AG acoustic-guitar-2015-08 AG_272.pdf

EMMYLOU HARRIS | ARLO GUTHRIE | RON SEXSMITH | JOSH ROUSE

WIN A 50TH ANNIVERSARY MARTIN D-35

3 SONGS

HAPPY TRAUM Careless Love Blues SAM COOKE Good Times THE WHITE STRIPES The Unfortunate Rake

AUGUST 2015 | ACOUSTICGUITAR.COM

PAYING THE DEVIL HIS BLUES HAS A FLORIDA BUSINESSMAN REALLY UNCOVERED ROBERT JOHNSON’S LOST GIBSON L-1?

TONE QUEST HOW TO FIND THE ULTIMATE GUITAR PICK NEW GEAR EASTMAN E10OM-LTD YAMAHA A6R BLACKSTAR ID:CORE BEAM SING OUT! HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SINGING SKILLS FEELING HANDY A GUIDE TO DIY GUITAR KITS

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CONTENTS

‘You can experiment and color outside the lines. That’s how music changes and grows and becomes relevant for the time that we’re living in.’ EMMYLOU HARRIS, P. 20

Features 20 Still the ‘Traveling Kind’ Emmylou Harris returns to songwriting with longtime collaborator Rodney Crowell By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

24 On the Trail of the Holy Grail The search for Robert Johnson’s lost guitar

Special Focus Do It Yourself Guitar Kits 46 DIY Guitars For every level of ambition, there’s a kit to help you build your own acoustic guitar

Miscellany 10 From the Home Office 13 Opening Act 96 Marketplace 97 Ad Index 98 Final Note

By Greg Olwell

By Mark Ari

32 The Quest for Tone How to find the ultimate guitar pick By Adam Perlmutter

40 Heart Song Luthier Manuel Delgado adds kindness and care to his instruments

August 2015 Volume 26, No. 2, Issue 272 On the Cover Robert Johnson Used by permission of Delta Haze Corporation

By Karen Peterson

AcousticGuitar.com 5

M ay 1– Ju ne 30 ,2 5 01

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CONTENTS

B.C. Rich goes acoustic p. 78

NEWS 15 The Beat Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” turns 50 + 5 more talking blues; Blues Hall of Fame opens; IBMA names new leader PLAY 58 Songcraft Ron Sexsmith delivers the upbeat Carousel One 60 The Basics How to find the vocal pitches you need in chords 61 Weekly Workout Exploring chromatic approaches in solos and chord progressions Songs to Play 66 The Unfortunate Rake You might know it as ‘St. James Infirmary’ 68 Good Times Mellow Sam Cooke soul 70 Careless Love Blues Happy Traum’s arrangement of a blues classic AG TRADE 77 Shoptalk A new line of Grace Harbor guitars; Martin’s Wood Summit; B.C. Rich goes acoustic—again 80 Makers & Shakers Jeff Hoffee and his carbon-fiber guitar cases

82 Review: Eastman E10OM-LTD An impressive new entry in the boutique flattop market 84 Review: Yamaha A6R Plugged or unplugged, this dreadnought is a tonal juggernaut 86 Review: Blackstar ID: Core BEAM amp A toaster-sized stereo amp for home or stage use 88 Guitar Guru The pros and cons of long-scale and short-scale guitars 90 Great Acoustics John Denver’s custom Yamaha L-53 MIXED MEDIA 92 Playlist The revamped Yonder Mountain String Band’s Black Sheep; also, Josh Rouse’s The Embers of Time, Della Mae’s eponymous third album, and Jamie Lin Wilson’s Holidays & Wedding Rings 95 Books The Music of the Stanley Brothers; On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom; and John Prine: In Spite of Himself

Grammy and GMA Dove award winner, Chris Tomlin talks about songwriting, performing and why he plays Elixir® Strings.

Chris Tomlin has sold millions of records, won a Grammy and has over 20 Dove Awards. His chart topping hit songs and sold-out performances brought music of faith to this generation. Since Chris’ early days playing Willie Nelson songs with his father, Chris has always loved the guitar, the art of songwriting, joy of performing and reaching people’s heart through music. “I’ve used Elixir Strings for 20 years! They feel so good, sound great, and last such a long time.” —Chris Tomlin

Watch the video now:

AcousticGuitar.com/ How-To /Tomlin-Elixir

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Holly Miranda

In the Studio: Holly Miranda Enjoy a recent Acoustic Guitar Session episode with singer-songwriter Holly Miranda. Watch Miranda perform her new song “Until Now” and the Leonard Cohen classic “I’m Your Man.” Visit AcousticGuitar.com/Sessions to check out interviews with and performances by Richard Thompson, Ani DiFranco, Seth Avett, Peter Rowan, Della Mae, Bruce Cockburn, Valerie June, Julian Lage, Eliza Gilkyson, Preston Reed, and many others. EXPERIENCE THE REDESIGNED ACOUSTIC GUITAR STORE! Put down this magazine, grab your guitar, turn on your computer, and visit the new store.AcousticGuitar.com. We just finished a redesign that makes it much easier to browse through all of our books, instructional video guides, magazine back issues, and more. Now is a great time to check out some of our newest series like The 5-Minute Lesson (brief, insightful tips on warm-up exercises, practice tips, gig preparation and other useful topics) and Be a Better Acoustic Guitarist (real-world advice and expert insight that will help improve your guitar playing). 8 August 2015

HUGH O’CONNOR

AG ONLINE

Rodney Crowell and Collings Guitars

Rodney Crowell and his 1993 Collings C10 Deluxe

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CONTENT DEVELOPMENT Editorial Director & Editor Greg Cahill Editor at Large Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers Managing Editor Blair Jackson Senior Editor Marc Greilsamer Associate Editor Whitney Phaneuf Senior Designer Brad Amorosino Production Manager Hugh O’Connor Contributing Editors Kenny Berkowitz, Andrew DuBrock, Teja Gerken, David Hamburger, Steve James, Orville Johnson, Richard Johnston, Sean McGowan, Jane Miller, Greg Olwell, Adam Perlmutter, Rick Turner, Doug Young

INTERACTIVE SERVICES Interactive Services Director Lyzy Lusterman Creative Content Manager Joey Lusterman Creative Content Coordinator Tricia Baxter Community Relations Coordinator Courtnee Rhone Single Copy Sales Consultant Tom Ferruggia

MARKETING SERVICES Robert Johnson, circa 1935, with the coveted Gibson L1.

obert Johnson is cloaked in myth and mystery. How did he do it? That’s what everyone wants to know. Like an episode from the cult-TV hit Ancient Aliens, Johnson exhibited a bluesy prowess that defied explanation—so deep, so blue, so superhuman, surely the devil must have imbued him with some mystic mojo. That’s why folks tell the tale that Johnson sold his soul at the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 out on that steamy stretch of Southern blacktop that snakes through Clarksdale, Mississippi, past miles of flat cotton fields, not far from the banks of the Mississippi and straight through our collective imagination. And then there’s the guitar. That guitar. The one perched on Johnson’s lap in what for years was the only known photograph of the blues giant—the more recently discovered image on the cover of this issue is a selfie shot by a roadweary Johnson in a dime store photo booth. The earlier grainy, black-and-white photo of the dapper young bluesman, clad in a three-piece pin-striped suit, his fedora tipped at a rakish angle and a sly smile on his face, was taken at the Hooks Brothers Photography Studio in

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Memphis. That much is known. What’s not known is whether the guitar—a Gibson L1, on which Johnson is fingering an A7—actually belonged to the blues legend or if it was merely a prop provided by the photographer. Still, that guitar is iconic. And it would be valuable, if its whereabouts were known. So, it’s not unusual that every once in a while someone comes forward to say that they’ve found it, the holy grail of the blues. When AG contributor Mark Ari emailed to say that a Florida businessman named Herb Chaney had laid claim to finding Johnson’s guitar, it piqued our interest, though it sent our editorial skepticism into overdrive. We’re still skeptical. All the more so since Chaney proved elusive once Ari followed up with him. In fact, Ari spent the better part of a year trying to get Chaney to sit down with the guitar, time that provided plenty of chances to talk to others unconvinced of the claim. He got the story and AG got a chance to revisit Robert Johnson—the myth, the mystery, and the man. Play on. —Greg Cahill

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17

17

You Talkin’ to Me? 5 classic talkin’ blues songs

18

Leader of the Pack IBMA selects new executive director

NEWS

GETTY / WIREIMAGE

Memphis Time Blues Hall of Fame opens its doors

THE BEAT

Arlo Guthrie

‘Alice’s Restaurant’ Turns 50 Arlo Guthrie hits the road with his Thanksgiving classic BY WHITNEY PHANEUF

rlo Guthrie has compared his now-classic Thanksgiving Day song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”—which hilariously recounts his arrest for littering and subsequent problems with the draft board—to something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie. Though the real-life events that inspired the talking blues song happened 50 years ago, Guthrie tells AG in an email interview that it’s endured, in part, because the story is as relevant today as it was in 1965. “Anyone who lived through the ’60s will find these days somewhat familiar,” writes Guthrie, 67, who was in college in 1965 and shocked when his arrest for illegally dumping his friend’s garbage left him ineligible for the Vietnam War-era draft. “Young people are discovering that they have a voice, not just individually but as a herd. The adversarial nature of young people is a great energy, and builds with every passing event that struggles to hold back the inevitable need to evolve. It’s not simply a matter of authority versus natural progression. It’s a very sophisticated manipulation from very powerful multinational corporations, governments,

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and authority figures, such as religious, cultural, and political leaders. If anyone is waiting for a majority of people to agree on ways to make the world better for everyone, they will be long dead and still waiting.” To commemorate the song’s anniversary, Guthrie has spent most of this year on the road, hitting North American cities with an entirely new tour centered around his most beloved song. The tour includes previously unseen, newly digitized images from the Guthrie archives. His touring band features his son Abe Guthrie on keyboards, Terry Hall on drums, Bobby Sweet on guitar, and Darren Todd on bass. Guthrie says he’ll have four acoustics at his disposal on tour—“it ain’t like the old days”—a Martin 0000, a Gibson J-200, a Composite Acoustic prototype six-string, and a Composite Acoustic prototype 12-string. The original 18½-minute talking blues, released in 1967, was recorded on a Martin D-18, “which was somewhat modified by the luthier Porfirio Delgado,” Guthrie adds. The song’s repetitive fingerpicking progression was inspired by Piedmont blues musicians

and written to serve Guthrie’s stream-of-consciousness storytelling. “I spent all of about two seconds to come up with a tune that we could make up silly lyrics to while sitting around a dinner table at the Church,” Guthrie notes, referring to the Great Barrington, Massachusetts, house where he spent that fateful Thanksgiving with his friend Alice Brock and her husband. “It took a little longer to refine it, and years to know it so well that I could scuba-dive and still be playing that tune at the same time. The idea was to play something that would allow me to tell a long tall tale without it becoming distracting—or in other words, play something familiar. The actual fingerpicking is instantly recognizable now—I just have to begin that little run up to the beginning and everyone already knows what it is. But, when I first began, nobody knew what to expect.” On tour, Guthrie will perform “Alice’s Restaurant” in its entirety, plus a mix of songs from all his other albums. Visit risingsonrecords.com for complete tour dates. AG AcousticGuitar.com 15

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5 MORE CLASSIC TALKING BLUES BLIND WILLIE MCTELL ‘TRAVELIN’ BLUES’ Recorded in 1929 under the moniker Blind Sammie, this side spotlights McTell’s Piedmont fingerstyle and wistful vocals. WOODY GUTHRIE ‘MEAN TALKING BLUES’ You can find this 1944 screed on corporate greed on The Asch Recordings, Vol. 3 (Folkways).

BLUES HALL OF FAME OPENS The Blues Foundation has opened the doors to the long-awaited Blues Hall of Fame at 421 South Main in downtown Memphis, right up the street from the National Civil Rights Museum and the Lorraine Motel, the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The opening coincided with the 36th annual Blues Music Awards held May 7 at the Cook Convention Center. Blues Music Award winners included Keb’ Mo’, for his 2014 album BLUESAmericana (Kind of Blue Music); singer and guitarist Ruthie Foster, who earned the Koko Taylor Award for best traditional blues female artist; and folkblues artist John Hammond, who earned a pair of awards in the Best Acoustic Album and Best Acoustic Artist categories for his record Timeless (Palmetto).

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BOB DYLAN ‘TALKING WORLD WAR III BLUES’ The voice of his generation toyed with his image as a Beat bard with this humorous postApocalypse tale. DAVE VAN RONK ‘TALKIN’ CANCER BLUES’ The Mayor of MacDougal Street pokes fun at the coffin nails that eventually killed this folk legend. GREG BROWN ‘SLOW FOOD’ A heaping dish of wit and wisdom from In the Hills of California: Live from the Kate Wolf Festival, 1997-2003 (Red House). One of this Iowa sage’s best. —GC

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THE BEAT

Mipso

IBMA NAMES NEW LEADER

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The International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), beleaguered by executive shakeups in the past year, has a new leader: Banjo-playing banker Paul J. Schiminger assumed the duties as executive director of the Nashville-based organization on June 1. According to a report in the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, five of 16 IBMA board members have quit in recent months following a disagreement about the organization’s goals. The IBMA’s third annual World of Bluegrass festival kicks off September 29 in Raleigh with a Bluegrass Ramble that features Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley, Mipso, Front Country, and many others. The World of Bluegrass, a massive trade event, will run September 29 through October 3. It will feature dozens of bluegrass artists performing at the Red Hat Amphitheater in Raleigh.

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Strum one today! Grace is playing a GHP-200 Parlor 18 August 2015

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This just in from PC Games regarding Rust, the multi-player survival game created by Facepunch Studios: “Rust’s developers sneaked the game’s first musical instrument into an update released over the Easter weekend. You can now find an acoustic guitar in the survivalist wasteland, letting you strum out a solo between hunting naked men.” Ah, we’re gonna let it go at that . . . . AG

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‘TRAVELING KIND’

20 August 2015

On her latest album with longtime collaborator Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris turns back to songwriting By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers wenty-fifteen is shaping up to be a banner year for Emmylou Harris. In January, an array of stars from the roots/Americana scene—including Alison Krauss, Kris Kristofferson, Vince Gill, Steve Earle, Mavis Staples, Conor Oberst, Shawn Colvin, and many more—gathered for a tribute concert in Washington, D.C., where Harris got her start as a folksinger back in the late ’60s. In March came the news that the Royal Swedish Academy of Music had awarded Harris the Polar Music Prize—she joins artists such as Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Stevie Wonder. And then, in May, came Harris’ new album with Rodney Crowell, The Traveling Kind (Nonesuch), a follow-up to their 2013 Grammy winner Old Yellow Moon. In many ways, the new collaboration with Crowell brings Harris full circle. The two musicians met in Nashville 40 years ago, when Harris was preparing to make her 1975 country debut, Pieces of the Sky, following the loss of her country-music mentor and partner Gram Parsons. She immediately tapped into Crowell’s talents as a writer, leading off the album with his “Bluebird Wine,” and adding him as a member of her Hot Band. Over the years since, Harris, 68, and Crowell, 64, have occasionally sung and written together, but on The Traveling Kind they step into the spotlight as songwriting partners, co-writing six of the album’s 11 tracks. With its mix of classic country, folk, blues, and roots rock, The Traveling Kind includes all the major ingredients of what’s come to be known as Americana. Of course, Harris had been playing Americana long before anyone called it that, celebrating the traditions behind the music even while bringing new songs to life. In the spring, I spoke with Harris at her home in Nashville as she was gearing up for album

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release shows with Crowell—followed by extensive touring in Europe and, later in the year, around the States. In the midst of her fifth decade in music, she sounded more than ready to hit the road with her old friend and her Gibsons. “The traveling kind,” she says, “must travel.” The Old Yellow Moon album included Rodney’s originals and some older songs, but nothing written by you. Was part of the agenda for the follow-up to collaborate on songwriting? We talked about it. It was Rodney who said, “Come on, Emmy, let’s write some songs.” He’s got so much energy, and he very generously brought me into the writing room along with Will Jennings and Cory Chisel, who I did not know before. He’s a wonderful talent. How did you go about working on songs? Really, Rodney would come up with an idea, and we would see it through. Cory brought a couple of ideas. “The Traveling Kind” was something that he brought, and also “You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try”—he had a beginning and a beautiful melody. And Will had the rough track of the one that ended up being a song about [a girl] dancing around the room in her underwear, the French song [“La Danse de la Joie”]. So all the songs were started by the others? Yeah. Usually when I write, I have to stew around for a long time with an idea, so this was kind of new for me. I mean, Rodney and I had written before over the years. We’d collaborated on a few songs—usually those were ones that I had an idea for and he would help me see through. This was a different kind of writing. This was more coming in with a completely blank slate. It’s a

little more pressure because you’re there with someone, but of course I’m very comfortable with Rodney. He is one of my favorite people. Was your involvement more on the musical or lyrical side? Oh, lyrics have always been my strong suit. So would you start with a title or a few lines and then work together to chase down the rest of the lyrics? It kind of all happens in the moment. Certain things ring true and you say, “Boy, I really like that.” When we were writing “You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try,” there was a line that I really loved that says, “Maybe somewhere down the line we’ll remember who we were.” I felt that it was so tender and beautiful. I said, “We have to keep that,” but we had trouble finding a rhyme. Rodney called me later and said, “I’ve got it” [the next line is “Another place, another time, some old feeling starts to stir”]. So that was satisfying. That song strikes me as having such an old soul. Oh, yeah. It reminds me of an Everlys kind of song. Beautiful melody, and we’ve all been there, that kind of bittersweet breakup when you have tenderness for the other person but you both know it’s not working. That’s when it’s really hard to break up. There’s something there, and you want to honor that. The song “The Traveling Kind” pays tribute to artists from the past but also seems to be about songs themselves. How do you look at it? I think it’s the singer and the song together. It’s talking about our people, the people we spend most of our lives with, or the people we

AcousticGuitar.com 21

EMMYLOU HARRIS

WHAT EMMYLOU HARRIS PLAYS GUITARS Standard tuning: Gibson Montana rosewood SJ-200. Gibson Montana J-200 (a copy of Gram Parsons’ guitar). Open D (D A D F A D): Gibson Montana SJ. Open A (A A A E A A): Julius Borges OM. AMPLIFICATION Sunrise pickups. Fishman Aura system (first edition). STRINGS D’Angelico 80/20. ACCESSORIES Golden Gate horseshoe-type capos with Shubb replacement rubber. Accord jumbo cases. Gear descriptions courtesy of Harris’ long-time guitar tech Maple Byrne.

‘I BELIEVE THAT A GOOD SONG, LIKE A GOOD BOOK OR A GOOD FILM, HAS TO HAVE A UNIVERSAL MESSAGE.’

22 August 2015

emulate, that we are inspired by. We are the traveling kind in the sense that we do spend a lot of time traveling, but the song is not so much about the traveling as it is about the work itself and the music and the muse and what drives us to do what we do. “Higher Mountains” addresses a loved one who has passed on. For you, is that song directed at someone in particular? Rodney started that after his father died and he saw his mother deal with that loss. They had a very long marriage. It was a turbulent marriage, as you know if you’ve read his book, Chinaberry Sidewalks, but I knew his parents and they were devoted to each other. It was the same with my parents. They had a different kind of relationship. It was a gentler kind of thing, not so much drama, but my mother also lost her husband, my father, years before. So [Rodney and I] had a similar experience, and there was definitely a personal connection to that song. To deliver someone else’s song effectively, do you need to relate the story somehow to your own experience? Of course. For the most part, I’ve been an interpreter, so the song has to resonate for me in some way that is personal. I believe that a good song, like a good book or a good film or anything, has to have a universal message. It has to talk about the human story that we all share. The details might be different, but the heart of the story is something that hopefully everyone can relate to.

While writing these particular songs, did you play guitar much? I played along a little bit while we were writing, but for the most part I was thinking of myself as a lyricist and responding to what Rodney and Cory were playing, or to the track when we heard Will’s little demo of “La Danse de la Joie.” When I write on my own, obviously it’s very much connected to the guitar. So are the songs on your Hard Bargain album [2011], for instance, more the product of sitting with a guitar? Definitely. A lot of the songs on that album I actually started just sitting and playing the guitar because I was concentrating on open tunings. That opened up a little more of the melody for me. There was only one song that I had the lyric to [first], now that I think about it. With “The Ship on His Arm,” I had a chorus for a long time; it was inspired by a drawing by [artist/ songwriter] Terry Allen that Susanna Clark had given me that was titled “When She Kisses the Ship on His Arm.” I had this chorus, and for a long time I wasn’t really sure what the narrative was—then one day I realized for me it was the story of my parents and their separation. He was in two wars, and obviously both times neither of them knew if they were going to see each other again. So I just put myself in that place and I was able to actually tell the story and come up with the verses, with these two people reaching out to each other.

