AG Acoustic-Guitar-2013-10.pdf

4 SONGS TO PLAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN “The River” PATTY GRIFFIN “Go Wherever You Wanna Go” THE WHO “Behind Blue Eyes” TRADITIONAL “Wayfaring Stranger” OCTOBER 2013

F O R E V E R Y P L AY E R I N A N Y S T Y L E

Patty Griffin Honors Her Father on American Kid

21 WAYS

to Make Your Guitar Parts Shine

MICHAEL GURIAN

LESSONS Folk Song Accompaniment Seventh Chords Demystified Hammer-Ons & Pull-Offs

Aoife O’Donovan Steps out Solo

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OCTOBER 2013, ISSUE 250

VOL. 24, NO. 4

departments 14 PRIVATE LESSON Traditional Folk Song Accompaniment: Jefferson Hamer on the flatpicking and hybrid-picking styles he uses to accompany folk ballads. By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

46

NEW GEAR 18 Gibson J-35: Gibson brings back a classic slope-

features

38 21 Tips for Better Accompaniment Learn to make your solo guitar parts more distinctive and deepen the impact of your songs. By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

46 Patty Griffin After digging into gospel and touring with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, the singer-songwriter returns with the

shoulder, this time with stage-ready electronics. By Adam Levy 22 Boulder Creek ECGC-7VB: Stylish, affordable acoustic-electric with contemporary features. By Adam Perlmutter 26 Zoom A3: Clean, compact preamp provides myriad effects, modeling, and EQ to help you color and perfect your amplified sound. By Doug Young

28 PLAYER SPOTLIGHT Aoife O’Donovan: The voice of Crooked Still and the Goat Rodeo Sessions steps out solo. By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

all-original American Kid. By Derk Richardson

56 Michael Gurian

= video at AcousticGuitar.com

From his days as a luthier in the 1960s and ’70s to running a successful parts factory, Michael Gurian has had a long and influential life in the guitar trade. By Orville Johnson

Seventh Chords: Learn how to build major, minor, dominant, and other seventh chords.

12 “The River” Bruce Springsteen

62 SHOPTALK

53 “Go Wherever You Wanna Go”

Traugott Guitars: California guitar maker offers ultra high-end steel-strings. By Teja Gerken

Patty Griffin

64 PLAYLIST

70 “Behind Blue Eyes” The Who

66 WEEKLY WORKOUT

74 “Wayfaring Stranger”

Ascending and Descending Slurs: These hammer-on and pull-off exercises will strengthen your hand and increase your finger independence. By Scott Nygaard

Traditional, arr. by Al Petteway

DAN GABEL

in every issue AG Online Music Notation Key Marketplace Ad Index

October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

Painting Pictures: Ellis Paul shares tips and exercises that can help you sharpen your lyrics. By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

34 THE BASICS

songs to play

8 10 78 80

30 SONGCRAFT

82 GREAT ACOUSTICS 1965 Goya T-18. By Teja Gerken ON THE COVER: Patty Griffin. PHOTOGRAPHER: Darren Carroll.

AcousticGuitar.com 7

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ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

Jim Lauderdale and Collings Guitars

Jim Lauderdale and his 1994 Collings D2H SB

Serious Guitars | www.CollingsGuitars.com | (512) 288-7770

NOTATION

music notation key

Dropped-D Tuning: D A D G B E

ˇ

D Guitar tunings are given from the lowest (sixth) string to the highest (first) string; standard tuning is written as E A D G B E. Arrows underneath tuning notes indicate strings that are altered from standard tuning and whether they are tuned up or down. In standard notation, small symbols next to notes refer to fretting-hand fingers: 1 for the index finger, 2 the middle, 3 the ring, 4 the little finger, and T the thumb. Picking-hand fingering is indicated by i for the index finger, m the middle, a the ring, c the little finger, and p the thumb.

# # 4 œ œ œ3 & 4 œ œ 2

m p

i p

A7

œ

3

1/4

œ m p

œ œ m p

1/4

2

B

0

3 0

0

3 0

1/4

1/4

3 2

œœ Û Û Û Û Û Û Û œœ œ ≤

≥

≤

≥

≥

≤

≥

≤

À À À À À À À

0 2 0 2 0

In tablature, the horizontal lines represent the six strings, with the first string on top and the sixth on the bottom. The numbers refer to frets on the given string. Slur markings indicate hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides; indicates a bend. The number next to the bend symbol shows how much the bend raises the pitch: ¼ for a slight bend, 1⁄2 for a half step, 1 for a whole step. Pick and strum direction are shown below the staff ( =downstroke, =upstroke), and slashes in the notation and tablature (!) indicate a strum through the previously played chord. 1/2

C

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10 AcousticGuitar.com

G

3 20004

A7

1 3 1 2 11

D m7

5 fr.

x1 3 1 2 1

5 fr.

Chord diagrams show where the fingers go on the fretboard. Frets are shown horizontally. The top horizontal line represents the nut, unless a numeral to the right of the diagram marks a higher position (“5 fr.” means fifth fret). Strings are shown as vertical lines. The line on the far left represents the sixth (lowest) string, and the line on the far right represents the first (highest) string. Dots show where the fingers go, and thick horizontal lines indicate barres. Numbers above the diagram are fretting-hand finger numbers. X indicates a string that should be muted or not played; 0 indicates an open string. Vocal tunes are sometimes written with a fully tabbed-out introduction and a vocal melody with chord diagrams for the rest of the piece. The tab intro is usually your indication of which strum or fingerpicking pattern to use in the rest of the piece. ag

Want to Know More About Acoustic Guitar Notation? To receive a complete guide to Acoustic Guitar music by mail, send a selfaddressed, stamped envelope to Music Editor, Acoustic Guitar, 501 Canal Blvd., Suite J, Richmond, CA 94804-3505. The complete guide can also be found online at AcousticGuitar.com/notationguide.

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While all these patterns translate perfectly to a six-string guitar, keep in mind that they won’t sound quite the same as they do on a 12-string, because the paired octaves on the lower four strings can make some notes sound like they’re played an octave higher than they really are. When the song builds momentum in the choruses and later sections, the 12-string occasionally breaks into full-chord strumming. Throughout the original recording, you’ll hear small chord embellishments, like a walkup between Em and G chords, a Gsus4 resolving to G over the word “coat” in the second verse, or the Am chords embellished by hammering on to the first-fret C note of the chord with your index finger. —ANDREW DuBROCK

The River Words and music by Bruce Springsteen BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN first performed the title track of his fifth studio album, The River (1980), a year before its release, at a 1979 No Nukes benefit in Madison Square Garden. The rhythm part of “The River” is held down by a 12-string acoustic guitar, with individual notes of chords and their embellishments played with a flatpick. Try the flatpicking pattern shown below, which is similar to much of the song’s backup. This pattern is adapted and embellished for each chord and, while you could use the straight pattern throughout the tune, it will have more of an organic sound if you vary the strings you pick as you go. This is illustrated in the intro figure shown below, right.

Flatpicking Pattern

# & 44

Chords

Em 0 23 000

G 3 2 0004

D x x0 132

C x 32 0 1 0

Strumming Pattern

G /B A m C add9 G /F #

x 2 00 0 4 x0 231 0 x 21 0 4 0 2 x00 04

B

Intro

G œ œ œ œœ Û Û Û Û Û Û œœ œ J œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. *Strum: ≥ ≥ ≤ ≤ ≥ ≤ 0 0 3 3 3 À À À À À 0 0 0 0

Em

2

0

0

0 2 2 0 * ≥ = down; ≤ = up 2

2

2

0

2

0

0

0 2

3

G /B Am G C #D œœ œ C œ œ œœœ & œ. J œ œ œœ œœœ œœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ

3

3

2

0

B

3

0

2

3

0 2

0

0

0

0

2

2

1

2

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0 3

3

2

0

0

2

3

0 3

2

0

0 3

Em

G

D

C G/B Am

G

C

Em

2. Em

1.

G

D

I come from down in the valley D

Cadd9

And, man, that was all she wrote

Cadd9

Em

Where, mister, when you’re young Em

G

Then I got Mary pregnant

G

G C

G

G

C

They bring you up to do like your daddy done

We went down to the courthouse

C

G

Me and Mary, we met in high school

G/F # Em

And the judge put it all to rest

G/F# Em

G

C

And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat

Am

When she was just seventeen

No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle

Am

G

C

We’d ride out of this valley down to where the fields were green Chorus

G

C

No flowers, no wedding dress Chorus

Em

C

D

G

We’d go down to the river and into the river we’d dive Em

C

D

Oh, down to the river we’d ride 12 AcousticGuitar.com

Cadd9

Em

C

D

G

At night we went down to the river and into the river we’d dive Em

C

D

Cadd9

Oh, down to the river we did ride ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

© 1980 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (ASCAP). USED BY PERMISSION OF ALFRED MUSIC PUBLISHING CO., INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Intro

C

Now those memories come back to haunt me

Harmonica Solo (over verse progression)

G/F # Em

G Em

3.

G

D

Cadd9

They haunt me like a curse

I got a job working construction for the Johnstown company Em

G

C

Am G

But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy

Is the dream a lie if it don’t come true G

C

Or is it something worse

C

Now all them things that seemed so important G/F#

G

Em

Well, mister, they vanished right into the air

Chorus Em

C

That sends me down to the river

Am

Now I just act like I don’t remember G

D

G

Though I know the river is dry

C

And Mary acts like she don’t care

Em

C

D

Cadd9

It sends me down to the river tonight Em

4.

G

But I remember us riding in my brother’s car D

Cadd9

Her body tanned and wet, down at the reservoir Em

G

C

D

G

Down to the river, my baby and I Em

C

D

Cadd9

Oh, down to the river we ride Em C D G Em C D Cadd9

At night on them banks I’d lie awake C

Em

Ooh,__ ooh, ooh,__________ (repeat, ad-lib, and fade) G

And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take

October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

AcousticGuitar.com 13

PRIVATE LESSON

Given how long the Child Ballads have been played and adapted, how did you approach making them your own? HAMER Well, it all starts with the melody— that dictates the approach I take. With a song that’s more up-tempo, I’d probably play with a flatpick. For something mid or slower tempo, I might use pick-and-fingers technique. And then really you tackle each song one at a time and find a style that seems to suit it.

Traditional Folk Song Accompaniment Jefferson Hamer on the flatpicking and hybrid-picking styles he uses to accompany folk ballads. By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

THE COLLECTION OF ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH folk songs known as the Child Ballads have been circulating for centuries. During the last 50 years, they have been interpreted and performed by such artists as Martin Carthy, Fairport Convention, and Joan Baez. Recently, singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell (see Player Spotlight, October 2012) teamed up with multi-instrumentalist/ singer Jefferson Hamer to join this venerable tradition, releasing the duo album Child Ballads (Wilderland). Hamer, who also performs traditional Irish and American music with Eamon O’Leary in the Murphy Beds, was a natural partner for this ballads project with Mitchell. A gifted guitarist and singer, Hamer is able to hit close harmonies with Mitchell’s high voice and weave gorgeous instrumental lines around her fingerstyle guitar. Hamer is also steeped in bluegrass and plays in the roots/country collective Session Americana, and he and Mitchell steer their Child Ballads gently in the direction of old-time country duets. During a spring tour stop with Mitchell at upstate New York’s Hamilton College, Hamer sat down with his Collings dreadnought to talk about and demonstrate the intricate guitar work behind the ballads.

A lot of these melodies are modal and could be harmonized in so many ways. How did you decide which chords you use? HAMER That was one of the joys of working with Anaïs on the musical side of the arrangements. We spent a lot of time working with the lyrics, and then after we had a text we were happy with, the big challenge was, how do we want to treat the music? We wanted to keep it fairly simple, because there are so many words and we wanted to keep the spotlight on the text. But we did have a few simple devices. Like in “Willie’s Lady,” the melody is all over an E chord, but it’s not re-

LICK OF THE MONTH This lick shows one way that Jefferson Hamer embellishes a midtempo melody, like “Clyde Waters,” by adding triplets. Try substituting this variation for the last four measures of Example 5 (p 17), leading in with the quick flatpicked triplet in the pickup measure.

Dropped-D Tuning: D A D G B E Capo I

# & # 44

B

ˇ

3 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ww œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w 3

3

0 2 4

14 AcousticGuitar.com

0

2

4

0

0

0

4

0

2 4 2 0

0

0 2 5

0 0

0 0 2 4

0

4

2

0

4

2

2 0 0 0

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

PHOTO © JAY SANSOME. TEXT © 2013 JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION.

