Tag: country blues

Posted on

Open Mic Night and the Allure of Playing Country Blues Roots Music…

The scene at Cup of Joe in Cedar Falls during the early stages of Open Mic Night… Hosts Rick Vanderwall and Bill Guernsey…

It’s been two months since I played at Open Mic night at Cup of Joe, located in downtown Cedar Falls, IA… I missed the last one to attend a Wilco concert in Cedar Rapids.

Wilco playing at the Paramount in Cedar Rapids, IA

The Wilco show was a lot of fun and it was a treat seeing Nels Cline play guitar, as he is one of the top players in the country. The venue in which Wilco played was also quite marvelous. It was an ornately restored old downtown theater with marvelous acoustics.

Nevertheless, I was glad to be back at the Cup again with a chance to perform in a small intimate setting… I am clearly not a headline performer… instead, the specter of performing in front of people really motivates me to work at the craft of playing guitar!

Me and my Taylor Solid Body Custom Walnut, with a newly replaced neck…

In the above image, you can see I was delighted to be back. This is me posing before the coffee counter just before my performance… Call my performance costume, ” old man cool-eclectic.” 😁

It was a big night for me because I was going to play publicly, for the first time, Stefan Grossman’s arrangement of A Tribute to Lonnie Johnson… this piece is epic in length and requires a reasonable amount of finger-style skill to pull it off so for me at least it marked a stage of development along my guitar playing journey…

I’d been working on the Lonnie Johnson piece for weeks and weeks and though I’ve pretty much mastered it, it is still difficult for me to play it flawlessly even alone at home, so playing it publicly was going to be quite an adventure for me, but I was looking forward to seeing how well I could do.

A year ago, my fingers would sometime disassociate themselves from my brain on pieces of music much simpler than the Lonnie Johnson charts, so I set a high bar for myself.

Taylor T5z Pro Ltd; Molasses Burst…

I actually began working on the Lonnie Johnson piece using my newest guitar, shown above, the Taylor T5z Pro, which is an acoustic/electric hybrid that sounds great whatever you play on it, but especially nice when playing old finger-style country blues; however, at the last moment I decided to play that night on my Taylor Solid Body Custom, which you can see me holding above. After playing the T5z for weeks on end, I think I just needed a change of pace. I am holding the Solid Body in the photo at the top of this article. It is a lovely instrument and plays like butter… While the T5z plays beautifully too, it is bit more demanding than the Solid Body, and that is probably why I made the last moment switch…

I’ve written before on this weblog about finger-style blues and why I am so dedicated to that genre:

  1. It’s a musical style that can be played strictly instrumentally or accompanied by singing. In instrumental form, the music holds up on its own, so it is suitable for a single guitar player to perform without accompaniment. Since I have no interest in being in a band, this genre is perfect for me.
  2. Country blues pieces span from the elegantly simple to the moderately complex and there are available lots of charts and educational videos from which to learn, so it is a great genre to develop playing chops, which can be very satisfying.
  3. While there is a very active global community of country blues players, they are still diminutive in size compared to other musical genres, so it is a smaller fairly supportive group of players.
  4. As a baby boomer, I grew up with early rock ‘n roll and this music serves as its foundation. Country blues are THE essential roots of much of the popular music that I grew up with. My experience is that audiences are not exposed to country blues that often but like it when they hear it. Much more interesting than the millionth cover of Moondance they’ve heard before.
  5. While players use picks or strum through country blues, the really authentic way to play it is with the fingers. Finger-style playing is way too cool… just sayin’

As testament to the roots nature of country blues, I am embedding a link through the photo of classic bluesman Charlie Patton on the right. It leads to an interesting blog article that gives a nice comparative sampling of rock music to its original country blues form. The blog is called Please Kill Me… This is what is cool… Click on Charlie Patton and then come back!

Grant and me at Bob’s Guitars, our favorite hang out…

As is typical for me, I signed up to play first. There are actually only 6 15 minute slots available for open mic wannabes, so I usually get to the shop about 45 minutes before Rick and Bill, the hosts arrive and when they do I hit the sign-up sheet promptly. My friend Grant is almost always there too and he signs up to play second. In fact, we are hoping to play a full set on our own at the Cup some time in the near future!

