the boxy-sounding quality associated with many acoustic-electric guitars—a tone that works as a nice platform for more acoustic-electric textures and experimentation with digital effects. STYLE, DURABILITY & AFFORDABILITY Ovation’s Celebrity Standard Plus CS24P-FKOA is an excellent new guitar that plays easily and has a detailed, balanced sound. It’s suitable for many applications: A beginner can be proud to own this smart-looking instrument and grow into it as an intermediate player, while a seasoned musician can use this durable instrument in live settings or as a musical scratch pad—all for a song at less than $500. AG
AcousticGuitar.com 85
NEW GEAR
All the Power without the Fuss
Fender’s Acoustasonic 90 is the perfect little amp for the guitarist on the go BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
I
almost threw myself backward when picking up the deceptively heavy-looking container that held Fender’s new Acoustasonic 90 amplifier, which weighs in at a mere 18 pounds, but has a brawny voice and a wide range of sound-shaping capabilities. It’s a smart choice for the portable guitarist. Fender is most celebrated for its electric guitar amps, which date back to those made by Leo Fender himself in the 1940s. The tube amps that the company produced in subsequent decades, categorized by their cosmetics— tweed, blonde, brownface, and blackface, with model names such as the Twin, Deluxe, Champ, and Princeton—are among the most coveted of all vintage amps. But in 1999, Fender embraced the acoustic guitar with the introduction of the Acoustasonic amplifier. Now a classic, it has appeared in numerous variations, each offering great new features to the basic platform. THE LOOKS & LAYOUT The Acoustasonic 90 is extremely compact at about 15 inches tall by 19 inches wide and 10 inches deep. Having the handsome, vintageinspired combo of a tan tolex covering and brown control panel, the amp looks a lot like the 150 that AG reviewed in the April 2012 issue. But a closer inspection reveals that the 90 is essentially a streamlined version of that amp. The 90 has a bit less power (90 watts as opposed to 150) and does not include the 150’s Voicing and String Dynamics controls on the front panel or the effects loop and USB port on
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the rear panel. Absent, too, are the 150’s metal tilt-back legs, used to project the sound. The layout of the Acoustasonic 90’s control panel is uncluttered and user friendly. There are two separate channels, identical except that one includes a jack for accepting a quarter-inch instrument plug while the other includes a mic/ instrument jack that will take either an instrument plug or an XLR plug while supplying phantom power (+15VDC). Each channel includes a volume control; a feedback-elimination button; treble, middle, and bass controls; a knob for accessing a selection of time-based digital effects; and a knob controlling their level. The amp’s power switch is on the rear panel, along with a balanced XLR out, for interfacing with external sound reinforcement; a quarterinch footswitch jack, accepting Fender’s optional two-button footswitch ($69.99 street—ouch!), for turning on and off the digital effects on each channel; and a ground-lift button. While I would like to have seen a level control for the output, I was glad to find the 90 includes a handy feature missing from the 150—an eighth-inch auxiliary input allowing for a playback device like an mp3 player or smart phone to be patched into the amp, for jamming along with accompaniment. ROBUST SOUND & LUSH EFFECTS I plugged an Ovation Celebrity Standard Plus into the Acoustasonic 90 and dialed in a flat EQ on both the guitar and the amplifier to test the amp’s sound, then did the same with a Gibson
AT A GLANCE
FENDER ACOUSTASONIC 90 THE SPECS 90 watts. 18 pounds. Eight-inch cloth-surround low-frequency woofer and high-frequency tweeter. Separate instrument and microphone channels with independent EQ and studio-quality effects sections including reverb, delay, chorus, and vibrato. Optional two-button effects control footswitch. Feedback-elimination control. XLR line-out with ground lift. Auxiliary out. Lightweight five-ply hardwood cabinet with tan tolex covering. Five-year limited warranty. Made in Mexico. fender.com PRICE $399.99 list; $299.99 street
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American Eagle. With both guitars, the 90 had an immediately satisfying sound, rich and natural, without any of the tubbiness or stridency associated with an amplified acoustic guitar—a sound that was consistent even as I edged the volume up past five. The 90 is plenty loud at higher volume levels, certainly ample enough for use in a medium-capacity venue. At lower levels, the 90 is discouraging of feedback, and at higher levels the feedback elimination control—set on basic mode—works well to minimize this unwanted effect, though it doesn’t completely negate it on chords that are held for extended periods. For a particularly vexing frequency, the advanced mode comes in handy. To access that mode, I pressed the feedback button, held it until the LED turned green, then let the guitar howl for a few seconds. The control did a good job of “learning” to curtail that episode of feedback, greatly reducing its presence the next time I coaxed it from the amp. The amp also holds up well for those who sing. I plugged a condenser microphone into channel 2 and a guitar into channel 1 and was able to easily get a natural vocal sound that blended nicely with the guitar. As such, this amp would be an ideal choice for the singersongwriter who travels light, quickly setting up and breaking down in subway stations, on street corners, or at house parties.