You mentioned open tunings. Are you still using those unusual low open tunings with all the drone strings? I love that. On [Hard Bargain], I used the open A [A A A E A A] for “The Ship on His Arm,” and there were several others that I wrote in open D but capoed up into the key of E. That was just an experiment. I said, I’ve got one song over the years that I’ve written in open-D tuning [“Prayer in Open D”], and I just thought, “Well, I’m going to see if I can come up with something so I don’t feel funny about taking out one guitar for one song.” So it was kind of a practical thing. Sometimes that helps you to be creative. It’s not all magic.

I guess they’re just part of the same thing. It’s not like I set out to be a bandleader. Well, I did at one point say, “I’ve got to put more energy into writing songs in my artistic development.” I felt that since I had written songs in the past, I was capable of it. Perhaps I was being a bit lazy by interpreting songs, although I don’t think I will ever give that up. I don’t think that it’s a lesser talent. But for the most part, it’s all part of this one big, great package. You’re just doing what feels right at the time.

Winning the Polar Music Prize puts you in some amazing company. What was your reaction to that news? Well, everything is a great surprise to me, and I’m very grateful for it. You just go along one day at a time, one project at a time, one record at a time, one song at a time. You’re looking down, paying attention to the details of what you’re doing, and then all of a sudden something like this comes. It does take you by surprise, but it’s a wonderful surprise. AG

You do wind up with a lot of guitars in different tunings onstage. Yes, I do. I have some songs over the years in open G. The open A was something that Daniel Lanois showed me once, and there were quite a few songs on Red Dirt Girl that use open A and open Bb. When I was writing, I would just capo up, but onstage it’s easier to have a guitar that’s tuned up a half step. Compared with albums like Red Dirt Girl or Hard Bargain, this collaboration with Rodney has a much more traditional country feel. Do you think of the duo that way? Oh, yeah. It harkens back, of course, to the Hot Band days, when Rodney and I were in the band together. He had country music in his bones from his father, and I was kind of a latecomer to it back then. We remember country music the way it was—not that you have to go back and only do stuff from decades ago. You can experiment and color outside the lines. I think Rodney and I were coloring outside the lines even back then. That’s how music changes and grows and becomes relevant for the time that we’re living in. We still respect and draw from the past, but you have to bring it forward. I think Rodney’s brilliant at that in his writing and his sensibilities. I mean the song “Just Pleasing You,” as far as I’m concerned, is one of the best country songs written in years. I don’t think those lyrics could have been written decades ago because we weren’t at that place in our evolution. He brings the past and the future together in that song. You’ve had such a diverse career as a singer, interpreter, bandleader, and songwriter. Does one role stand above the others, or are they different facets of the same thing? AcousticGuitar.com 23

24 August 2015

USED BY PERMISSION OF DELTA HAZE CORP.

In 1935, Robert Johnson posed with a Gibson L1 for a photo shot at the Hooks Brothers Studio in Memphis.

HOLY GRAIL

ON THE TRAIL OF THE

Has Herb Chaney located the most iconic of acoustic guitars, Robert Johnson’s elusive Gibson L1? By Mark Ari

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n five sessions between 1936 and 1937, bluesman Robert Johnson made 29 recordings that were remarkable for the artistry of his lyrics, vocal style, and guitar work. In the three quarters of a century since his death in 1938 at age 27, these recordings have inspired generations of emulators and enthusiasts, including Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, and Peter Green, to name a few. Today, the reality of the man is obscured by stories of devil-dealing, a hoodoo-inflected mythology of supernatural guitar skills traded at the crossroads for the price a soul. When I heard that Herb Chaney, a Florida businessman, claimed to have one of Johnson’s guitars, the one that appears on the first-known photograph of Johnson, I jumped at the chance to have a look at it. Sure, I was skeptical, but a Robert Johnson guitar would be an almost magical discovery. For guitar collectors, it would be the Holy Grail. It’s not every day someone sends me in search of that. The next half year, with all its frustrations and delays, would bring me closer to Robert Johnson than I ever expected to be. Chaney was out of the country when I first contacted him. The guitar, a Gibson L1, was with him. That struck me as odd. If I had a guitar I thought had belonged to Johnson, it would be in a vault somewhere or locked in a case bolted to the floor. I imagined it stuffed into an overhead bin or crushed in flight cargo. But I didn’t want to be unfair. Maybe he couldn’t part with it. Maybe he’d bought it a seat of its own. The guitar, Chaney insisted, was “clearly the one in the one photo of Johnson.” The photograph Chaney was talking about is the famous image of Johnson taken in 1935 at Hooks Brothers Photography Studio in Memphis (opposite). This is the earlier of three authenticated shots of Johnson. The others are

a stamp-size, dime store photo (which appears on the cover of this issue), and a more recently identified image of Johnson and a player believed to be Johnny Shines (disputed by many). Hooks Brothers gave the world a beautiful portrait. You can see Johnson head to toe, and the L1 is on his lap. Since Johnson is known to have preferred Stella and Kalamazoo guitars, and may have recorded on his $12.50 Kalamazoo KG-14, most folks doubt the Gibson was his at all. It could have been a prop. It might have been borrowed, like the undersized suit he’s wearing in the photo. Still, that’s the guitar Johnson is holding in that iconic shot, and for many that makes it special.

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ccording to Chaney, the L1 came from a pawn shop in Fremont, Nebraska. His grandfather had bought it there 47 years ago, when Chaney was just 12. He told me he was 35 before he knew what he had—or believed he had—and that there was a crazy story behind how he found out. He said he’d be glad to meet with me, show me the guitar, and tell me the whole story when he got back to Florida. That would be at least a couple of months away. In the meantime, I scoured the internet to see if I could find similar claims about Johnson’s guitars. I was told that folks come up with these stories all the time, but I only came across one. In 2005, Moments in Time, a California memorabilia dealer offered up a Gibson L1— again, the model from the Hooks Brothers photo—at a price of $6 million. It appeared and disappeared, leaving behind lots of electronic chatter in blues- and vintage-guitar forums. Gary Zimet of Moments in Time told me he took the guitar on consignment for an Australian who had picked it up 40 years earlier in a thrift shop or garage. “Something like that,”

Zimet said. He didn’t recall exactly. He never met the guy or saw the guitar except in pictures. There was no provenance, no documentation to connect the alleged Johnson guitar with a Johnson relative or friend. The Australian made his case based on physical characteristics and patterns of wear. He showed similarities and explained discrepancies. “He wasn’t trying to deceive anyone,” Zimet assured me. “He honestly thought he’d proved it.” But a comparative analysis by Bruce Conforth, an ethnomusicologist who’s done research on Johnson, proved otherwise. Highresolution shots of the Australian’s guitar superimposed on the Hooks Brothers photograph showed that the two guitars were not the same. So that was the end of that story. I kept digging for other claims. Neil Harpe, an Annapolis, Maryland, artist and Stella-guitar aficionado, didn’t know of any Stella owners who boasted their guitar had a connection to Johnson. “However,” he said, “if there happened to be a photo of Johnson with a Stella, I’m sure somebody would have stepped up from the sidelines, sure enough!” Harpe is right. Johnson’s music has affected so many people so deeply that there’s a longing for a saintly relic, an object touched by the master that will provide a magical connection. So little is known about him that mystery itself is part of the legend. That leaves all this empty space for people to fill with what they want to believe. Steve LaVere, a music-industry insider who has been involved with Johnson’s music and legacy for 50 years, explained to me: “There are millions of fans the world over who are struck by Johnson’s power as a performer and player. The average person could never expect to be that fine a musician, so there must be some supernatural explanation.” LaVere was thinking of that devilish deal Johnson is supposed to have made. Some say AcousticGuitar.com 25

ROBERT JOHNSON’S GUITAR

he went down at midnight to the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he was approached by a large, black man who took his guitar, tuned it, played it, and returned it to Johnson’s hands. From then on, Johnson could play anything he wanted for the rest of life. The irony was how short that life turned out to be and how strangely it ended. As the story goes, Johnson was playing at a juke joint outside of Greenwood, Mississippi. During a break he was handed a jar of bootleg whiskey that had been poisoned by a jealous husband, or maybe a jealous lover. According to the late Delta-bluesman Honeyboy Edwards, a longtime associate of Johnson, the drink was laced with passagreen, a toxin extracted from moth balls. Johnson allegedly suffered for three days. His final minutes were spent on his hands and knees, barking like a dog. Or so rumor had it. But that’s part of the legend, too. A similar story was told about bluesman Tommy Johnson, no relation.

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s the day approached for Chaney’s return to Florida, I tried to pin him down on a date. He didn’t return some of my emails. When he did, he told me he’d be out of the country months longer than planned. I was getting nowhere. Gibson Guitar hadn’t responded to my queries. Contact information on the website for the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation didn’t work either. I wondered whether Chaney’s guitar was the one that had been on consignment at Moments in Time. The timeline fit. Maybe the Australian was Chaney’s grandfather, in which case it could not be the real deal. I turned to Andy Cohen, traditional studies coordinator at Folk Alliance, and he pointed me to the Real Blues Forum, a Facebook group devoted to country blues. That’s where I met Bruce Conforth. Aside from his involvement with the Moments in Time guitar, Conforth has all the credentials I could hope for: a PhD in ethnomusicology who teaches at the University of Michigan; he was the original curator of the

Is this L1 a coveted blues relic?

PAMELA HNYLA

SO LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT ROBERT JOHNSON THAT MYSTERY ITSELF IS PART OF THE LEGEND. THAT LEAVES ALL THIS EMPTY SPACE FOR PEOPLE TO FILL WITH WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE.

26 August 2015

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and is also an executive board member of the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation. This is a guy who cut his teeth on the ’60s folk scene in New York City. He hung out at Izzy Young’s Folk Center on MacDougal and Allan Block’s Sandal Shop, and hobnobbed with Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, and Reverend Gary Davis. He doesn’t just love this stuff—he brims with it. Maybe he could help me find what I was looking for. We had several long conversations. We talked about Johnson’s guitars. About provenance and how without that, all you have is, “Well, it looks like Johnson’s guitar,” and most of the time it only looks like it because it’s the same model. I thought of Chaney’s crazy story and hoped it was a good one. I wrote to Chaney and asked if his guitar was the Moments in Time guitar. Conforth, along with Gayle Dean Wardlow, co-author of King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton, are finishing a manuscript that combines their years of research into what will likely be the definitive Johnson biography. As we talked, Conforth demolished the myth of the unknown, illiterate field hand on a Mississippi plantation who never played professionally. In its place, he painted a portrait of a young, urbane, and ambitious musician who worked hard on his craft, playing anything he thought people wanted to hear, trying in every way to get a leg up in his career. He spoke of a resourceful man who knew how to use his talent. Johnson and Memphis bluesman Johnny Shines were staying at a crummy hotel— Johnson was shacked up with a woman, a dwarf who did his bidding—when a fire broke out and destroyed their guitars. So they headed up the highway. Johnson played harmonica and danced by the side of the road, while Shines passed the hat. Apparently, he was so good the police were called to direct traffic. By the time the two men arrived in Steele, Missouri, the first town on their way, they had enough cash to buy new guitars. Conforth’s research shows that Johnson traveled widely. With Shines and Detroit bluesman Calvin Frazier, Johnson got as far north as Windsor, Ontario, where they performed on Elder Morton and his Radio Chorus, a religious radio show. They played at a riverfront baptism, too. This was in 1938, the year Johnson died, but not before he made it to New York City. After arriving, hoping for the big break, Johnson ditched his pals to audition for the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, a popular New York-radio talent show.

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ROBERT JOHNSON’S GUITAR

The idea of Johnson trying out for the same program that had catapulted Sinatra to fame two years earlier seems almost whimsical, but no more than the thought of Johnson playing an electric guitar. Conforth could hardly wait to tell me about that. “In New York City, he hung out in Harlem, and one of the jazz guitarists up there turned him on to an electric guitar. There’s no evidence he owned one or performed with one. The only evidence I have is that there was one situation where this one cat gave Johnson an electric guitar and said, ‘Hey man, dig this. What do you think of this?’ And Johnson screwed around with that guitar for that period of time.” According to Conforth, the information has always been there. “If people don’t know a lot about Robert Johnson, it’s because they haven’t looked in the right places. They haven’t turned over the right rocks. We can account for almost all of Johnson’s life, and we’re in the process of working something out for the book that will be completely groundbreaking.”

O

ver the course of my talks with Conforth, Chaney and I exchanged emails. We set a date when I’d at last be able to meet him. He also informed me that his guitar was not the same one as the Moments in Time guitar. “It has never been offered or seen with the exception of Gibson, when they did a year-long restoration,” he wrote. I wondered at the word “restoration,” but only for a moment. Probably, it had to be done to maintain what would be an 85- to 90-yearold instrument. Very old guitars sometimes need work just to keep them from falling apart. Taking another run at Gibson, I had better luck. Todd Money, manager of Gibson repair and restoration, got back to me and said there were no records of a restoration done on an L1 under the name Herb Chaney. That was curious. Roger Ball, a customer-service representative, put me in touch with the former Gibson historian Walter Carter, of Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville. Carter didn’t feel there was any way to prove Chaney’s claim. “I wouldn’t trust any provenance,” he said. “Playing wear wouldn’t identify the guitar either. There are plenty of guys out there who would be able to make the playing wear match. The only way to authenticate the guitar would be to match details in the wood.” The Hooks Brothers photograph, good as it is, does not have sufficiently high resolution for that kind of detail to be inspected. Apparently, there was no way for Chaney to prove his claim. But if his “crazy” story was a good one, if it did provide provenance, and the guitar did well in a professional analysis, he’d have something no one else had. I asked 28 August 2015

Conforth if he’d analyze Chaney’s claim as he’d done with the Moments in Time guitar. He agreed, and we talked more about Johnson. To understand Robert Johnson, Conforth said, you have to know how and where he spent his formative years, ages three to nine. It wasn’t on a plantation, but in the bustling metropolis of Memphis, a city of nightclubs and restaurants, gambling houses, hoodoo, and vaudeville. A young Machine Gun Kelly was peddling bootleg whiskey out of a clothes cart there. W. C. Handy was composing “Beale Street Blues.” Every year, Ringling Bros. paraded clowns and acrobats and circus animals through downtown Memphis. “What kid is not going to want to see that?” he asked.

JOHNSON, OFTEN DISAPPEARING FOR DAYS, WEEKS AND MORE, WITHOUT A WORD TO HIS FRIENDS, WAS ITINERANT MOST OF HIS LIFE. No kid on a Delta plantation would have experienced what Johnson had in the hubbub of Memphis, a city of cotton, wood, and mules, honking and propelling itself toward the roaring ’20s. Abandoned by his mother at age three, he was left with his stepfather’s family. They lived close to Beale Street, the center of it all. Johnson would have heard the popular music. Blues singer and guitarist Jim Jackson was playing. So was Gus Cannon and his influential jug band, Robert Wilkins, and the Beale Street Sheiks—all were there while Johnson was getting his first guitar lessons from his stepbrother Charley. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Johnson got an education. It was mandatory in Memphis, where reformer Julia Hooks and her husband were making sure black truants were swept from the streets into schools. “He became quite literate,” Conforth explained. “This accounts for some things he did later in life. As an adult, he carried a notebook with him all the time in which he wrote down lyrics and ideas for songs.” Then, after years with the only family he ever knew as family, Johnson’s mother suddenly reappeared and whisked him south to live and labor on a plantation with her and her new husband, Dusty Willis. Johnson hated field work. Willis beat him unmercifully for that. “Do you think that might have something to do with his wanderlust later in life?” Conforth asked. Johnson, often

disappearing for days, weeks, and more, without a word to his friends, was itinerant most of his life. He only tried to settle down once. That was the real crossroads. Johnson had been playing parties and picnics since at least 1928. But in 1929, at 18, he married Virginia Travis and planned to give up performing. He was going to try to do farm work and build a family. When Virginia got pregnant, she went to Penton, Mississippi, to have her baby with her grandmother. Johnson decided to take up his guitar and play his way up Highway 61 to join her. He was going to have fun, carousing as he went. A last fling. But when he arrived looking for his wife and child, Virginia had already died in childbirth, and the baby with her. Virginia’s family and the whole community condemned him. They said he’d killed his wife and baby by roaming about to play the devil’s music instead of staying at her side where he was supposed to be. Conforth explained, “This is the moment he says to himself, ‘Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m no good. And if that’s true, so be it. That’s what I’ll be.’ After that, Johnson is a different person. He drinks all the time. When he’s drinking, he blasphemes and curses God so much that folks won’t stay near him because they’re terrified of getting hurt when God strikes him down.” That other crossroads was borrowed from folk tales. Johnson’s guitar skills didn’t come in a demon flash, but with persistent effort. He’d been performing around since Virginia’s death. His partners included a female guitarist and a piano player named Punk Taylor from Lost Lake, Mississippi. Johnson would sometimes sport a Vaseline-wave haircut and a plaid jacket. He didn’t stand out from his peers in any way except, perhaps, in his desire to do so. While searching for his real father, Noah Johnson, he met Ike Zimmerman, a gifted player and teacher, in Martinsville, Mississippi, and became his sidekick. For close to a year, Johnson accompainied Ike to his favorite places to practice, including the privacy of cemeteries near his home, where the two men sat on gravestones for hours on end and played. When I got the opportunity to speak with Johnson’s grandson, Steven Johnson, of the Robert Johnson International Blues Revue Band, he told me how the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation promotes a message of hope and hard work. I had that image in my head of Robert Johnson and Ike Zimmerman sitting on gravestones and woodshedding their chops. “He perfected his talent,” Steven said of his grandfather, “through hard work and dedication to what he believed in.”

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PAMELA HNYLA

ROBERT JOHNSON’S GUITAR

Florida businessman Herb Chaney claims that this is Robert Johnson’s iconic Gibson L1.

F

inally, the day arrived to take the seven-hour ride to the Chaney home. I asked photographer Pam Hnyla to go with me, and we were greeted warmly by Herb and his wife, Mary. They were excited. Before he showed me the guitar, Herb told me his story. Twenty years after his grandfather bought it for him, Herb went to a guitar shop to see what he could get for it on a trade-in toward a 12-string. The storeowners offered him any guitar in the place as an even trade, so he figured he had something of value and decided to keep it. It sat in his closet until ten years ago when his wife had it completely restored as a present for him. That’s when they decided it was the Johnson guitar. “When you put it next to the photo,” he said. “It just looks like it.” 30 August 2015

The guitar turned out to be beautiful. It sounded swell. To my surprise, it had been completely refinished. Face-to-face, Chaney seemed more doubtful about the guitar than he had been in his emails. He didn’t really know whether it was what he wanted it to be. I think he figured it looked as much like Johnson’s guitar as anybody’s, and he wanted someone to examine it to affirm his belief. He got very animated, though, when it came time to photograph him with the guitar. He ran upstairs and came back in a colorful Hawaiian shirt. When he strummed, he dug in hard to make it ring and looked at me as if to say, “What else do we need to know?” Later, I showed Conforth the images. Hnyla’s shot of the Chaney guitar in my arms caught the exact angle of the L1 in the Hooks Brothers photograph. They lined up perfectly in the overlays. Since there is no provenance and the guitar had

been entirely refinished, Conforth could only consider physical characteristics. Several things didn’t match. Most significantly, the Chaney guitar has a bound fingerboard and three rings around the sound hole. The Johnson L1’s fretboard is unbound, and its sound hole has only two discernible rings. That was that. Conforth said, “For the Johnson guitar to be the same one as the Chaney guitar, everything on it would have had to have been replaced.” What a fascinating statement. Remove everything to replace it and there’s a moment when there’s nothing there. The stuff of dreams. I didn’t find the Holy Grail. If it’s sitting in someone’s garage or attic, chances are we’ll never know about it. But when I look at that photograph of Johnson now, I see so much more because historians like Conforth and Wardlow are at last turning over the right rocks. AG

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THE QUEST FOR

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n ongoing quests for the tools best suited to the sounds they hear in their heads, acoustic guitarists over the decades have cycled through guitar after guitar, exhausting numerous tonewood combinations and body styles—all while using the same pick. But the importance of this tiny—and usually inexpensive—accessory cannot be overstated. The pick plays such a critical role in shaping not just tone, but articulation, phrasing, and volume, as any player who has suddenly been caught without a pick has had the misfortune to 32 August 2015

discover. Without a doubt, a guitarist should be just as choosy about the pick—a.k.a. a plectrum or flatpick—he or she uses as the instrument whose strings it sets in vibrating motion. Yet, it’s not necessarily an easy task to find the right pick. In fact, there’s a bewilderingly wide range on the market—so many different sizes, shapes, and thicknesses, in materials from cellulose to wood to stone, by familiar names like Dunlop Manufacturing Inc., the Californiabased maker of consumer electronics, and D’Addario’s Planet Waves, as well as small

companies, relatively new to the market, including BlueChip and Red Bear Training Co. Luckily, though, there are guidelines you can apply to make your search easier. And, best of all, it will take only a nominal cash investment to score a bounty of different picks that you can whittle down in finding what feels right. “A guitar’s tone starts with a pick and strings,” says Robert Cunningham, D’Addario’s resident plectrum expert. “Picks are a very inexpensive way to get new sounds and textures. Try them all and see what works best for you.”