That particular night I played in the following order:

  • A Tribute to Lonnie Johnson in Drop D tuning… (Stefan Grossman) – I did ok… shanked some into the rough, but pulled it off… at Open Mic it would be too challenging to record myself; however, I do have a decent sampling of Lonnie Johnson that I made at home, which is embedded below. Note that I am playing the T5z.
  • Spoonful in Drop D tuning… (Charlie Patton, arranged by Stefan Grossman) a briefer and lighter tune to cleanse the palette after the heavy low down Lonnie Johnson piece…
  • Cocaine Blues… (traditional, arranged by Stefan Grossman) a favorite of mine and the rare tune I have completely memorized… breezed through it… a crowd favorite too… a lovely, complex finger-style tune that stays at home in the top three frets… relaxing and also cleansing to play…
  • Police and a Sergeant… (Robert Wilkins, rearranged by Catfish Keith) I love this piece and it’s a great way to end the set. It’s very meaningful to me because I took a lesson with Catfish Keith to work on it! Last time I played it at the Cup, I pretty much lost my way and unravelled, though I got through it somehow… The other night I played it clean as country water…

Below you can see a photo that my wife took of me playing… it’s been post processed and posterized a bit to make it more fun… Note that I am for the first time performing with my iPad and foot pedal for page turning…

It was a great night closed out by the Jacobs playing some jazzed-up seasonal tunes!

The Jacobs knocking out jazzy holiday tunes…

Thanks also to my friend Grant for the call out at the end of my set! He played a fine set too!

Posted on

Wind it up again… Rocktober’s Open Mic at Cup of Joe…

(left to right) Bill, Rick and Colin open the night

Third Friday of the month is Open Mic night at Cedar Fall’s Cup of Joe and it is the event that guitar playing devotees such as myself use to motivate ourselves to develop new tunes and to enhance out musical technique.
,
October’s Open Mic was again hosted by Rick Vanderwall and Bill Guernsey, as well as Rick’s grandson, Colin Simpson. They provide the sound system and some sense of order by ushering through performers in 15 minute time slots. Order was required that night as Cup of Joe was a full house by the time performances commenced. The payback for Rick and company is they themselves get to open the night with a performance.

As I said, Open Mic night is big stuff for those of us trying to develop our performing chops. Two of the regulars are my friend Grant Tracey and me. Here we are the day before Open Mic at one of our wood and steel gatherings, checking out some of the finer guitar instrumental offerings at Bob’s Guitars in Cedar Falls. Grant’s holding a Taylor GS Mini and I am twanging away on a Taylor T5z Pro Ltd., which is a singular guitar!

I like to play first, right after Rick, Bill and Colin do their thing. Perhaps it was nerves when I first started doing Open Mic, but now it’s a habit… I am rethinking opening the night in the future as this past Friday it was pandemonium while I was playing, with people milling around in front of me still signing up for slots to play. Very hard to connect with the audience or play cleanly with that sort of chaos surrounding me.

Nevertheless, I managed to get through my set with minimal “shanks” into the musical rough. For the first time ever, I played a medley of Take a Whiff on Me & Stagolee, both being in the key of D. My guitar teacher Tom Garman helped me create a “professional” transition between the two pieces. I also knocked out a couple of my favorite tunes, Cocaine Blues and Railroad Bill. Probably the highlight for me was to play a spirited version of Etta Baker’s Carolina Breakdown, a tune I stumbled through a year ago during my first sojourn into the world of Open Mic. The photograph of me on Friday night was taken by my wife Annette, who showed up just in the nick of time to catch my performance. She’d been on the road with her students touring the fashion industry in Minneapolis earlier that day!

Kudos to my friend Grant who played his set, including a Hank Williams cover and several of his own tunes, all played for the first time at Open Mic on an acoustic guitar. I thought for that venue it sounded far better than the Fender Mustang he’s played in the past! His home penned tunes, such the fan favorite, Black Sky, work really well with acoustic guitar accompaniment.

See you next month… and I must get to work on some new tunes!

Posted on

The Tone Zone… adding some crunch…

My primary, perhaps even exclusive focus in guitar music is to learn and play old country blues, including tunes by such luminaries as the Rev. Gary Davis, the Rev. Robert Wilkins, Elizabeth Cotton and Etta Baker. These tunes were mostly played on acoustic guitar; however, there are enough images out there to indicate that the country blues players were not immune to the charms of the electric guitar… Nor am I, and I play the blues tunes I’ve learned interchangeably on a combination of five different guitars.