As with the 150, the Acoustasonic 90 includes a suite of top-quality digital effects accessible via a single rotary knob—vibrato, chorus, reverb plus chorus, chorus plus delay, delay, reverb plus delay; and three additional reverb types—plate, room, and hall. These timebased effects are adjustable in terms of level, not individual parameters. As a player who only makes minimal use of effects, I found this to be a perfect arrangement; it’s nice to have access to so many lush, clean textures with a minimum of fuss. However, the lack of adjustability—and the absence of an effects loop—might be a minus for players who rely extensively on effects to customize their sound; for example, precisely timing a delay’s repeats to the tempo of a song. SIMPLE SONICS Fender’s Acoustasonic 90 is a streamlined version of its top-of-the-line 150, costing $200 less than that amp, but sounding just as good. Most significantly, this slightly less-powerful amp does away with features that are geared mostly to the acoustic guitarist who doubles on electric. In a compact and lightweight package, this amp produces more than enough sound to fill a moderately large hall, and its excellentsounding, preset digital effects are perfect for acoustic guitarists and singers who are not inclined to sonic tinkering. AG
azz J e l y rst als Finge r Essenti an Guita with Sean McGow
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Easily expand your chord vocabulary …by visualizing chord relationships. Guy’s Grids is the 228-page, 9” x 14” ultimate encyclopedia of chord structure. Use this Grid format to enhance memory retention while reinforcing understanding of chord theory. Check out Guy’s other titles: • Scales, Modes & Arpeggios • Chord Cousins • Inversion Immersion • 2-String Harmonic Outlines for Guitar
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88 June 2014
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PLAYLIST
Cassandra Wilson Blue Light ’ Til Dawn (Expanded 20th Anniversary Edition) Blue Note/UMe
‘Blue Light’ Sees New Dawn
Singer Cassandra Wilson charted new musical terrain with this unplugged fusion of jazz, blues & sultry R&B BY MARK SEGAL KEMP
C
assandra Wilson’s Blue Light ’Til Dawn is such a subtle and nuanced fusion of jazz, blues, and so-called acoustic soul that when you listen to it today—two decades after its initial release—it’s hard to comprehend just how radical and groundbreaking this avanttraditionalist experiment was. That’s because Blue Light has gone on to influence and inform much of what we’ve heard outside of the experimental jazz world since its release, from Lauryn Hill’s solo recordings to Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me to more contemporary
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albums such as Esperanza Spalding’s Music Society recordings. Blue Note Records has reissued a remastered version of Wilson’s classic along with three additional live tracks. What fueled Blue Light’s original 12 songs is pretty simple: Wilson’s remarkable smoky voice—equal parts Betty Carter, Nina Simone, and Sade—over minimalist African percussion and jazz instrumentation, acoustic guitar, and unusual uses of accordion and pedal-steel. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the acoustic guitar on this record—it simply would not be the masterpiece it is without the
arrangements of guitarist Brandon Ross, who had previously put his acoustic imprint on select tracks by musicians ranging from the Brazilian free-jazz saxophonist Ivo Perelman and avantjazz composer Henry Threadgill to the Southern hip-hop crew Arrested Development. Ross is all over Blue Light. His warm and gentle fingerpicking introduces the album’s opening track “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” the kind of folk-R&B blend that India.Arie would bring to such mainstream acoustic-soul songs as “Ready for Love” nearly a decade later. But Wilson and Ross then dig deeper, segueing into raw and minimal blues picking