London Jazz Festival & playing Fylde guitars

I saw some good jazz concerts last weekend at the London Jazz festival, the highlight of which was Sonny Rollins at 80 - what a force of nature Sonny is!  It was good to catch up with old friends Nick & Simon.

So, with a little inspiration from the jazz repertoire here is a short section of St James Infirmary Blues played on a Fylde Goodfellow.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKgbL-SCllg

Vintage Instruments & The Cactus Cafe - Philadelphia Pa & Austin Tx

I am on the road for a 2 week business trip in the USA- which means too long away from the family. However, as some consolation, I got to visit a couple of interesting guitar places. The first in Philadelphia is Vintage Instruments. This is a business devoted to all sorts of instruments and it is located in the most beautiful brownstone tenement. Guitars are located downstairs in the basement area and this store has a huge choice of vintage acoustic guitars – especially Gibsons, & Martins, but also Nationals. I tried 2 1930’s Gibson L-00s, which were on sale for $4.5K and $4.7K. I found a big difference between these guitars. The $4.5K guitar sounded really thin, but the slightly more expensive guitar sung out. Both guitars were recently re-strung, but the difference was to my ears stark. Just as an aside, the $4.7k guitar had some buzzing in the D & G strings, which was a little surprising in a guitar set up to sell. Service in the store is distinctly idiosyncratic. The lady who served me first just did not listen to what I was saying and was extremely condescending. But if you can put up with this, it is well worth a visit – probably best to phone ahead and make an appointment. Fred is the man to talk to in this shop – he listens & knows his guitars.

 

There is a lesson in my experience – you can’t buy a guitar without trying it out first – especially true of old guitars. If I had splashed out for the $4.5K guitar, I would have been very disappointed. I am not saying it was a bad guitar, just that when I played it, it didn’t sound good to my ears.



The next city I visited was Austin, Texas – where I was lucky enough to spend the weekend. Austin is well known as a musical city – and it celebrates the fact with large guitars scattered through town and naming a street after one of its most famous musical residents (Willie Nelson Boulevard). I wanted to check out two places when in town: The Cactus Café at University of Texas, and Collings Guitars. Unfortunately, I arrived too late to catch the Collings factory tour – which only runs on Friday. I did however get to the Cactus Café to see Chris Knight. The Cactus has hosted lots of great names over the years – including Lucinda Williams, Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett and the great Townes van Zandt. They have a nice display of old posters showing past performers right outside the entrance to the café – I took a photo of one of their signed Townes posters.

And here is Chris Knight in action at the Cactus

If you are ever in Austin and feel the need of grabbing some cowboy boots, or a Stetson, then go to South Congress (SoCo) and head for Allens Boots. The picture below shows a small selection of their boots (I resisted any temptation - they are not for me). SoCo is a nice place to visit with some cool shops.

I walked back from SoCo to town (I was looking for a gift for my wife, so I went into lots of the nice boutiques) and happened upon Quincy’s guitars. I was lucky enough to meet Pat the propriator in there. Now, the guys at Vintage Instruments could learn a thing or two from Pat about how to listen to customers and make them comfortable. He is very enthusiastic & knowledgeable and he stocks some great Collings & McPherson guitars. I loved the Collings custom OM2 he had. It was deeper bodied than the standard model (it was dreadnought depth) which added a little more depth to the already beautiful standard OM2 sound. Here is a picture of Pat holding that custom Collings, with some other Collings on the wall behind him.

Family vacation time - great but no guitar!

Recording some of the songs

I recorded a couple of my study tunes today.  I recorded in mono using Garageband.  To capture the guitar sound, I used an SE condenser microphone through an Apogee Duet.  I recorded in the attic which has quite a live sound ( the floorboards are mainly bare).  The guitar has quite a large dynamic range and I needed to place the mic carefully to avoid overloading the bass response.