Did you tune out other guitarists’ interpretations of these songs to find your own? HAMER That’s a great question. In the case of the two songs on this record that came from Martin Carthy—“Geordie” and “Willie’s Lady”—I very much had his versions in mind. But I didn’t just replicate his parts; one, because I don’t know how to play exactly what he does—he’s an amazing guitar player. I kind of simulated his style on “Geordie” as I heard it. I didn’t sit there with the Slow Downer [software] and listen to every little nuance of his playing, and I’m not in the same tuning he uses on that song. I’m in a C-modal tuning, and I actually got the idea for that tuning from Nic Jones.

See video of the music examples at AcousticGuitar.com

Dropped-D Tuning: D A D G B E (Ex. 1–2) Ex. 1 Capo II = 120

ˇ

B

3 5

0

2

3

00

0

00 0

00

3 5

3 2 3 5

00

2

3

00

0

00

2 0

0

5

00

3 5 0

0

2

3

00

0

00

3 5

0

7

B

0 0

3

2 3 5

0 0

2

0 0

3

0

0 0

2 0

0

5

0 0 0

0 0

3 5

0 0

7

7

0 0

0

3

0 0

0

0 0 0

3 5

0 0

3 2 3 5

0 0

2

3

0 0

0

0 0

2 0

0

5

0 0 0

0

5 7

3 5

18

3

0 0

0

0 0 0

3 5

0 0

3 2 3 5

 

4

B

2 0 0

4

0

2

0

0 0

3 2

5 7

3

2

3

4 2

0 0

October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

0 0

0

0 0

2 0

3 2 0 0 0

5

1

0

0

0

0

2

2 4

3 0

4 0

0 0

0

5

2

0 0 0

0



0

0 5

4

0

 

 

2

0

0

0

5

0 0 0

8 5

2 0

4

0

2

5 7

7 5 7 5







2 0 0 0

0 0

3 2

0

0

0

0 0

0

0 0

2 0

3

0 0

2 0

3

0

0 2 0 0

0

3 0

4

3

1 0 0

0

0

0

2

0

0

 0 0



0

3

0

7 5 7 5

= 80

 

0

  2 4 0 0

0 0

0

11

B

7



Capo VII Ex. 2

B

5



12

B

8





0

0

∑



0 0

0

AcousticGuitar.com 15

PRIVATE LESSON

ally major or minor until I add my vocal harmony—then it becomes major. I could have sung a harmony that was minor, or I could have avoided the third, but I liked that major third sound, so I did it that way. Then we added some substitute chords. The [second] part of that song is over the E, but you can sing it over the VII chord, the D. So we would sometimes substitute that VII chord as a way to interject some excitement into the arrangement. There’s also the IV: a lot of that song is I–IV. Listening to the record, it’s often hard to tell who’s playing what. Your guitar parts, like your voices, are so closely entwined. HAMER That was a goal, for sure. There’s very little soloing on the record, where Anaïs holds down a rhythm and I take a lead. Most of the album is two interlocking guitar parts. What I play in “Willie’s Lady” sounds like this [Example 1]. So that would be one pass through the instrumental. If I were playing it solo, without Anaïs’ guitar, I would probably do things a little differently. She’s giving it a drive, so I’m a little freer to float on top. You’re using your middle finger to pick some of those upper notes, right? HAMER Yeah. There are a few ways to go at it. One is just a pure flatpicked approach. Sometimes I like to get some finger in there, because to my ear it creates this clawhammer-banjo effect. You get a little syncopation and a little more lilt to the rhythm, and also a little more dynamics in the tone. If every note is picked with the flatpick, sometimes, at least in my own playing, it can sound a little monotone. If you mix it up with the pick and fingers a little bit, you can get different sounds and timbres coming from the guitar, and that can be exciting. It sounds like you’re using a lot of droppedD tuning on the record. HAMER My dropped-D songs are “Clyde Waters,” “Willie’s Lady,” and “Sir Patrick Spens.” When we recorded “Sir Patrick Spens” I did it in D A D G A D tuning, but now when we play it live I do it in dropped D. It saves some time in the tuning. But I will say, the melody for “Sir Patrick Spens,” which is one that we came up with, very much revolved around the D A D G A D sound. There’s something to be said for trying a tuning and seeing what you come up with; it might inspire you melodically in a way that if you were in standard you wouldn’t have gotten to. Would you share a bit of your part on “Sir Patrick Spens”? HAMER This is a good illustration of the hy16 AcousticGuitar.com

brid style. I like to play out of dropped D and capo high up the neck to shrink the scale of the guitar a bit. I find that dropped D, because you have these two open drone strings, helps me get a fuller sound. So if I were going to play in the key of A, well, obviously I could use the open A position, or I might capo at the second fret and play out of G. But doing it this way [with D shapes, capo on the seventh fret] gives me a pretty full bass register, and then I have an octave to work with for the melody [Example 2]. I try to maintain as much of a bass pulse as I can. Martin Carthy is a master of that—his thumb is just infallible with that bass pulse. The way I just played it is sort of articulating the single notes of the melody. I could also play it with a little more of the pick and less of my fingers and strum more than one string at a time. What is the C-modal tuning on “Geordie”? HAMER It’s C G C G C D. One of the nice things about C modal is all the strings are slackened, and if you’re playing with your fingers they get snappy in a nice way, especially if you’re using medium-gauge strings. So here’s “Geordie” [Example 3]. Does your background in bluegrass shape how you play these songs? HAMER Very much so, especially when it

WHAT HE PLAYS ACOUSTIC GUITAR: Collings D2H with a sunburst finish. Part of the guitar’s top was smashed by an airline (despite being in a flight case), and New Hampshire luthier Pat DiBurro “worked miracles” to bring the guitar back to life, Hamer says. “This guitar has a real prominent midrange. It’s not a big, booming dreadnought. It has plenty of bass, but I feel like it has enough presence and crispness that it articulates single notes really well.” AMPLIFICATION: K&K Pure Mini soundboard transducer into a Radial JDI passive DI and then a Grace Design m101 mic preamp. Onstage, Hamer adds a little “breath” to the sound by stepping up to a Shure SM57 external microphone. RECORDING: For the Child Ballads album, engineer Gary Paczosa recorded both Hamer’s and Anaïs Mitchell’s guitars with pairs of Neumann KM 54s in an X/Y pattern. STRINGS: Medium gauge, phosphor bronze or 80/20, no particular brand. ACCESSORIES: Wegen TF 120 triangular flatpick. Shubb capo. Korg Pitchblack tuner pedal.

comes to pick technique. Really all I mean by that is I put the downbeats on the downstroke and the syncopated offbeats on the upstroke. With my students, I try to make sure they’re doing that when they’re playing a melody. Sometimes the temptation is to just go up and down regardless of whether you’re playing a quarter note or an eighth note or a 16th or whatever. Trying to maintain the [pulse] is always going to be the foundation of your righthand technique, and it helps you play in time if you syncopate a melody. A song like “Clyde Waters” is probably the closest I come to a bluegrass approach. Anaïs starts the song with this rolling finger line. It’s kind of midtempo. It feels funny to call that bluegrass, because it doesn’t have a bluegrass feel, but what I correlate with the bluegrass approach is this: You figure out where your boom-chuck would lie [Example 4]. That’s the foundation of the tempo. Those are going to be my downstrokes, and most of the melody can be played with downstrokes [Example 5]. Of course you have the upstrokes here and there. So that’s the melody that I play in the instrumental breaks. Your guitar comes in and out in that arrangement. HAMER The trick in that song is to stay out of the way of Anaïs. The whole song is built around a front half and a back half. The way we structured that is she takes the front half almost solo—I hardly even touch the guitar— and then I come in with the harmony and my guitar on the back half to give it a lift. Each verse is propelled forward that way. So that was an example of, what are we going to do for 20 verses that’s going to keep this interesting? Our approach was to give it this kind of rolling waves type of arrangement. With these ballads, are you conscious of making sure you don’t play too much? HAMER Well, yeah, you’re trying to respect the song and let the song speak for itself. When you’ve done a lot of work on the lyrics, you want to let those express themselves. Plus the harmony singing was a big part of the record. Everyone has their own way of coming up with the right guitar part, and mine is very much trial and error in the studio. I try things, and then when I listen back I usually get a better idea of whether I’m on the right track, if it sounds kind of noodley and undefined, or if it lacks a real decisive purpose. I want the part that goes on the record to feel like it had to be there. ag JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS (jeffreypepperrodgers. com), the founding editor of Acoustic Guitar, is author of the Homespun video series Learn Seven Grateful Dead Classics for Acoustic Guitar. ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

See video of the music examples at AcousticGuitar.com

Tuning: C G C G C D Ex. 3

ˇˇˇ ˆ ˇ 

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October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

2

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Dropped-D Tuning: D A D G B E (Ex. 4–5) Capo I Ex. 5 Ex. 4

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AcousticGuitar.com 17

NEW GEAR

See the video review at AcousticGuitar.com

Gibson J-35 Gibson brings back a classic slope-shoulder dreadnought. By Adam Levy

GIBSON ISSUED ITS FIRST J-35 MODEL in 1936. The curvaceous flattop delivered rich sound, bore a clean look with a minimum of cosmetic frills, and its initial $35 price tag was an appealing selling point. Compared to Gibson’s similarly proportioned Jumbo model, priced at $60, the J-35 was a budgetwise buy. (Remember, the Great Depression was in full swing by the mid ’30s.) The J-35 became one of Gibson’s most popular prewar flattops and remained in production until 1942, when it was replaced by the J-45. The company recently reintroduced the J-35 to its Gibson Acoustic line, which is built in Bozeman, Montana, and today’s J-35 has all the sonic and aesthetic charm of its ancestor, and is once again priced competitively.

Historic Design While the current J-35 has its roots in the classic 1936 design, it’s not intended to be an exact spec-for-spec replica of the original model or its subsequent refinements. It’s more an amalgam of vintage details. Perhaps inspired by the 1939 edition, the neck and heel of the new J-35 have rounded profiles—unlike the V-shaped neck and pointier “French heel” on the first J-35s. The mahogany back and sides of the J-35 we received for review are a pale reddish-brown, like those of the earliest models—whereas the back and sides were typically stained a darker brown on later examples. One particularly interesting design detail of this modern J-35 is the “Only a Gibson Is Good Enough” banner emblazoned on the headstock beneath the old-style script Gibson logo. No prewar J-35s would have had this banner, though it was featured on the 1942 J-45, and some other Gibson flattops, through 1945. It may not be historically “correct,” but it adds a touch of class. In the original J-35 construction, the rectangular bridge was affixed with two small screws that went through the top—and the interior bridge plate—on either side of the E-string bridge pins. These screws were then covered with mother-of-pearl dots. Though no screws are used in the bridge assemblage of the new J-35, pearloid dots remain as a nod to the look of the original. The white/black/white rosette is another remnant of the first J-35s, as is the unique pickguard shape. The back is bound in a

18 AcousticGuitar.com

single ply—a feature Gibson first added to its 1937 edition. Today’s top has multi-ply binding, while original models were singleply bound. The build quality was very high on the review guitar. Each element looked good, and the whole had been assembled tightly and cleanly. The finish on the unbound fingerboard appeared a little inconsistent at the end—where it overlays the guitar’s top. Other than that, I could find no cosmetic hitches.

Full-Bodied and Dynamic After giving the new J-35 a proper look-see, it was time to start kicking the tires, so to speak. The guitar seemed to be a naturalborn strummer, so I improvised a folky Neil Young–style chord progression, experimenting with different picks (nylon, Delrin, and faux-tortoiseshell celluloid, in various gauges). Each pick brought out a subtle variation of the J-35’s voice, but its inherent warmth always came across. The sound was full-bodied with plenty of harmonic detail across the dynamic spec-

AT A GLANCE SPECS: Slope-shoulder 16-inch-wide flattop with 14-fret neck. Solid Sitka spruce top with scalloped X-bracing. Solid mahogany back and sides. Mahogany neck. Dovetail neck joint bonded with hide glue. Unbound rosewood fingerboard with 12-inch radius. Tusq nut and compensated Tusq saddle. 25.75-inch scale length. 1.725-inch nut width. 27⁄32-inch string spacing at saddle. Nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Vintage-style nickel-plated tuners, 15:1 ratio, with white plastic buttons. Active L.R. Baggs Element pickup system. Gibson lightgauge strings. Made in USA.