HOW TO FIND THE ULTIMATE GUITAR PICK BY ADAM PERLMUTTER

FROM SEA TURTLES TO STEEL The earliest stringed-instrument picks, dating back thousands of years, were made from feather quills. By the late 19th century, tortoiseshell—extracted from the shell of the nowendangered Atlantic Hawksbill, which is not a tortoise, but a sea turtle—had become the standard plectrum material on account of its superior tone and handling, both durable and flexible. That all changed with the advent of synthetic materials such as celluloid. In the early

1920s, D’Andrea (dandreausa.com) first commercially offered picks made from cellulose nitrate, or celluloid, with an appearance that mimicked tortoiseshell, and was soon making these picks for such major guitar companies as Gibson, Martin, and later, Fender. Founded in 1940, Herco (which is now owned by Dunlop) developed a nylon pick known for its warmth and smooth attack. In 1973, it became illegal to hunt the endangered Hawksbill, so manufacturers sought other alternative materials in the

making of picks. Dunlop’s Tortex line (jimdunlop.com), for instance, whose iconic logo incorporates a turtle, is made from DuPont Delrin—a plastic that behaves similarly to tortoiseshell. One of the largest pick companies, Dunlop offers plectrums in plenty of other synthetics, for a range of sonic applications. “Softer materials, like our nylon picks, give a warm tone and soft attack; harder materials, like our Ultex picks, give a brighter, bolder response and can even provide a percussive element to the attack,” says Dunlop accessories product AcousticGuitar.com 33

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manager Frank Aresti. “Tortex, our most popular picks, have a great tactile feel, produce a consistent tone, and add a bit of a ‘scratch’ to the attack, making chords and notes sound bold without adding too much extra overtone to the guitar’s natural voice.” D’Addario’s Planet Waves (planetwaves.com) offers a similarly comprehensive line of picks with varying compositions that suggest different uses. “Materials can change the tone quite a bit,” Cunningham says. “Something like nylon in our Nylflex picks is very warm-sounding with rolled off highs, compared to, say, our Ultem Cortex picks, which are really dynamic, giving the notes a lot of snap and projection. Our Delrin Duralin picks are somewhere in the middle, offering a good balance of both worlds with a percussive attack.” Other companies use proprietary materials. Graph Tech—which is known for its TUSQ, or synthetic ivory, nuts, and saddles—offers picks said to incorporate built-in harmonics, coming in three different timbres: bright, warm, and deep. Mick’s Picks’ (mickspicks.com) VEX plectrums are cut from a synthetic material called Abusite, which makes them both durable and 34 August 2015

clear-sounding. In their high-end offerings, Red Bear Trading Co. (redbeartrading.com) and BlueChip (bluechippick.net) both use special materials that mimic tortoise. Then there are plenty of other alternatives, many of them natural. Wood is sometimes used for picks and generally produces warm tones. Primarily a guitar company, Riversong (riversongguitars.com) makes high-tech versions from five-ply sandwiches of hardwoods, like walnut, and isotropic materials. Clayton (steveclayton.com) offers picks made from a handful of different exotic woods, not to mention animal horns, and even coconut shell. Polished stones like turquoise and jade have found their way into pick-making, known for their richness of sound. StoneWorks (stoneworkspicks.com) sells unique plectrums made from polished semi-precious stones, as does Stone Picks (stonepicks.com). In a different direction, companies like Dunlop and Fender (fender.com) have long made stainless-steel picks—steel, brass, bronze, and copper are the metals offered by DR Guitar Picks (drguitarpicks.com). These materials tend to have an impressively crisp attack. But

In he last couple of decades, we have seen a renaissance in the world of boutique guitars, and this hasn’t been limited to instruments. Red Bear Trading Co. and BlueChip are two of the leading players in the highly specialized boutique pick market. Since 2003, Red Bear (redbeartrading.com) has been offering flatpicks and thumbpicks not mass-produced but handmade, from $27. The company’s original designs involve the use of polymerized animal protein, which behaves like the tortoiseshell that’s been illegal to use for more than 40 years. These picks are known for their smoothness and tonal warmth. Because Red Bear picks are so labor-intensive to make, they’re only available in the maker’s online store once a week, and tend to sell out that same day. So it’s best to stay tuned to the website to find out the next time the online store will open, and which picks will be for sale. BlueChip (bluechippick.net) picks and thumb picks (flatpicks from $35, readily available at the company’s online store) are made from a high-grade proprietary material that the company describes as self-lubricating, making them move across the strings in a fast and easy way, as can be heard in the work of a virtuoso like the young jazz guitarist Julian Lage. Red Bear and BlueChip picks might cost many times as much as their standard-issue counterparts, and they have yet to see inexpensive imitations, as has happened to certain boutique guitars. But for something so crucial to one’s sound and technique, they’re potentially a smart investment. —A.P.

LL16R

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4wrd.it/LSeriesAG ©2015 Yamaha Corporation of America. All rights reserved. Photos of Billy and Jeff were shot on location at Chicago’s Virgin Hotel.

ULTIMATE PICKS

beware: a metal pick can wreak havoc on coated strings, the surface of a pickguard, or worse, a soundboard. The sound of any given pick will, of course, vary based on the instrument it’s used on, as well as string type, tension, and gauge, along with playing technique, but remember this: Softer materials tend to produce mellower tones, while harder materials sound brighter. Different materials also vary in tactile feel. A Dunlop Tortex pick, for example, has a distinctive matte finish that many players find secure to grip, while one made from nylon can be more slippery in comparison. Speaking of feel, some picks incorporate textured surfaces that are engineered to prevent slippage. D’Andrea’s nylon Brain pick, for instance, incorporates 256 tiny raised pyramid shapes on its surface for this purpose; Pickboy (osiamo.com) makes ceramic-andnylon plectrums with raised dots, while that company’s cellulose Pos-a-Grip series incorporates circular cutouts in its picks. This sort of feature is an obvious boon for a musician

Fred Kelly Bumblebee Teardrop

inclined to sweating, and an intended consequence is that the gripping surfaces can be played on the strings for unusual textural effects. Synthetic or natural, grip or no grip, it all comes down to this: What material feels and sounds best is obviously a matter of personal preference, so it might take a bit of experimentation to find what suits you. IN ALL SHAPES & SIZES The shapes, sizes, and thicknesses of regular picks are just as variable as their composition. A rounded triangle, as pioneered by D’Andrea, is the most common shape, and a teardrop with a pointy tip, like on Dunlop’s Jazz III, is a popular variation. Other familiar shapes include the equilateral triangle and the shark-fin shape— kind of the Swiss Army knife of plectrums with its various points for string contact. Larger picks with softer tips are generally better for strumming and are easier, at least for the beginning player, to hold. Smaller picks with pointier tips, which tend to glide across

Planet Waves Thumb pick

Dunlop Nickel Silver Fingerpick

between strumming and fingerpicking. Thumb picks are typically made of plastic and have rounded tips, like on their regular counterparts; little tabs; or a hybrid construction (thumb pick and flatpick in one), as is in Fred Kelly’s (fredkellypicks.com) Bumblebee Teardrop. They’re available in a variety of thicknesses. And tonally speaking, the same rules of thumb, no pun intended, apply when shopping for this type of pick as for a

flatpick: the thicker the thumb pick, the greater the bass response. It’s best to try a variety of thicknesses to find the thumb pick that will yield a satisfying registral balance on your particular guitar and one that suits your physiology as well and isn’t prone to slipping off your thumb. Though fingerpicks, which are made of metal or plastic, are most commonly used on banjo, they can also be used on the steel-string guitar to excellent effect. These picks are wrapped

Alaska Pik Fingerpick

OF THUMB PICKS & FINGERPICKS Thumb picks are plectrums that curl around the thumb, keeping the other digits available for fingerpicking duties. One advantage of using a thumb pick over straight fingerpicking is that the pick can add clarity to the bass notes on strings five and six that might otherwise sound murky, though, to be fair, some guitarists find that the thumb pick makes their instruments’ bass response overpowering. Another advantage is that the thumb pick allows for easy switching 36 August 2015

around the index, middle, and ring fingers, in conjunction with a thumb pick or flatpick. While fingerpicks can be tricky to get the hang of using, they’re handy for beefing up the sound of contrapuntal parts. Metal fingerpicks will impart a brighter and brasher sound, useful for banjostyle rolls, while plastic ones generally offer a more subdued, warmer sound. And as with thumb picks, size matters— be sure to find the right-sized fingerpicks for your digits.

ULTIMATE PICKS

the strings, work well for precisely controlled soloing. A pick’s edges matter, too. “Many traditionally popular pick styles have more pronounced edges for a big, bold attack,” says Dunlop’s Frank Aresti. “But a pick with a beveled and hand-burnished edge, like our Primetone, noticeably reduces string drag, which makes both strumming chords and alternate picking practically effortless.” The thickness of a plecturm is crucial to its sound. Picks are sometimes labeled coarsely, as in the classic Fender Medium celluloid pick, while others, like Dunlop’s Tortex, are

identified in millimeters. Interpretations vary, but picks .44 millimeters and under are considered thin; mediums range from .45 to .69; and heavies, from .85. Generally speaking, thin picks work well for strumming a flattop guitar. Cunningham explains, “Using a very thin pick almost acts like a natural compressor where all strums and notes will be very even in volume, which can be great for recording.” On the other hand, heavier plectrums tend to work better for dynamic single-note work. “A thicker pick will have much less give and allow you greater variation in volume. Many ‘shredders’

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also prefer a thick pick that does not flex much, to improve picking accuracy,” Cunningham adds. Julian Lage, the young jazz-guitar wizard who is in the best possible sense a shredder, uses a heavy pick, BlueChip Picks’ TP 40 (1.00mm thick), when playing his 1939 Martin 000-18, Waterloo WL-14L, or 1930s Gibson L-5. “I feel like the pick helps determine so much about how hard or light I play or how to interact with the string in general,” he says. “It really liberates the guitar as well as my technique.” Lage’s occasional duo partner—Nels Cline, who also plays in Wilco and who travels effortlessly between musical worlds—favors an even thicker plectrum. He uses Dunlop’s fattest Ultex Standard (1.14mm) on everything from his 1930s Oahu koa flattop to his 1962 Gibson SJ-200. “Why extra heavy? For me, one can always play softer with anything, but if you want to really dig in, it’s got to be pretty heavy—no flapping! And I find the tone of a heavy pick to be far more appealing on any acoustic instrument,” he says. DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE PICKY If you find yourself overwhelmed by the many pick selections referenced in this article, just remember these simple guidelines: If you’re a strummer, go for thinner picks; if you traffic more in intricate single-note soloing, try for a heavier flatpick; and if your style combines these approaches, start with mediums. Remember: softer materials, warmer; harder, brighter. Go to your local guitar shop and emerge with a generous sampling of different pletctrums within these broad categories, and start experimenting: Pay close attention to how the picks vary in terms of their sonic and tactile nature, plus, just as important, how each one makes you play—does it enhance your technique or detract from it? Keep in mind, too, that the best pick for you might deviate from these general guidelines— only your own ears and fingers will know what’s best. You might not find a one-size-fitsall solution. “It’s OK to use different picks for different guitars and playing styles,” Cunningham says. “In fact, you should!” Aresti agrees: “You don’t have to love just one pick. I like to keep a tray with lots of different picks, so I can choose something that fits my mood or the sound I’m going for in any given situation, especially when it comes to recording.” Just as your playing evolves, so too might your plectrum needs, so remember: it always pays to be picky when it comes to choosing flatpicks. AG

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Heir to a guitar-making dynasty, luthier Manuel Delgado adds kindness and care to his instruments

HEARTSONG

40 August 2015

TEXT BY KAREN PETERSON PHOTOS BY BILL STEBER

Delgado “Monica” flamenco hybrid

Delgado “Marta” classical hybrid

or 87 years, the Delgado family has crafted guitars and traditional fretted instruments for musicians such as Andrès Segovia and Los Lobos, doing so primarily from their iconic East Los Angeles location. Today, third-generation Delgado luthier Manuel continues to carry on the family tradition, but not in L.A. He’s moved to Nashville, where the trained boxer, who once toyed with the idea of joining the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, is carving out his own niche as a master craftsman. In a world so often defined by its sharp edges, a conversation with the 43-year-old Delgado is pleasantly disarming. Deeply philosophical, and spiritual, he is keenly aware of his heritage as son and grandson of renowned classical guitar makers, and how that birthright informs who he is and how he works today. He’s a grateful man. “I feel I’ve been given a gift and look at it as a responsibility. I can take it and squander it, hide it or not share it, or I can look at what I have and do something good with it,” says Delgado, who custom builds both nylon- and steel-string guitars, adding, “It’s how I feel about everything.”

The Delgado family’s Candelas Guitars on Cesar Chavez Avenue in East Los Angeles is as legendary as its list of clients. It was established in 1948 by Delgado’s grandfather, Porfirio Delgado Flores, and his great-uncle, Candelario Delgado Flores (Candelas). The Delgado brothers began making guitars in a small Mexican village, moving to Juarez, Mexico, and then to East L.A. classical-guitar legend Andrés Segovia, a repeat customer, put the brothers on the map, and there was no turning back: pop, folk, country, and flamenco players such as Jackson Browne, José Feliciano, Burl Ives, Arlo Gutherie, Hoyt Axton, Charo, the Kingston Trio, and many others, bought and played Delgado guitars. Walt Disney called on the master craftsmen to build the original Mickey Mouse Club guitar. For Manuel Delgado, the move in 2005 to Nashville with his wife, singer and songwriter Julie Mooneyham, was an exodus and a struggle, he admits. It meant leaving behind strong familial and cultural roots, and, of course, the family business, to face the competitive reality of establishing his own Delgado Guitars from scratch—and doing so not just in any city, but in the anointed Music City. “I currently build more steel-string acoustic guitars over classical nylon, but I build a great many instruments that are used in Latin music that can have either nylon or steel strings,” Delgado says. “For example, the Cuban Tres I’m making has steel strings, the Bajo Quinto has steel strings, but the Jarana is nylon, the vihuela is nylon, guitarrón is nylon. “But I think being in Nashville, I get a lot more steel-string players over classical guitars.”

F

Left Candelario Delgado Flores in 1971

Delgado “Rosario” OM steel string

ARTISAN AS BUSINESSMAN That was then, this is now, and the past is behind him, save for his unwavering attachment to the memories and the lessons learned by the men he repeatedly invokes during the interview: his father, Candelario, who died in 1996, and grandfather, who passed in 1999. Both inspired how he approaches his artistry: always with respect, and always by hand. Unlike many modern luthiers, Delgado handcrafts his guitars and the 35 other folk instruments in his portfolio, painstakingly and throughout, often spending hours on just the details. He has no assistants. The exacting process limits the number of instruments he makes each year—20 to 25, he estimates. (Prices are generally in the $6,500 range.) But methodical, rapt attention to the task is the only way he can work; it’s a process, he says, that allows the “individual potential of the instrument to come out.” Much like a sculptor who sees the form within the raw material, Delgado says he has a conversation with the wood. “It tells me if it wants more thickness at the top or which way it wants to be planed,” he says. He also has a conversation with the person who has commissioned the instrument. Or, rather, an in-depth interview (sometimes, he jokes, it’s more like “spending time on the therapist’s couch”), the point of which is to discover who the future owner is, beyond the obvious. It’s about unearthing the details of the heart that might then be incorporated into his final design, whether it’s a type of wood more compatible in its tone with the client’s voice or, as in a recent commission, fashioning a guitar rife with symbolism. In the latter case, the personalized features included a 25-inch body span from nut to saddle, signifying the client’s 25 years of marriage, and a rosette designed as a three-banded AcousticGuitar.com 41

MANUEL DELGADO

crown of thorns, with South American bloodwood as a backing, here in honor of the man’s deep Christian faith. With his research in hand, Delgado begins to fashion his creations. “I begin with the end [product] in mind. I design and build it in my head, and play it in my heart before I start.” “I’m not intent on building what others are doing,” he adds. “If a client wants a guitar to look like a Stratocaster, I say, ‘Someone else is building them already.’ But if they want a Strat built from a unique angle, I say, ‘Now you’ve got my attention.’ I want to build what you can’t find somewhere else.” DEDICATED TO AUTHENTICITY Happiest in his shop, Delgado muses that “I could build all day long, Segovia playing in the background.” That shop, attached to the home he shares with his wife and two young daughters in the hip and historic East Nashville neighborhood, houses not only Western guitars—classical and 42 August 2015

steel string and his acoustic bass optimized for amplification—but also a catalog of world instruments, from flamenco guitars and ukuleles to the Irish bouzouki and classic Latin instruments like the guitarrón, vihuela, and the Cuban tres. For Delgado, it doesn’t matter what type of instrument he’s commissioned, or wants, to make—it goes back to the all-important initial conversation with the instrument and, in this case, an added analogy: “A surgeon can operate on someone from the US or Cambodia,” he says. “While each patient may have a different outer look and different DNA, the important things— the heartbeat, the blood flow—are the same.” To successfully render any instrument, from any culture, the craftsman must “respect and honor what makes them unique,” says Delgado, from the traditions that define them to the native wood that creates their tones, whether it’s a Western guitar or a bajo sexto, a stringed instrument originally from southern Mexico and now a fixture in Tex-Mex music.

‘I LEARNED FROM MY FATHER, AND WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES, I CAN STILL SEE MY FATHER’S AND GRANDFATHER’S HANDS, TELLING STORIES.’ For Delgado, it’s about building authenticity into all that he crafts, a mission that today involves a commitment to ensure the accuracy of his own musical culture, mariachi, which has exploded in popularity in classrooms and communities across the United States. In Nashville, too: just before he spoke with Acoustic Guitar, Delgado had been at a meeting about the prop o s e d P l a z a M a r i a c h i — M u s i c C i t y, a 60,000-square-foot mixed-use plaza complete with an entertainment stage. The renaissance of the joyous sounds of mariachi is good news for all involved, Latino or not, but with the caveat that mariachi, like any musical genre, sounds best when played with its native instruments: most used in schools aren’t the traditional stringed instruments, like the guitarrón and vihuela, which make mariachi soar, but with substitute standard guitars.

MANUEL DELGADO

A Birdseye maple headstock overlay on a Delgado “Guitarra de Golpe”

B

A

B Delgado “Hutzel” square neck resophonic with a Sitka spruce top, African ebony figerboard, Honduras mahogany neck C Andrés Segovia with Candelario Delgado when they met at the Sheraton West in Los Angeles, 1960s.