that dances along with a syncopated, almost hip-hop-sounding beat and rubbery bass line in a version of Robert Johnson’s “Come on in My Kitchen” that finds Wilson’s quietly husky voice teasing and taunting: “You better come on in my kitchen, because it’s going to be raining outdoor,” she PHOTO BY PETER NEILL coos, adding with impeccable timing and attitude, “Can’t you hear that wind howl?” When Blue Light first appeared, plenty was made of the Robert Johnson covers (Wilson and Ross also turn in a spectacularly spooky “Hellhound on My Trail”) as well as her takes on Van Morrison (“Tupelo Honey”) and Joni Mitchell (“Black Crow”). Wilson’s own compositions got comparatively less attention, even though one of them, “Redbone,” is the culmination of every other twist and turn this moody musical narrative takes. Drawing from the ’60s-era jazz poetry of the Last Poets and early Gil ScottHeron, the light-skinned Wilson frames lyrics that tackle the sensitive topic of skin-color difference within the black community with African hand drums and juicy jolts of pedalsteel: “I heard the women at church say just the other day, ‘You know, that girl live too hard,” Wilson slur-sings over the hypnotic percussion. “‘Redbone girl’s got a problem, she stayed up all night, she drank whiskey, she got in a fight.’” The Mississippi-born Wilson comes full circle on the final track, reclaiming the rural roots of Ann Peebles’ Southern-soul classic “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” pulling in the late Chris Whitley to fingerpick a dusty intro on his National resonator guitar and offer a few subtle slashes in between phrases. Many have covered this song—including Tina Turner, who sprinkled it with glittery electronic effects for her 1984 comeback Private Dancer—but no one, not even Peebles, ever made it sound as deeply Delta as this. The extra tracks—less intimate versions of “Black Crow” and “Tupelo Honey,” as well as a cover of the Hoagy Carmichael/ Johnny Mercer song “Skylark,” from Wilson’s 1995 album New Moon Daughter—may be interesting, but their presence here ultimately takes away from the power and acoustic-based majesty of Blue Light ’Til Dawn all by itself.
Leif Vollebekk
Railroad Earth
North Americana Outside
Last of the Outlaws Black Bear
Canadian singer-songwriter jumps borders on second CD
Bluegrass-inspired jammers keep stretching
Leif Vollebekk’s restless valentine to his southern neighbors, North Americana, opens with a rusty, sawing fiddle that evokes a rail yard. It’s a foretaste of this tactile, borderjumping, alt-folk collection which touches on Crescent City gospel, juke-joint piano ballads, and the river bottom shuffle of “Cairo” without settling down in one place too long. In a sensitive tenor that couples Josh Ritter’s swagger with Ryan Adams’ vulnerability, Canadian Vollebekk crafts paeans to perpetual motion, pausing occasionally to note a shuttered gas station, a young woman glimpsed through a fogged barroom window, or “orange smokestacks in the sunset” on the harmonicadriven E-Street shuffle “When the Subway Comes Above the Ground.” With sessions spread between Montreal, New York, and Paris, Vollebekk’s travelogue boasts stellar side musicians including Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld on violin. With the core of each song cut live—fingersmeared bass strings, creaking piano stool, and tape hiss intact—these players give Vollebekk’s lo-fi gems the loose-limbed elasticity of jazz. Vollebekk’s guitar, a Harmony Sovereign “Jet Set” that belonged to his grandfather, claims the center of most songs, rattling and percussive on the keening drone “Takk Somuleidis,” crisp and liquid on the Gillian Welchstyled Americana “Southern United States.” Playing a Guild M-20 on “From the Fourth,” Vollebekk evokes Nick Drake’s darkly dulcet picking on Pink Moon. With this spare rumination on moments slipping away like quicksilver, the peripatetic sprawl of Vollebekk’s grandly ramshackle album finally comes to rest.