Pedaltrain Board replete with a variety of pedals, each serving a distinct function…

I think one of the most fun elements of playing electric guitar is the great range of possibilities when it comes to sculpting a sound, as compared to an acoustic flat top.

Besides the guitar itself, which offers some tone control, electric guitars also have available tone sculpting capabilities with the amplifier itself; however, as depicted above, the marketplace offers a wide variety of pedals to enhance and sculpt the tone emanating from the guitar/amp combination.

To date, I’ve mostly restricted myself to adding tone modulation to my country blues tune such as tremolo, reverb, or delay, along with some compression beforehand, but I’ve been loath to experiment with or add in overdrive or distortion tone modification, which is currently so popular in rock and roll music, especially heavy metal. Those aforementioned tone modifications can have a huge impact on the listeners response to the music and can easily destroy the aesthetic of a country blues tune.

Mesa Boogie Flex Drive…

Well… I am still totally uninterested it big time distortion and wild horses could not get me to sit down and listen to a metal band, but I am going to stick my toes in the “distortion” waters a bit.

I decided to throw my infrequently used Boss Equalizer under the bus and remove it from my pedal board (it is sitting safely in its original box waiting for a rainy day). In place, I am going to put in a pedal that can add some tasteful crunch to the guitar’s signal. I do already possess a Mesa Boogie Tone Burst which can add some slight tone fattening but has limited impact, which is what it was designed to do; however a different pedal is required to get a more noticeable crunch.

The pedal choices for tone modification include overdrive, distortion or fuzz devices. The changes wrought by distortion and/or fuzz devices are so over-dramatic they offend my sensibilities, so I decided to acquire an overdrive, which I think will be more manageable and not destroy the aesthetic of a country blues tune. There are so many of these things on the marketplace that a decision can be overwhelmingly impossible to make from the perspective of my somewhat shallow knowledge base. So I decided to jump into the deep end and trust Mesa Boogie again by grabbing a pedal that was designed to add more crunch to the signal than the Tone Burst mentioned earlier.

Fortunately for me I had the great good fortune of getting a nice discount from Bob of Bob’s Guitars and acquired a Mesa Boogie Flux Drive. Bob has a history of taking good care of his constant customers, which I am. It did not hurt that this particular pedal had been languishing on Bob’s pedal shelf for years and he probably viewed my testing the pedal out as a decisive moment to finally unload it!

Well… my initial experience is very positive with the Flux Drive… the device works by pushing the valves in my Fender Princeton into modestly aggressive overdrive and adds a nice sonic crunch that does not obscure the essential elements of the tune I am playing… Check me out at open mic night because I will probably use it for at least one tune!

Posted on

Friday Night (high)Lights… or life in the open mic world…

Exterior of Cup of Joe, on the corner of Main and 1st Street…

In Cedar Falls, Iowa, right smack dab in the middle of flyover country exists a funky little coffee shop that’s been in business for twenty some odd years. The coffee is excellent, the baked goods are great, and the authentic retro-fifties furnishings give it an ambience unlike other coffee shops I’ve ever been to. In short, it is one of those idiosyncratic local treasures that inhabit small towns. The shop is called Cup of Joe…

Besides purveying what coffee shops typically offer, Cup of Joe is also a patron of the arts… The owners rotate through the walls of the shop varying two dimensional art forms, including paintings, sketches, photographs and prints. In fact, a couple of years ago, the shop was kind enough to host an exhibition of my landscape and prairie photography.

Cup of Joe interior… performance space in the far back… Note artwork on the wall…

Most importantly, on every third Friday of the month, Cup of Joe hosts an open mic night for musicians, poets and what have you…

In fact, last night was my first year anniversary performing country blues guitar at the Cup during open mic and a great night it was…

Through some arrangement for which I am unaware, open mic night has been hosted by three gentlemen who referred to themselves as The Three Blind Mice… They consisted of Rick Vanderwall, Bill Guernsey, and the late Rick Nees. They would perform themselves at the opening of the event and then help out others during their time at the mic. As Rick V. was out of town visiting family, the evening was hosted by Bill alone.

