acoustic guitar 279.pdf
TRANSCRIPT
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AcousticGuitar.com 5
CONTENTS
40 Happy Trails
Robert Earl Keen takes
a detour into bluegrass
By Mark Kemp
46 Their Roots Are Showing
5 Texans who are helping
the spirit of bluegrass evolve
48 Lucky 7
Don’t miss these
Texas bluegrass events
10 The Front Porch
96 Marketplace
97 Ad Index
March 2016
Volume 26, No. 9, Issue 279
On the Cover
Robert Earl Keen
Photographer
Darren Carroll
Special FocusTexas Bluegrass
18 Fresh Americana
Quiles & Cloud blend old
and new in acoustic collaboration
By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
20 Bluegrass Band of Brothers
How the Gibson Brothers
got their groove
By Pat Moran
24 The ‘Circle’ Unbroken
Celebrating the Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band’s enduring classic
By Mark Kemp
32 Welcome to the Jungle
Instrument makers and players—
including Slash—are mesmerized
by the Tree
By Mark Kemp
Features Miscellany‘Will the Circle Be
Unbroken did not
come about by
magic. It took a lot
of hard work, lucky
breaks, and a great
career risk for the
Nitty Gritty DirtBand.’p. 24
L—RBob Carpenter,
Jeff Hanna, Emmylou Harris,Jimmie Fadden (background),
Jimmy Ibbotson
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6 March 2016
CONTENTS
NEWS
13 The Beat
The Spirit of John Fahey tour;
Chris Isaak goes Nashville
16 Five Minutes With . . .
Eclectic flatpicker Jon Stickley
PLAY
51 Songcraft
Peggy Seeger reflects on
her Child Ballads collection
54 The Basics
Unlocking I-IV-V progressions
58 Weekly Workout
How to be a better accompanist
62 Woodshed
Rag pickin’ lesson, Pt. 2
Songs to Play
66 Ruby’s Eyes
Tommy Emmanuel’s
fingerstyle ballad
70 Will the Circle Be Unbroken
The sad but uplifting perennial
72 O the Wind and Rain
A Child Ballad murder tale
AG TRADE
77 Shoptalk
Staten Island’s Mandolin Brothers
up for sale
78 Makers & Shakers
Custom builder Linda Manzer
82 Guitar Guru
The glue quandary
84 Review: Martin 00-15E
Vintage look, modern electronics
86 Review: Taylor 326e
Baritone packs a wallop
88 Review:
Blueridge BG-1500E
A super jumbo with a modern twist
90 Review:
L.R. Baggs Session
Acoustic DI
Impressive direct input box
and comp/EQ pedal
98 Great Acoustics
Milk Carton Kids:
In perfect harmony
MIXED MEDIA
93 Playlist
The Allman Brothers’ Idlewild
South gets a deluxe reissue; also,
Eric Bibb and J.J. Milteau’s Lead
Belly’s Gold , Punch Brothers’
The Wireless EP, and Nouveaux
Honkies’ Blues for Country
Martin 00-15E, p. 84
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8 March 2016
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Colvin. Visit acousticguitar.com/sessions to check out AG’s interview/
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10 March 2016
Those friends included former Blue Grass
Boy Peter Rowan, longtime friend Lyle Lovett,
fiddler Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, and banjo
player Danny Barnes of the Bad Livers.
The special section also features a look at
five Texas music acts steeped in bluegrass,
though not typically associated with that music,and a roundup of seven Lone Star State festivals
that feature bluegrass music by regional and
national acts.
Elsewhere, you’ll find a feature on the Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band’s 50th anniversary, or to be
more precise, the making of their landmark Will
the Circle Be Unbroken album; and an article on
the Tree, an ancient Honduran mahogany trunk
that crashed to the jungle floor decades ago
only to find its way into a custom guitar for the
rocker Slash, among others.
There also is a profile of guitar maker and
innovator Linda Manzer, an interview with the
legendary folk artist Peggy Seeger, a lesson onbeing a better accompanist, and much more.
Play on.
—Greg Cahill
The Lone State State isn’t the first place you
think of when talk turns to bluegrass. But
our Texas bluegrass special section, penned by
contributing editor Mark Kemp, shows that
there’s plenty to consider, from such early
pioneers as the Mayfield Brothers to the blue-
grass roots of the Dixie Chicks to Robert EarlKeen, a singer-songwriter with his boots planted
firmly on the front porch.
Keen recorded an excellent bluegrass album
last year, Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions
(woefully absent when the Grammy Award
nominations were announced in the fall). He sat
down in the AG offices recently to shoot a Ses-
sions video and share a few stories about his love
for the genre, as well as the stumbling blocks
he’d put in his own path as a bluegrass artist. “I
was not comfortable with my voice singing blue-
grass,” Keen told Kemp. “[But] I always had an
affinity for bluegrass lyrics—the songs them-
selves, how cool the stories are. So, I eventually worked my way through the idea that I couldn’t
do bluegrass, and I invited all these friends of
mine to come in and pick with me.”