In the ten years since Railroad Earth formed, the New Jersey bluegrass-rooted jam band has kept getting better, continually expanding its musical, instrumental, and lyrical reach. With Last of the Outlaws, all that ambition has paid off. The album’s centerpiece, a five-movement, 21-minute track called “All That’s Dead May Live Again/Face with a Hole,” ranges from Celtic air to piano meditation to cowboy symphony, a suite that’s the most challenging, engaging, and consistently rewarding music the group has ever made.
—PAT MORAN
The album’s centerpiece is a five-movement, 21-minute track. As Railroad Earth’s live reputation builds, the band continues to stretch out, creating elbow room for accordion, bouzouki, classical guitar, dobro, saxophones, bass clarinet, and pennywhistle, without losing any of the ensemble’s tightness, grounded in its core of guitar, fiddle, and mandolin. At the same time, Railroad Earth has never stopped writing hooks, especially in the choruses of “Hangtown Ball” and “When the Sun Gets in Your Blood,” the two tracks here that linger the longest. Whether the songs are written by singer/ guitarist Todd Shaeffer, bassist Andrew Altman, drummer Casey Harmon, or multi-instrumentalist John Skehan, there are plenty of moments that recall the Band’s Robbie Robertson, in that the band lets its outlaw tales unfold with the wide-open ease of a Western landscape. —KENNY BERKOWITZ
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PLAYLIST | MIXED MEDIA
Bryan Sutton Into My Own Sugar Hill
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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
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Carolina flatpicker puts his voice to a terrific new collection On Bryan Sutton’s first outing in which he actually sings, the North Carolina flatpicking whiz offers a few ironic winks and nods. Take the breezy, old-time string-band feel of “That’s Where I Belong”—it sounds as though Sutton himself wrote the song about the bucolic mountain country surrounding his hometown of Asheville. He didn’t. It’s a deep cut from a 1990 one-off by UK country-folk band the 3:51 Knotting PM Hillbillies. That Sutton reclaims this Appalachian-like tune from his British brethren—on an album titled Into My Own, no less—only shows how playfully modest this hugely in-demand sideman can be. You probably know Sutton best for his dazzling picking behind such artists as Ricky Skaggs, Dolly Parton, Béla Fleck, and Chris Thile. Like the late Doc Watson—Sutton’s childhood hero and fellow Carolinian—he plays at lightning speed, but with grace, sensitivity, and impeccable nuance. His previous solo albums have been bluegrass-based instrumental workouts in a wide range of genres. Into My Own offers a similarly eclectic mix, but adds Sutton’s warm, homespun vocals to four of the 12 songs. In addition to “That’s Where I Belong,” he puts his high-lonesome to Guy Clark’s country-folk “Anyhow, I Love You”; rips it up alongside banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and bass on the Asheville-centric bluegrass ballad “Swannanoa Tunnel” (set to the tune of “Nine Pound Hammer”); and sings over his own stripped-down picking and strumming on the traditional “Been All Around This World.” In between are explosive collaborations with famous friends, like mandolin player Sam Bush, banjo man Noam Pikelny, and a terrific experimental jazz-grass turn with Bill Frisell. —MSK