Bill and I mugging for the camera…

Here I am with Bill at the end of the show; however, earlier in the evening my friend Grant Tracey and I helped him haul in his equipment as he was working alone that night. He brings in a PA system and microphones, as well as an amp suitable for electric and acoustic guitars. During the show he tweaks and fine tunes the sound such as you can in that particular space. Most importantly, Bill maintains order and keeps the participants in line and within a 15 minute timeframe.

What was unique and particularly fun that night was the shop owner, Dawn’s request that Grant, another guitarist, and I participate in a video feed advertising the night’s festivities. We all have different music in us… Yeah, you can quote me on that… Grant is a singer/songwriter, largely influenced by his youthful devotion to punk rock… Me, on the other hand, I love those old time, deep rooted, foundational country blues and that’s what I play… You can see our introductory video below: (you may have to click twice)

After Bill warmed up the crowd with a Neil Young cover, I opened the night with a fifteen minute country blues set. It’s my preference to play first, and I will arrive at the coffee shop a good hour before set-up just to get my name on the list first.

Here I am playing my set of 4 country blues tunes. That night was the public debut of my newly repaired Taylor Solidbody Custom Walnut electric. I had the guitar signal passing through my pedal board with compression, some gain to fatten up the sound a bit, a dash of vibrato, some slap-back delay and all blended into some hall-like reverb… Even though I painstakingly set up the pedals at home through my Fender amp, it sounded a bit boomy from where I was sitting… fortunately Bill smoothed it out for me with some amp equalization. Still, when sitting behind the speakers it’s hard to assess how your rig sounds… a performer monitor would be nice, but that’s a lot to ask for at an open mic night…

My set included:

  • I Do Blues – a new tune for me credited to Rev. Robert Wilkins
  • Police and a Sergeant – Rev. Robert Wilkins, arranged by Catfish Keith
  • Railroad Bill – traditional, arranged by Etta Baker
  • Cocaine Blues – traditional, arranged by Stefan Grossman

I was prepared to play more, but Bill put the hook on me as there were a number of others signed for the mic! I did a pretty good job on three of the four tunes, but shanked a few into the rough on Police and a Sergeant, which I played flawlessly at the Bandshell performance last month. Throw of the dice at this stage of my performing career, I guess… It’s not for lack of practice that I shank one, but more dependent on keeping focus and maintaining the brain/finger connection…

My beloved wife Nettie was there to take photos of me playing. She does a great job with an iPhone… I hope to upgrade my iPhone from the current 6s to the latest because the cameras on the new ones are so “dadgum” good and perfect for supporting this weblog.

You’ll no doubt note that, as is typical, I am obscured by a music stand… There are reasons why. First, I much prefer playing sitting down because I have better control of the guitar and secondly, I like referring to the charts while I play because I simply cannot remember most of my pieces which have fairly complicated finger movements.

Before the next time I perform, I hope to convert to an iPad, equipped with a foot pedal, to dispense with the paper and music stand, which should obscure me less while I play…

  • Lillian and me…
  • Jacob and me…

After my performance, I had a chance to catch up with one of my former Northern Iowa Textile and Apparel majors, Lillian T. If I missed teaching, which I do not, it would be because of special kids like Lillian… she was an absolute delight to work with in the classroom… I also had a chance to interact a bit with one of the two Jacobs in the coffee shop that night… He is a Northern Iowa music major and a tremendous guitar player… he noted my tasteful use of pedals and the pleasant “acoustic” sound of my guitar, which obviously delighted me to hear!

  • Grant digging into his Mustang…
  • The Jacobs laying out masterful Jazz riffs…

After my set, as you can see above, my pal Grant played a 4 tune set on his beloved Mustang, including some soulful picking of individual notes within his chord progressions… The show concluded on a high note with the Jacobs, both exceptionally accomplished jazz guitarists, who laid out their improvisations in masterful style…

September’s open mic night was a night to remember… until next month… I am working on some new tunes as I write… see ya…

Posted on

Not Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock… but good enough…

CVAGA performance at Overman Park bandshell… About my clothes… I was at the gym earlier and thought I would have a chance to change… I was mistaken…

I’ve written before that playing in front of people is equal amounts of stress I and excitement; however, the most important thing about it to me is that performing helps me to take myself more seriously as a musician, such that I am… this past Friday night I had the opportunity to join several guitar players on stage at Overman Park in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The “concert” took place the couple of hours before dark, after which a film is shown on an outdoor screen… that night it was Ironman…

Each musician or group of musicians was granted a 15 minute time slot, which in reality was more like a suggestion, as some players seemed to linger on the stage for much longer…

the Bandshell looking outwards…

The entire experience actually lasted quite a long time. As a player, I was asked to help set up. I arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon and was early, so I took the opportunity to climb on the stage and look out at the park before people would arrive in a couple of hours. The weather was lovely for a mid-August date… Days like that are the payoff for suffering through long, brutal Iowa winters.