C

In 2006, Delgado opened a second business, La Tradición Music, with the goal of handcrafting true mariachi instruments and, ambitiously, pricing them affordably. It was a tough business model to actualize, but in 2012, La Tradición Music partnered with national instrument dealer West Music, which serves the education market. While the instruments are not fully handcrafted, Delgado assures they’re up to his high standards. DEFINING HIS IDENTITY As a child, Delgado hung out in the family shop, at first building wooden toys, then graduating to handcrafting his first guitar at age 12. Still, following in his family footsteps wasn’t always in the forefront. There was a period in his life when the idea of going into law enforcement struck a chord. His father had been a boxing coach for the L.A.P.D. After his death, Manuel stepped in as his replacement. He was planning to attend the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Academy. 44 August 2015

Yet at one point, he realized that his heritage “was my identity. It is who I am, I can’t separate the two.” His father’s passing hit hard, and as he talked he recalled synchronistic moments in recent years when the “who I am” became abundantly clear— seeing photographs of his father when he was Manuel’s age today; remembering that his father had once thought of relocating to Nashville (“It felt like I’d received a blessing from dad,” he says); getting a call from Arlo Gutherie, who learned of his Nashville shop and wanted to know if he’d do some repairs on the guitar Delgado’s father had made him years ago. “I learned from my father,” Delgado says, “and when I close my eyes, I can still see my father’s and grandfather’s hands, telling stories.” Now his hands are telling the stories, notable among them is one that stands in homage to what else he learned from his mentors—“to be respectful of others’ struggles.” Following the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, Delgado began

D

D Delgado “Monica” flamenco Hybrid model. Spruce top with maple back and sides, Honduras mahogany neck, African ebony fingerboard with rope inlay

creating his charity “Unity Guitar.” Colored in patriotic stars-and-stripes, it is built of wood from around the world: African ebony for the fretboard, Honduras mahogany for the neck, Canadian spruce on top, and US maple on the bridge, sides, and back. The sides and back of the guitar display autographs signed by some of popular music’s biggest names: Glen Campbell, Emmylou Harris, Smokey Robinson, the Dixie Chicks, Earl Scruggs, Dwight Yoakam, and Los Lobos’ Louie Perez and David Hidalgo, as well as other Latin entertainers, such as actress Alejandra Guzmán and rockers Jaguares. The kick-off was held at a street party in front of the Delgado’s East L.A. shop, where eclectic funk-rockers Ozomatli performed for free. When the auction was over and more than $35,000 was raised, Delgado donated the money to help families of undocumented workers, of any ethnicity, who died in the collapsed Twin Towers. “Kindness and love, that’s what music is about,” he says. AG

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KITS 46 August 2015

Rosewood Dreadnought Guitar Kit with Bolt-on Neck from Stewart MacDonald

No matter what your level of ambition, there’s a kit to help you build your own acoustic guitar By Greg Olwell

bout three years ago, Rick Gunn ran into something that happens to guitarists all of the time: he played a guitar he wanted and couldn’t afford. However, instead of just longing for that Martin HD-28, he realized that he might be able to build one himself. Since building your first guitar from scratch might be a little too much for someone with just basic woodworking skills, like Gunn had at the time, he began investigating how to build the guitar he wanted from a kit. After a couple of months of research online and several consultations with sellers, he settled on a Martin HD-style kit from Blues Creek Guitars. “When I first started, the idea was building a few of them as cheaply as I could,” says Gunn, an accountant from Cumming, Georgia. “Now, it’s an obsession.” He’s not alone. Many guitarists are eager to try their hands at building a guitar. For many, it gets in the blood and becomes a life-changing event. What began for Gunn as a way to get the guitar he wanted has turned into a sideline of guitarbuilding from scratch and repairing guitars under his own brand, Rose Creek Guitars. Call it a success story, a late-blooming obsession, or a hobby run amok, but building your next guitar from a kit could be the most musically rewarding thing you do. “This is like the ultimate build. You build it and then you can make music with it,” Gunn says. “I love the sound my guitar makes—and when I play my first guitar, I know it’s mine.” Just make sure your skill set includes patience, especially for your initial build. “If anyone has any woodworking experience, I think they can build a guitar,” he adds. “You just have to take your time.”

A

GETTING STARTED Before you order a kit and start building it on your kitchen table, count on doing research— lots of research—planning, and some soulsearching. You’ll need to know your motivation: Are you building a guitar to save money? To learn how they’re made and maybe deepen your love of lutherie? Or maybe you’re considering a new hobby or even a career change? Knowing your motive can help you decide which kit might be best to begin your first build. Some are designed for first-time builders and will be comparatively easy to build, requiring only basic gluing and clamping and fretwork, while others will be way more intensive. To begin, you need a vision. Since you can ultimately do a lot of customization, your vision

doesn’t have to be the exact guitar you end up with, but you’ll need to make some basic decisions before you make your purchases. Almost every kit on the market is a tribute of a classic Martin model, so you’ll be making decisions between dreadnought, OM, and OOO shapes and basic woods you want in your guitar (rosewood or mahogany backs, with a spruce top). Many kits are available with either a bolt-on neck, which is much easier to set correctly on your first build, or a more traditional dovetail joint. The kits you should consider for your first build are the ones that contain every part you’ll need to complete the guitar, from pre-shaped parts like a machined neck, pre-bent sides and binding, to shaped braces with the gluing locations mapped out on the back and top. Several of the suppliers also offer kits that have less work done beforehand, but you might want to consider those more advanced kits after building at least one guitar. You’ll either have the bug and need to build more, or know that it’s not for you. You’ll also want to check which parts are included in each kit. Though some kits include hardware, like tuners and strings, others do not, so plan accordingly. You’ll also need to decide and budget for adhesives and finishing materials. COMPARE THE COST Many people try to do it on the cheap when they’re first starting out, primarily because they’re not sure of their level of commitment. Plan on spending $400 to $600 on a kit, depending on the supplier and materials, plus maybe another $100 on finishing materials (if you do it yourself). Tools will be the next most important—and largest—investment. Beyond the cost of the kit, your biggest start-up expense is going to be those tools. Building a guitar, even from a mostly complete kit, is going to take proper tools and skimping on those never saves money nor time. It’s the one area that Gunn, as well as Lars Vendel, a guitar maker from Kil, Sweden, who got started by making ten kits, both wished they had spent more on at the beginning. Both agree that the best bang-for-the-buck investments an aspiring builder can make are purchasing the right tools to build a better guitar: proper lutherie tools, like files; radius sanding disks for the guitar model you’re building; and molds to hold everything in place. Tools, including clamps, can easily set you back another couple of hundred dollars.

The J45 kit offered by Kenneth Michael Guitars

WHERE TO BUY A KIT There are many sources for acoustic-guitar kits. Nearly all of them are Martin-style guitars in the always popular dreadnought, OM, or OOO shapes. Martin also offers genuine kits, as well as replacement and upgrade parts like inlays, through the Guitar Maker’s Connection portion of its 1833 Store. Blues Creek Guitars bluescreekguitars.com Kenneth Michael Guitars kennethmichaelguitars.com Luthier’s Mercantile lmii.com Midwest Guitar Shop midwestguitar.com Steven Kovacik Guitars guitar-repair.com Stewart-MacDonald stewmac.com AcousticGuitar.com 47

SPECIAL FOCUS DIY GUITAR KITS

WELCOME TO THE BUILDER COMMUNITY tionforum.com Though kits come with instruction books and sometimes DVDs, these may not be enough to nail the finer points of building or to guide your tool choices or plans for customizing your guitar. But you can gain the wisdom of others through online forums. These sites are also great for emotional support and inspiration as you manage the agony and ecstasy of slugging through your first kit—or tenth. Here are a few inner-luthiernurturing resources for kitminded builders. Acoustic Guitar Construction Forum For kit builders and scratch builders: acousticguitarconstruc-

48 August 2015

Kit Guitars Forum A very active community for kit builders: kitguitarsforum.com Luthier’s Mercantile In addition to its parts supply, LMI has a helpful Kit FAQ on its site: lmii.com Official Luthier’s Forum has a Kit Building 101 forum full of activity and tips: luthiersforum.com Stewart-MacDonald stewmac.com

UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES No one said building a guitar from a kit would be easy, but the challenge is part of the reward, right? Presuming you have some basic woodworking skills, you’re still bound to find some challenges. Even if your first kit is mostly just gluing the pieces together, there are still areas that remain a challenge even to experienced builders, and these can make or break a build. Patience may be the biggest challenge a builder faces. You’re going to need plenty of it because your first guitar is going to take a while to build. Gunn and Vendel both report that their first guitars took over 100 hours to complete. Vendel, who used to work in auto-body

CALL IT A LATE-BLOOMING OBSESSION OR A HOBBY RUN AMOK, BUT BUILDING YOUR NEXT GUITAR FROM A KIT COULD BE THE MOST MUSICALLY REWARDING THING YOU DO.

Process pics from the J200 kit offered by Kenneth Michael guitars

repair before launching his new career as a guitar builder, warns against taking shortcuts. “I never made any instruments before this, and it was way more difficult than I ever could imagine,” he says. “After all the custom cars and trucks I’ve built, this is the hardest! But, if you do it step-by-step, the proper way, you shall be rewarded.” Getting the neck angle correct is crucial and ended up being the most time-consuming part of Gunn’s first build. “I timed myself on my first guitar and it took me about 24 hours to get the neck right,” he says of the shimming, sanding, and reshimming he had to do to get the correct geometry. The good news, it gets better with each build—he says he can now do it in about 45 minutes. Finishing is another big challenge faced in each build. Some call it the Achilles heel of lutherie because it’s so difficult, and well, you’re never finished because it’s always a challenge to get it right, for large factories and small builders alike. Some kit builders choose to send their guitars out to a professional for finishing, while others do it themselves, usually starting with spray cans of lacquer before moving on to more sophisticated finishing equipment as their interest and skills grow.

Smokey darkness

FIXING THE MISTAKES While the kits may come with everything you need to build a guitar (except tools), you might make a mistake and need to replace a part. Most suppliers offer spares for every part, so if you trim a brace too short, or if you just end up with a bad piece of wood (it’s organic material and each piece is different, after all), you can usually replace it easily. IS IT WORTH THE TROUBLE? Considering the good quality of many affordable acoustic guitars on the market and the value that they can offer a player, is there any way that building a guitar from a kit could be worth it? “Definitely,” Gunn exclaims. “My first one, I spent $500 on the kit and $100 on the finish, and I’ve had people offer me $2,000 for it, and it’s not even close to being nice, finish-wise. Each one gets better as you go along. Do you spend $3,000 or more on a guitar, or spend $600 or $700 in parts and build it yourself?” Vendel, on the other hand, suggests that it’s worth the effort, but not if you’re trying to save money by building one guitar. With the costs to get started, especially the purchase of tools, you’re going to end up with an expensive guitar, but it’s worth the personal satisfaction. “The guitar will end up being pretty expensive,

Escape the expected. Experience graphite.

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AcousticGuitar.com 49

SPECIAL FOCUS DIY GUITAR KITS

but it will be your sound,” he says. “If you have some handy skills, you end up with the one and only guitar you want to play the rest of your life.” And for many builders, it’s the quiet focus and determination that it takes to complete a guitar that are some of building’s greatest rewards. It’s wood therapy, according to John F. Hall, Jr., moderator of a forum dedicated to nurturing the community of kit-guitar builders. He’s also the owner of Blues Creek Guitars, a popular supplier of acoustic-guitar kits. For many who get into building, each guitar is better than the one before, and the next guitar is going to be the best.

Documenting your build is another way to help memorialize your efforts. Gunn, who has since moved on from kits to scratch builds (he’s on his 26th guitar), photographs each guitar throughout his build, and puts together a photo album using Shutterfly to accompany each guitar he makes and sells. Once you’ve taken the plunge and turned your luthier dreams into a reality, the next question is what to build next? It could be another guitar, a ukulele, a mandolin, or who knows what. After you’ve invested your time and money into getting started, it’d be a waste not to make more. AG

GETTING SCHOOLED Bill Cory’s self-published manuals, Building Martin-style Kit Guitars and Complete Guide to Building Kit Acoustic Guitars, have proven to be popular titles for people delving into kit building. Both are available on his website as print or E-books: kitguitarmanuals.com The Guild of American Luthiers is also a good resource for links to makers’ websites detailing builds, online guitarmaking classes, and other helpful organizations and periodicals. For details, visit luth.org HD28 kit offered by Kenneth Michael Guitars

50 August 2015

The Fishman of Acoustic Preamps Our new Platinum Pro EQ and Platinum Stage universal preamps are designed for players looking for a pro-quality preamp/DI for their acoustic guitar, violin, cello, bass, resonator guitar, banjo, mandolin or other acoustic instruments that may be too small or too precious to have an onboard preamp. Class-A analog circuitry makes it a preamp… Great sound makes it a Fishman. Platinum Series Preamps from Fishman – For over 30 years, the world’s #1 maker of acoustic instrument pickups & preamps.

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fishman.com | 800.FISHMAN

ACOUSTIC GUITAR’S 2015

GUITAR MAKER

DIRECTORY Bischoff Guitars 5150 Deerfield Rd. Eau Claire, WI 54701 (715) 834-3751

Bourgeois Guitars (207) 755-0003 [email protected] bourgeoisguitars.com

Celebrating 40 years of making guitars and friendships, one at a time. Also offering a full line of repair work.

The Future of Vintage Tone. Each of our instruments is individually hand voiced for optimum balance. Our Aged Tone ™ torrefaction technology helps us achieve stunning vintage sound from day one.

Bowerman Guitars

Brian Howard

63379 O.B. Riley Rd. Bend, OR 97701 (541) 460-2424 [email protected] bowermanguitars.com

608 W. Main St. Hummelstown, PA 17036 (717) 566-9883 [email protected] brianhowardguitars.com

Jayson Bowerman handcrafts custom acoustic guitars, tenor family instruments, octave mandolins and F-5 style mandolins with attention to detail, emphasis on wide dynamic range and exquisite tone.

Custom made to be played! A beautiful blend of golden-era design and modern playability. Responsive and dynamic instruments made entirely by hand in my small lutherie, with the attention to detail that can only be found in a handcrafted guitar.

Faith Guitars

Lowden Guitars

Connolly Music, US Distributor 8 Vernon Valley Rd. East Northport, NY 11731 (800) 644-5268 [email protected] faithguitars.com

34 Down Business Pk. County Down, BT30 9UP Ireland +44 28 4461 9161 [email protected] georgelowden.com

Faith Guitars, led by world-renowned British luthier, Patrick James Eggle, was voted UK’s Best Acoustic Guitar for the past three years. Solid tonewood is central to their sound.

52 August 2015

George Lowden began making his acoustic guitars in Ireland in 1974, selling them worldwide through specialist dealers since 1981. Twelve craftsmen, including two of his sons, build Lowden guitars by hand under his supervision.

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Greg Brandt

Handmade Guitars by Bob Gramann

12017 Martha St. Valley Village, CA 91607 (818) 980-9348 [email protected] gregbrandtguitars.com

122 Laurel Ave. Fredericksburg, VA 22408 (504) 898-0611 [email protected] bobgramann.com/guitar

Building fine classical guitars in the Los Angeles area for over 35 years. Using only the finest, aged tone woods from around the world. Custom design work and repairs accepted.

Handmade steel-string guitars with a soft touch, pleasant feel, and big fulltoned sound. All-domestic wood models available. Prices from $2,500. Also: Plunky open-backed banjos and loud acoustic bass guitars.

Hense Happy Turtle Picks

Hoffman Guitars

happyturtlepick.de

2219 East Franklin Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55404 (612) 338-1079 [email protected] hoffmanguitars.com

The feel and sound of turtle shell, but legal because they are made from Milchstein. Made in Germany. We are looking for distributors!

Since 1971, Charlie Hoffman has built over 600 guitars. Charlie enjoys working with customers to create instruments which reflect the customer’s needs and desires.

Journey Instruments Austin, TX (512) 689-9007 journeyinstruments.com Precision instruments for your musical journey. Never check your guitar again! Our Overhead™ (carbon or wood) collapses into carry-on dimensions 22x14x9” with a premium backpack for all your gear!

Karol Custom Guitars 3936 Seebring Cres. Missassauga, ONT L5L 3X9 Canada (905) 607-9397 [email protected] karol-guitars.com Celebrating 15 years of custom building presentation grade instruments – 6 and 12 string acoustics, harp guitars, baritones, doublenecks, electrics – Hand built using the finest materials. Offering hands-on building instruction – small class size, relaxed atmosphere – check website for availability and scheduling.

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

AcousticGuitar.com 53

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Kraus Guitars PO Box 5 Middleport, NY 14105 (716) 735-4047 [email protected] krausguitars.com Highest quality guitars made with an emphasis on handwork. This one man shop produces instruments with a reverance for the luthiers tradition.

Leo Posch Custom Stringed Instruments 5981 Wellman Rd. McLouth, KS 66054 (913) 796-6400 [email protected] leoposch.com Leo combines traditional materials and workmanship with innovative features and designs. Superior customer service and craftsmanship since 1980.

Pellerin Guitars

Phoenix Mandolins

1244, St-Desire Thetford Mines, Quebec G6H 1M6, Canada (418) 335-9471 [email protected] pelleringuitars.com

159 Saint George Rd. South Thomaston, ME 04858 (207) 354-0397 [email protected] phoenixmandolins.com

We build high-end steel string traditional and harp guitars with responsive lows, clear mids, and resonant highs. Harmonic balance and definition, at both high and low volumes, are what make Pellerin instruments exceptional.

Pimentel & Sons Guitar Makers 3316 Lafayette Dr. N.E. Albuquerque, NM 87107 (505) 884-1669 [email protected] pimentelguitars.com The Pimentel family has been making custom classical, flamenco, acoustic guitars, and mandolins completely by hand for over 60 years.

54 August 2015

Phoenix Mandolins

Building professional-quality mandolins renowned for craftsmanship, playability, and tone. Particular expertise with light-string and jazz models.

Rozawood Havirska 518 Kolin, CZ28002, Czech Republic +420 607 193328 [email protected] rozawood.cz

Rob Ickes, Jerry Douglas, and Mike Marshall are well-known U.S. players of Rozawood resophonic guitars, octave mandolins, and mandocellos made by Roman Zajicek, one of the finest European guitar makers. Flattop and tenor, terz and baritone guitars are the next part of Rozawood production.

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Taylor Guitars 1980 Gillespie Way El Cajon, CA 92020 (619) 258-1207 taylorguitars.com

Taylor Guitars blends an innovative use of modern technology with a master craftsman’s attention to detail. Under the direction of Master Guitar Designer Andy Powers, Taylor continues to offer new innovations in guitar design for the ultimate playing experience.

Thorell Guitars 43 S 100 W Logan, UT 84319 (435) 713-9507 [email protected] thorellguitars.com Ryan’s guitars are known for their unique styling, tone, and world class playability. His hand built guitars are owned by some of the best players in the world including Frank Vignola and Tommy Emmanuel

Veteran Guitar and Musical Instrument Co. Texarkana, USA [email protected] veteranguitar.com

Tim Reede Guitars (612) 721-8032 reedeguitars.com Classic beauty. Compelling sound. Uncompromising quality. Presented at the most prestigious guitar shows in North America and featured in the book “Meeting the Makers.”

Handmade guitars from the highest quality woods and materials. A disabled veteran-owned business. Our Veteran model guitar is embellished with personaliation recognizing that veteran’s military service. Also available, the Ammo Box and Bohica cigar box instruments.

KNOW YOUR INSTRUMENT. PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT. SOUND YOUR BEST. We predict that some day all new guitars will come equipped with a copy of the Acoustic Guitar Owner’s Manual. After all, you’ve made a big investment in your guitar. You deserve to know how it works, how to maintain its value, and how to keep it sounding great. With this definitive guide, you’ll become a more savvy acoustic guitar owner and repair-shop customer.

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“Illustrated with many drawings and close-up photos, the book is as readable as it is informative, and is another ‘must have’ if you own and play an acoustic guitar.” —Vintage Guitar “Guitar junkies and novices alike will find much interesting and useful information in this book.” —Wood & Steel

AcousticGuitar.com 55

PREMIERING THIS JUNE

|

ERNIEBALL.COM

THE WHITE BUFFALO PLAYS ERNIE BALL ACOUSTIC STRINGS

NEW ALBUM COMING THIS SUMMER THEWHITEBUFFALO.COM

60 Basics

Exploring new chromatic approaches

66 Acoustic Classic

A dose of the blues with ‘The Unfortunate Rake’

68 Acoustic Classic Sam Cooke’s soulful tune ‘Good Times’

PLAY

FRANCO VOGT

Finding vocal pitches in chords

61 Weekly Workout

Happy Traum, p. 70 AcousticGuitar.com 57

SONGCRAFT

Lucky 13

Ron Sexsmith delivers the most upbeat album of his career BY KENNY BERKOWITZ

on Sexsmith does most of his songwriting on foot, walking the long way to a swimming pool that’s only a few blocks from his house, picking up a cup of coffee, and thinking all along the way. That’s how he wrote the songs on his first album, Ron Sexsmith (1995), while he was working as a messenger, and that’s how he’s written the new Carousel One, his 13th. Named after the LAX baggage claim where he picks up his luggage, it’s the most upbeat album of his career, following the health scare that inspired 2013’s Forever Endeavor and the pop dreams of 2011’s Long Player Late Bloomer. For the first time, he’s working with producer Jim Scott, who came recommended by Barenaked Ladies, recording the main tracks with a quartet of celebrated studio musicians—Bob Glaub (bass), Jon Graboff (guitars, steel), Don Heffington (drums), and John McGinty, (keyboards)— then coming back later to overdub a set of vintage guitars, keyboards, and children’s toys. Like all of his best work, covered famously by Michael Bublé, k.d. lang, and Rod Stewart, Carousel One has a mix of folk, pop, and soul, leaning toward ballads of love and loss. What makes it different is the playfulness that underlies these songs, whether he’s writing about the sun rising outside his window in Toronto, the portrait of a Saint Bernard on his kitchen wall, or, as on “Before the Light Is Gone,” the process of songwriting itself, which begins with the daily routine of walking to work: “I better get myself up/every morning brings another song/ with a melody to develop/I’m all in before the light is gone.”