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John Gorka Bright Side of Down Red House The folksinger’s fretwork drives set of uneasy winter’s tales Despite the warm presence of John Gorka’s rolling, grainy baritone, a chill hovers over the wintry-themed Bright Side of Down. Disease and rustbelt decay frame a proud man’s plea for help in “High Horse,” time slips away precariously on the soulful “Procrastination Blues,” and even the rollicking, zydeco-tinged “Holed Up Mason City” teeters giddily on a patch of black ice. Yet, in line with the disc’s punning title, Gorka tempers apprehension with humor and empathy. Gentle folk tempos pulse with the insistence of pop, gospel, and R&B, emphasizing Gorka’s message of hope and mystery. (The jauntily smooth shuffle “More Than One” recalls Bob Welch-era Fleetwood Mac.) Rob Genadek’s detailed production is uncluttered, spotlighting melody and Gorka’s vocals. Backup singing, by Antje Duvekot and Red Horse compatriots Lucy Kaplansky and Eliza Gilkyson, is by turns ethereal and bluesy. Despite the focus on voice, Gorka’s guitars—a Martin OM-28VR and a Lowden with a cutaway body—are both engine and spine of this LP. Gorka’s nimble fingerpicking is the result of applying three-finger banjo playing to the guitar. His high-strung fretwork on the Bill Morrissey cover “She’s That Kind of Mystery” is hushed yet energetic—you hear his hands sliding up the frets to form chords. Gorka’s fretless nylon-stringed banjo, tuned to open D instead of G, is played in a strutting, modified Scruggs-style. The unhurried intensity of the playing lays bare the beating heart at the core of Gorka’s collection of uneasy winter’s tales. With grace and good humor, he acknowledges harshness, but anticipates the thaw. —PM
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PLAYLIST | MIXED MEDIA
Ten Great Rock Strumming Patterns
ACOUSTIC ROCK ESSENTIALS
Add ten popular rock rhythms (and their variations) to your strumming vocabulary. n
n
Strumming patterns based on music by the Beatles, Coldplay, the Strokes, Buddy Holly, and more Tips for finding the right rhythm patterns for your own songs
By Andrew DuBrock Includes 16 minutes of video
Rock On. Acoustic Rock Essentials ALL THE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES TO UNPLUG YOUR ROCK AND ROLL store.AcousticGuitar.com.
Special Consensus Country Boy: A Bluegrass Tribute to John Denver Compass All-star string band picks on the late pop-folk singer Fifteen years after John Denver’s death, his songs are here to stay, their sentiments as simple, and melodies as hummable, as ever. Gathered together by Special Consensus— founder Greg Cahill (banjo), Dustin Benson (guitar), Dan Eubanks (bass), and Rick Faris (mandolin)—these dozen favorites include a couple of bluegrass standards alongside songs that have been largely forgotten, all given a loving treatment that emphasizes their rightful place within the canon. All-star friends include John Cowan, who leads the band through “Take Me Home, Country Roads”; Michael Cleveland and Buddy Spicher, who bring twin fiddles to an instrumental version of “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”; Peter Rowan, who lends his high tenor to “Rocky Mountain High”; and dobroist Rob Ickes, who trades solos with Benson and Cahill on “Wild Montana Skies,” complete with a vocal duet with Claire Lynch. It’s a new direction for Special C, building on the momentum of the group’s Grammy-nominated 2012 album Scratch Gravel Road, and as the band approaches its 40th anniversary, it’s a good time to enjoy the expanded arsenal of instruments and four-part harmonies. They beautifully match the mood of these songs, played bright and sweet, especially on the four-guitar version of “This Old Guitar” that has to be heard to be believed. —KB
It’s a new direction for Special C, building on the momentum of the group’s Grammy-nominated 2012 album. 94 June 2014
BOOKS
Stoned Again The gear that drives the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band BY GREG CAHILL
T Rolling Stones Gear: All the Stones’ Instruments from Stage to Studio Andy Babiuk & Greg Prevost Backbeat Books