PRICE: $2,190 list/$1,699 street. MAKER: Gibson Acoustic: 1-800-4GIBSON; gibson.com.

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

NEW GEAR trum—from murmur quiet to cannon loud. To explore the J-35’s tender side, I fingerpicked renditions of James Taylor’s “Shower the People” and “Fire and Rain.” (Taylor favored a Gibson J-50 early in his career.) This led me to second-guess my initial impression of the guitar. It’s great for strumming, yes, but it’s a righteous fingerpicker, too. In open position or capoed anywhere up the neck, it sounded like a record. That is, it seemed to be benefiting from a touch of topquality EQ and compression when played acoustically. Playing JT-style hammer-ons and pull-offs within chord shapes felt luxurious, thanks to the J-35’s remarkable sustain.

Stage-Ready Sound The J-35 comes equipped with an L.R. Baggs Element undersaddle pickup and preamp system, which includes a small, soundholemounted volume control and is powered by a single nine-volt battery affixed to the neck block. I plugged the guitar into a few small amps and was pleased to find that its natural sonorities were well represented in the resulting amplified sound with no major EQ tweaks. Then I plugged the Gibson into my laptop—via an Apogee Jam interface—to see how it fared for direct recording. As is, with no

EQ or other effects added, the sound was reasonably balanced and clear. There was more low-end rumble than would be usable on most recordings, so I applied a high-pass filter to quell the big bottom (with a rolloff at 150 Hz) and a parametric EQ to focus the low mids (175 Hz, -4 dB). EQ is highly subjective, of course. Choices will depend upon the voice of the guitar, the other instruments in the mix, and the desired quality of sound overall. Suffice it to say, the Element’s direct sound would be a useful recording resource alone or in conjunction with an external studio-quality microphone.

A Classic Redefined With its attractive prewar styling and periodinspired construction, the Gibson J-35 is easy to love. It would make a great choice for a modern-day troubadour, old-time revivalist, or anyone else who likes their guitars with broad curves and lavish tones. It can’t be bought for $35 anymore, but with a street price at about $500 less than Gibson’s comparable J-45 Standard, it’s still a relative bargain. ag ADAM LEVY is an itinerant guitarist and performing songwriter based in Los Angeles. Read more of his writings and hear his music at adamlevy.com.

EDITORS ’ IMPRESSIONS TEJA GERKEN: This J-35 shows why Gibson’s short-scale slope-shoulder dreadnoughts have been popular with players of all stripes for almost eight decades. It’s responsive enough to sound great when played fingerstyle (yielding an excellent country-blues type fingerpicking tone), but not so delicate that it can’t take a heavy pick attack. The guitar produces the classic “dry” Gibson sound when strummed, and it has the uncomplicated clarity you hope for in a mahogany dreadnought. SCOTT NYGAARD: Gibson’s J-35 may have once been an affordable model, but vintage specimens these days can run up to five figures. The importance of the Gibson slope-shoulder dreadnought sound and style, however, is proven by how many small manufacturers and luthiers offer their own versions. What impressed me most about Gibson’s “reissue” was its clarity and liveliness. Our review instrument did not sound like a typical new guitar: flatpicked melodies across its entire range leaped out of the instrument, tonally balanced but with impressive power, and open-position strumming and bass lines were crisp, bright, and muscular.

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NEW GEAR

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Boulder Creek ECGC-7VB Stylish, affordable acoustic-electric with a contemporary design.

By Adam Perlmutter

MODERN FEATURES LIKE offset soundholes, side soundports, and wood binding typically have been found on costly, bespoke guitars. But these construction attributes are being seen with increasing regularity on guitars at all levels, including the line of smartly modern flattops designed in California by Boulder Creek Guitars. Boulder Creek builds a full complement of instruments, from nylon-string models to 12-strings, and OMs to jumbos. We auditioned the Gold Series ECGC-7VB, a grand concert–size cutaway model with a maple body and a built-in electronics system.

Classy Styling The ECGC-7VB is built from an attractive medley of tonewoods. The spruce soundboard on our review instrument was finely grained, and the quartersawn flamed maple back (which was perfectly book-matched) and sides had impressive grain and figuring, offering a nice contrast to the plain maple used for the neck. The rosewood headstock cap is a smart touch. In addition to traditional wood X-bracing, the ECGC-7VB boasts Boulder’s Suspended Bracing System. Developed by Mike Shellhammer, this system incorporates a pair of lightweight aluminum tone bars mounted to plastic brackets that are glued to the top and designed to provide extra strength to the soundboard while allowing the top to vibrate freely, enhancing the guitar’s sustain and resonance. Meanwhile, the upper-bout soundhole is intended to make the guitar louder and create a more pronounced bottom end than a centrally located soundhole does, while the side soundport directs the sound to the player’s ear. Finished in a glowing, violin-inspired sunburst, the ECGC-7VB has an elegant appearance, made even more so by the natural plain maple used for the body and headstock binding as well as the heel cap, back strip, and end strip, all with twin black definition lines. The fingerboard’s binding, which has no black lines, is gracefully thin. A pearl rosette around the soundhole adds a subtle sparkle, as do the iridescent dot markers inlaid on the fingerboard and Boulder Creek logo on the headstock. And the gold sealed tuners have handsome ebony-like buttons. The ECGC-7VB we reviewed is decently crafted overall, a solidly built guitar that should hold up well with years of use. Aside from the frets needing a bit more polishing—a situation that could be addressed easily enough by a trusted tech—there were no anomalies to

22 AcousticGuitar.com

be found that would affect the playability or the sound. And the superficial rough spots, like a few internal glue gobs, can absolutely be forgiven on a $500 guitar.

Impressive Voice and Responsiveness Although the ECGC-7VB is a bit heavy, it sits nicely on the lap, and the neck has a medium C-shape profile and 111⁄16-inch nut that will appeal to a broad selection of players. Its factory-set low action was comfortable and buzz-free and the notes rang clear and true at all 20 frets. Despite some jagged fret edges and a heel-mounted strap button that rubbed against the fretting hand in the higher positions, the guitar was a pleasure to play. Overall the ECGC-7VB had an attractive voice—clear and bright, owing likely to its maple build, with impressive sustain, volume, and projection. The low end was sturdy and the highs well defined, while the mids were a bit assertive, and the soundport did, indeed, seem to provide a detailed listening experience for the player. The ECGC-7VB excelled in a range of settings. It was great for strumming approaches, from boom-chuck to Carter-style to even four-to-the-bar jazz, and chords of

AT A GLANCE SPECS: Grand concert body size. Solid spruce top with wood X-brace and aluminum Suspended Bracing System. Laminated flamed maple back and sides. Maple neck. Rosewood fingerboard and bridge. Synthetic bone nut and saddle. 25.624-inch scale. 111⁄16-inch nut width. 23⁄16-inch string spacing at saddle. Violin Burst gloss finish. Gold tuners with 18:1 ratio. Proprietary undersaddle pickup and AB4-T preamp. D’Addario EXP (.012–.053) strings. Made in China.

PRICE: $699 list/$489 street. MAKER: Boulder Creek Guitars: (408) 779-3845; bouldercreekguitars.com.

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

Classical Guitar Studies at Juilliard Sharon Isbin Department Chair

NEW GEAR all sorts had good note separation and balance on the instrument. Articulated with a flatpick, single-note lines in any style sounded robust. Despite a relatively narrow nut width of 111⁄16 inches, the guitar’s string spacing didn’t feel at all cramped for fingerpicking. The guitar rang sweetly when placed in alternate tunings like open G or D A D G A D and subjected to fingerpicked improvisations.

Flexible Electronics Like many Boulder Creek acoustic-electric guitars, the ECGC-7VB comes equipped with the company’s AB4-T preamp and undersaddle piezo pickup. The preamp includes a chromatic tuner, which bypasses the output when it is engaged; four-band EQ (brilliance, treble, mid, and bass) with sliding controls; a volume knob; and a phase switch. While typical acoustic guitar electronics include a single 1⁄4-inch output, the AB4-T has both a 1⁄4-inch unbalanced jack and balanced XLR. Though the guitar had a natural sound when amplified with the EQ set flat, it’s nice to have the soundshaping flexibility it offers. Running the guitar through a Fender Acoustasonic, I found it easy to dial in dark jazz tones or shimmering, bright timbres. Overall, the ECGC-7VB is an attractively voiced and extremely playable instrument, an acoustic-electric that sounds good plugged in or not. As a bonus, the guitar is styled in the manner of a fine boutique instrument, but costs a mere fraction of one, and can therefore be enjoyed without anxiety. ag

• Private Lessons and Master Classes • Chamber Music Performance • Guitar History and Literature • Fretboard Harmony Scholarship and cost-of-living assistance available Juilliard.edu/guitar Apply by December 1

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ADAM PERLMUTTER is an Acoustic Guitar contributing editor who transcribes, engraves, and arranges music for numerous publications.

EDITOR ’ S IMPRESSION TEJA GERKEN: The Boulder Creek ECGC-7VB continues the company’s concept of delivering designs and features found on high-end, luthier-built guitars to entry-level price regions. But how does it play and sound? Our review guitar featured an ultralow action setup that would have made most electric guitars proud. As such, playability was very easy, though at the cost of some buzzing with a heavy picking hand. Due to the large side soundport, the Boulder Creek’s impressive

Photo: J Henry Fair

bass sound was more audible to the player

24 AcousticGuitar.com

than to a listener. But even with this caveat, the guitar offered a lovely, rich voice that, while Joseph W. Polisi, President

not as dynamic and complex as some, made the guitar very satisfying to play.

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

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NEW GEAR

Zoom A3 Clean, compact preamp provides myriad effects, modeling, and EQ to help you color and perfect your amplified sound. By Doug Young

ACOUSTIC GUITARISTS usually depend on effects much less lies in the software, accessed via the LED than electric players, but given the chance, the list of devices screen and controlled by three combinayou might wish to use can be fairly long. String together a tion push-button/knobs. The LED screen preamp, DI, EQ, tuners, and footswitches for muting and presents a virtual pedal board with three boosting, reverb, chorus, delay, modeler, and a few more slots. Slot one is always occupied by the and before you know it you’ll have an acoustic pedal modeler, which we’ll explore in a minute. board that rivals those of its electric cousins. Or you The other two slots can be loaded with could have all of those in a single small any two of a large collection pedal, which is what Zoom has tried to of effects, which include provide with its latest acoustic preamp reverbs, delays, chorus, See video of the and effects unit, the A3. phaser, flanger, compresgear review at AcousticGuitar.com Zoom is a Japanese company with a sors, auto-wah, exciters, and long history of turning out impressive and graphic and parametric EQs. useful devices for musicians, including handheld Pushing the buttons steps through the audio and video recorders, guitar stompboxes, multiavailable effects, while turning them takes track recorders, and more. Its A2 multi-effects pedal is you inside the controls of the selected popular with acoustic guitarists, and Zoom has packed even effect. Patches can be saved to memory more functionality into the new A3. so you can recall different selections as you need them. Small and Powerful Exploring the effects could take a long At just 41⁄4 inches wide and 6 inches long, the Zoom A3 is small enough time, and there is certainly something here to fit in the accessory compartment of most guitar cases, but Zoom has for everyone. I quickly found some subtle still managed to pack in a lot of functionality. You get a rough sense chorus sounds I especially liked. Overall, of the device’s complexity just from looking at the controls. The top of the effect quality is on par with other the A3 includes three footswitches (Effect On/Off, Volume Boost, and stompbox effects, but the sheer number Anti-Feedback), 14 other controls, and a small LED screen. The controls and tweakability makes it very likely that fall into several categories. Three knobs cover EQ: Bass, Midrange, and you can fine-tune one to get a sound you Treble. Two provide level adjustments for the separate Mic and Pickup inputs. Another pair provides balance between dry and effected signals AT A GLANCE and master volume. Three more controls serve double duty as both knobs and pushable switches and are used to navigate the LED screen. There are also three LEDs that serve as both status indicators and SPECS: Compact floor preamp with effects pushable buttons that let you control a related setting. The final control and modeling. 1⁄4-inch guitar and XLR mic allows you to select the body type of the guitar you are using, to allow inputs. XLR DI and stereo unbalanced the modeling features to work optimally. outputs. Bass, midrange, and treble tone 1 1 The A3 also includes stereo ⁄4-inch outputs and a ⁄4-inch mono controls. Pickup and mic levels. Master input jack for a pickup, along with a switch that allows you to choose volume control. Footswitches for mute/tuner, settings to complement your pickup: flat, magnetic, or piezo. The boost, and anti-feedback control. Large manual does not state exactly what these switches do, and I found the collection of effects, including reverb, chorus, function to be extremely subtle. It appears that the Magnetic switch phaser, compression, EQ. Full suite of boosts the bass a bit, while the Piezo position rolls off some highs. modeling effects. Runs on internal nine-volt The manual specs the input impedance at a constant 1 megohm. The battery, external power, or USB. Made in back of the unit contains an XLR mic input (24 or 48 volts of phantom China. power can be selected via software), a jack for using a nine-volt power adaptor (the unit can also be powered via USB), a ground-lift switch, PRICE: $335 list/$199 street. and an XLR DI out. MAKER: Zoom Corp: zoom.co.jp (US

Software Effects and Controls The A3’s hardware features are impressive enough, but its real power

26 AcousticGuitar.com

distributor: Samson Tech, samsontech.com/ zoom, [631] 784-2200)

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

like. With 12 reverb algorithms alone, there are nearly endless options.