  • Sound system set-up…
  • CVAGA Banner at the Bandshell…

It was not long before the other performers and the sound tech arrived for set up. The sound system was a real pro rig, including monitors for the players which I had never used and was delighted to get the experience. You can see in the image above right that the event is hosted by CVAGA or the Cedar Valley Acoustic Guitar Association. Rick Vanderwall, a friend of mine, and original founder of the Association invited me to perform. I was somewhat ambivalent, but he insisted, and I am glad, in the end, that I agreed.

Overman Park Bandshell during set up

You can see from the image to the left that Bob’s Guitars underwrites the concerts. The Bob was there with his wife Avis and their dog Scout. You will most often find them all at his shop when its open. I’ve written about their shop before…

Yours truly awaiting my turn for sound check. Note my pedal array at my feet which allows me to sculpt my own idiosyncratic interpretation of country blues.

It was a bit nerve wracking waiting for sound checks to occur. Here I am on the left patiently waiting for my turn. Despite the fact that the host organization is an acoustic society, I was told there were no hard/fast rules, so I decided to play my semi-hollow bodied Taylor T3, along with my pedal array. My teacher and family all concurred with my decision to go electric. Ah yes… I think that Bob Dylan would have approved too… Other than one snide comment that I brushed off, everyone else was cool with my choice.

I played a 15 minute set of finger-style country blues. Fortunately, I got to play first, which is what I really like to do at open mic events. i.e. Get it over with! Though there are lyrics to each of the tunes I played I did not sing. At this stage of my player development, the finger-style patterns are too complicated for me to sing simultaneously. Further, I am not confident that my singing voice would complement my playing anyway. My set included the following tunes:

  • Corinna Corinna; traditional… arranged by Stef Grossman
  • Railroad Bill; traditional… arranged by Etta Baker
  • Police and a Sergeant; Rev. Robert Wilkins… arranged by Catfish Keith
  • Cocaine Blues; TJ Arnall… arranged by Stef Grossman
  • Shake Sugaree; Elizabeth Cotton… arranged by Stef Grossman

I think I played reasonably well… actually as good as I can at this stage of my development. Iowa audiences are typically very kind and they acted appreciative. My family and friends thought I did well too, but it’s always hard to tell if they are being nice or really mean it… My wife Nettie was particularly pleased with the quality of the sound system and how my playing came across, so that sounded like a legit “mazel tov!” I was most excited that the sound guy, who hears a lot of performances was delighted with the combination of my choice of music, my playing and the tone sculpting that I do with my array of pedals.

Me and my main-man Grant…

In the end I was glad I did it and I was equivalently glad when it was over with. Here I am afterwards relaxing with my main-man and fellow musician Grant, who was kind enough to capture my performance.

All’s well that ends well…

my travel rig the night of the show…
Posted on

Railroad Bill… a Piedmont Country Blues tune…

Piedmont Country Blues is a finger style guitar blues with the thumb alternating on the bass strings and the fingers (varying in number depending on the player) plucking out the melody. Etta Baker from North Carolina was one of the most beloved players of Country Blues.

Etta Baker

Among her many well known tunes, Railroad Bill is one of the best known and most recognized. This tune was played by the late Ms. Baker as an instrumental; however there are lyrics that speak to the actions of an African American train-robbing desperado. Apparently Railroad Bill was done wrong by a train company and he sought revenge by waylaying trains and robbing them until he met his unfortunate end.

Railroad Bill seems deceptively simple on the chart, but it’s not… getting the phrasing correct is an ongoing challenge; however, I am getting pretty close. Here below is my current rendering of the tune.

You’ll note that unlike most Piedmont Blues players, I am playing electric guitar (Taylor T3 Custom) through a variety of tone pedals giving it a bit of a haunting sensibility.