R

Ron Sexsmith 58 August 2015

Thirteen albums in 20 years. How do you stay so prolific? It’s what I do, I just write. I remember when my first record came out, I was getting pretty good reviews, and all of a sudden, I felt like I was under pressure: What was I going to do for my second record? So I wrote, and in fact, every record since then has been written while I was waiting for the new record to come out, just trying to stay ahead of myself. It’s never been easy for me to write songs, but I apply myself, and thankfully, I’ve had all these ideas and they haven’t stopped coming. The songwriting process is the subject of “Before the Light Is Gone.” Where do you write? How do you write? I have certain rituals. I have my coffee walk in the morning, and that’s when my mind tends to wander a bit, and I’ll have these melodies pop into my head. Then, when I get back home, I’ll mess around on guitar or piano and develop it into something.

‘I really like the feeling of flesh on the string. It just feels like you become one with the instrument.’ How do you choose? Whatever is closer at the time. It’s usually piano, because I don’t have to take the piano out of its case, but most of the songs on this album were written on acoustic guitar. I’ll have the whole song practically written in my head before I even pick up an instrument, and then I’ll just start banging away, finding which chords go with what I’m singing. And that’ll change the song. How so? Things change once you start playing an instrument. The song gets better, and sometimes I’ll find some passing chords or a different bass note. That’s the fun part, when the song for the most part is done, but then you add these little frills, or maybe you’ll come up with an intro that you hadn’t thought of until you picked up the guitar. Once the instrument comes into it, the song becomes more real. It’s not just something in your head. Describe your approach to playing guitar. I don’t use a pick. I have this thing I call “the claw,” which is mostly my thumb and first finger. Sometimes I’m using the top of my finger like a pick, and other times I’m just plucking the bass notes and picking out a melody from underneath the chord. Basically, it started because I used to hate it when the pick fell in the soundhole. I’d be playing these gigs

and I’d have to stop and shake my guitar until the pick fell out. And I never used a pick when I was at home, so I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll just play without a pick.” So after I developed enough calluses to do that, I haven’t really looked back. Because I really like the feeling of flesh on the string. It just feels like you become one with the instrument. And again, it helped me to develop my style. I think you’re trying to find this thing that you can call your own, and my guitar playing is a part of that. When did these songs come together? I was waiting for Forever Endeavor to come out, sitting at home and writing new songs. Then, when it was released, I didn’t really feel the album was doing very well, so I decided to just start working on the new record. And by the time I got to Jim Scott, I had about two and a half batches of songs, and it was just a matter of picking the ones we liked, flying to Los Angeles, and starting to record. The musicians had gotten there the night before I arrived, and they already had their levels, so when I walked in the studio, Jim showed me to my own little vocal booth and asked, “Is there some threechord country song we can do right now, just to hear how everything sounds?” And that’s what you hear [on one of the album’s two bonus tracks, the Charley Pride song] “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?” Take one. That’s the very first thing we did after I walked through the door, and right away, it just felt good. What’s it like to record an album with people you don’t know? That’s always been the case for me on every record. All the producers I’ve ever worked with tend to have a posse of musicians that they like to use, and I’m just happy to let them pick people they’re confident in. Because it’s so expensive to record, you don’t want to be on take 30 because the drummer’s not getting it. And it gives each album its individual character, recording in different places with different musicians. What could I learn about songwriting by listening to this album? Every songwriter has their own idea of what a good song is. I’m very old school, very old-fashioned about it. I love structure, I love being as concise as possible. I love songs in the classical sense, all those old writers like Johnny Mercer—you’re never scratching your head, wondering what they’re singing about. I like songs to be strong melodically and lyrically, and then hopefully you find the right surroundings once you bring musicians into it. A good song will start somewhere and end someplace else. But the song remains intact. I could play it on guitar and it would still sound like the song I started with. You can completely strip it down to the core and it still holds up. That’s the only way I know how to do it. AG AcousticGuitar.com 59

BASICS

Sing Out! Next Steps

BY OCTOBER CRIFASI

How to find the pitches you need in chords

recently had a student ask what more she could do to improve her singing and playing skills. Even though we had done a great deal of work to solidify her sense of timing and coordination of matching lyric with downbeat, something was still a bit off. The stumbling block, she came to realize, had more to do with singing the melody in the appropriate key than playing and singing in time. Ear training is as important to the sing-andplay arena as frequent work with a metronome is, though you need not look far to find the pitches you need, as vocal melodies often come from the related triad, or three notes, of the chord that accompanies it. The key is to train your ear to recognize these important notes and use them as a guide to find where to start.

I

FIND THE FIRST NOTE Use an easy and familiar song for this exercise. A song with only three chords and a simple melody is a good choice—something like “When the Saints Go Marching In” in the key of G, for example. Start with the chorus, as the first few notes are usually one of the three notes in the triad. In “When the Saints,” the first chord is G, as is the first note of the melody. Holding down the open G chord, strum once and let the chord ring. Now, keeping the chord pressed down, play the third string one time and hum the note you hear. You are now humming the root, or first note, of the G major triad and also the first note of the chorus. Repeat this a few times and then transition from humming to actually singing the note out loud either as “la” or “g.” Strum the chord again and see if you can sing the note over the chord without having to play the third string for pitch. Once you’ve sung it successfully a few times, switch out “la” with the actual lyric of “Oh.” 60 August 2015

SING IT THROUGH With the first note now in place, strum the G chord again and let it ring while you sing the entire phrase “Oh when the saints” over it. The reason this song is an excellent template for the exercise is because the lyrics “Oh,” “when,” and “saints” follow the G major triad in perfect order: G, B and D. Practice singing “Oh” playing the sixth string (G), “when” with the fifth string (B), and “saints” with the fourth (D); or if those are too low for you, play the same notes an octave higher, open third and second strings providing the G and B. To play the D, move your third finger to the third fret of the second string.

Ear training is as important to the sing-and-play arena as frequent work with a metronome is. When confident with the melody, try singing the first few lines of lyric while slowly strumming or picking the G chord as you would normally. When it is time to switch to a new chord, in this case D major, hold the new chord and play each string to see if you can hear the note that comes next in the melody. For “When the Saints,” the note will be A, or the note you are holding on the third string when you make a D chord. Continue through the song this way and see how often the notes you sing line up with the notes you play in a chord. While this method won’t necessarily work for every song, the more work you do with easy songs, the easier finding more complex melodies will become down the road. AG

WEEKLY WORKOUT

Exploring New Chromatic Approaches

BY SEAN MCGOWAN

Add a breath of fresh air to stale solos and progressions

WEEK ONE Start with two common chromatic approaches. The first approach illustrated in Ex. 1 is called a chromatic passing tone. This is simply the concept of connecting two scale tones with a half step in between. In this example of a line based on F major, the G# on the “and” of beat 2 is a chromatic passing tone that connects G and A. Similarly, the Db on the “and” of the fourth beat connects the scale tones D and C. Notice that chromatic passing tones can move in either direction, ascending or descending, and often appear on the off-beats with regard to their rhythmic placement. They can really create the essence of climbing up or falling down into the next note in a melodic passage. Ex. 2 shows another type of approach using chromatic neighbor tones. Neighbor tones are the notes on either side of a chord tone, and they may be a whole or half step above the chord tone, but

hallmark of guitar styles is the use of chromaticism in improvised solos and melodic lines in general. Chromatic ideas are prevalent in jazz, classical, blues, country, bluegrass—you name it. The concept of chromaticism is essentially the use of notes (and even chords) moving in half steps that create musical tension and color while passing between or approaching inside scale or chord tones. The use of wellplaced chromaticism can add a breath of fresh air to an otherwise stale-sounding diatonic (only the notes of the key/major scale, for example) solo or chord progression. In this Weekly Workout, you’ll look at some common chromatic approaches, and some ideas for incorporating them into your improvised solos and songwriting. Chromatic scales and those that incorporate chromatic approaches also serve as great guitar warm-ups and additions to your technique regimen.

A

WEEK 1 Week

One Ex. 2 Chromatic Neighbor Tones

Ex. 1 Chromatic Passing Tones

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will always be a half step below the chord tone. In this way, they are referred to as chromatic lower neighbor tones. Ex. 2 outlines an F major triad featuring chromatic neighbors under the third (the G# in beat 2), the fifth (B on the “and” of 3) and the root (E on the “and” of bar 2, beat 2). The use of upper and lower chromatic neighbor tones outlining triad arpeggios is common in the compositions of Mozart, and standard vocabulary in the solos of great jazz guitarists such as Django Reinhardt and Joe Pass. Ex. 3 and 4 feature patterns for major and minor arpeggios, each complemented with neighbor tones. Ex. 3a shows an F major arpeggio; Ex. 3b depicts the same pattern, adding upper and lower neighbor tones surrounding each chord tone (F, A, C). Ex. 4a demonstrates a D minor arpeggio; 4b adds the neighbors. Notice that the upper neighbor tones may be a half or whole step above the chord tone, but they are

8

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AcousticGuitar.com 61

˙

Week One WEEKLY Ex.WORKOUT 1 Chromatic

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0 1 2 Experiment 3 with different articulations for each example. For instance, add slides and hammer-on and3a pull-off combinations Ex. instead of picking every note. This F type of exercise will strengthen your fretting hand while improving your sense of phrasing.

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62 August 2015

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that feature chromaticism. The first scale in Ex. 1 is the chromatic scale, which features every single note in the span of an octave. This is a powerful warm-up 6 5 technical 4 5 10 8 7 and 8 utilizes 13 the fretboard in an interesting way. These patterns are

10

Ex. 5a

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Ex. 6 offers another line over an F chord using both approaches. This one features a Db chromatic note connecting scale tones D and C in the eighth-note pickup, and the B and G# notes 0 1 are lower 2 neighbors 3 of2C and A in the following 2 3 measure. Ex. 7 features a3 highly chromatic ascending line using both approaches. These will sound great over major or dominant chords, and also give you a nice workout due to the tricky sidestepping motion that half steps create.

Ex. 4b

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bœ œ #œ œ œ œ nœ œ ˙ n œ œ œ œ WEEK TWO œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ nœ œ This week, work through some notable scales

Ex. 4a

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always scale tones, for example, drawn from the parent major or minor scale. Lower neighbors, on the other hand, are always a half step below the chord tone, and chromatic in nature. Of 2 1 1 course, neighbors 2 you could play only lower 2 1 2 3 3 approaching chord tones in half steps for a unique sound. All of these patterns are movable—try playing them in several different Ex. 3bkeys for a thorough fretboard workout. Now, take a quick look at how to incorporate these two approaches into lead lines. Ex. 5a shows a simple melodic line from an F major scale (F G A Bb C D E); Ex. 5b adds some chromatic approaches to create a bluessoaked flavor. The Cb on the “and” of beat 1 is a chromatic passing tone between C and B b, while the G# is a lower chromatic neighbor to A, 8 6 5 6 the third of the F chord. 7 5 4 5 8 7 6 7 10 8 7 8

BEGINNERS’

6

Ex. 2 Chromatic Neighbor Tones

Passing Tones

3

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WEEKTwo 2 Week Ex. 1 Chromatic Scale

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VIDEO LESSON ACOUSTICGUITAR.COM

movable; Ex. 1 shows an A chromatic scale. If you employ a four-note-per-string pattern, you’ll use every finger on the fretting hand, and gradually work your way up the fretboard at a reverse 45-degree angle. This will help your position shifting as well as finger independence. Ex. 2 illustrates the same scale but in three octaves, with a symmetrical fingering pattern. You will still use 1-2-3-4 for the essential fingering, but shift that pattern every other string (in this example, the A, G, and high-E strings). The next three examples show scales frequently used in jazz solos (hence the names of the first two) but are effective in any style of solo. Each one is based on a common scale or mode, with one added chromatic note. Ex. 3 is sometimes known as the bebop dominant scale. It’s essentially a Mixolydian mode (1 2 3 4 5 6 b7)

with an added seventh, creating a chromatic approach between the root and flat seventh. Ex. 4, known as the bebop major scale, adds a chromatic note between the fifth and sixth degrees of a major scale. Finally, in Ex. 5 we have the Dorian mode (1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7) with an added flatted fifth. These three scales will work beautifully over dominant, major, and minor chords respectively. Jazz guitarist Pat Martino uses the scales to great effect in his solos. The concept of adding an extra note serves two purposes: to create a nice color of chromatic motion within the scale, and to even out the rhythmic phrasing of the scale. Diatonic scales have seven notes, and will end on the offbeat if you play them straight up or down. By adding an extra note, you can start a scale on a downbeat, and complete the line on a downbeat.

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Move these scale patterns through different keys, and try coming up with your own scale patterns. Be sure to write them down if you find a pattern that works well for you.

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BEGINNERS’

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B Ex. 3 Bebop Dominant Scale

œ #œ nœ #œ œ #œ nœ #œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ # œ œ œ & #œ nœ #œ œ œ #œ œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ #œ œ B

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AcousticGuitar.com 63

Ex. 4 Bebop Major Scale

WEEKLY WORKOUT

œ #œ œ nœ #œ nœ #œ & b #œ 2

3

4

1

5

2

3

n

4

After you get this solo under

your fingers, try playing it B

over a backing track in Garageband, or use a looping device to record the chords. That way, you’ll hear the chromatic lines in context over the chords.

BEGINNERS’ 6 7 8

TIP 4 B

9

10

11

12

Add some different swing/ blues rhythms to this basic progression, and experiment with this chromatic chord Ex. 3 Bebop Dominant Scale approach on some tunes in your repertoire.

nœ #œ nœ #œ n˙.

œ

œ nœ #œ nœ #œ

œ nœ #œ nœ #œ nœ #œ

nœ #œ & #œ

nœ œ œ #œ œ #œ nœ #œ œ œ # œ œ # œ œ œ #œ

WEEK THREE WEEK FOUR Now focus on building a solo over a common You can incorporate chromatic approaches in I–IV–V chord progression. This example essenyour chord and rhythm playing as well. Work tially outlines a 12-bar blues progression in the through the same 12-bar blues progression in the 5 key of G, and you can see how accessible these key of G, but add chromatic approaches to each 7 device 8 9that 10will chromatic concepts are in roots and acoustic basic chord. This is a wonderful 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 music. Many of the lines will5sound familiar, as work in most blues and rock progressions; the 6 7 8 they’ve been around in American music since classic “Stormy Monday Blues” features plenty of the late-19th century, in early blues, ragtime, chromatic motion in the harmony. and jazz. The first four bars illustrate the use of There are different ways to approach chrochromatic passing tones, effectively connecting matic harmony, but the most common and the scale tones of each chord, while adding effective way in this context is to simply some extra flair to the lines. approach each chord by a half step above or Measures 5 and 8 both feature variations on below. This will work with any type of chord the neighbor tone approach, known as chro(major, minor, etc.) but is especially colorful matic enclosures. In bar 5, the target note is a G with dominant-seventh chords in a blues (the fifth of C7). This G is being of the chord 9 approached 10 11 12 setting. 13 Notice 14 how 15 the 16 structure 17 10 11 from 12above 13 and below—kind of chromatically progression is the same as in Week Three, but 13 like sidestepping into the chord tone. This approaching the original chords with dominant happens again in bar 8 with an enclosure sevenths a half step away. Measures 7–8 feature around the target D (first note of bar 9), which a nice chromatic turnaround to the Am7 (iim7) functions both as the fifth of the G chord and chord in bar 9; the final turnaround in bars the root of D7. This is a lick pulled straight 11–12 use a dominant 13 shape moving down from bebop—soloists such as Charlie Parker in half steps to resolve back to G7. AG and Dizzy Gillespie loved to approach chord tones with this type of chromatic pattern. The Sean McGowan (seanmcgowanguitar.com) solo concludes in the final four bars with a is a jazz guitarist based in Denver, where he combination of chromatic passing and lower directs the guitar program at the University neighbor tones. of Colorado.

BEGINNERS’

TIP 3

Ex. 2

w

œ #œ nœ #œ œ #œ nœ #œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ # œ œ œ & #œ nœ #œ œ œ #œ œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ #œ œ B

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Ex. 4 Bebop Major Scale

nœ #œ #œ œ #œ #œ nœ œ œ #œ œ œ # œ œ œ œ #œ #œ nœ œ & nœ #œ #œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ # œ œ œ B

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Ex. 5 Combined Minor Blues Scale

#œ œ œ œ #œ œ bœ nœ œ œ n œ # œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ nœ bœ & nœ œ # œ œ œ # œ œ œ œ n œ œ œ B

5

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64 August 2015

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WEEK 3 Week

Three

œ œ nœ œ & œ œ #œ œ

C

3

4

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5

B

&

#œ nœ bœ œ œ C7

7

10

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3

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B D7

& nœ œ Œ 3

Ó

C7

œ nœ nœ œ #œ œ bœ nœ bœ œ #œ 3

4

5

B WEEK 4 Week

Four

D b9

G 13

˙. & .. ˙˙ .. ˙. B

. 54 .3 3

G7

F #7# 5

# ˙˙˙ #˙

3 4 3 3

˙ & n ˙˙ ˙ B

3

3

C9

4

3

5

2

3

3

4

5

6

3

10

6

œ œ #œ nœ ˙ 3

5

6

˙˙ ˙ n˙

n # # ˙˙˙ ˙

b n ˙˙ ˙˙

4 2 4 2

3 3 2 3

3 3 2 3

4 3 2

5 4 3

6 5 4

5 4 3

2

3

4

3

˙ b n ˙˙ n˙

E7

˙ n # ˙˙ n ˙

A m7

E b9

3 3 2

3 2 1

3 1 2

2

1

0

1 0 2 0

n ˙˙˙ ˙

7

8

9

7

2

5

4 5 4 2

D7

∑

7

G 13

4 4 3 4

3

G

˙ b ˙˙ b˙

n ˙˙˙ n˙

6

5

A b13

# # ˙˙˙ #˙

8

3

G 13

b n ˙˙ n n ˙˙

9

œ œ Œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ

Ó

F #13

b b œœ b œœ

F 13

7

œ œ Œ

3

8

6

G7

nœ œ œ #œ œ œ nœ nœ #œ

Œ

œ bœ œ #œ œ œ œ nœ

nœ #œ œ ˙

Gœ

œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ

G

B7

C9

# ˙˙ n # ˙˙

C9

b n ˙˙ n ˙˙

C #dim7

2 2 1 2

3 3 2 3

5 3 5 4

A 13

A b13

B9

˙˙ ˙ #˙

b ˙˙ b ˙˙

D9

n ˙˙ # n ˙˙

A b13

n˙ b ˙˙ b˙

G7

B b13

n˙ b ˙˙ b˙

# # ˙˙˙ n˙

n bn ˙˙˙ b˙

6 6 5 6

5 5 4 5

6 5 4

3 4 3

8 7 6

7 6 5

6 5 4

4

3

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˙ n ˙˙ n˙

.. . .

AcousticGuitar.com 65

SONGBOOK

Various Artists The Unfortunate Rake Folkways

A Morality Tale

You may know it simply as “St. James Infirmary” BY ADAM PERLMUTTER

66 August 2015

t’s rare that a song is as explicit in describing sickness as the Anglo-Saxon ballad “The Unfortunate Rake,” which illustrates a young man’s fate as he succumbs to venereal disease. Like most songs of its ilk, it emerged in the 18th century and spawned dozens of variants, 20 of which are collected on the 1960 Folkways album The Unfortunate Rake. The most wellknown to modern listeners is perhaps “St. James Infirmary Blues” or “St. James Infirmary,” a jazz standard recorded by Duke Ellington and others, and also covered by everyone from the Hugh Laurie and Rickie Lee Jones to Graveyard Train and the White Stripes. This arrangement is informed by the version recorded by A. L. Lloyd and Alf Edwards, with an instrumentation of voice and concertina, which appears on the Folkways record. That recording is in the key of F minor, but this

I

arrangement is in the more guitar-friendly key of E minor. (It can, of course, be played in F minor through the use of a capo at the first fret.) The music is simple, limited to the i, iv, and v chords (Em, Am, and Bm) in the cowboy position. If barre chords are new to you and the Bm grip feels uncomfortable, just omit the chord’s highest note, the first-string F# As indicated by the 3/4 symbol, the arrangement is in waltz time, or three quarter notes per bar. In playing through the notation, which depicts the first seven bars of each verse and sets you up to play the remainder of that section, count “One, two, three,” throughout. As for the strumming, use all down strokes, with a slight emphasis on each beat 1. And to make the accompaniment feel a little more vigorous, here and there toss in an upstroke strum on the “ands” of beats 2 and 3. AG

THE UNFORTUNATE RAKE

Basic Accompaniment Pattern

Chords

Em

Am

B m 1 342 1

x0 231 0

0 23 0 0 0

#

Em

Basic Accompaniment Pattern

B342 m 1

&

#

Em

œ

œœ œœ 0 0 0 2

B

œœ œœ 0 0 0 2

0

Em

TRADITIONAL

Am

Am

œ

0

œœœ œ 0 1 2 2

& œœœ œ

B

0 1 2 2

œ

œœ œœ

œœ œœ

Am B mœ

œœœ œœœ œ œ œ 00 00 œ 0 2

0

0

0 1 2 2

0 2

0 1 2 2

œœœ œœœ œ œ

œœœ œœœ œ0 œ0 œ 1 1 2 2

0

2

2 3 4 4

2 2

2 3 4 4

œ

œœœ œœœ œ œ

œœœ œœœ œ0 œ0 1 2 2

0 2 3 4 4

2

1 2 2

2 3 4 4

œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ 23 23 œ œ 23 œ 23 Bm

4 4

2

2

2 3 4 4

4 4

2 3 4 4

4 4 4 etc. 4

2

2

2 3 4 4

œœœ œ œ

œœœ œ

2 3 4 4

2 3 4 4

2

œœœ œ œ

œœœ œ

2 3 4 4

2 3 4 4

2

etc.