Extensive Modeling Possibilities With all of the effects and features, it’s easy to forget one of the most powerful features of the A3: a full-featured modeler. The modeling is easy to use. First you select the type of guitar you are using with the body-type selector knob on top, and your pickup type from a selector on the side. The body selector provides 16 guitar types to choose from, including nylon-string, OM, dreadnought, and even upright bass. Once you have configured the A3 for the type of guitar and pickup you are using, you can choose one of 36 model types from a software menu to alter the way the A3 transforms your sound. So, at least in theory, you can set up the Zoom A3 to match your Martin OM with an undersaddle pickup, and then make it sound like a Gibson J-200 by choosing the appropriate model.

Test Drive With all of the features included in this complex unit, it was hard to know where to begin in checking it out, so I began with the basics. You can easily ignore all of the exotic features and just plug in a guitar, run the unbalanced or DI output to an amp or PA, and adjust the sound with the three tone

controls. I was immediately pleased with the results of this simple test. Plugging in a Martin OM with a K&K soundboard transducer, I found the sound to be clean and clear through my small PA system. The tone controls were effective. The Zoom manual doesn’t specify the frequencies of the tone controls, but I measured them to be, roughly, bass, centered around 80 Hz; mid, centered around 600 Hz; and treble, a shelf starting at about 2 kHz. The next logical feature to try is the modeling, and again, I found plenty of good sounds to use. It’s difficult to say whether the modeled sounds really reproduce their targeted instruments, but each model does seem to have the appropriate characteristics. For example, switching to a D-28 model

October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

added a more beefy low end to my OM, while selecting an 0 model produced less bass and more mids. Some modeling options were less useful than others—the upright bass model certainly didn’t work well with my OM, but transforming an OM into an upright bass seemed too much to ask, and most models produced interesting and useful sounds. In a live gig I tried the A3 with both the guitar selector and model set to OM-28 and the mix control at 50 percent, and it produced a very nice sound with a little more resonance than the dry pickup. The A3’s strengths and weaknesses are both products of its massive set of features. The unit seemingly provides everything you would ever need, but only if you can figure out which of the 14 knobs to push to operate it. The most basic operations—muting/tuning, activating or bypassing effects, and signal boost—are easily available via footswitch. The anti-feedback feature is also very effective, and readily available. Just step on the footswitch and the A3 will automatically seek out and eliminate up to three problem frequencies. Unfortunately some of the A3’s features require bending over and twiddling the tiny knobs. Even changing between saved presets involves turning knobs that may be hard to reach and see onstage. However, I suspect with a bit of time exploring the unit, most guitarists will settle on a small set of features they actually use, making the need for live adjustments fairly rare.

Self-Contained Powerhouse Zoom has set a high bar for features in the A3—it’s hard to think of anything significant they’ve left out, and the A3 could easily replace an entire row of stompboxes. Many guitarists will find it attractive just for its clean sound, musically useful EQ, and modeling options. The effects are limited to two at a time, but the large range of options allows you to explore at your leisure and find subtle or dramatic colors to add to your sonic palette. ag DOUG YOUNG (dougyoungguitar.com) is a San Francisco Bay Area–based fingerstyle guitarist and contributing editor to Acoustic Guitar.

AcousticGuitar.com 27

PLAYER SPOTLIGHT

ately puts me in this one box, and I think I don’t just live in that box. I would say I am a singer and a songwriter, but when you put the two together it’s its own genre. My friends and I often joke that I should call myself a songer-singwriter.

The voice of Crooked Still and the Goat Rodeo Sessions steps out solo. By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

OVER THE LAST DOZEN YEARS, Aoife O’Donovan has emerged as one of the most distinctive young singers in contemporary folk. Her pure, silky voice has been heard with the neo-traditional string band Crooked Still, the “folk noir” trio Sometymes Why with Ruth Merenda and Kristin Andreassen, and the allstar Goat Rodeo Sessions band with Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, and Chris Thile. Along the way Aoife (pronounced EE-fah) has recorded/ performed some of her original tunes with various combos, and her song “Lay My Burden Down” was notably covered by Alison Krauss on her 2011 album, Paper Airplane. But until this year, O’Donovan has never fully launched herself as a solo artist. O’Donovan’s solo album Fossils, released in June by Yep Roc, was worth the wait. The record opens with “Lay My Burden Down” and proceeds through a set of richly textured original songs, with acousticelectric band arrangements centered around O’Donovan’s serene voice and guitar. O’Donovan’s songwriting style is tough to pigeonhole, reflecting her deep roots in traditional music (her father was born in Ireland and hosts A Celtic Sojourn on Boston’s WGBH), her training at the New England Conservatory, and her love of the jazzy syncopation of Joni Mitchell. Like her voice itself, the music on Fossils is gently understated yet sneaks up on you with its emotional intensity. In the spring, as O’Donovan was gearing up to hit the road with her own band, followed by tour dates with Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and with the Goat Rodeo Sessions, she spoke with me from her home in Brooklyn about this new phase in her busy musical life.

The banner on your website says your name and “singer.” Does releasing a solo album of all original tunes suggest it’s time to update that tag? O’DONOVAN It says “singer” there because I feel like that is definitely my identity. If I were to update my website to say “Aoife O’Donovan, singer-songwriter,” it immedi28 AcousticGuitar.com

How far back does songwriting go for you? O’DONOVAN The songwriting goes back to the beginning really. Back when I was a college student at New England Conservatory I was writing a ton, and performing original music at my recitals as well as with classmates of mine at NEC. And songwriting even predates that. When I was 12, my best friend, Sara Heaton—who is now an accomplished opera singer actually—had a band called Faerie Mist. We wrote two songs that we recorded, and I still like ’em. Were you always writing on guitar? O’DONOVAN It’s been on guitar and piano. A bunch of my earlier tunes were actually piano based. Thinking about myself as a guitar player is a pretty new thing. I took guitar lessons in high school and I’ve always played the guitar, but about a year and a half ago, when I was getting ready to go on my first solo tour, opening for Punch Brothers, I was like, man, I’ve got to get better on the guitar if I’m going to go onstage and play in front of 600 people every night. So I got the metronome and actually practiced the guitar, and I’m continuing to practice the guitar. It’s amazing what a metronome will do to your guitar playing. What do you practice? O’DONOVAN What I practice is being able to accompany myself in a style that’s distinctive. One of the things that I’ve always done on guitar is fingerpicking, but my style is based around a twofinger pattern I like to call the claw—I use my thumbnail and my index finger. I’ve recently incorporated a third finger into it, which is sort of more like a banjo roll, and sometimes a fourth finger as well. But before last year I was pretty uncomfortable playing with a pick, so practicing picking patterns with a metronome, with an actual pick, is something that I’ve been working on. Are there particular players who inspired your approach to guitar? O’DONOVAN I don’t know. I feel like the direction I took with the guitar kind of happened out of poor training. Neil Young and Joan Baez, I guess, were people I was listening to a lot when I was learning to play the guitar, and they both do a fingerpicking kind of thing. But ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

PHOTO © SHAWN BRACKBILL. TEXT © 2013 JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION.

Aoife O’Donovan

by no means was it thought out—my style just came to be because it was what I started doing naturally. You’ve covered Joni Mitchell’s “Amelia,” and a few of your new songs, like “Pearls,” have Joni-esque chord voicings. The chords may not be in an alternate tuning, but have that open, ringing quality. O’DONOVAN “Pearls” is actually standard tuning. That song started out with a quarter-notey fingerpicking pattern, and I changed it to the syncopated strumming pattern that ended up on the record. But yeah, of course, I’ve listened to a ton of Joni Mitchell and think she’s just really unbelievable and would never try to deny the influence in any way. Your song “Beekeeper” has a cool rhythm— in seven, I believe. How did that come about? O’DONOVAN That just came from me messing around on the guitar and then realizing that I was playing a pattern in 7/4. I was humming a melody to myself, and there are a bunch of early demos where I was singing all kinds of random words with a pretty similar melody and chord progression. I really love playing that song because it is in an odd meter, but when I’m in the song it doesn’t seem odd to me. I’m not counting it out or struggling to keep time because the words themselves fit with the rhythm. There’s nothing oddly spaced. When I brought that song to the people I recorded it with, we came up with those two interlocking guitar parts—the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar—and then the drumbeat is pretty much 4/4 with a dropped beat. There’s no syncopated jazz stuff going on. It’s pretty straight, but then if you try to tap your

WHAT SHE PLAYS ACOUSTIC GUITAR: 1934 Martin 0-17. O’Donovan came across the guitar at Ithaca Guitar Works in 2006 while on tour with Chris Thile and notes that it’s not all original—a previous owner had the guitar refinished and the pickguard and tuners replaced. On her guitar wish list is a hollow-body electric similar to a Gibson ES-125 she had on loan recently from Rob Moose of Bon Iver. AMPLIFICATION: K&K Pure Western Mini pickup installed by Bob (Yukon) Stubblebine in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ACCESSORIES: D’Addario phosphor-bronze light strings, Shubb capo, Boss pedal tuner (for use onstage), and Snark tuner (for unplugged use).

October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

feet to it, it’s like, oh weird—I can’t really tap my feet to this. Did the existence of Alison Krauss’s version of your song “Lay My Burden Down” affect how you recorded that song yourself? O’DONOVAN Possibly subliminally it did. Initially I was like, I’m not going to record that song because Alison already recorded it. In a lot of ways, even for me, her version has become the definitive version. It’s so beautiful. I feel like her singing that song brought it to life for me. But there’s a lot of emotion in that song. There are a couple of different ways you can interpret the lyrics, and my version, I think, pulls out some of the joy in it. It’s a little more upbeat, it’s got more of a country leaning, there’s the steel, there’s that really amazing baritone electric guitar solo, which is one of my favorite points in the record, and there are harmony vocals, which is the one thing I missed from her version—I wished that [Union Station’s Dan] Tyminski had jumped in on the harmony there. So I got Annalisa Tornfelt from Black Prairie to sing this really beautiful low harmony, and I love the way that came out.

“When I was getting ready to go on my first solo tour, opening for Punch Brothers, I was like, man, I’ve got to get better on the guitar.” How does it feel to switch gears from collaborating with so many other musicians, to working with your own band, to playing solo? O’DONOVAN What’s been really great about the last 12 years of my life as a musician is all the different things that I’ve done. To get to spend one week doing one thing and another week a totally different thing keeps your creative chops engaged and always keeps you inspired. Touring with Crooked Still was incredible, and I’m looking forward to really hitting the road with my band. But right now I’m on the road solo with the Milk Carton Kids, and that’s really fun. The main difference in playing solo and doing a band set is that you have to pace your set really differently when it’s just you. You can’t rely on the tricks and the sounds of a band. But the pros are that you don’t ever have to make a set list and you can do whatever you want. If you want to do a song in a different key, you can do that. You can add beats, you can add choruses . . . it’s very free. ag AcousticGuitar.com 29

SONGCRAFT

Ellis Paul shares tips and exercises that can help you sharpen your lyrics By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

She fell to the mattress with the grace of an actress You’re falling like a thief from a roof She’s asking for proof, “Are you staying?” Outside you hear mission bells Welcome to Maria’s beautiful mess In a cluttered apartment on the West Side —Ellis Paul, “Maria’s Beautiful Mess”

PERHAPS THE GREATEST MAGIC OF SONGWRITING is how, with just a few notes and words, a song can transport a listener to a faraway time and place, and even into the head of another person. Ellis Paul is one songwriter who has been accomplishing this for more than 20 years, rising from the Boston coffeehouses to become a big draw around the country on the strength of his sharply observant, hooky folk-rock songs. One measure of the passion of Paul’s fans is that they contributed $100,000 to support the release of his 2010 album, The Day Everything Changed—at this writing, Paul’s current fan-funding campaign is closing in on an equal amount for his next studio release, due this fall. Along the way, Paul has written many memorable character songs, from the travelogue “3,000 Miles” and the Katrina story “Hurricane Angel” to the songs on his recent kids’ album, The Hero in You, for which he wrote musical profiles of such figures as Thomas Edison, Rosa Parks, Albert Einstein, and Georgia O’Keefe. On tour, Paul shares his passion for songwriting in workshops (see “Sketching a Character,” page 33 for one of the writing exercises he uses). In a conversation from his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, he shared these thoughts on how to sharpen your lyrics.