I had been playing the Wind & Rain in G, but today, I changed to D and that seemed to better suit the way I play.  Unfortunately, the guitar was tuned a bit sharp.

I also recorded a version of 4 strong winds.  I found this the most difficult song to arrange.  I have known Neil Young's version for the last 30 years, and finding a new way to approach it was tricky.  Still, I decided to try a 2 track approach - playing the melody in quite a simple, but stylised way, and combining it with some acoustic lead.  I used the Benjamin guitar on both tracks. I retuned the guitar to standard pitch before recording this one.  The recording level seems lower than other tracks - I need to work out why.

• Oh the wind and rain
• Four Strong Winds

 

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Oh The Dreadful Wind & Rain (Twa' Sisters)

This a strange song about murder and its consequences. A sister is thrown into a river to drown by her jealous elder sister because the boy they both love has chosen the younger as his girl. The drowned sister is fished out the river by a miller & various parts of her body are fashioned into a fiddle by a passing fiddler. The fiddle plays mournfully about the dreadful events.

The song has quite a few variants and originated in the UK - the ballad collector Child has a version of it in his collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Child 10)

I have heard recordings where the song is played in a bluegrass or country folk style by Jerry Garcia, Gillian Welch and Crooked Still. However, given its British roots, I would prefer to play in a British style. So I am working on playing fingerstyle to pick out the melody and putting a bass line to it. It's done now so I will post a version of it.

Nick Benjamin, guitar maker

In addition to limiting myself to learning a few songs over the next few weeks, I will also focus on playing just one guitar - built by Nick Benjamin in Lewes. Lewes has been a centre for guitar making in the Uk for a while & Nick keeps the tradition going.

Nick is a master luthier, who really listens to what customers want and produces outstanding guitars. If you haven't seen his work, check it out at www.benjaminguitars.co.uk

I posted a photo of Nick holding my guitar at the side of this blog

Choosing what to play

It can be tricky choosing just a few songs to concentrate on. This is one of my weaknesses - I just like to pick along to whatever great song catches myattention. I can't guarantee not to do this anymore, but yesterday I looked through a few tunes and chose 3 to know backwards. So over the next few weeks I am going to arrange, and learn these tunes:-

The Dreadful wind and rain - there are a few versions of this around, including Jerry Garcia's and Crooked Still's

Four Strong Winds - Neil Young's version is my brother's favourite song of all time

Between the wars - Billy Bragg's song never seems right in sync with the times.

Anyway, I will try these tunes out to start with

Resonator guitar

Sometimes guitars can be tempermental. I have a Republic Resolian, a small resonator guitar which needs some setting up. This is a specialist job, not every luthier has got the experience to set up a resonator guitar well. Fortunately there are a few good resonator luthiers in the UK. I am going to use Dave King, based in Reading. He makes beautiful little parlour guitars, but also has a lot of experience with resonators. I have recorded some sound files of my guitar before treatment. I will post some afterwards too. The recordings were made using a cheap AKG D5 mic into an Apogee Duet and then straight into Garageband.

Although the Resolian guitar is a cheap(ish), Chinese built guitar, it is really comfortable to play & when it is properly set up I am sure it will sing.

Starting out:

I have played guitar for over 30 years, since I was 9 or 10. I first learnt some songs from a paperback guitar tutor book that my mum bought. She was a teacher and a piano player and she thought that she would learn the guitar to teach school children songs in class (a guitar being quite a bit more portable than a piano). However, having bought a guitar from a friend (a Framus f-hole), my mum never got over the sore finger stage of playing and gave up. I got the guitar & tutor book for free and started learning "On top of old smoky". That was me hooked. I saved up and bought a Beatles songbook and, quite a bit later on, a better guitar. After a while, I could figure out the chords for songs by listening to them repeatedly on my record player. The Beatles' Get Back was the first song that I managed to get all the guitar parts figured out by ear. I was about 11 or 12. Over the years, I have always had guitars at home & find playing a great way to relax.