2 3 4 4

Bm

3. And had she but told me before she disordered me Had she but told me of it in time Em I might have got pills and salts of white mercury Bm I was a-walking down by there one day 3. And had she but told me beforeBut shenow disordered me in the height of my prime I’m cut down g down by Saint James’s Hospital Am Had she but told me of it in time What should I spy but one of my comrades I might have got pills and salts of white mercury 4. Get six young soldiers to carry my coffin own by there one Eday m But now I’m cut down in the height of my prime Six young girls to sing me a song AmAll wrapped up in flannel though warm was the day And each of them carry a bunch of green laurel y but one of my comrades 4. Get six young soldiers to carry my coffin So they don’t smell me as they bear me along 2. I asked him what ailed him I asked him whatSix failed himgirls to sing me a song young n flannel thoughI asked warm was him the the day cause of all his complaint And each of them carry a bunch of green laurel 5. Don’t muffle your drums and play your fifes merrily It’s all on account of some handsome youngSo woman they don’t smell me as they bear along Play ame quick march as you carry me along ailed him I asked him that whathas failed him me to weep and lament ’Tis she caused And fire your bright muskets all over my coffin ause of all his complaint 5. Don’t muffle your drums and play your fifes Saying theremerrily goes an unfortunate lad to his home t of some handsome young woman Play a quick march as you carry me along caused me to weep and lament And fire your bright muskets all over my coffin Saying there goes an unfortunate lad to his home 1. As I was a-walking down by Saint James’s Hospital

Basic Basic Basic Accompaniment Accompaniment Pattern Pattern Pattern Intro/Interlude RiffAccompaniment

Chords Chords Chords Chords

G

LISTEN TO THIS

G

Em

œ .. œ œ œ œ œ .. œ œ œ . EE mmC ACA mA mm BB m#B mm. œ .. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ EmmE C œ J œœœ .. J J œ œ. J . . x x x/D 1 342 1 342 1 1 342 1 1 & ˙ œœ . ... m EEmEmm AAmœœœœAm BBmBmm œœ .. œœ ..

231 0023 00000 023 00000x03200 1 0 0xx 000231 00 0 0 23 2 1 0 0 003 23 0231

C /E C /F # C /A

B G

# œ .. & œœœ .. œœ ..

. 00 . 02 3

xx 2 0 1 0 x x 4 0 1 0 x0 2 0 1 0

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ J œ ˙

3

3

# # # œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ &&& œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ 3

3

3

0

3

0

0

The White Stripes The White stripes Third Man

œ œ œ œ

0 0 00 0 0 0 0 00 0 0 œ 0 œ0 00˙0 0 2 2 22 2 2

3 0 0 0 2 3

3

3

3

0 0 0 2 2 0

3 0

3

Strumming Pattern

Ó

G 0 0 00 0 0 1 1 1.1 1œœ 1 2 2 2.2 2œœ 2 2 2 22 2œœ 2

Û Û

0 0 00 0 0 1Û 1Û11Û1 1 AcousticGuitar.com Û 2 2 22 2 2 2 2 22 2 2

67

2 2 22 3 3 33 4 4 44 4 4 44

SONGBOOK

Stone Soul Groove

Let the good times roll with this Sam Cooke party classic BY ADAM PERLMUTTER

ood Times” is one of the last singles that the great soul singer Sam Cooke recorded before his untimely demise in 1964, at the age of 33. This lighthearted ode to partying shows just how effective the simplest acoustic-guitar part can be in propelling a tune in any context. (Incidentally, the Godfather of Jazz Guitar, John Pisano, played on Cooke’s recording.) The song is built from just four chords—the I, the IV, the V, and the vi, or D, G, A7, and Bm in the original key of D major—one of the most

“G

68 August 2015

Sam Cooke

common progressions in popular music. The harmonic rhythm, or the rate at which the chords change, is mostly one per bar, giving you ample time to switch between grips. To play the song, first make sure you’re familiar with the four cowboy-type chords shown in the arrangement. Then, on a single chord, work out the basic strumming pattern with downstrokes on the beats and upstrokes on the “ands.” Render this part with a relaxed swing feel: strum a pair of consecutive eighth

notes, not evenly as written, but with the first eighth note slightly longer than the second. Playing along with the recording should help you cop the proper groove. As a bonus, the arrangement includes the single-note lick that features prominently in the Rolling Stones’ 1965 version of “Good Times.” For your convenience, it’s transposed to the key of D from the Stones’ key of choice, Bb. Note the judicious use of rests here—less is, indeed, more. AG

D

D

G

GD

D

A 7 A7

Bm Bm

la la La daLalada la ta datalada daladadadadadadatada ta ta ta Bm Bm

D

D

la lanight all night long yeah La la La la all long yeah

GOOD TIMES

D

Bm Bm

D

D

D

D

G

If it all takn If it take

G

Everybody the good roll COOKE WORDS MUSIC BY SAM Everybody let AND theletgood timestimes roll A7 A7

We stay gon’ here stay here we soothe our souls We gon’ till wetillsoothe our souls

Chorus Chorus D

D

D

If it all takenight all night long yeah If it take long yeah

Strumming Strumming Pattern Pattern G G

Bonus Bonus Lick Lick Bm Bm D D

Strumming PatternCome Bonus Come onLick andtheletgood the good on and let timestimes roll roll

DD A7 GA7 D A7 GG Chords Chords D D D D D D œ # œ œ2.œ 2.wIt might œmight œ itœ might We stay gon’#here stay tillsoothe we Ósoothe œœweBonus ### here tillœ our souls D G A7 Bm It might beo’clock one be three # œœBm be one be three œœ ÛmÛ Û Û ÛWeÛ gon’ œourœ souls Ó o’clock œ œ itand œÛ œand œ œ œ & D D G G A A 77 B Strumming Pattern Lick Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Û Ó Ó œ œ œ Time don’t mean that much to me Time don’t mean that much to me œ œ œ œ B m D B m D xxxx00132 x x 132 332200000044 0022003300 11342 34211 & &itPattern DIf it take G I ain’tI felt Dgood A 7 know IfPattern takenight all night one more Chords all long time time Lick Strumming Strumming ain’tthis feltgood this Bonus Bonus Lick œœonelongD more sincesince I don’tI don’t know whenwhen etc. *Strum: # œ œ œ œ œ w And I might not feel this good again And I might not feel this good again G D G A 7 B m 2 Strumming ÛDCome Û ÛonÛBonus Û letÛGtheLick Ó œ œ œ œ œD œ Pattern Bonus Lick À&D ÀPattern DÀ#ÀDœœCome Dtimes Droll roll Ó œ œ œ GG D Chords Chords 3 ÀStrumming and on and let the goodgood times Chords

x x0 132 3 2 0 0 0 4 x0 2 0 3 0

1 342 1

x x0 132 3 2 0 0 0 4 x0 2 0 3 0

Chords Chords

GG AA BB34211 32200000044 xx0022003300 11342

*Strum: DD GG DD ######## DœœœœœDœœœœÛÛÛÛÛÛ *Strum: œ œ œ w œ & & && œœœœœœœ ÀÛÛÛÛÀÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÀ ÛÀÛÀÛ2323Û ÛÀÛÀ ÀÀ ÓÓ ÀÀœœœœÀÀœ ÀÀœœœ w 22 00 ÀÀÀÀ ÀÀÀÀÀÀ B *Strum: *Strum: B B BB 22 ÀÀ ÀÀ ÀÀ==upup *À * == down; down; 33 ÀÀ À

1 342 1

2 0

GG mm 77xxxD m m A0A02730703 0 B1B D B 342 11 0x132 1 342 0 132 3 23 02 0 00 0 40 4 x0x2 *

*Strum:

= down; = up

*Strum: *Strum:

ntro G

D

Chorus22

A7

D

Whoa la la ta da whoa la ta da

Intro D a da da all night D long yeah G D A7 Intro la la ta da whoa la ta da Whoa Intro Intro Intro Bm

G

DDD

GG

AD7D

m3m2 0 0 0 4 x0 2D xD x0 132BB 30 0D

A7 A7 7 9

D

7 97

2 3 Bm Bm D D 2 If it all takenight all night long gotta tell you If it take long gotta tell you 0

33 22 =00down; D D = up

D

ÓÓ œœœœœœ œœœœœœ ww AA77 7 79

7

Chorus Chorus D

9 ÓÓ œœœœœœœœœœœœ G G 97

etc.

So come on let andtheletgood the good So come on and timestimes roll roll

7 97 9 D7 9 D

Outro-Chorus

7

7 97 etc. etc. 7 9 9

A7 A7

We stay gon’ here stay here we soothe our souls We gon’ till wetillsoothe our souls

G

G Get in the groove and Glet the good times roll *

9

We stay gon’ here stay here we soothe our souls We gon’ till wetillsoothe our souls

77 99

77 99 7

77 9977 77 9977 77 G 779D 99 7799 99 9 B m B m D Come on and let the good timesD roll

1. Evenin’ is sinkin’ Evenin’ sun issun sinkin’ low low If it all takenight all night If it take long long Chorus Outro-Chorus A7 D A7 A7 A7 77 2 hereThe I’m a 2 stay I soothe my soul Dtillclock Ggo We gon’ stay here D till we soothe our77souls G9977 on the wall say it’s time to The clock on the wall say it’s time to go Bridge Outro-Chorus Bridge 7 7 9 9 9 9 00 Chorus Chorus Outro-Chorus Strumming Pattern Bonus Lick Get in the groove and let the good times roll Come on and let the good times roll B m D D BDm DD G G GG G D DD Bm Bm D D D G D AG7 mygroove plans Iand don’t youroll If it take all night long yeah plans I don’t know about youtimes Dgot 7about Get in and let the good night And all long night (all night) andnight all night (all night) D A7night) Come on and let good times roll Andallall (all night) and all (all GetImy inthe the groove letknow theA good times roll If it take Come onnight and letthe the good times roll # œ I got 1.

BB

AA77

D

*D * ==down; down; D==up up D

Chords a da la la ta daWhoa la dalalada da da ta talalaDtatadada lalaB ta Whoa tamda dawhoa whoa DD Dlong A77 La daG da all G nightD DG A 7 yeah B mA Bm

If it all takenight all night long yeah If it take long yeah

Chorus Chorus

œ œ œwe # œ Û Û I’m Û ÛaÛstay Û here till D Ó Aœ7here œGGœ till œBmsoothe ID soothe myÓsoulœ œ œ œ œ w We gon’ stay our souls Bm D D D

œADD7 A7 G AAD 77 D œ I’mtell *A*7 =D=& down; down; ==I’ll up up tell you exactly what I’m gonna exactly what I’m gonna do do aayou stay here tilltill my EverybodyI’lllet good times roll I’mthe stay here soothe my soul B mI Isoothe Dsoul

Whoa lala la ta tanight da dalong whoa whoa la ta ta da da da da yeah a la laWhoa all nightDLalong yeah La dala daall all night yeah la G Dlong ta da DDLa da laGla DD la da da da AA77da ta ta*Strum: G 1 342 1

D A7 Get Get inin the the groove groove and and let the the good good times times roll roll And all here night (all night) and allsouls night longnight) (all night) We stay till soothe our Andgon’ all night (all night) and all long (all We gon’ stay here tillwe we soothe our souls Blet m Dnight

If itBm take all night D long yeah

If it take allDnight longetc.

BBmm DDD Bm Bm A7 D 2 BB DD Àallnight Àwe Àsoothe Chorus IfÀitÀChorus take all long Somebody said it might takenight all night long IfIfSomebody itittake allallnight Outro-Chorus said itlong might take all longOutro-Chorus D A A 7 7 taketill night longyeah yeah take night long We gon’ 32stayIf ithere our souls Chorus D GD 7 97 7 97 7 B m D La la la all night long yeah 7 9 9 7 9 9 0 La da da daAAall all nightDlong long yeah yeah Bm DDDD Everybody Glet D timesaaroll DII soothe B m Bm G the goodI’m G La DDda 7B7m night I’m stay stay here hereGGtill till soothe my myandsoul soul Dthe good LaLalalaG lalaallallnight D B nightlong longyeah yeah Everybody let times roll And all night (all night) all night (all night) And all night (all night) and all night (allD night) so so Everybody let the good times roll on and let the good times roll If* it =take all night D long yeah A7 aCome tataDda da whoa whoa la la ta ta da da down; = upGet Get in in the the groove groove and and let let the the good good times times roll roll Come Come on onand and D A 7 D GGA7 DD AA77 D We gon’ stay hereAtill7 we soothe ourBBsouls Chorus m m DD We gon’ stay here tilltillwe soothe our souls Chorus Intro We gon’ stay here we soothe our souls Chorus Outro-Chorus We stayda here we soothe D la Gda La da latillDla la ta ta da daDourla lasouls da da da daIt might da da ta ta one ta taDChorus 2. da be o’clockBm and it might be If three D BB m mgon’La IfGitit take take all night night long long yeah yeah DDD D GG A7 G AA77all BBmm DD DD DD

LaLada ta da la da da da da ta ta D m m dalalala Blamta da la daDda da da ta ta

Bm

D G Come on and let the good times roll If itallmuch take allto night long yeah Time don’t mean that me IfIfitGet long yeah in the groove and let the good times roll ittake take allnight night long yeah Come on and let the good times roll I’m I’maastay stayhere here till tillIIsoothe soothemy mysoul soul We Wegon’ gon’stay stayh f it take all night time DA7 A7 DD long one Bmore I ain’t felt this good since I don’t knowD when D GG m A7 D A7 D D A7 We gon’ stay here till we soothe our souls We gon’ stay here till we soothe our souls 2. It might be one o’clock and it might be three Laall da all here nightlong long 2.2. ItItnot might be one o’clock ititmight be We gon’ stay till weyeah soothe our souls And I might feel this good might onehere o’clock and might bethree three La La lala lala all night long yeah yeah I’m abestay tillagain Iand soothe my soul G danight We gon’ stay here till we soothe our souls

Come on the good Whoa laand la talet da whoa latimes ta daroll Bnight m D Come on and let the good times roll all ll night long long yeah yeah BBm m DD

G

DD

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69

SONGBOOK

Oh, Loveless Love Learn this Happy Traum fingerstyle arrangement of the classic ‘Careless Love Blues’ BY ADAM PERLMUTTER

Happy Traum

he blues has a long and rich oral tradition. The folk musician and blues expert Happy Traum has done much to preserve it, in the instructional series he’s overseen for almost 50 years through Homespun Tapes, not to mention the music he recorded with his late brother, Artie Traum, as well as his solo work. “Careless Love Blues” appears on Traum’s latest album Just for the Love of It. Traum learned the song many years ago, straight from one of his mentors, the great Piedmont blues guitarist Brownie McGhee. Traum’s version is a composite, drawn from his memory of the several ways that McGhee, his first teacher, played him the song.

T

The key to playing this arrangement of “Careless Love Blues”—or fingerstyle blues in general—is to be able to play a steady, driving bass line on the lower strings while adding a melody and chords on the upper strings. This can be done with a thumbpick and fingers, as Traum does, or fingerstyle. Whichever picking technique you choose, if you’re new to the style, try learning the parts separately: first tackle the bass part (downstemmed notes), striving for a steady, confident rhythm and adding a bit of palm muting to tighten the sound. Then learn the higher part (upstemmed notes) before combining them.

You could also try working up both parts at the same time, thinking of the piece not in terms of independent horizontal lines but as a series of vertical snapshots. For instance, in the verse, on beat 1 your thumb picks the low open E, on beat 2 your thumb picks that note again, joined by the other fingers picking an E chord on strings 2 through 4, and so on. However you learn the song, take it slowly until you can play it at tempo with an effortless rhythm. With any luck, in the process some choice phrases will make their way into your improvisational vocabulary. AG

DON’T FRET There’s a capo for that. The Kyser® Quick-Change®. Guaranteed for life.

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70 August 2015

CARELESS LOVE BLUES

TRADITIONAL, ARRANGED BY HAPPY TRAUM

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2. Well it made me weep made me moan Careless love made me weep made me moan Careless love made me weep made this poor boy moan It made me lose my happy home

4. Never drive a stranger from your door Never drive a stranger from your door I said never drive a stranger away from your door He may be your best friend you don’t know

3. Now if I had listened to what my mama said Yes if I had listened to what my mama said If I had listened to what my poor old mama said You know John I’d be home sleepin’ in Mama’s bed.

5. I’m singin’ love oh careless love Yeah love oh they call it careless love Love oh love careless love Don’t you see what careless love has done

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Makers & Shakers Case designer Jeff Hoffee

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New Gear Eastman E10 orchestra model

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Guitar Guru The long and short of scale length

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Great Acoustics John Denver’s Yamaha L-53

AG TRADE Grace Harbor Grand Concert

SHOPTALK

State of Grace

Dana B. Goods unveils new line of Grace Harbor acoustics BY MARC GREILSAMER

n recent years, Dana Teague has become increasingly, and repeatedly, frustrated by the lack of quality acoustic guitars available in the entry-level market. Now, Teague, president of instrument distributors Dana B. Goods, has taken matters into his own hands by developing his own line of affordable acoustics. Named after his daughter Grace, the Grace Harbor line will be his company’s first proprietary brand, with Grace Teague herself playing a major role in quality control and setup of the new instruments. “All Grace Harbor guitars are simple in style, feature durable, quality craftsmanship inside and out, have great tone, and are made to play,” Dana Teague says. The company settled on a manufacturing facility in China that has worked extensively with American guitar makers in the past. The new line grew out of an off-the-cuff dialogue with the manufacturer that Teague had while visiting China last year. In the ensuing months, Teague worked closely with the builders to develop appropriate designs that would satisfy his goals for appearance, playability, and cost. One of the highest design priorities for the Grace Harbor line is the bracing process. Top braces are affixed in vacuum fixtures, then chiseled by hand for maximum flexibility. Their proprietary gluing system used for the bridge and neck joint is believed to provide optimum strength and enhance the transfer of vibrations. To protect tone, Teague opted for a slightly thicker neck profile than the sleeker neck size

I

currently in favor with many builders, and for nut and saddle material he chose PPS (polyphenylene sulphide), an engineering plastic used in electrical insulation, gaskets, and other materials. The new product line is launching with six distinct models, all with laminated sapele backs and sides, Indian rosewood fingerboards and bridges, and nato necks. The dreadnought-sized GHD-100 and GHD-100CE (with cutaway and electronics) will feature laminated spruce tops, while the guitars in the 200 series boast solid spruce tops and are available in four styles: classical (nylon-string), dreadnought, grand concert, and parlor. The parlor model is of particular interest to Teague and company. “Grace and many of her friends naturally gravitated towards parlorsized guitars,” he notes, “because they were slightly smaller and easier to play. However, many parlor-sized guitars lack balanced tone and projection due to the smaller resonating chamber and relatively slim necks.” Teague is confident that his GHP-200 parlor (with its standard 25.4-inch scale length) will address these commonly seen issues. The Grace Harbor guitars will list for between $429 and $519, and each comes with a hard-shell case. In other news, Dana B. Goods also announced that they are renewing their distribution agreement with Japan’s Aria Guitars, which will include a number of Aria’s solid-top acoustic models. AG

MARTIN HOSTS ITS FIFTH BI-ANNUAL WOOD SUMMIT Back in May, C. F. Martin & Co. hosted the Fifth Bi-Annual Wood Summit at its Nazareth, Pennsylvania, headquarters, convening members of government, nonprofit groups, and industry leaders to discuss a range of subjects related to wood sustainability and environmental stewardship. Among the topics covered: CITES (pronounced si-tees, the agreement known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and its domestic counterpart the US Lacey Act, chain of custody DNA tracking, and sourcing of alternative materials. AG checked in with one of the event’s facilitators, Michael Dickinson, Martin’s exotic, alternative, and sustainable wood sourcing specialist, to learn more. “This year’s Wood Summit was interesting because it was the first CONTINUES ON FOLLOWING PAGE

AcousticGuitar.com 77

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time we did not have a theme,” Dickinson told me by email. “Letting the speakers talk about the subjects of their choice allowed for a more frank and open discussion of today’s most impactful subjects.” Not surprisingly, Dickinson cites the world’s various regulatory policies—the Lacey Act, the EUTR (European Union Timber Regulations), and others in Australia and (coming soon) Japan—as having the most significant impact on today’s guitar-building industry, not to mention the international restrictions posed by CITES. “One can imagine the amount of paperwork required for several different governmental bodies, for the exact same information, can be quite daunting to all of us in this industry,” Dickinson notes. “My hope is that events like ours will help us understand why the information is collected, what each agency uses the information for, and how it relates to sustainable forest practices worldwide. As much as I complain, if all it takes is me completing forms . . . to stop some guy in Brazil from cutting down a rosewood tree illegally, I will happily complete the paperwork until my fingers fall off.” Dickinson is hopeful that DNA tracking will play a major role in guarding protected timber. “I imagine the day when I say, ‘Sorry, sir, I can’t buy your lumber, because its DNA fingerprint matches that of wood from Nigeria, not Cameroon.’ Who knew that every tree has its own sequences, just like us humans? Or who would have ever thought you could match a tree to a guitar built in the US?” Saving the rainforests, Dickinson believes, will require a mix of new plantations along with new technology. For example, Dickinson is excited about newly developed methods of chemically 78 August 2015

Michael Dickinson

modifying softwoods to produce materials on par with natural hardwood timber. By being able to control factors such as density and color through this treatment, the versatility of responsibly harvested softwoods can be greatly expanded. “Think of the possibilities,” Dickinson says. “Thousands of applications from one species. It is mindboggling and exciting to consider how many old growth forests could be saved by this process.” Dickinson also shared the story behind Martin’s kiln in Guatemala. “By purchasing mahogany from the Mayan biosphere,” he notes, “not only could we track the tree back to the forest, the whole forestry plan in that area allows small villages to reap the benefits. They are building schools and a solid infrastructure, and our Martin Guitar kiln is making it possible for them to have year-round employment. The coolest thing is it also helps preserve the Mayan ruins. By selectively harvesting in the biosphere around the ancient buildings, scavengers are less likely to pillage for fear of running into a logger.” Also noteworthy from the Wood Summit was the presentation by the Maple Propagation Project. “What we are talking about here is basically cloning,” Dickinson says. “That is complete and total sci-fi movie stuff. While I do not understand the technology, as a guitar-building and wood aficionado, I think being able to have a constant supply of figured maple is very exciting. But even better, if we are that close to being able to clone wood, then we are even closer to me being able to get an actual light saber, and that would be awesome!” —M.G.