As a songwriter, have you always been drawn to telling other people’s stories in addition to writing about your own life? PAUL Well, folk music embraces every kind of song you can think of—there are children’s songs, character songs, singer-songwriter “bare your heart and your love life wide open” kind of songs. One reason I like folk music so much is I can get away with anything I want. I don’t have to worry about singles; I just have to worry about content and believability. When you’re chasing down a song, do you think much about what category it might fall into? PAUL When I’m building an album, sometimes I’ll try to get some sort of a ballpark 30 AcousticGuitar.com

Is “painting a picture” ultimately what you’re trying to do with your lyrics? PAUL Yeah, you’re trying to show. You can think of a character as being frustrated and depressed; these are conceptual things. But in order to write the character in a song, you can’t tell the audience he’s depressed—you have to show it. That’s something all of my favorite songs have and something I aspire to in all of my songs is creating a little bit of a snow globe, so people are looking into it and then suddenly they’re inside it—they’re part of the song. They’ve escaped from their life into the song’s life.

WHAT HE PLAYS ACOUSTIC GUITAR: Custom Taylor jumbo built for Oklahoma Vintage Guitars in El Reno, Oklahoma. This one-of-a-kind Taylor, which has an Adirondack spruce top and cocobolo back and sides, is “a phenomenal guitar,” Paul says. “It’s changing how I play.” He calls the guitar Guinness because of the cocobolo’s resemblance to a glass of the Irish stout. A falling speaker once punched a fist-sized hole in the guitar’s side, which was meticulously repaired by Virginia luthier John Hamlett. “When the Guinness beer company heard about the accident,” Paul says, “they sent me an enormous care package filled with company paraphernalia and beer.” Along with standard tuning, Paul’s alternate tunings include open C (open D down a half step), C G D G B D (which he calls “open Joni”), and D A D D A D (with the third string tuned way down, in unison with the fourth string). Paul says he learned a lot about open D—and about creating rhythms with his right hand—from some informal backstage lessons with the late, great Richie Havens. AMPLIFICATION: Fishman Matrix Infinity pickup/preamp, with soundhole volume and tone controls, and Fishman Aura Spectrum DI. STRINGS: D’Addario phosphor-bronze mediums. ACCESSORIES: Kyser capos. Intellitouch tuners. Paul strums with a Clayton .80-mm flatpick or fingerpicks with the pads of his fingers.

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

PHOTO © JACK LOONEY. TEXT © 2013 JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION.

Painting Pictures

for all of the songs to live in. I’m like any other songwriter: sometimes the personal life takes over the songwriting, and then I do an album more like [Joni Mitchell’s] Blue and less like a John Prine record. But, for the most part, I’m just writing the songs that come to me. I never know what form they’re going to take, even if I’m painting a picture that’s outside of my own life.

What allows that to happen? PAUL It’s details of the person’s life. Those details work best when they trigger sensory experiences in the listener’s mind. You know, like the first line of any great song, like [the Eagles’] “Peaceful Easy Feeling”: “I like the way your sparkling earrings lay / Against your skin so brown / And I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight / With a billion stars all around.” All of that is laying out a detailed picture that is a sensory experience for the listener. Is it the same sort of process when you write from your own experience? In a way, you are creating yourself as a character. PAUL It is. With all of my songs, I write as much as I can in 48 hours. And then after 48 hours, if you have a rough draft of the song, you go back and you sharpen your pencil and get your eraser, because the editing is where a song goes from being a B or C song to being an A song. You ask yourself, what’s the mission statement of the song? Even if it’s a personal song, even if you’re writing about isolation or loneliness or longing or love, what is the song trying to say? You put that on the top of the paper, and then you have to weigh how you can support the mission statement by improving every line. Do you ever spend time collecting assorted details that you may or may not use in a song? PAUL I wait until the subject comes to me. For example, I have a new record coming out, and there’s a song written from the perspective of the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building is actually the thing that’s talking. I wanted to write about something historical in the vein of “City of New Orleans,” by Steve Goodman. The thing I love about that song, it’s a character song that was written from the perspective of the train. So I decided maybe the Empire State Building would work. What’s cool about the Empire State Building is that it was built during the Great Depression, but it’s this monument of capitalism at the same time. It was funded by DuPont, but it was built by immigrants from every walk of life—Italians and Russians and Irish. So I did all this research and started collecting. The mission statement of this song is about the importance of the symbol—and it’s rich and poor, capitalism and socialism. I looked for historical details of the building that could fill in the gaps. There’s another new song where I’m writing about a guy named Jimmy Angel, who was a barnstorming airplane pilot in the 1930s and ’40s. There’s not a lot of historical documentation of his life, but the stuff that I October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

AcousticGuitar.com 31

SONGCRAFT

found was fascinating. He discovered Angel Falls in Venezuela. He was a World War I pilot and barnstormed from point to point to point, so he had this kind of restless life. I’m trying to build a song about that restlessness. It’s a relationship song about someone he’s abandoned—maybe a kid or a girlfriend. I haven’t gotten all the details squared away yet. But the metaphor of flying and escaping and being in constant motion is the mission statement of that song.

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32 AcousticGuitar.com

Do you like singing a character song in first person, as in your song “3,000 Miles”? PAUL I do. I think it provides authenticity, the closer to the source you get. There are still great songs written in third person, but you lose a certain amount of presence and vulnerability. First-person songs tend to be a little bit more powerful. But when you’re writing characters, you have to weigh each line for believability, and that’s why all those details are important. If you’re just sort of glossing over the details and you’re telling the story rather than showing the story, you lose believability, and a lot of the sizzle of the song will disappear. Do you have to identify somehow with a character you’re writing? PAUL I do. Otherwise, there is no inspiration. If you don’t have a personal connection, you can’t assume the body of that person when you’re talking. I understand this barnstormer guy because I’m living that kind of life—I’m leaving my children every week to hit the road, going to these foreign environments, a completely restless kind of lifestyle. I can connect to the Empire State Building because I’m a history buff, and it’s the story of our country in one fell swoop. Is Woody Guthrie an inspiration for writing songs about characters and history? PAUL He’s absolutely the best lyricist of this kind of writing who’s ever been born to it. He’s brilliant with the words, and he doesn’t go out of his way to be complicated or heady. The wordplay, the internal rhymes . . . the writing is so beautiful. Even when you just say the words out loud, it’s shocking how great the poetry is. And then he understood the importance of sensory involvement in the song. He uses colors a lot. He talks about nature a lot—he’s always pinpointing fields and orchards and peaches and grain and trees and forests and mountains. He just had a really great paintbrush, and he knew how to do it. He sang like a rusty door hinge, and what often happens is people who are limited in their range and their vocal presentation end ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

Sketching a Character When teaching workshops on songwriting, Ellis Paul uses an exercise that he compares to writing a character’s back story for a novel. He asks students to think of a historical character and make the following list of attributes (afterwards without knowing the name, the other students try to guess the identity based on the list). As an example here, he uses Charlie Chaplin. 1. List five things you’d find in his bedroom. • A black bowler hat. • A cane with a curled handle. • An open script at his bedside. • An open jar of white clown makeup. • A red violin on his bed. 2. List five things he sees when he looks in the mirror. • A headful of black tousled hair. • Just a patch of a mustache twitching beneath his nose. • A hint of unwashed white makeup on his cheek. • He’s practicing expressions and posing with posture like a dancer. • His pants are too big and baggy but flow with his movements.

Does the guitar lead you to the characters or subject to write about? PAUL Yeah, most often the song will start as a piece of guitar music that will tell me the mood before the subject. I’ll do free verse over the guitar until I come up with a catchphrase that I like, and then I’ll ask myself what the catchphrase is about. I’ll set the guitar down and take a piece of paper and start writing, and I’ll go back and forth between guitar and paper at that point. Sometimes, like the Empire State song, I know what it’s going to be about. Sometimes I’m halfway through a song before I know what it’s about. It’s not a precise science. They can come on any surfboard they choose. ag

up using the written word to become these great lyricists—like Dylan, John Prine, Sam Baker, and Bill Morrissey, some of my favorite writers. As you’re working on lyrics, what role does your guitar play? PAUL The guitar is sort of your dance partner. It’s the color part. I feel like the lyrics are the black-and-white movie and the guitar throws color in. Instead of being in that house in that tornado with Dorothy spinning around, when the guitar is working at its best, you’ll open the door and it’s the Land of Oz—suddenly it’s colors and munchkins and witches and drama in a different way.

Courtney Hear

Hartman

and

3. Describe the character as a color. • He lives in a black-and-white world. 4. Describe the character as a nonhuman or inanimate object. • He walked like a penguin, but held his space like a bird of paradise when standing still. 5. Give the character a voice—a onesentence quote. • “Every movement, every expression must tell the inner workings of the character’s mind.” This example, says Paul, “reveals that physical dancer side of Chaplin’s personality. I would perhaps focus on that in a song—the awareness of movement, a dance in a silent picture . . . interesting opposites there. Black and white would have a presence in the song—opposites as well—when describing the word on the page of a script, perhaps a description of his clothing, or as a metaphor for his life.”

October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

Della Mae with

dellamae.com bourgeoisguitars.com

This World Oft Can Be Produced by Bryan Sutton

AcousticGuitar.com 33

THE BASICS

Seventh Chords Learn how to build major seventh, minor seventh, dominant seventh, and other seventh chords. By Andrew DuBrock

used most often in rock and blues. Dominantseventh chords resolve strongly to a chord whose root is a fifth lower. That means that in the key of C, a G7 chord—which is a fifth higher than C—resolves back to C. Example 8 shows this in a chord progression similar to the Beatles song “Hey Jude.” Notice how moving from a regular G to the G7 in measure 3 really accentuates the resolution back to C in measure 4. Also check out how we take the C chord and turn it into a C7 midway through the measure to highlight the upcoming F chord (C7 is a fifth above F). Dominant-seventh chords are so common in rock and blues that you often hear them used for every chord in a song, as shown in Example 9. This progression, similar to the verse of the Beatles song “When I Saw Her Standing There,” could just as easily be an E–A–E–B progression, but the added flattedseventh gives it a bluesy bite that major chords alone don’t provide.