The Rolling Stones: 50 Songs for 50 Years Alfred Music
his lavishly illustrated follow-up to 2001’s Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four’s Instruments from Stage to Studio is a comprehensive look at the tools of the trade used by the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band. Of course, most of these guitars are electric, ranging from Keith Richards’ arsenal of Fender Telecasters and Ronnie Wood’s custom-made Zemaitises to Mick Taylor’s Les Pauls and Brian Jones’ teardropshaped sheer white Vox Mark III, to name a few. But the Stones were no slouches in the acoustic world. Richards can be heard throughout 1963’s “As Tears Go By,” for instance, playing a Harmony 1270, a jumbo flat-top 12-string acoustic. “Got new gitty from Ivor’s,” he wrote in his diary. “Lovely instrument!” Over the years, Richards, Jones, Wood, Taylor, and even frontman Mick Jagger would go on to record and perform with a variety of acoustics (you can hear the unplugged Stones best on a handful of colorfully titled unauthorized bootlegs)—acoustic guitars are front-and-center on “Sister Morphine,” “No Expectations,” “Wild Horses,” “Sweet Virginia,” and other Stones’ hits. Among the models used on the band’s landmark 1972 world tour, to promote Exile on Main St., were a Martin D-45 and Gibson Hummingbird equipped
with a FRAP (flat-response audio pickup) system, the first transducer pickup designed especially for acoustic guitars. After someone walked off with the D-45, Richards took to playing a Martin 000-28 Auditorium (also equipped with a FRAP system) on the 1973 leg of the tour. This 672-page book also features an 1850 Louis Panormo parlor guitar given to Richards by Jagger as a birthday present during the band’s 1994-95 Voodoo Lounge tour. That gift coincided with a present the Stones delivered to fans in ’95—the Stripped album was packed with acoustic numbers and found Richards playing a pair of Martins; Wood using a Gibson J-200, Martins, and an Old Harvey Dobro; and Jagger switching between a Martin and a Gibson Hummingbird. Meanwhile, another recent Stones anthology is a collection of 50 songs reissued to mark the band’s 50th anniversary. It offers tab to such acoustic-friendly classic-rock numbers as “As Tears Go By” (see music on page 25), “Back Street Girl,” “Country Honk,” “Factory Girl,” “Lady Jane,” “No Expectations,” “Parachute Woman,” “Play with Fire,” “The Spider and the Fly,” and “Wild Horses.” Essential stuff for any Stones fan. AG
AcousticGuitar.com 95
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LAC I N OU - O VE S T NE lr IC ba N gg U s.c E PE om /v D ™ D AL en I u e
EVENTS
Nickel Creek
June
Kerrville Folk Festival Kerrville, Texas MAY 22–JUNE 8 kerrville-music.com
This sprawling folk festival spans 18 days in late May and early June, with performances, workshops, and outdoor activities. This year’s lineup features Judy Collins, Eliza Gilkyson, Terri Hendrix, Mary Gauthier, Jimmy LaFave, Dale Watson, and many others. The festival even includes bike rides, canoe trips, and yoga classes. What’s not to love?
Pagosa Folk ’n Bluegrass Festival Pagosa Springs, Colorado JUNE 6-8 folkwest.com
The nonprofit organization Folk West organizes two festivals each year in Pagosa
Springs, Colorado: the Four Corners Folk Festival in August and the Pagosa Folk ’n Bluegrass Festival in June. This year’s lineup for Folk ’n Bluegrass includes some phenomenal acoustic acts, including the Claire Lynch Band, the John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band, Peter Rowan’s Twang an’ Groove (featuring Yungchen Lhamo), MilkDrive, Cahalen Morrison & Eli West, the Shook Twins, and a whole lot more. Don’t forget to visit one of the local hot springs for some post-festival relaxation.