B.C. RICH GOES ACOUSTIC—AGAIN Thanks to B.C. Rich’s strong presence in the electric realm of hard rock, few players realize that Bernardo Chavez Rico’s company began life in the 1960s as makers of acoustic guitars. After a lengthy layoff from the acoustic scene, B.C. Rich announced its plan to return to the acoustic guitar market with a line of five new models. What’s more, the company will be using its own history as a roadmap. “We are constantly studying our own storied history,” says company spokesman Josh Vittek. “We monitor what B.C. Rich fans discuss online and listen to their comments when they contact us. The early B.C. Rich acoustics are this really great underground legend. All the talk about them is totally organic and based on the approach Bernie Rico and the craftsmen took to them over the years.” No doubt that history is a driving force behind the new models. B.C. Rich adhered to many of the primary construction methods of those legendary acoustics, aiming for a familiar design and appearance, while adding a number of modern techniques to the mix. “Bernardo’s Guitar Shop, a Los Angeles store in the 1950s, offered handmade custom classical, folk, and mariachi guitars,” Vittek explains. “By the 1960s, the shop was the place to hang and get your guitar repairs taken care of. People were bringing in their Gibson and Martin steelstring guitars for modifications. At that same time, Bernardo’s son Bernie, who was now working in the shop, saw the trend in steel-string acoustics, and Bernie and the luthiers began building their own steel-string models. “But they did it their way; they didn’t copy the others. The guys in the shop cut, shaped, and built everything by hand with chisels, hammers, and knives. There was even a window between the showroom and the wood room where customers could see the guitars being made.” The five new B.C. Rich acoustics, all dreadnought-sized, include the laminated spruce/sapele BCR1 (natural) and BCR2 (black finish), the cutaway BCR3 with flamed-maple top (available in four colors), the cedar-topped cutaway BCR4, and the top-of-the-line BCR6, which offers a solid spruce top and rosewood back and sides. All but the BCR1 will include Fishman Sonitone electronics. Some of the new models are currently available, with the rest coming later in the year. —M.G.

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MAKERS & SHAKERS

Stronger Than Steel

An eye for details: Jeff Hoffee

Jeff Hoffee’s sturdy carbon-fiber cases take off BY ADAM PERLMUTTER

ot long after the 2008 financial crisis, Jeff Hoffee found himself in a small rented workshop, about the size of a two-car garage, surrounded by garbage bins loaded with debris from failed attempts at building instrument cases. Then, one day, after 18 months of toiling in frustration, he had a light-bulb moment. “All of a sudden, the clouds receded, and it all just came together,” Hoffee says. “I finally realized the right combination of manufacturing techniques to make consistent cases.” Just a few years later, Hoffee, based in Joliet, Illinois, is a premier manufacturer of fretted-instrument cases made from carbon fiber—a woven composite material comprised

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80 August 2015

primarily of carbon atoms. Carbon fiber has traditionally been used for aerospace and automotive engineering and is now seen with increasing frequency in instrument design in such guitar brands as RainSong, Blackbird, and the Kevin Michael line of McPherson Guitars. Hoffee is cagey about his proprietary manufacturing techniques, but effusive when discussing their benefits. “Carbon fiber is a much better material than wood in terms of strength-toweight ratio—it’s supposedly stronger than steel—and carbon-fiber cases are a lot sturdier and lighter than wooden ones. Plus, the natural weave pattern of carbon fiber gives our cases awesome-looking exteriors,” he says.

Companies such as Lowden, Bedell, McPherson, and Martin agree with Hoffee’s assessment and sell select and limited-edition models with his cases. Some independent luthiers offer them as options as well. Archtop maker Erich Solomon is an early adopter, having worked with Hoffee since the cases were introduced to the market in 2010. “I ordered my first one after seeing the ‘terror test’ video on YouTube where Jeff drops a concrete block onto a case from a ladder and then throws it into a creek,” Solomon says. “While the cases themselves are beautiful, and the interior fit to my guitars is always first-class,

the real beauty of these cases is in their durability and resistance to all the forces in the universe that would conspire to ruin your favorite guitar.” Working musicians, too, see the benefits of Hoffee cases. The company’s high-profile, globetrotting endorsers include Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, and John Pizzarelli. “I am totally sold on Hoffee cases,” Pizzarelli says. “They are light, strong, and can stand up to being thrown around by insensitive baggage handlers—so light, in fact, I don’t even switch to a soft case when I’m off the road and playing local gigs in New York.” TRIAL BY FIRE Hoffee, 48, is a lifelong musician. He grew up in Illinois and played in band class and other school programs before joining his first rock group in the seventh grade. Though not a stranger to the guitar, he has long considered the drum kit to be his main instrument. “I’ve been in bands pretty much my whole life, and though I don’t play professionally, I’m always in one group or another in my spare time,” he says. Hoffee entered the music business in the early 1990s, starting in retail and then working as a sales representative for Eastman Strings, Lyon & Healy, and others. In the process, he sold many instrument cases and was often disappointed with the quality of their build and components. “It seemed like cases were an afterthought,” he says. “Companies were apparently trying to make them as cheaply as possible. I saw so many broken latches and hinges, and much worse, damaged instruments.” By the middle of the next decade, Hoffee became intent on filling what he saw as a void in the marketplace. Having visited case factories and seen the manufacturing process up close, he figured it’d be a cinch to design and build his own cases—even if nontraditional. “I started researching carbon fiber and other materials in the composite industry, like fiberglass. I went to classes and seminars and watched videos, all along thinking, ‘This is going to be so easy.’” When Hoffee rented his workshop, he assumed it would take just two months to build case prototypes and get beyond the development stage. Out of financial necessity, he worked in isolation and started by making his own molds. But two months became two years—two years fraught with difficulties. Hoffee says, “It turns out that I was wrong. It was really hard at first, even though I started out with something so simple—a violin case, which is basically just a rectangular box. I struggled through one failed process after another. My wife started getting really worried I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, and about a year and a half into it, I almost threw in the towel.”

BUILDING A BUZZ After Hoffee arrived at a successful manufacturing process and sold his first case, things started to look up. Through word of mouth, and without advertising—unless you count the homemade series of YouTube videos, in which the cases are subjected to extreme mistreatm e nt wh il e th e gui ta r s i n s i d e r e ma i n unscathed—he soon had more orders than he could fulfill. “I remember telling my wife that if I could accomplish what I set out to do, things would take off really quickly,” he says, “and I’m glad to say that came true.” To keep up with his orders, Hoffee hired a small staff and has already needed to move a couple of times to ever-larger manufacturing facilities. He currently has six employees who work in two different buildings: one housing the molds for the cases’ exterior shells and the other dedicated to interior assembly. “We’re lucky to have expanded,” Hoffee explains. “It’s so much cleaner to do the exterior work, with all these resins and chemicals, in a separate place from the fabric work.” The most difficult part of the manufacturing process is creating the shells—the technical mastery of which had eluded Hoffee for so long. This requires that carbon fiber be handlaid into a mold in a way that’s not disruptive to the material’s twill pattern. After that, resin is

injected into the mold, which is allowed to cure overnight before the hardened shell is carefully removed from the mold. Hoffee says, “Making our cases is labor-intensive. We’re so proud of all the handwork that goes into the making of each one.” While Hoffee and his team build a handful of standard-sized shells, the plush interior of each case is custom-made to conform to a particular instrument’s dimensions. No expense is spared in any of the details, and this is reflected in the pricing: $900 for a dreadnought-sized case or $1,150 for one that’s made to order. “My philosophy from the beginning has always been, no matter the cost, to use the best parts and materials, from the interior fabric—ours is very expensive—to the latches. That’s the way it has to be for a case that you can check on a plane and toss around without worry about damaging your guitar.” A case costing a thousand dollars is bound to house a costly instrument, and Hoffee has acknowledged this in a new security feature. He recently started offering a GPS option that, with a device stored in a hidden compartment, can be tracked in the event of theft, a feature that’s emblematic of Hoffee’s ongoing quest for the perfect guitar case. “Luckily,” he says, “ I haven’t heard any reports of the GPS having to be used— and I hope never to.” AG

‘My philosophy from the beginning has always been, no matter the cost, to use the best parts and materials.’ Hoffee uses plush, high-end interior fabric.

AcousticGuitar.com 81

NEW GEAR

Solid Adirondack spruce top

A Honey of a Guitar Eastman’s E10OM-LTD takes a run at the boutique flattop market BY ADAM PERLMUTTER

82 August 2015

aving a preference for boutique guitars made much closer to home than East Asia, I’m not necessarily predisposed to like Eastman’s E10OM-LTD. But removing this smart guitar from its arched hard-shell case, I have no choice but to like it. I can tell before I even play it that this flattop has an impressive resonance, based on the way it seems to vibrate. A few cursory fingerpicking patterns find the instrument to have a rich, warm voice and a spongy responsiveness—a mahogany-bodied guitar at its best. Some cowboy strumming with a thin pick shows that the guitar has ample headroom, making it a well-rounded player. Eastman, which started as a maker of affordable violin-family instruments in the early 1990s, entered the flattop market through the backdoor, as it were. The company offered acoustic and electric archtops before delving into flattops in recent years. In its Traditional Series, which includes the E10OM-LTD, the

H

Orchestra model size

company produces guitars of all sizes, inspired by prewar classics. The E10OM-LTD is an OM (orchestra model), inspired by the 14-fret guitar that Martin introduced in 1929 to extend access to the upper frets. Unlike many imported instruments, it’s constructed from all-solid woods. The back and sides are made of beautiful mahogany (the review model even boasted a hint of curly figuring on the back), but more noteworthy is the instrument’s Adirondack spruce soundboard—a wood rarely seen on imports and usually reserved for high-end domestic guitars. This is the real deal, the tonewood that Martin, Gibson, and others used for the tops of their great prewar guitars. In terms of cosmetics, the E10OM-LTD has an interesting mix of Spartan and fancy appointments. The body binding is plain black, like on a lower-end Martin, as are the end strip and heel cap; the rosette is made of simple black and

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Mahogany neck

1.75-inch bone nut

Chrome vintage open-gear Gotoh tuners

BODY Orchestra model size Solid Adirondack spruce top with hand-carved scalloped and forward-shifted X bracing

EXTRAS D’Addario EXP16 coated phosphor bronze strings (.012–.053)

NECK Mahogany neck 25-inch scale length

Hard-shell case

AT A GLANCE

EASTMAN E10OM-LTD

Solid mahogany back and sides

1.75-inch bone nut

Ebony bridge with bone saddle

Chrome vintage open-gear Gotoh tuners

Natural gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish

crème rings. However, the slotted headstock sports an elegant vine inlay, and the fingerboard is studded with floral motifs for position markers. (Both the slot-head design and fretboard inlays are new additions to the model.) The rosewood endpin, as opposed to the customary plastic, adds a touch of class as well. WELL BUILT, WELL BALANCED Faults are few and minor in terms of craftsmanship. The 20 nickel-silver frets are well polished, with just a hint of jaggedness at their ends, and the nut and saddle slots are cut cleanly. On the body, a nitrocellulose lacquer finish—another vintage-approved aspect—is fairly thinly applied and buffed smoothly and evenly. Things are tidy inside the box, too, with only the subtlest hint of excess glue. The E10OM-LTD is well balanced between its neck and its body. Aside from the action being slightly high at the 12th fret, at least to

Satin finish

my liking, the guitar plays well. Its relatively thin, subtly V-shaped neck has a decidedly more high-performance feel than the larger necks typical of a prewar example. It’s easy to play barre chords all along the neck for extended periods. At 25 inches, the neck’s slightly shorter scale, relative to 25.4 inches on a standard OM, makes it comfortable to play stretch chords, while the 1.75-inch nut makes for ample string spacing when it comes to fingerpicking. In standard tuning, the E10OM-LTD offers an even and highly adaptable voice. It sounds terrific for everything from traditional approaches like Carter strumming and Travis picking to less idiomatic fare, such as chord-melody soloing inspired by the cluster voicings favored by late jazz pianist Bill Evans. The guitar fares just as well when subjected to single-note excursions, be they in a bluegrass or an atonal mold. The guitar’s open-gear Gotoh tuners have a vintage look but the smoothest feel, making

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nonstandard tunings a breeze. While the instrument maintains its lush and vibrant sound when placed into tunings like drop-D and DADGAD, things do get slightly muddy when it’s played in standard tuned down a whole step (D G C F A D) or lower—not enough, most likely, to trouble most ears. With a price tag of about $1,300, Eastman’s E10OM-LTD is far from inexpensive for an imported guitar, and its country of manufacture will no doubt be a deterrent to some. On the other hand, it’s priced at a fraction of a comparable US-made instrument. These things aside, the E10OM-LTD is a honey of a guitar, a beautiful interpretation of a Golden Era classic that is sure to blossom with age. AG Contributing editor Adam Perlmutter transcribes, arranges, and engraves music for numerous publications. See his website at adamperlmutter.com. AcousticGuitar.com 83

NEW GEAR

AT A GLANCE

YAMAHA A6R BODY 14-fret dreadnought with cutaway Solid Sitka spruce top Solid Indian rosewood back and sides Nitrocellulose lacquer finish NECK African mahogany neck with satin finish Ebony fretboard with 15 ¾-inch radius 259/16-inch scale length 111/16-inch nut width Gold-plated, open-gear Gotoh tuners (15:1 ratio) Bone nut and saddle Ebony bridge and bridge pins ELECTRONICS Yamaha SRT pickup/preamp system EXTRAS Non-branded 80/20 bronze strings (.012–.052) Hard-shell case Limited lifetime warranty PRICE $2,399 list; $1,499 street Made in Japan usa.yamaha.com 84 August 2015

East Meets Western Plugged or unplugged, Yamaha’s A6R dreadnought is a tonal juggernaut BY ADAM LEVY

n our January 2012 issue, AG reviewed Yamaha’s Chinese-made A3R dreadnought, which boasts a similar look and many of the same features as their new A6R: solid Sitka spruce top, solid rosewood back and sides, and an SRT pickup/preamp system with DSP micmodeling technology. What’s new for the A6R— as well as its concert-sized cousin, the AC6R—is that these limited-production guitars are being built in Japan by some of the company’s top craftsmen. Better build-quality ups the sticker price, as you’d expect, but the A6R’s bang-tobuck ratio remains impressive nonetheless.

I

LARGE AND IN CHARGE Measure for measure, this Yamaha is no grander than your average dreadnought. Still, the A6R’s body looks and feels big, especially if you’re not already used to the plus-size platform. Its acoustic voice is sized to match—slightly on the burly side, yet rich in upper harmonics. The satin-finished mahogany neck, on the other hand, feels relatively slim; its shape will appeal to players who prefer modern-style

necks. The factory-set action is medium-low over smallish frets. Chording is a breeze and intonation is reliable—low, high, and everywhere in between. There’s not a ton of stringto-string definition within chord voicings, though this is not necessarily a bad thing, as the individual notes bond together in a sonically pleasing way. One of the A6R’s most conspicuous visual elements is its unusually shaped pickguard, inspired by the one used on Yamaha’s N1000 guitar 40 years ago (which, in turn, was reminiscent of scratchplates found on vintage Gibson Doves). In a subtle way, this helps peg the A6R as a Western-style model. Other notable cosmetics include a luminescent abalone rosette, real mahogany binding, and gold-plated, open-gear Gotoh tuners. The A6R’s Sitka spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides are handsome specimens, and a nitrocellulose lacquer finish highlights the woods’ visual appeal while letting them resonate and breathe naturally. The fretboard is ebony, as are the bridge and bridge pins.

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The Original Guitar Chair

Steve Kaufman Group Guitar Lessons

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the details make the difference

Guitar and Mandolin LEAVE THE MICS AT HOME The sophisticated onboard SRT pickup/preamp system includes a three-way switch that lets you choose between DSP models of three classic microphones—a large-diaphragm condenser, a small-diaphragm condenser, and a ribbon mic. (All of the “mic” tones are digitally simulated—the result of recording this guitar on actual mics, then storing the sonic imprints as complex algorithms.) The characteristic differences between these models are easy to hear, though all three are rich in color and dimension. A blend knob lets you mix the mic and under-saddle pickup signals to taste. You can further customize your tone with a focus/wide selector: Focus mode simulates the sound of a mic in close proximity to the guitar; in wide mode, each faux mic sounds as if it’s an arm’s length away. A resonance knob allows you to boost or limit the level of guitar-body resonance, and there are the usual elemental EQ controls for low, mid, and high frequencies. On paper, the number of tone-shaping options may strike some players as overkill, but it’s all in the name of getting usable musical tones— and the learning curve here is not steep at all. Acoustically, the Yamaha A6R sounds more or less like other X-braced spruce/rosewood dreadnoughts in its class, with a well-balanced, if not particularly distinctive, tone. Such pliancy, however, makes the A6R useful in a wide variety of musical settings—live or in the studio, acoustic or electric. If that’s the kind of workhorse, professional-level instrument you’re seeking, don’t hesitate to check out an A6R. But you better act fast: Yamaha will be offering only 20 of these guitars to the US market. AG Adam Levy is an itinerant guitarist based in Los Angeles, where he is the Chair of the Guitar Department at Los Angeles College of Music. His guitar work has appeared on recordings by Norah Jones, Tracy Chapman, Amos Lee, and Ani DiFranco, among others. Read more of Levy’s writing and hear his music at adamlevy.com.

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SONGWRITING BASICS FOR GUITARISTS

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SONGWRITING BASICS FOR GUITARISTS

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MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR GUITAR AS A WRITING TOOL WITH ADVICE FROM PAUL SIMON, ELVIS COSTELLO, JONI MITCHELL, AND AWARD-WINNING SONGWRITER JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS.