THE TERM SEVENTH CHORD is one that may come up in your first Minor-Seventh Chords week of guitar lessons, but many players aren’t aware that it enTo build a minor-seventh chord, take any compasses a wider range of chords beyond dominant-seventh dominant-seventh chord and lower the third chords, like D7, G7, and C7. Chords like “C major seventh” and “D a half step, turning it from a major third into minor seventh” are also types of seventh chords, as are more exotic a minor third (Example 10). For another apones, like “G minor-major seventh.” proach to the same process, you could build In this lesson, we’ll take a close look at three of the more comthis chord by adding a minor-seventh interval mon seventh chords: major seventh, minor seventh, and dominant sevon top of a minor triad (this gives enth. We’ll also briefly touch on less common seventh chords, like the you the exact same chord). Like minor-major seventh, diminished seventh, and half-diminished seventh. the C7 voicing in Example 6, the See video of the To get a handle on what these names mean, let’s start by taking a look at Cm7 in Example 10 would require music examples at how chords are built. a big stretch, so most people reorAcousticGuitar.com ganize the notes into shapes that are easier to play (like the barre chord in ExAdd a Major Seventh ample 11). Major and minor chords are all built from three notes: the root, third, and fifth Minor-seventh chords are also common notes of a scale. A seventh chord adds the seventh note of the scale to those other in pop and rock, and Example 12 shows this three notes, creating a four-note chord. Example 1 shows a C-major scale, along chord in a progression similar to the bridge in with each scale degree. Example 2 takes the root, third, fifth, and seventh notes “Norwegian Wood,” by the Beatles. You can and pulls them into a chord—in this case, a C major-seventh chord (Cmaj7). What color many minor chords with this sound. In makes this a major seventh chord? Two things: the third and seventh degrees, Example 13 an Em7 chord is used to make which are both major intervals (a major third and a major seventh, in relation to the transition between Em and the next the root). A simpler way to look at it is that if you add a major-seventh interval (the chord (C) more interesting, in a progression seventh degree of the major scale) to a major chord, you end up with a majorsimilar to the opening of the Beatles song “A seventh chord. Many people play this chord with the high E string, as shown in Day in the Life.” Example 3; just form a standard C chord and remove your index finger from the second string. Major seventh chords offer a wistful, dreamy sort of sound that is different from a regular major chord. Example 4 shows how this chord colors the Exotic Seventh Chords sound of a Cmaj7–F chord progression similar to what John Lennon played on his The half-diminished, diminished seventh, and piano part for “Imagine.” You can also start with a major chord, then move through minor-major seventh chords aren’t used quite its maj7 chord and onto something else, as Example 5 shows in a passage similar as often as their other seventh-chord counto the opening of the Eagles song “Lyin’ Eyes.” terparts, but they do come in handy every so often. A half-diminished chord lowers the fifth Dominant-Seventh Chords of a minor-seventh chord one half step (ExIf you take a major-seventh chord and replace the major-seventh degree with a ample 14), yielding a chord that also goes by minor-seventh degree (the seventh note of the minor scale), you get a dominantthe name “minor seven, flat five.” Reorganize seventh chord (Example 6). All we’re doing is lowering the seventh degree by a half step (one fret). Stacking the notes on top of each other the way they’re shown in Example 6 requires an uncomfortable stretch on the guitar, but it’s fine to organize Take this lesson at them in a different order. Most guitarists play a root-position C dominant-seventh AcousticGuitarU.com chord (“C7” for short) as shown in Example 7. This type of seventh chord is the one 34 AcousticGuitar.com

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

See video of the music examples at AcousticGuitar.com

Ex. 1: C-Major Scale with Scale Degrees

root

B

major 2nd

0

3

Ex. 2

Ex. 5

perfect 4th perfect 5th major 6th major 7th octave (8th)

2

Ex. 3

C maj7

0 0 2 3

0 0 0 2 3

0 0 2

C

13 4 21 1

0 0 2

3

0 0 2

3

0 0 2

3

Cx32maj7 00 0

x 32 0 1 0

1

F

x 32 00 0

3

0

2

Ex. 4

C maj7 x 32 00 0

0

3

C maj7 x 32 00 x

B

major 3rd

1 2 3

3

1 2 3

3

1 2 3

3

1 2 3

3

F

13 4 21 1

Tommy Emmanuel

Xuefei YANG

Sat. 10/5/13, SFJAZZ Center*

Roland DYENS

Sat. Oct. 12, 2013, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

KATONA TWINS

Fri. 11/1/13, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church*

Alvaro PIERRI

Sat. 11/23/13, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

Ex. 6

Ex. 7

C maj7

 

C7

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ) Sat. 12/7/13, SFJAZZ Center*

Tommy EMMANUEL CGP Martin TAYLOR Fri. & Sat. 1/17 & 1/18/14 Palace of Fine Arts Theater

 

those notes into a playable order, and you may end up with the great movable voicing shown in Example 15. Half-diminished chords are rare in rock music but turn up quite a bit in jazz, where they often serve as the ii chord in ii–V–i progressions like Example 16. The diminished-seventh chord lowers the flatted seventh of the half-diminished chord another half step (Example 17). Diminishedseventh chords are built from four equidistant intervals—four minor thirds—which means that if you move a diminished-seventh chord shape three frets higher or lower on the neck, you end up with the exact same notes. This makes diminished-seventh inversions incredibly easy to play on the guitar. Take any of the movable diminished-seventh voicings in Example 18 and move them around the neck in minor-third intervals, as shown in Example 19. It works great resolving to other chords like the I chord, as shown in Example 20. In Example 21 (similar to a progression heard October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

C7 x 3241 0

Chris THILE

Fri. 2/14/14, SFJAZZ Center*

SOLODUO

Sat. 2/22/14, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

TOMATITO & his Flamenco Sextet in the Beatles song “Michelle”), it resolves to the V chord. In Example 21, I’ve called the two diminished chords by different names: Ddim7 and Bdim7, based on their respective bass notes—but they are both the same chord since they’re three frets apart and include the same four notes. Build a minor-major–seventh chord by taking a minor chord and stacking a major seventh on top of it (Example 22). This chord is seldom used on its own since it sounds so discordant, but it works great as a passing chord. Example 23 shows how it’s used between minor and minor-seventh chords in a progression similar to a passage from the Beatles’ “Something.” ag

Wed. 3/12/14, Palace of Fine Arts Theater**

David RUSSELL

Sat. 3/15/14, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church*

Manuel BARRUECO

Sun. 4/6/14, SFJAZZ Center*

Grigory GORYACHEV & Jerome MOUFFE Fri. 4/25/14, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

*Presented in association with San Francisco Performances. **Presented with the Flamenco Society of San Jose.

Learn more acoustic rock techniques in Andrew DuBrock’s Acoustic Rock Essentials downloads available at store.AcousticGuitar.com. Includes video

AcousticGuitar.com 35

THE BASICS

Ex. 8

See video of the music examples at AcousticGuitar.com

C

G

x 32 0 1 0

G7

3 2 0 0 04

E7

Ex. 9

x1 3 1 4 1

A7

1 3 1 24 1

7 fr.

Ex. 11

Ex. 10

C

E7

x1 3 1 4 1

5 fr.

F

x 3241 0

13 4 21 1

B7

1 3 1 24 1

7 fr.

Ex. 12

C m7 x1 3 1 2 1

C7

x 32 0 1 0

32 000 1

E m7

Dm

7 fr.

A

x0 123 0

0 23 0 4 0

xx0 231

C 7 C m7

Ex. 13

 

 

G

3

Bm

Em

x 1 342 1

3 2 0 0 04

E m7

0 23 000

C

Ex. 15

Ex. 14

C m7

C m7 C m7

Ex. 16

Cm

x 1 342 1

D m7

x 1324 x

3 fr.

G7

5 5 fr.

1 3 1 24 1

Ex. 17

Cm

x 1 342 1

3 fr.

Ex. 19

C dim7

C dim7

xx 1324

xx 1324

Ex. 21 F

13 4 21 1

Ex. 22

C m(maj7) x 31 00 x

C dim7 xx 1324

7 fr.

Ex. 20

C dim7 xx 1324

C

10 fr.

B

Ex. 23

Am x0 231 0

x 32 0 1 0

A m(maj7) x 312 0

0

5 fr.

A m7

x0 2 0 1 0

 

Ex. 18

C dim7

xx1 3 2 4

 ∫   

4 fr.

D

x x0 132

C dim7

x2 3 1 4 x

∫

2 x1 3 1 x

∫

∫

* Also E dim7, G dim7, or Adim7 (A=B )

G

Dx2314 dim7 x

 

5

C dim7*

C

x 32 0 1 0

3 2 0 0 04

Dm

x 1 342 1

x 1 333 x

 

3 fr.

C m7 5 C dim7

5

x 1324 x

x 32 0 1 0

0 23 0 4 0

C

x 32 0 1 0

F

13 4 21 1

B dim7

C

x 2314 x

Bx2314 dim7 x

x 32 0 1 0

C

F

x 32 0 1 0

Fm

1 34 111

13 4 21 1

C

x 32 0 1 0

major 7th

minor chord 36 AcousticGuitar.com

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

-

21 TIPS Better Accompaniment for

Learn to make your solo guitar parts more distinctive and deepen the impact of your songs. BY JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS

W

Creating Space 1. Strum less. Perhaps the most common mistake in accompaniment is to play too much and too relentlessly. Good grooves need breathing room, which means that in most situations you should not be strumming constantly at full volume. Once you’ve established the tempo, listeners can still feel the pulses you don’t play. When you leave some open space in the accompaniment, what you do play will have much more impact. For comparison, first play Example 1, strumming on the first two beats of each measure and then doubling up (with down/up pick strokes) on beats three and four. Every beat has a strum (or two), and notice the full voicings of all the chords—five strings in the case of Am and C and six for G. The guitar rings con38 AcousticGuitar.com

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

© 2013 JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION.

hen you perform solo, your guitar is the whole band. This simple truth is too often underappreciated by singersongwriters who work hard at putting their own stamp on the vocals and lyrics, yet strum the same basic rhythms on every song. That’s a missed opportunity, because the guitar is capable of so much more than just supplying the chords and keeping time. Skillfully played, one guitar can cover the roles of bass and drums, and add riffs that hold the songs together—a true band in a box. In this lesson we’ll explore ways to get more out of your accompaniment by paying close attention to rhythmic feel, dynamics, chord voicings, picking-hand technique, and the nuances of the song itself. The goal is not to play anything tricky or fancy and steal the spotlight from the vocal, but to make the guitar parts more distinctive—and ultimately to deepen the impact of the song itself.

See video of the musical examples at AcousticGuitar.com

stantly and mechanically, and the eighth-note strums are like a drummer adding fills in every measure. Too much. Now try Example 2, which thins out quite a few notes. Hold down the same Am, C, and G fingerings as in Example 1, but this time strum only two or three strings at a time. The first two strums in each measure ring for one and a half beats (three eighth notes), and on beat four of measures 1 and 3, substitute a quarter note for the two eighth-note strums. This pattern is way less busy than Example 1 and has a touch of syncopation—a real improvement in sound and feel. 2. Play the bass. Even better than thinning out the strum pattern is using some bass notes in place of chords. After all, you are the bass player in this one-person band, so you should think about creating movement and interest in the low end. Check out one idea in Example 3, which substitutes a moving bass line for most of the strums in the previous examples. Notice how the bass reinforces the harmony even when you’re not playing the chords. You can also try leaving out the chords completely at first and figuring out a bass line with a nice feel all by itself. Once the bass is solid, add chords sparingly. You may be surprised at how few chords you actually need to create a full sound. 3. Roll it. One effective way for flatpickers to create lighter, airier accompaniment parts, especially in songs rooted in country and folk, is to use cross-picking “rolls.” Essentially this means picking individual strings, as you would when playing fingerstyle, while still being able to switch easily to strumming when you want. In Example 4, play the same Am–C–G progression as in the previous examples, but this time intersperse sequences of cross-picked eighth notes with just a few strums. Use alternating down/up picking for the single notes, and keep your picking hand relaxed and loose. If you’re not accustomed to skipping over strings like this (for instance, playing a pattern of strings five, three, four, two in the first measure), slow the tempo down until you can play it smoothly. But don’t worry too much about playing the exact notes in the tab. As long as you’re picking chord tones and staying in time, you can make up your own patterns. 4. Work the dynamics. When you do want to create a big, intense sound, it’s always tempting to play as hard and loud as you can, using the fullest chord voicings you’ve got. The problem with this approach, though, is that once you’ve cranked up to 11 you have nowhere to go but down, dynamically speaking. It’s far better to allow yourself some headroom, so you can either ratchet up the intensity for a climax October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

Ex. 1 A m

C

G

œ œ œ œ & 44 œœœ Û Û Û Û Û œœœ Û Û Û Û Û œœœ Û Û Û Û Û œœœ Û Û Û Û Û œ œœ œœ œ B

Ex. 2

Û ÛÛÛÛ

0 1 2 2 0

œœœ œœœ œœ J

Am

& 44 œ . œ. B

Ex. 3

& 44

0 1 2

2 0

Ex. 4

& 44

Ex. 5

0 1

G

0 1 0

2 3

œœœ œœœ œ œ. J

0 0 1 1 0

0 2 3

G

3

0 1 0

0

2

3

Am

0

2

3 0 0 0 2 3

œ œ œ œœ œœ œ J 3 0 0

3 0

3 3 0 0 0

j œ œœœ œ.

3 0

3

C

3 0 0

0 2 3

3 0 0

Û ÛÛÛÛ

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ ... œJ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œœ œœ œ J

œœ œœ œ œ œ. J œ #œ œ.