Roots on the River Bellows Falls, Vermont JUNE 5–8 rootsontheriver.com
The Roots on the River fest is a great way to cool off from the June heat. Held in the historic river town of Bellow Falls, Vermont, this year’s festival offers a bevy of talented acoustic artists, including Curtis
McMurtry, Heather Maloney, Hayley Reardon, Poor Old Shine, and many others. The festival will be hosted by folkrock singer-songwriter James McMurtry.
Telluride Bluegrass Festival Telluride, Colorado JUNE 19–22 bluegrass.com/telluride
Nestled in the San Juan mountains and surrounded by the Telluride Box Canyon, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival combines stunning scenery and great music. This year’s lineup features acoustic-music greats Béla Fleck, Brandi Carlile, Nickel Creek, the Del McCoury Band, Aoife O’Donovan, Punch Brothers, Peter Rowan, the Lone Bellow, and others. The surrounding area is great for hiking, biking, and horseback riding as well, and is home to a wealth of hot springs and historic ghost towns.
AcousticGuitar.com 97
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DO YOU PLUG IN? Get the Acoustic Guitar Guide, Amplification Essentials to learn everything about getting amped! store.AcousticGuitar.com
PLAYER TIPS. GEAR REVIEWS. BREAKING NEWS. SIGN UP FOR ACOUSTIC GUITAR NOTES AT ACOUSTICGUITAR.COM AcousticGuitar.com 99
ACOUSTIC INSTRUCTION
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Acoustic Guitar Subscribe, acousticguitar.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Golden Ark, Inc., goldenartktrading.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Original Guitar Chair, originalguitarchair.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Acoustic Guitar Guides, store.acousticguitar.com . . . . . . . . 87, 94
Guitar Center, guitarcenter.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9, 17
Paul Reed Smith, prsguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
Alfred Publishing Co., Inc., alfredpublishing.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Guitars in the Classroom, guitarsintheclassroom.org . . . . . . . . 16
Alvarez alvarezguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Guy’s Publishing Group, LLC, guysgrids.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88
L.R. Baggs, lrbaggs.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
Hal Leonard Corporation, halleonard.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 100
Bose Corporation, bose.com/live1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Hill Guitar Company, hillguitar.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Bourgeois Guitars, pantheonguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Homespun, homespun.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
Breezy Ridge Instruments, Ltd., jpstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Huss & Dalton Guitar Company, hussanddalton.com . . . . . . . . 16
Collings Guitars, collingsguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Johnson String Instrument, johnsonstring.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Seymour Duncan Acoustic, seymourduncan.com/acoustic . . . 41
D’Addario & Company, daddariobowed.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6, 88
Juststrings.com, juststrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91, 94
Sheppard Guitars, sheppardguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94
Digitech, digitech.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Steven Kaufman Enterprises, Inc., flatpik.com . . . . . . . . . . 91, 92
Elixir Strings, elixirstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Kyser Musical Products, kysermusical.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
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Luthier Music Corp., luthiermusic.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Ernie Ball Music Man, ernieball.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Mandolin Bros., Ltd., mandoweb.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
G7th, Ltd., g7th.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59
C.F. Martin & Co., Inc., martinguitar.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104
George Lowden Guitars, georgelowden.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Masecraft Supply Co., masecraftsupply.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
Gibson Montana, gibson.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Music Emporium, themusicemporium.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Taylor Guitars, taylorguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Godin Guitars, seagullguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Nova Strings, novastrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