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AT A GLANCE

BLACKSTAR ID:CORE BEAM ELECTRONICS Solid-state 20-watt stereo amplifier EXTRAS Delay, reverb, tremolo, chorus 12 preamp voicings Built-in tuner Mini-USB port Bluetooth connectivity PRICE $389 list; $279.99 street Made in China blackstarinsider.co.uk

Easy Listening

Blackstar’s ID:Core BEAM is a stereo guitar amp with an expansive feature set BY ADAM LEVY

magine a toaster-sized gizmo that can faithfully amplify your acoustic-electric guitar and play music in stereo from any Bluetooth-enabled device—at the same time, if you like. That’s what Blackstar’s new 20-watt ID:Core BEAM amp is, essentially, and it would be a pretty cool piece of gear if that’s all it did. That, however, is just the start. BEAM stands for Bass/Electric/Acoustic/ Music. Though this amp has only one channel and one input jack, you can choose from 12 preamp voicings designed for particular instrument types. There are two for acoustic guitar, two for bass, six for electric guitar, and two

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acoustic simulators for electric guitar. Once you’ve selected the appropriate voice, gain, volume, and EQ controls can be used for further adjustment. There’s a bank of effects as well, including delay, reverb, tremolo, and chorus—all easily tweaked and storable, along with other settings, as recallable user patches. As for the preamp voicings, Acoustic 1 and Acoustic 2 voices are both particularly impressive. The former has a flat-EQ response, which may be most useful for guitars that have active EQ controls onboard, while the latter is a little more midrange-forward in character. Nestled among the knobs and buttons on the top-

mounted control panel is a mini USB port that lets you connect the BEAM to your computer for direct recording—a handy feature. The difference between the two acoustic-oriented voices is even more apparent here, with Acoustic 2 yielding more dynamic results. The USB port is also the connectivity point for Blackstar’s free INSIDER software (downloadable at blackstarinsider.co.uk). INSIDER lets you go even deeper into editing and storing your own patches, and boasts a phrase trainer that allows looping and time stretching of mp3s—very useful if you’re into transcribing note-for-note and playing along. With a street price of $279.99, Blackstar, interestingly, is marketing the ID:Core BEAM amp as a product for home use—not the stage. Still, there’s no reason you couldn’t bring it along on your next solo-acoustic gig. What it lacks in sheer wattage, it makes up for in portability and features. (Oh, yeah, there’s a built-in tuner, too.) AG

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ENTER TODAY ACOUSTICGUITAR.COM/WIN/MARTIN-D-35 GIVEAWAY RULES: No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Entrants must be 18 years or older. Each entry must be individually submitted using the Official Entry Form at AcousticGuitar.com/Win/Martin-D-35-50th-Anniversary-Model and received by August 31st, 2015; facsimiles may not be substituted. Prize drawing will be made on or around June 15th, 2015. The grand prizes will be fulfilled by C.F. Martin & Co. Guitars within 60 days of receipt of winner’s written acceptance. Employees of Acoustic Guitar magazine, and C.F. Martin & Co. are not eligible to win. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received. Limit one entry per person. Acoustic Guitar magazine reserves the right to notify the winner by mail or by e-mail and to identify the winner in the magazine as well as the Acoustic Guitar website and Facebook page. International entrants, please note: If the winner is resident outside the United States and Canada, he or she is responsible for all shipping, customs, and tax costs. In the event that an international winner is unwilling or unable to cover these costs, he or she will forfeit the prize and a new winner will be selected at random. Giveaway entrants may receive information from Acoustic Guitar, and C.F. Martin & Co. For the name of the prize winner, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to C.F. Martin & Co. 2015 Giveaway, c/o Acoustic Guitar magazine, 510 Canal Blvd, Suite J, Richmond, CA 94804. This offer ends on August 31st, 2015. Taxes are the responsibility of the winner. No prize substitutions are permitted

GUITAR GURU Scale length is double the distance between the nut and the center of the 12th fret

The Long and Short of It Scale length has a substantial influence on a guitar’s properties BY DANA BOURGEOIS

Q

What’s the difference between long-scale and short-scale guitars, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Henry J. Lewis Lompoc, California

GOT A QUESTION? Uncertain about guitar care and maintenance? The ins-and-outs of guitar building? Or a topic related to your gear?

88 August 2015

A

Roughly speaking, scale length is the distance between nut and saddle. The laws of physics, however, require that saddles be placed a bit beyond the length of the scale. Actual scale length can be determined by doubling the distance between the nut and the center of the 12th fret. A scale length of 25.4 inches, 25.5 inches, or longer is considered long for steel-string acoustic guitars; anything less is considered short. Commonly used short scales are 25, 24.9, 24.75, and 24.625 inches. Nylon-string and classical guitars have different categories of long and short scale, most are longer than 25.5 inches. Scale length can have a significant effect on playability. All factors being equal (string gauge, string length beyond the nut and saddle, break angles, and so on), shorter scales produce lower string tension, are more elastic, easier to fret, and require less arm extension. On the downside, a shorter, slacker string travels further when plucked or strummed and is more prone to buzzing and fret rattling when played at higher dynamic levels.

Ask Acoustic Guitar’s resident Guitar Guru. Send an email titled “Guitar Guru” to editor Marc Greilsamer at [email protected], and he’ll forward it to the expert luthier.

To understand sonic differences between scale lengths, it’s helpful to visualize how acoustic guitars create sound. In the simplest model, vibrating strings drive a diaphragm (the top), creating air pressure disturbances within an enclosure (the body). Pressure waves escape through the soundhole and disturb the air outside the guitar; ambient air disturbances are sensed by the ear. Relationships between string energy, top surface area, and enclosed air volume largely determine the characteristic sound of a guitar. Change any variable, and the efficiency and character of the system is altered. Differences between long and short scales are most clearly demonstrated when both are used in conjunction with the same body style. I make a Slope D (slope-shouldered dreadnought) and a midsized OM in both 25.5-inchscale and 25-inch-scale versions. Over the years, I’ve built enough examples of all versions, and seen enough examples by different makers, to observe repeatable characteristic differences. On a classic OM, a long-scale string length drives a medium-sized top and medium-sized air enclosure with hyper efficiency. These guitars have power to spare, can be flatpicked or played fingerstyle, and can have presence and headroom to rival larger guitars. In comparison, the short-scale version is an evenly balanced system, well-suited to developing full tonality when played with a medium touch. The long-scale OM is rich and powerful, the short-scale sweet and full. The long-scale Slope D, with relatively large top surface and large air enclosure, is the evenly balanced version, comparable in power, volume, and articulation to its square-shouldered dreadnought cousin. Lessen energy input at the front end of the system by shortening scale length, and the result is OK—though not ideal—for flatpicking. But it’s a much better fingerpicker than square- or slope-shouldered dreads with long scale lengths, and maybe the best strumming machine known to man. Players are well advised to consider the ability of scale length to critically alter factors such as playability, tonality, and headroom. Magic happens when good wood and good design come together in a package that’s just right for your playing style. AG Dana Bourgeois is a master luthier and the founder of Bourgeois Guitars in Lewiston, Maine.

If AG selects your question for publication, you’ll receive a complimentary copy of AG’s The Acoustic Guitar Owner’s Manual. Dana Bourgeois

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John Denver’s Luxurious Yamaha

This high-end 1978 Yamaha L-53 saw plenty of duty BY TEJA GERKEN his lavishly appointed Yamaha L-53 was custom-made for John Denver in 1977. Having previously played several stock Yamaha guitars, Denver ordered a matching pair of sixand 12-string instruments during a tour of Japan, and they were delivered sometime in 1978. During this period, Yamaha’s L-Series (“L” stood for “luxury”) was the company’s high-end line of guitars, available only as special orders. Crafting a set of guitars for one of the era’s biggest stars was certainly a coup for Yamaha. Built by a small team of craftsmen in the company’s custom shop, the guitar was designed by Terrumi Nakamoto, who was also in charge of building instruments for Paul Simon and John Lennon. According to Yamaha historian Mark Kasulen, the instrument features a top made from rare ezo spruce (a species found only on the Japanese island of Hokkaido). The guitar’s back and sides are made of extraordinarily dark Brazilian rosewood, its fingerboard and bridge are ebony, and the instrument’s elaborate five-piece neck alternates strips of mahogany and ebony.

T

The guitar’s abalone purfling, multi-ring rosette, and large block-style fingerboard inlay are by no means subtle, and the back and headstock are truly breathtaking. Featuring Yamaha’s distinctive V-shape, the headstock is covered almost entirely in abalone. The back’s three-piece design is beautifully executed; a darker piece of rosewood was used for the center panel and abalone strips match the body’s purfling. Denver used the L-53 extensively in concert and on TV (it’s featured on the cover of the popular album Denver made with the Muppets, A Christmas Together), retiring it in the early 1980s after it developed some cracks. According to Fine Guitar Consultants’ Richard Glick (who recently inspected and appraised the instrument), Denver returned the guitar to Yamaha for repair or exchange, and it is unknown how it changed owners from that point on. AG This article was first published in the November 2003 issue.

Brazilian beauty: left, the 3-piece rosewood back with abalone strips

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Ageless Arts Josh Rouse’s midlife crisis

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Bookish Bluegrass A scholarly look at the Stanley Brothers

PLAYLIST

MIXED MEDIA

YORK WILSON

The New Deal Yonder Mountain’s revitalized sound

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PLAYLIST

A Giant Step Forward Revamped, revitalized Yonder Mountain String Band carries the flock forward

Outstanding in their field: Yonder Mountain String Band Yonder Mountain String Band Black Sheep Frog Pad

BY MARC GREILSAMER

or a group that never felt entirely comfortable within “proper bluegrass society,” Yonder Mountain String Band has managed, through 17 years of hard touring, to become one of the biggest names on the circuit. Sure, their liberal, envelope-pushing music (often labeled “jamgrass”), which layers elements of no-holds-barred rock and heavy improvisational tendencies atop a deep bluegrass foundation, may not sound like Flatt & Scruggs. But let’s not forget that bluegrass has always had a welcoming place for progressives—guys like David Grisman and Sam Bush and Bill Keith— who’ve ignored musical boundaries, both perceived and real, to create forward-looking, highly original music. And, really, was anyone more open-minded than the genre’s founding father, Bill Monroe, who wasn’t coloring within the lines when he devised this syncopated mountain music? With bluegrass, as with any other genre, today’s innovation is tomorrow’s tradition.

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Following the sudden (though not entirely unexpected) departure of founding member Jeff Austin, the release of Black Sheep finds the ensemble at a crossroads. Yet, a circumstance that could have doomed many a band seems to have made them stronger. For one, core members Adam Aijala (guitar), Ben Kaufmann (bass), and Dave Johnston (banjo) have added two top-notch pickers to the mix—mandolinist Jake Jolliff and fiddler Allie Kral—formulating the “classic” five-piece bluegrass instrumentation in the process. And despite the absence of Austin’s songwriting contributions, the new material (all jointly credited to Aijala, Kaufmann, and Johnston) sounds fresh and frisky— slightly off-kilter lyrically and full of interesting musical twists and turns. The hard-driving opener, “Insult and an Elbow,” puts it all together, with Kaufmann’s peculiar words giving way to high-powered solos from Jolliff and Aijala. The title track,

with lead vocals by Johnston, sounds like a punk song rearranged for bluegrass, while “Ever Fallen in Love,” a Buzzcocks remake (and the sole cover here), is exactly that. Other standout tracks include the quirky, melodic, mid-tempo “Annalee,” which benefits from some seamless instrumental interplay; and the dynamic, slow-building “I’m Lost.” Things conclude with “New Dusty Miller,” a modern, irresistibly funky take on an old fiddle tune that boasts some skintight ensemble playing. YMSB is fortunate to have been able to add the likes of Jolliff and Kral to the fold. Kral delivers several moments of sharp improvisation, but her fiddle work also provides brilliant coloring when used in a supporting role; and Jolliff’s fluid, fleet-fingered mandolin is nothing short of a revelation. All in all, Black Sheep feels like a giant step forward, as Yonder continues its journey from bluegrass’ fringes to its contemporary center. AG

Josh Rouse

Della Mae

The Embers of Time Yep Roc

Della Mae Rounder

Peripatetic pop-folkie confronts middle age with grace & humor In his early 40s, running headlong into a midlife crisis, Josh Rouse turned to the only English-speaking psychotherapist in Valencia, Spain, where he’s been living for the past decade. The result, along with a healthy dose of gestalt therapy, is The Embers of Time, which finds Rouse trying to focus on the present while being constantly pulled back to the past. In “You Walked Through the Door,” history returns as an old love story, and what might have been if he’d taken that other path. In “Time,” it’s a visit to the grave of his stepfather, whose face he can’t remember. In “Coat for a Pillow,” it’s all the years spent wandering from place to place, Nebraska to Nashville, country to country, and never feeling at home. Then, returning to today, Rouse faces the balancing act of parenting, staying out all night, and paying the bills, trying to write with too many other things on his mind. “How am I gonna tell another story? How am I gonna live another line?” he asks in “JR Worried Blues,” singing to a J.J. Cale groove that sets the tone for the album, its loping acoustic guitar and harmonica set against a gently sympathetic countrypolitan backdrop, with beautifully understated Dobro (by Xema Fuertes, from the album’s Valencia sessions) and pedal-steel (Fats Kaplin, from the Nashville sessions). Rouse’s answer, besides his therapist’s reassurance that “It’s OK to feel like shit,” is ultimately as true as any other: You just do, as time keeps pushing you down the road, one foot in front of the other, lighting your way by the embers of the past. It’s as simple as that, but Rouse tells these stories with such humor, patience, and middle-aged grace that the album becomes a quiet revelation. — Kenny Berkowitz

Compelling acoustic roots music feels familiar but still original Della Mae’s second Rounder album (third overall) is another fine acoustic outing full of passion, personality, and good pickin’. Working with a new producer—the sometimes idiosyncratic Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Norah Jones, Kings of Leon)—the group doesn’t stray radically from the formula that made their previous album, This World Oft Can Be, so musically and emotionally satisfying. Celia Woodsmith’s lead vocals are still up front and largely unadorned (save for some creative reverb), the harmonies always sublime, and the instrumental voices retain their purity and immediacy—the guitarfiddle-mandolin (and sometimes banjo) interplay has never sounded warmer. But there are some changes to both the musical and sonic palette that make this a richer listening experience than its predecessor. The departure of bassist Shelby Means appears to have opened up the band’s songs to new possibilities—guest Mark Schatz excels on bowed bass on a couple of tunes (especially on the quietly insistent “Can’t Go Back”) and gives a jazzy flavor to “Shambles.” “Good Blood” (with mandolinist Jenni Lyn Gardner on lead vocals) and “Take One Day” are perhaps the most traditional-sounding songs on the album, but the group seems increasingly interested in using their influences as jumping-off points to move in new directions, as on the opening “Boston Town,” a wonderful proworking-women tune that has the feel of some of Bruce Springsteen’s recent rootsy anthems. There’s plenty of musical variety here, too. Della Mae’s masterful version of the Rolling Stones’ bluesy “No Expectations” shows some different colors (kudos to Courtney Hartman for the wicked slide guitar), and the spooky, gospelflavored closer, “High Away Gone,” is a fascinating experiment in studio sound manipulation. — Blair Jackson

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Jamie Lin Wilson Holidays & Wedding Rings Self-released

Texas singer-songwriter follows in the footsteps of great Lone Star troubadours It’s hard to choose a favorite line on Holidays & Wedding Rings; that’s how good this solo debut is, and how smartly these songs are written. A would-be motel tryst is like “running for the edge and thinking you’ll fly, knowing damned well that it’s suicide.” After years of being away, a dying man meets his grandchild, passing time with small talk before asking his daughter, “Do you really think she looks like me? That’s hard for me to see, but it’s awfully nice of you.” A woman tries to recover from a breakup, so desperate for love that “she’ll believe you, because she needs to, even if it’s all a lie. She’s hoping for tomorrow, but she’ll take tonight.”

It’s the stuff of three-chord country dreams.

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It’s the stuff of three-chord country dreams, filled with the tiny details of men and women making their way through this world as best they can: that hot summer pregnancy, that sweet remembered smell of a South Texas wind, that feeling of driving a convertible with the top down. Whether she’s writing alone or co-writing with friends in Austin, Wilson cuts straight to the heart of these songs, the tunes feeling as simple as they are true, the performances honest and understated, the acoustic guitars—by Wilson, David Abeyta, and Scott Davis—solid, steady, and unsentimental. After a damn fine debut with the Trishas on High Wide & Handsome (2012), Holidays & Wedding Rings feels like a leap forward, losing some of that polish but gaining a deeper, solitary vulnerability that suits these songs beautifully, with an attention to craftsmanship that would make Guy Clark proud. —K.B.

American legends: Carter, left, and Ralph Stanley

BOOKS

The Stanley Brothers Sessions A scholarly look at a bluegrass act that helped define the genre BY GREG CAHILL

ou know that a book has a scholarly underpinning when it kicks off with a three-page explanation of the formatting of the discography. Indeed, Gary B. Reid, the founder of the bluegrass and old-time music label Copper Creek Records, has taken a reverential approach to The Music of the Stanley Brothers, an authoritative book on Ralph and Carter Stanley, key figures in the formation of bluegrass music. The contents are arranged chronologically, and the book is packed not only with discographies, but also key biographical details and musicological analyses of the songs. On page after page, Reid tracks songs, labels, and festivals, from 1947 to 1966. The result is a heartfelt homage to two of the most important American musicians of the last half of the 20th century. It’s told in a clear-eyed manner, unsullied by pretense or hyperbole. “As for the Stanley Brothers. . . , the music speaks for itself,” Reid writes in the last chapter. “They were at the start of it all. The recordings show how the group morphed from old-time string to bluegrass, how their songwriting efforts added to the core repertoire of the genre, and how they became the genre’s most recorded group.” Carter died in 1964, the 88-year-old Ralph continues to perform and record, and the Stanley Brothers’ rich legacy lives on.

Y

On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom Who knew that Dennis McNally, the longtime publicist of the Grateful Dead, was such a deep thinker?

While others may be content to take a superficial view of American roots music, McNally takes the reader back in time to Henry David Thoreau and the transcendentalists, and works of the literary giant Mark Twain, to examine the history of the nation’s attitudes toward race and how that past helped to inform the African-American experience. It’s no small undertaking, but McNally captivates the reader with intelligent discussions that flow as strong and steady as the Mississippi River—the waterway that cuts through the American heartland—and flesh out the Mississippi Delta blues and life along Highway 61, that Southern throughway captured in song by Bob Dylan. W.C. Handy, Charley Patton, and Pete Seeger—they’re all here. This is a musical travelogue in overdrive and one hell of a ride. John Prine: In Spite of Himself Rolling Stone once called John Prine “a richly imagistic Midwestern everyguy whose languid good nature defied singer-songwriter smugness.” North Carolina writer Eddie Huffman delivers a well-rounded portrait of Prine, culled from magazine profiles, newspaper interviews, album liner notes, and concert reviews. It’s a quick read and good overview of one of Americana’s greatest songwriters. It hits all the bases, but left me wanting for more perspective, especially given the subject’s incisive wit and observational humor. Maybe Prine protégé Todd Snider, who last year released an often hilarious autobiography, can set his keen sights on Prine. AG

The Music of the Stanley Brothers By Gary B. Reid University of Illinois Press

On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom By Dennis McNally Counterpoint

John Prine: In Spite of Himself By Eddie Huffman University of Texas Press

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Shubb Capos, shubb.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Janet Davis Music, jdmc.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Steven Kaufman Enterprises, Inc., flatpik.com . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Kyser Musical Products, kysermusical.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Stewart-MacDonald’s Guitar Supply, stewmac.com . . . . . . 93

Luthier Music Corp., luthiermusic.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Sweetwater Sound, sweetwater.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

C.F. Martin & Co., Inc., martinguitar.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Taylor, taylorguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Epiphone Guitars, epiphone.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Masecraft Supply Co., masecraftsupply.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

TC Electronic A/S, tcgroup.tc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Ernie Ball Music Man, ernieball.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Music Dispatch, musicdispatch.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Woodstock Invitiational, woodstockinvitational.com . . . . . . . 18

Fishman Transducers, fishman.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Music Emporium, themusicemporium.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Yamaha Corporation of America, yamaha.com . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Alvarez, alvarezguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Bose Corporation, bose.com/live1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Bourgeois Guitars, pantheonguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Breedlove, breedlovemusic.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Collings Guitar, collingsguitars.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 D’Addario & Company, daddario.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 17, 67 Dana B. Goods, danabgoods.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 DR Music, drstrings.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Eastman Strings, Inc., eastmanstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Elixir Strings, elixirstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 7

AcousticGuitar.com 97

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MUSIC COMES STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART, AND PEOPLE’S HEARTS ARE IN THEIR EYES.

YOU CAN LOOK RIGHT AT A MAN AND KNOW IF HE’S ABOUT MUSIC— OR IF HE’S JUST A PIRATE.

WILLIAM HOWARD

BEN HARPER ACOUSTIC GUITAR, 1996

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