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The roots of
Texas bluegrass:
The Mayfield Brothers
THE FRONT PORCH
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©2 0 1 6 S A NT A C R UZ G UI T A R C OMP A NY
Within its walls are the instruments that made you passionate,
and the people who understand your passion. They share
your thrill of acquisition, and always welcome you to stop in
and see what's new. You still stare into the window like a kid
every time you pass by. Everyone should be lucky enough to
have a local guitar shop, and we all need to frequent the
stores that we want to keep in our towns. Music is personal,
on every level. Take pride in knowing who built your guitar
and who sold it to you. Treasure your local guitar shop.
local guitar shop
is a treasure
Your
Thanks to all for sharing in our journey
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Serious Guitars | www.collingsguitars.com
Julian Lage
and Collings Guitars
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AcousticGuitar.com 13
NEWS
Spirit ofJohn FaheyTourMembers of the legendary
Takoma 7 reunite for new tourBY KENNY BERKOWITZ
15 The Beat
Chris Isaak goes Nashville
14 The Beat
The League of Women Strummers
16 5 Minutes with . . .
The modern bluegrass of Jon Stickley
THE BEAT
CONT. ON PG. 14
B ack in 1959, guitarist John Fahey took
money he’d saved as a gas-station atten-
dant to start the Takoma record label, creating a
home not only for his own American primitive
recordings, but also for second-generation
players. These players shared his love ofcountry blues with a twist and together they
reimagined the possibilities of fingerstyle
guitar. Now, three of his earliest signings—
Toulouse Engelhardt, Peter Lang, and Rick
Ruskin—are hitting the road for the Takoma
Records Guitar Masters Tour, making stops this
spring in Arizona, California, Oregon, and
Washington.
“Fahey was a very strange cat, and you
never knew what to expect,” says Engelhardt,
who has kept early letters Fahey wrote him.
C O U R T E S Y O F V A
N G U A R D
R E C O R D S
John Fahey
5 ESSENTIALTAKOMA ALBUMS
Bukka WhiteMississippi Blues1964
John FaheyThe Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death1965
Leo Kottke,Peter Lang & John FaheyLeo Kottke, Peter Lang & John Fahey 1974
Robbie Basho, John Fahey, MaxOchs, Harry Taussig, Bukka WhiteContemporary Guitar: Spring ’67 1967
Leo Kottke
6- and 12-String Guitaraka The Armadillo Album1969
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14 March 2016
THE BEAT
THE LEAGUEOF WOMENVOTERS TOUR Patty Griffin, Sara Watkins, and
Anaïs Mitchell will hit the road
this spring to urge Americans
to get out and vote.
Teamed up with thenonpartisan organization
League of Women Voters, the
trio will hit 38 cities throughout
the southern and northeastern
United States to help fans
obtain election and voting
information.
The Use Your Voice Tour kicks
off February 12 in St. Petersburg,
Florida, and runs through April 2,
ending in Northridge, California.
For details, visit lwv.org.
—Whitney Phaneuf
“His criticism of my work was brutal, espe-
cially for a young, 20-something guitar
dreamer. One day, he would say he thought my
music was a bunch of crap. Then the next day,
he would write again, and say my solos were
some of the prettiest stuff he had ever heard. Iremember him saying to me, in his funny high-
pitched vibrato, ‘You’re the next guy, the next
gunslinger who will enter the O.K. Corral. You
need to keep developing your own style.’”
So Engelhardt did, mixing pop, psychedelia,
and the sounds of SoCal beach culture to
become “The Segovia of Surf,” while also teach-
ing community-college biology.
Lang’s path was equally indirect, recording a
ground-breaking album with Fahey and Leo
Kottke in 1974 before switching to a career in
film animation, struggling with his health, and
only recently returning to performance.
Only Ruskin has remained in music the
entire time, self-releasing albums of gospel and
blues, including the new Whatever Happened to
Blind Matzoh Leftkowitz?, and running a record-
ing studio in Seattle.
“I think [Ruskin] sums it up best for all of us
when he says we don’t think like other guitarists,”
says Engelhardt, who followed Fahey’s advice to
add more tunings, minor keys, and atonality to
his music. “As the years went on, I began torealize that John was trying to help me reach my
potential. In the end, he was right, and I appreci-
ated him as my mentor. In essence, this tour is
about his dedication to steel-string fingerstyle
guitar and the enduring legacy he left behind.”