C

2

3

0

3

G

œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

0

0 0 1 1 2

1 2

0

0 3

F

1 2

1 1 2 2 3 3

2

3

3

C

3

2

1

0 0 2 2 3 3

3 0 0

0

0

& 44 œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ B

Û ÛÛÛÛ

3 0 0 0 2 3

œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ .. Jœ œ œ œœ ... œ

Am

2

B

Û ÛÛÛÛ

C

0 1 2

B

0 1 0 2 3

3

in the song or bring it down for contrast. The dynamics are a function of not only your attack but also what sort of chord voicings you use; if you start with two- or three-note chords (as in Example 2), you can either expand to fiveor six-string voicings or cut back to bass notes only. Like a good band, you can create a dynamic range within the song.

2

0

0

3 0 0

0 0

3

0

3

G

0 0

3

F

œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ

0 0 0 0 2 2 3

2

0

0

3 3 3 1 1

2 3

3

2

Chord Voicings 5. Reduce the chords. Now, let’s look closer at the chords themselves. Any given chord can be played in many spots on the neck. Implicit in the tips above is the idea that it can be more effective to play reduced chord voicings (with, say, three notes instead of six), which have the extra perk of being easier to play. AcousticGuitar.com 39

21 Tips for Better Accompaniment Ex. 6

C /G

0 1 0 2

B Ex. 7

1 0 2 3 0

3

0

Ex. 8

1 0 2 3

3 3 0 0 3

1 2 3 3

1

1 2 3

2 3 2 4

3 2 0 0 2

1 2 3 3

1

1 2 3

0 1 0 2

0 0 4 2 2 4

C

0 1 0

0 0 0

0 0 3

3

0 0 0 5 7 7

1 2 3 3

G

0 1 0 2

0

0 1 0 2 3

2

D5

E5

E5

B5

5 2 2 0

0 10 9 7 0

3 1 0

5 3 2 0

0 0 4 2 2 0

0 0 9 9 7 0

0 4 4 2

3

C sus4

3 3 2 0

3 1 0 0

3

3

0 0 2 2 0

0 3 2 2 0

3 0 2 3

1 0 3 3

A

A sus4

2

2 2

D

3

0

3 0

D sus2

D sus4

0 3 2 0

3 3 2 0

A

D sus4 D

3 2

3 3 0

2 3

0 0

E sus2

E sus4

B sus2

B sus4

4 4 7 0

0 0 2 2 2 0

2 2 4 4 2

5 4 4 2

A sus4

2 2

2

2

 

0 1 0 3

3 4 4

C

C5

C sus2

40 AcousticGuitar.com

0 0 4 6

A5

A sus4

0

3 0 0 5 5

3 0 0 2

E /G E m/B F /C B m/F

A5

A sus2

2 2

G /D E /G

G

3

G sus4

Ex. 10

1 3 2 3

C

1 0 2 0

D m/F G /B

3 2 4 0

F

1 0 2 3

0

D /A

G sus2

B

B

5 5 7 7 0

D /F

C /E

1 0 2 0

A m/E D /F

5 6 7 7 0

F

G5

B

A /E

2 2 2 4

C /E

B

Ex. 9

C /E A /C

2 2

D sus2

3

0

3 0

2

3

0 2

3

0

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

See video of the musical examples at AcousticGuitar.com

Take a look at Example 5, which opens and closes with every guitarist’s least favorite chord, F. Instead of the full-barre version of F, hold down a friendlier three-string version in measure 1, playing the arpeggio either fingerstyle or with a pick. In measure 2, play the same pattern on C, shifted over to the fifth, fourth, and third strings; then do a slightly different pattern on G, now on the bottom four strings. In the final measure, play a lower version of F, with a root on the sixth string—still with no barre (you’re not playing the top two strings). By voicing the chords this way, we’ve created a pattern that’s not only easier on the fingers but has its own descending bass movement. Rather than just a sequence of chords, this accompaniment is starting to sound more like a song, which is our ultimate goal. 6. Use alternate bass notes. Another way to make a chord pattern more distinctive is to put notes other than the root in the bass on some of the chords. A basic chord consists of the root, third, and fifth—in a C major chord, for instance, those notes are C, E, and G. To vary the sound, you can use inversions of C major with an E or G in the bass. Example 6 shows a few such inversions, named with the alternate bass note after the slash. Note that several of these fingerings have no open strings, so you can move them up the neck to get different chords. Try substituting a few of these inversions into an accompaniment pattern. A chord with the third in the bass (like C/E, A/C, or D/F) won’t sound resolved, and you can use this to your advantage. Here’s an example from my arrangement of Tom Waits’s “In the Neighborhood,” in which the chorus goes C–F twice and then resolves with C–G. In Example 7, play C/E in measures 1 and 3, and then switch to a regular C in measures 5, 7, and 9. Within this little section, we move from tension (because of the C/E) to resolution (C with the root in the bass). Note also that measure 7 uses an “Alice’s Restaurant”–style walk-up from G to C—I play this pick-and-fingers style (see tip 14). 7. Go modal. A great way to add punch to an accompaniment pattern is to use modal chords— often called “5” chords or power chords. These chords consist of just roots and fifths; they have no thirds and so are not explicitly major or minor. Example 8 shows a few modal chord fingerings. On the G5 and C5, mute the strings that you’re skipping over by leaning the adjacent fretting finger against them: on the G5, lean your middle finger against the fifth string, and on the C5, lean your ring finger against the fourth string. Modal chords have an edge that can be especially powerful in hard-driving songs—hence their frequent use in rock, bluegrass, old-time, October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

Celtic, and other styles. Try substituting them for either major or minor chords in a progression. 8. Sus out. Sus (or suspended) chords are another important type of chord to add to your accompaniment toolbox. In a sus chord, the third is replaced with either the second or the fourth. A few sus chord fingerings are shown in Example 9. Notice how they sound unresolved; often they do resolve to the regular major chord, as in the classic James Taylor–esque embellishment Dsus4–D–Dsus2–D.

Accompaniment gets monotonous if you’re always playing in the same zone on the guitar—using open-position chords on every song, for example. Shifting to a different register makes for a refreshing change.

Sus chord voicings can be great connectors between chords too. The basic movement of Example 10 is A to D, played twice. Using the sus4 and sus2, as shown, makes the pattern much more graceful and musical than it would be with blocky chords. Play this one fingerstyle, letting the notes ring as long as possible. 9. Hold it. With accompaniment, it’s always a good idea to look for notes in common between chords in a progression. If you can hold down the same note (or let a note ring) between two chords, that will smooth out the sound and make the fingering easier. If you carry this idea further and play the same note(s) below or above an entire sequence of chords, that’s called a pedal point. Let’s say you’ve got this typical chord sequence: G–D–Em–C–D. In Example 11, start with a (modal) G5, and then leave your fingers planted at the third fret on the top two strings for all the other chords. These pedal points turn the D into a Dsus4, the Em into an Em7, and the C into a Csus2—the Indigo Girls use a similar effect in “Hammer and a Nail.” You’ve now got a continuous ringing sound through the whole sequence, and cooler chord voicings, too.

Combining strength and precision in a string that feels soft and comfortable.

martinguitar.com/strings

AcousticGuitar.com 41

21 Tips for Better Accompaniment 10. Change register. Accompaniment gets monotonous if you’re always playing in the same zone on the guitar—using open-position chords on every song, for example. Simply shifting to a different register, higher or lower, makes for a refreshing change. For going to a higher register, the capo is your friend. Familiarize yourself with how to use a capo to play the same chord using different fingerings up the neck (see “Arranging with a Capo,” April 2012). For example, you can play an E chord using a D fingering capoed at the second fret, a C fingering capoed at the fourth fret, and an A fingering capoed at the seventh fret. You may find fresh sounds for your accompaniment part in these up-the-neck capo positions. To lower the register of the guitar part, you can explore the world of alternate tunings (a big topic beyond the scope of this lesson) or, more simply, try lowering the pitch of all the strings by a half step or a whole step. In a lowered version of standard tuning, you can still use all the fingerings you already know. It’s amazing how different chords sound when they are pitched slightly lower than we normally hear them.

Ex. 11

B

G5

D sus4

3 3 3 3 0 0 0

12. Mute it. To go even more rock ’n’ roll with your accompaniment, use palm muting. Lay the side of your picking-hand palm on the strings just in front of the bridge to deaden the strings, but not silence them completely. Try it on Examples 12a and 12b. Experiment with where you place your hand (move it a little toward the soundhole, or right over the saddle) and how hard you press down. This kind of thumpy sound is fundamental to rock and blues or any 42 AcousticGuitar.com

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

D sus4

2 2 0

3

2 2 0

0

2

3

2 2 0

2 2 0

0



2 2 0

2 2 0

3 0

0

3 3 3 3 2

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

2 2 0

D sus4

2

0

3

0

3

3 0

3



0

3 3 2



0

Em

2 2 0

C sus2

3

3

0

2 2 0



3 0

2 2 0

E m7



 3

3 3 3 3 2

A5

2 2 0

G5

 

3 3 2

0

3

E5

B

B

3 3 3 3 0

 

A5

2 2 0

Ex. 12b

Ex. 14

3 3 3 3 0 2

D sus4

E5

B

B

C sus2

0

Ex. 12a

Ex. 13

3 3 3 3 2

3

Picking-Hand Technique 11. Use accents. Let’s shift our attention to the picking hand, which gets all these nice chords moving. One key to strong rhythm is using accents. In a good groove, not all beats are created equal—some should be emphasized and others not. Rock accompaniment is often built on continuous eighth notes, all played with downstrokes of the pick. Try Example 12a, a straightout-of-the-garage pattern with E5 and A5, and first play every chord with equal volume. Now notice the accent marks (>), and play the example again, hitting those chords harder with the pick and laying off the others. With these accents, instead of straight “one-and two-and three-and four-and,” we’ve got the classic pattern “one-and two-and three-and four-and,” which is often counted “one two three, one two three, one two.” Example 12b shows another variation, with the accents as follows: “oneand two-and three-and four-and” (or “one two, one two three, one two three”). Both of these examples include accents on offbeats, which really propels the music forward.

E m7

0

0

2 0 0

3 2

3

3 2

3

3 2

3

3

0



0 0

2

3

0

0

2 0

2 0 0

0

0

0 0 0 2

2 0

0

0 0 0 2 0

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

style where you want a more percussive feel— particularly in the bass. 13. Explore fingerstyle. There’s a lot you can do with a pick, but there’s a whole bunch of additional possibilities you can only play fingerstyle. As a one-person band, you will dramatically expand your range if you develop both fingerstyle and flatpick technique. The biggest advantage of fingerstyle, of course, is having three or four points of contact with the strings instead of one. This means you can develop multiple independent lines and pick strings simultaneously that are not adjacent to each other. As a quick illustration, check out Example 13, in which the chord changes from Example 11 are given a fingerstyle treatment. Play the down-stemmed notes with your thumb and the up-stemmed notes with your other fingers. These fingerstyle arpeggios create a very different feel than the ringing strums of the previous example.

Good accompaniment tells a story, just as the lyrics and melody do. 14. Try pick and fingers. If you’re hesitant to lose the power of the pick, consider the hybrid pick-and-fingers technique, in which you hold the pick as usual between your thumb and index finger while also plucking upper strings with your middle and possibly ring fingers. With this technique, the pick covers the bottom three strings (as the thumb would in regular fingerpicking) and the fingers grab the top three. Check it out in Example 14. First get the steady bass pattern—the down-stemmed notes—going with the pick, and once that’s solid, use your middle finger to add the up-stemmed notes. Yup, it sounds like fingerpicking, but then you also have the pick ready for strumming the Em chords in the last measure. It’s a versatile way to play. 15. Add string percussion. The acoustic guitar is a naturally percussive instrument. The strings serve quite nicely in the role of snare drum if they’re muted and given a good thwack—either with the pick or your fingers. Example 15a is an Em groove that combines a bass line with percussion. Play this one with a pick, and on the backbeats (beats two and four), mute the strings with your fretting hand and hit them with the pick hard enough to create a percussive slap. In measure 4, play the eighth note that follows the slap with an upstroke of the pick, October 2013 ACOUSTIC GUITAR

AcousticGuitar.com 43

21 Tips for Better Accompaniment Ex. 15a

#4 & 4

B

Em

œ 0

¿¿ ¿ œ ¿ x x

3

Ex. 15b

#4G & 4 œœ œ B

Ex. 16

# & 44

Π
x x

0

œ

œœ œ

0 0

x

3

G

œ

x

2

‰ ¿

0 0

œ œœ

œ

3

x

œ œ œ œœ œ œ 3 0 0

x 0

j œœ œ

¿¿ ¿ œ ¿

œ ¿ #œ œ œ œ

x x

0

3

x x

2

0 0

x

œ œ

Serve the Song 16. Create contrast between sections. Beyond the choices of chord voicings and picking style, good accompaniment takes into account the bigger picture of the song. One of your jobs as the one-person band is to differentiate the sections—so the chorus doesn’t blend too much into the verse, for example, and the bridge brings a refreshing change. These kinds of contrasts are built into well-written songs, and the accompaniment should reinforce them. You can use many of the tools in these tips to differentiate sections of songs. Use reduced, muted chords on the verse, then change to big, open voicings for the chorus, for example. Switch from strumming on the verses to a bass-driven pattern on the bridge. Add string

2

Œ ¿ x

3

œ œ œ 3

2 2

1 2

0 0

3

2

x

œœ œœ Œ œœ œ ‰ ¿ œ œ J

3 0

and then use alternating down-up picking for the rest of the measure. Example 15b shows a fingerstyle version of the backbeat slap. This is a pattern I use for the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band.” Slap your thumb against the bass string where you see an X in the notation, but not too hard—it doesn’t take much to make the string strike the frets for a good percussive sound. This pattern is much closer to the rhythmic feel of the original band recording than you could get by simply strumming a G chord.