Washburn Guitars, washburn.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Radial Engineering, radialeng.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 RainSong Graphite Guitars, rainsong.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 RS Muth Guitars, rsmuthguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Saddle, saddlethumbpicks.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Saga Musical Instruments, sagamusic.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Shubb Capos, shubb.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96 Stewart-MacDonald’s Guitar Supply, stewmac.com . . . . . . . . . 57 The Swannanoa Gathering, swangathering.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
100 June 2014
Sweetwater Sound, sweetwater.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Tanglewood Guitar Co., tanglewoodguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
GREAT ACOUSTICS
Gateway to a Heavenly Sound
1973 Churchdoor guitar is part of a line that inspired Cordoba’s Rodriguez model BY PAT MORAN
I
t is the stuff of legend: In the early 1970s, master luthier Miguel Rodriguez Jr. journeyed from his home in Cordoba, Spain, to Granada, where he saw a work crew carting a massive rosewood church door off its rotted hinges. Rodriguez seized the door, and from it came the most iconic guitars ever crafted by his illustrious family. Today, the “Rodriguez” model—part of American guitar company Cordoba’s 2014 Master Series—replicates Miguel Jr.’s “Churchdoor” guitar, renowned for its warm tone and powerful sound. A classical guitar with flamenco-like response, the Rodriguez is bigger than the traditional Torres nylon-string guitar, but lightweight for its size. “The strings have remarkable recovery,” says Tim Miklaucic, owner and CEO of Cordoba Guitar Group and Guitar Salon International. “You pull the string like a bow, and it snaps back immediately, allowing you to play quickly, easily, and accurately.” While Cordoba was perfecting and refining its Rodriguez model, Miklaucic discovered an original Miguel Rodriguez Churchdoor guitar for sale—the 1973 model pictured here that was built for famed Spanish guitarist Celedonio Romero. Interestingly, this Churchdoor guitar never reached its intended owner—instead, it was intercepted and acquired by flamenco singer Naranjito de Triana. Upon de Triana’s death, the guitar passed to a private owner and
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.
AcousticGuitar.com 101
thence to Miklaucic. The instrument is a sister to the fabled “La Wonderful,” the Churchdoor guitar Miguel Jr. crafted for Celedonio’s son, guitarist Pepe Romero. GSI president David Collett notes that the tales of these two family trees—the luthier Rodriguezes and guitar-playing Romeros—is entwined in the Churchdoor saga. “The families were close. As the Romero children grew up, the Rodriguez family was building guitars in the same region of Spain. As their paths crossed, a fascinating interplay between builder and player emerged which was critical in the evolution of the Rodriguez style,” Collett says. Familiarity led to admiration. When Pepe Romero said, “What the jet engine did for aviation, the Rodriguez family did for the guitar,” he was referring to the changes wrought by Miguel Jr., son of patriarch Miguel Sr. “(Miguel Jr.) made the guitar box bigger. He did more work in the thinning of the top, and added more doming and tension. There are many strategies he combined which gives the Rodgriguez its unique sound,” Miklaucic says, adding that Cordoba continues Miguel Jr.’s legacy of innovation. Modern refinements in the Master Series line include a truss rod, geared tuning machines, and string length scaled down to 650 millimeters.
102 June 2014
Miklaucic notes that though Cordoba’s Rodriguez model “contains the spirit and DNA” of the Rodriguez Churchdoor, it was not crafted from the limited supply of rosewood that Miguel Jr. discovered at that fabled church in Granada. Yet is that romantic tale of the Churchdoor’s genesis true? According to Collett, the actual story is more prosaic. “Miguel Jr.’s son, also named Pepe, was the marketing expert in the Rodriguez family—the idea guy,” says Collett. “He was always coming up with funny names for the materials they were working with—‘Pata Negra,’ for some dark, straight-grained rosewood they had, or ‘Sangre de León,’ for a reddish stain they would sometimes mix in the varnish. ‘Churchdoor,’ in reference to this wildlooking rosewood, was just one of these quips. “It was in the resale market that the legendary stories started to emerge,” Collett adds. Yet he believes that the final word on the Churchdoor legend should rest with Pepe Romero, perhaps the player most familiar with the guitar’s power. “Pepe told me that it’s also a ‘church door’ in the sense that it’s a portal to a sacred musical place,” Collett says. “He feels uniquely inspired and transformed when he has one of these guitars on his lap.” AG
PHOTOS BY FELIX SALAZAR, COURTESY OF GUITAR SALON INTERNATIONAL
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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