‘This tour is about
John’s dedicationto steel-string
fingerstyle guitar
and the enduringlegacy heleft behind.’TOULOUSE ENGELHARDT
Anaïs Mitchell
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AcousticGuitar.com 15
For his first album of new songs since 2009,
Chris Isaak followed the advice of his friend
Stevie Nicks and recorded in Nashville. He’s glad
he did, because he got to have breakfast with
Robert Plant, work with A-list producers DaveCobb and Paul Worley, and co-write with Music
City hitmakers Michelle Branch, Natalie
Hemby, Caitlyn Smith, Gordie Sampson, and
James Slater.
The album, Firs t Comes the Night, was
released on Vanguard in late 2015.
“I hardly ever co-write, and I was worried
they were going to try to make it country,” says
Isaak, talking between episodes of X Factor Aus-
tralia. “Usually, I’ll just write by myself, because
that’s who I’m with. But somebody said, ‘Well,
why don’t you try?’ So I did, and had a great
experience. I went in with some songwritingideas and just had fun. Fun writing. Fun
recording.”
You can hear it, too.
In the hell-bent, post-rockabilly “Down in
Flames,” Isaak opens with, “Kennedy got it in a
Lincoln, Caesar got it in the back/ Somebody
told me Hank Williams died in his Cadillac,” a
line the singer-songwriter has been carrying
around for years.
Others are more serious. “The Way Things
Really Are” inventories lost love in the line “this
broken heart, some photographs/a cancelled
check, a couple laughs.”
“I don’t know what exactly that picture is,”
says Isaak, “but it’s a dark picture.”
First Comes the Night—which peaked at No.
6 on the Billboard Top Rock Album chart—is
livelier than Isaak’s previous album, Beyond theSun, his 2011 set of cover songs associated with
Memphis and recorded at the city’s famed Sun
Studios. More importantly, the new album is a
great reminder of everything to love about
Isaak. There’s heartache, there’s crooning, and,
yes, he’s still aiming for a happy Elvis song.
Even though it was recorded in Nashville, the
album packs loads of retro style, with all the
songs written and recorded on Isaak’s iconic
Gibson J-200, a ’90s model with his name written
across the top in mother-of-toilet-seat (aka pearl-
oid). “Most of my playing is rhythm, with a few
little runs in between when I’m singing,” Isaaksays. “I hate it when a band feels like it has two
lead guitar players battling each other—I want
the rhythm guitar to be closer to the snare drum
and the conga than to the lead guitar.
“It helps when a singer can accompany
himself, because he can punctuate his rhythm
in a way that it’s really hard for another person
to do. I’m pretty good at getting the rhythm I
want, but when it comes to making Metallica-
thrashing leads, forget it. I’m a terrible lead-
guitar player, I could never play lead in
somebody’s band,” Isaak adds.
“But I wish someone would ask me.” —K.B.
CHRIS ISAAK GOES NASHVILLE
Chris Isaak
S H E R Y L L O U I S
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16 March 2016
Martin D-18, which he’s been
playing ever since. Rice—along
with Doc Watson, who came
before, and Bryan Sutton, who
came after—is a major influence
on the Jon Stickley Trio’s Lost atLast , in which the guitarist joins
with Lyndsay Pruett (fiddle)
and Patrick Armitage (drums)
to create an exhilarating,
all-acoustic swirl of newgrass,
rock, dubstep, Gypsy jazz,
hip-hop, and jam that somehow
manages to stay close to
tradition.
Bluegrasson His MindJon Stickley is steeped in
Tony Rice and a modern sound
BY KENNY BERKOWITZ
5 MINUTES WITH...
After surviving teenage
obsessions with grunge,
shred, and math rock, guitarist
Jon Stickley found his way
to bluegrass, switching from
electric guitar to mandolin asa student at the University of
North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
From there, he started digging
into the music of the David
Grisman Quintet, where he
discovered newgrass flatpicking
and the band’s original
guitarist, Tony Rice. So Stickley
shifted again, picking up a 1956
What do you love about Tony Rice?
His music is full of style and personality. There
are so many great flatpickers out there, and
some even have better tone than Tony had in
his prime. But there’s something about Tony’s
combination of attitude and technical prowess
that’s cool and rocking and hardcore and still
really beautiful at the same time. He has this
beautiful tone, played hard.
After discovering traditional bluegrass,
why didn’t you stay with it?
I started to think of ways to make the music
more me. I have these techniques I’ve come up
with over the course of my bluegrass study and I
decided to write some songs around them, and
that became the basis of the original trio sound.
To me, our first album sounds a little more like
bluegrass picking over different drum beats. It’s
like a five-piece bluegrass lineup: A roll on the
snare is like the banjo, the kick drum is where
the upright bass would be, and the hi-hat is the
mandolin chop. Plus, fiddle and guitar. But then
we were like, “Man, it would be really cool if we
had a bass, too.” So Lyndsay and I discovered
these octave pedals, and we both use them toplay bass. We’ve given our instruments the capa-
bility to reach down to the drum sonic range,
and it’s made the trio sound a lot more cohesive.