44 AcousticGuitar.com

œ

0 0

3

3 0 0

B

œ ¿ œ ¿

œ œœ

œ

3 0 0

0 3

œ œ œœ œ 3 0 0

3 0

2

percussion for the climactic section. And so on. One nearly foolproof accompaniment trick, I find, is to get very quiet for the beginning of the last verse and then cut loose for the closing chorus. 17. Play the melody. When you’re working out an accompaniment part, look for places where you can play snippets of the melody on the guitar. This is generally easier to do fingerstyle but can be done with a pick too. It can be a cool effect to play the melody on the guitar along with your voice, or you could play the melody during the intro or instrumental section. Listen to Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt to hear how they constantly doubled or echoed the melody of their songs with the guitar. Once you’ve figured out the chord positions you’re going to use in a song, spend some time finding the vocal melody notes in the same zone on the guitar. Play the melody by itself, as single notes, and then consider if there are places where you can smoothly integrate bits of the melody along with the chords. Example 16 comes from my arrangement of the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple.” In measure 2, play a few notes of the verse melody while you sing the opening line (“If my words did glow . . .”). This provides a nice pause from the strumming to kick off the verse.

18. Create riffs based on the melody. The song’s melody is also your best place to look for guitar riffs to add to your accompaniment. Good melodies usually have some kind of figure that stands out—a melodic hook, an interval jump, or a signature rhythm that recurs throughout the song. Figure out how to play this melodic hook on the guitar, and try using some version or part of it as a riff. Riffs like these can become a highlight of the whole song, helping to connect the guitar with the vocal in a deeper way. 19. Don’t compete with the vocal. Though it can be great to play or echo the vocal melody on guitar, be sure that you’re always supporting and not overshadowing your singing. Don’t play anything that interferes with the vocal or makes it hard to understand the words. If you find cool riffs to add, save them for the spaces between vocal lines, between verses, or between the chorus and next verse. That way, all the elements have their own space, and the audience’s attention isn’t divided. 20. Let the most important lines shine. If the song has certain lines that are particularly important to the storyline or meaning, you can highlight them with your accompaniment. You might simply drop the guitar out for a few bars, leaving the vocal by itself—a surefire way to get the audience to listen closely. Often, getting quieter is a better way to grab people’s attention than getting louder. Thin your guitar part down to just a bass line or percussive slap to highlight a key moment in the song. Contrast is everything. 21. Reflect the story. Finally, remember that good accompaniment tells a story, just as the lyrics and melody do. Think about the mood, plot, and message of the song and how you can support and enhance them with the guitar. If the song begins with an unsettled feeling and eventually finds a sense of peace by the end, let your accompaniment reflect that change. If the song is a carpe diem celebration right from the top, your guitar work should have that sense of joy and energy. In a great band, all the members lock in together and work toward a common purpose, which is, ultimately, to serve the song. As an accompanist, that’s what you should do too, on a smaller scale, making sure that your chord voicings, picking style, and dynamics all work together to serve the song. The singer and the audience will appreciate when you do it well. ag

JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS (jeffreypepperrodgers.com) is author of the Homespun DVD Learn Seven More Grateful Dead Classics for Acoustic Guitar and the Acoustic Guitar Guide Songwriting Basics for Guitarists. ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

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ix years elapsed between the release of Patty Griffin’s last album of original songs, Children Running Through, and the appearance of her new American Kid, issued in May by New West Records. It’s not as if the New England–bred singersongwriter disappeared in the interim. She did several Three Girls and Their Buddy tours with Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller, and in 2010, she released Downtown Church, a Grammy-winning collection of gospel performances produced by Miller. Later that same year, Griffin toured as a member of Robert Plant’s Band of Joy and contributed her backing vocals to the recording of the same name. But it’s as a solo artist—a composer of intimate TO PLAY 4 SONGS songs of love, loneliness, life changes, and occasional social criticism—that Griffin has garnered a devoted following through such albums as Living with Ghosts (her 1996 debut), Flaming Red, 1000 LESSONS Kisses, and Impossible Dream, as well as her AmeriFolk Song Accompaniment cana Music Association awards for Best Album and Seventh Chords ArtistDemystified of the Year in 2007. So, the arrival of Ameri-

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F O R E V E R Y P L AY E R I N A N Y S T Y L E

Patty Griffin Honors Her Father on American Kid

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PATTY GRIFFIN After digging into gospel and touring with Robert Plant's Band of Joy, the singer-songwriter honors her father with American Kid. By Derk Richardson • Photos by Darren Carroll

ix years elapsed between the release of Patty Griffin’s last album of original songs, Children Running Through, and the appearance of her new American Kid, issued in May by New West Records. It’s not as if the New England–bred singersongwriter disappeared in the interim. She did several Three Girls and Their Buddy tours with Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller, and in 2010, she released Downtown Church, a Grammy-winning collection of gospel performances produced by Miller. Later that same year, Griffin toured as a member of Robert Plant’s Band of Joy and contributed her backing vocals to the recording of the same name. But it’s as a solo artist—a composer of intimate songs of love, loneliness, life changes, and occasional social criticism—that Griffin has garnered a devoted following through such albums as Living with Ghosts (her 1996 debut), Flaming Red, 1000 Kisses, and Impossible Dream, as well as her Americana Music Association awards for Best Album and Artist of the Year in 2007. So, the arrival of Ameri-

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PATTY GRIFFIN can Kid, her seventh studio album, does mark something of a return. In terms of sound, American Kid is one of Griffin’s most consistent recordings since Living with Ghosts; it’s an acoustic folk effort that depends heavily on the delicate interplay of guitars—hers and those of longtime collaborators Craig Ross (who co-produced with Griffin and also played bass, organ, piano, and omnichord) and Doug Lancio (who doubled on mandolin), plus Luther Dickinson. Cody Dickinson, Luther’s brother and partner in the North Mississippi Allstars, played drums, and Robert Plant sang on two of the 12 tracks. Through it all, Griffin’s distinctive voice—a slightly raspy, bluesy alto— delivers poetic narratives that, in one way or

another, connect to her late father, Lawrence Joseph Griffin, to whom she dedicated the record. The 49-year-old Griffin talked with Acoustic Guitar by phone from the home she shares with Plant in Austin, Texas, where she has lived for 15 years (after launching her career in Boston and doing a short stint in Nashville). In the conversation, punctuated frequently by her uproarious laughter, Griffin addressed the genesis of American Kid, the evolution and limits of her guitar playing, her relatively recent immersion in gospel and classic country (American Kid includes a cover of Lefty Frizell’s “Mom and Dad’s Waltz”), and the roots of her songwriting in her love of singing.

Your father is a central character on American Kid. When were you struck by the idea of honoring your father with this album? GRIFFIN When I was looking at the whole pile of songs, it seemed to be a lot about him. I’ve definitely been influenced by my father, just as a person, in a very big way, and it seemed like the right thing to do. It was all pointing towards him. I didn’t set out to do that, but it did turn out to be in large part about him. Was the entire album written when this realization arrived? GRIFFIN I wasn’t really even halfway through when I realized, this is probably

WHAT SHE PLAYS

GIBSON J-200 JUNIOR

ACOUSTIC GUITARS: Patty Griffin’s stage guitars include a 1992 Gibson J-200 Junior, a 1965 Gibson J-50, and a CFox Frisco model, all outfitted with Fishman Matrix undersaddle pickups. She also has a prototype for an upcoming Patty Griffin Signature Model. She travels everywhere with a Collings Baby that she calls “my sweetheart. It’s beautiful. I haven’t put a pickup into it, but it could totally be a stage guitar.” Griffin also has “a little antique Martin from the 1930s that Buddy Miller made me

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CFOX FRISCO

buy at Matt Umanov’s. Don’t ask me what it is. I love Gibsons because I have a decent right hand, but the Band of Joy time got me a little better on my left hand, so I felt I could maybe graduate into a Martin. It’s a beautiful little guitar, and it’s on some of Downtown Church.” AMPLIFICATION: According to Roy Taylor, Griffin’s stage manager, for solo shows, her guitars go through Universal Audio Solo/610 tube preamp/DIs. “When she plays with the

LG-2 PATTY GRIFFIN SIGNATURE MODEL PROTOTYPE

band I run each guitar separately with a tuner on each line and a Countryman DI,” he says. “With each [guitar] in a different tuning it’s better to have separate channels of EQ at the desk. I also have a mic, either a Shure Beta 57A when there is a band or a Shure KSM 27 for solo shows, to get some ambience on some songs (“No Bad News” in particular). ACCESSORIES: D’Addario medium-gauge phosphor-bronze strings. Gray Dunlop medium nylon picks. Kyser capo.

ACOUSTIC GUITAR October 2013

going to be about my dad. It didn’t stop me from writing other things that had nothing to do with him. But I do think that even that song about the soldier [“Not a Bad Man”], I could tie it into my dad. This record does connect from top to bottom somehow. Were you consciously trying to shed light on certain aspects of your father’s personality and your relationship with him? GRIFFIN My dad was a feisty bugger. He was really cocky and pretty tough. A little guy, but a tough guy. If you met him, he was very quiet and sweet and actually pretty shy, but there’s this whole side to him that did not suffer fools, even for a second. People who didn’t know him very well didn’t necessarily know that about him. Even a lot of people who knew him probably didn’t know that side of him—except maybe some of the kids he taught in school who are now grown up. That’s what I really like about what came out about my dad on this record. Certain songs were inspired by that part of his personality. It’s fun to have those to sing right now. Was he a New Englander? GRIFFIN He was Boston Irish. His parents came from county Kerry in western Ireland,

and he was born there. It’s a magical place. Did the song “Not a Bad Man” relate to something in your dad’s life? GRIFFIN No, it just came out of me. I was thinking about something I’d heard about a young man who had come back from Iraq and was struggling with his mental health, for lack of a better term, and it just tore me up. So I just wrote a song about it, and that was what came out of my mouth first—“I’m not a bad man.” And I just went with that. The album title comes from the rest of that line in the first verse: “But I’m not a bad man, I’m just an American kid.” GRIFFIN Somebody suggested it to me, actually—somebody who’d heard all the songs. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be appropriate for the record. I like anything that is difficult to put a final definition over. Black is black, white is white, and red is red, but American Kid is a million different things to a million different people. So if that song does not address your dad specifically, which songs do? GRIFFIN “Irish Boy” is one of his stories that

I’m telling in my own way. It’s about getting back from World War II—a little snapshot of his life that he shared with me. “Please Don’t Let Me Die in Florida” is verbatim from him. He buried his brother down there, and it just freaked him out. I lived in Florida, and I loved it there, but it is a strange thing to live somewhere that’s a little bit of a holding place, to be so removed from the culture when you go there for your last days. Who am I to judge? I don’t know. But that was my father’s impression—don’t let that happen to me. Those are the specific stories that have to do with my dad. In everything else, though, I think he’s threaded in, some way or another. These songs have some little bursts of light and levity, as in “Get Ready Marie.” But overall, the album has a melancholy tone, a wistfulness. GRIFFIN Writing this record was heavier than writing a lot of things that I’ve done in the last few years. There’s a lot more weight on it for me. I really wanted to be more up front in trying to write about the wars that we’ve been involved in. I did write about those on other records, but I think I wrote about them more as protests. I wanted to write from a more emotional angle, more

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