And it’s not studio trickery. We’re still playing
our acoustic instruments, and what you hear on
the album is exactly what you hear when we
play live.
What does this new album say about who
you are?
When I think about it, I would say it’s a kid
who has grown up lis tening to all sor ts of
music, but was heavily influenced by punk andgrunge, and then became obsessed with blue-
grass picking. And it’s that kid, grown up and
taking a look back at what shaped his musical
taste and compositional leaning, and it’s just
trying to figure out what song to write next.
Do you still practice along with Tony Rice
records?
Definitely. Whenever I’m trying to work on
chops or work on a feel, that’s what I do.
Can you keep up?
I’m working on it.
Jon Stickley TrioLost at Last
Self-released
A U S T I N
S T E I N S I C K A T P H I S H B O N E
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18 March 2016
n a courtyard stage at the FreshGrass
festival in western Massachusetts,
Quiles and Cloud gather around a
single microphone. Maria Quiles (pronouncedkey-less) sways in her batik skirt, singing lead
and playing fingerstyle rhythm on a cutaway
Martin, while Rory Cloud, goateed with a long
ponytail hanging over his sky-blue jacket, adds
seamless vocal harmonies and silvery lead lines
on a sunburst Guild. Across the stage, Oscar
Westesson anchors the sound on upright bass,
deepening the grooves with touches of string
and wood percussion.
Quiles and Cloud are a long way from their
home in San Francisco, but this early-fall festi-
val in the Berkshire Mountains is where, in
2014, they took a big step onto the national
scene by winning the FreshGrass duo contest.
Part of their prize was the opportunity to make
an album produced by banjo master and
Compass Records co-founder Alison Brown, andthe result of those sessions is hot off the press
at FreshGrass 2015.
Quiles and Cloud’s new Beyond the Rain is a
mix of originals (“Black Sky Lightning,” “Missis-
sippi River”) and traditional tunes (“Deep Ellum
Blues,” “Faded Flowers”) and a cover of Bob
Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” The album,
along with many months of grassroots touring
around the U.S., introduces the duo as a compel-
ling new voice on the Americana scene. Though
clearly on the path blazed by Gillian Welch and
David Rawlings—and trod by fellow travelers
such as the Milk Carton Kids, Mandolin Orange,
FRESHAMERICANA
Quiles and Cloud blend
old and new in tight
acoustic collaborationBy Jeffrey
Pepper
Rodgers
E M I L Y
S E V I N
O
L—R
Cloud, Quiles,
Westesson
and Pharis and Jason Romero—Quiles and
Cloud’s sound is not particularly Appalachian or
twangy. Their music leans more toward contem-
porary folk and blues, with a touch of soul. After their FreshGrass set, Quiles, Cloud,
and Westesson sit in the backstage artist lounge
to talk about how they came together. Quiles
and Cloud met in 2011 at an open mic in a San
Francisco cathedral, finding not only immediate
musical chemistry but a shared sense that the
time was right, in Quiles’ words, “to go balls-to-
the-wall with music.
“Rory was out in San Francisco playing all
the time, sort of living out of his car, and I was
living in my uncle’s basement,” she says. “So we
found each other at a time when we were ready
to commit.”
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AcousticGuitar.com 19
WHAT
THEY
PLAY
MARIA QUILES
1999 Martin DCME mahogany
dreadnought. Martin SP
strings. Paige regular capo
and Shubb C7B three-string
partial capo (to simulate
DADGAD tuning onstage).
Korg PitchHawk-G tuner.
‘[WE WERE READY]
TO GO BALLS-TO-THE-WALL
WITH MUSIC.’MARIA QUILES
Both grew up surrounded by music and art.
Cloud’s mother fronted the folk-rock band Cheryl
Cloud and Common Ground, performing around
southern California through the ’80s and up untilshe passed away from cancer in 1995. Initially,
Rory played mostly electric guitar in various rock,
jazz, and hip-hop projects, but he eventually came
back to his folk roots—and now exclusively plays
his mother’s old Guild dreadnought.
“I started getting back into writing songs,
inspired by people like Nick Drake and song-
writers that I got exposed to later,” he recalls,
“and I started messing with alternate tunings
on the acoustic guitar.”
Meanwhile, up in San Francisco, Quiles’
parents were ballroom dance teachers and
painters. As a kid she played classical violin, butthen, she says, “The acoustic guitar came into
my life. I love playing violin and I still do it, but
for me, guitar is a great tool for writing. I’ve
dabbled in other roles in electric music, but I
really resonate with an acoustic guitar.”
Quiles and Cloud made their first album,
Long Time Coming, five months after they met,
and soon afterward connected with Westesson,
who joins them for California gigs and some-
times on tour elsewhere. At first the group’s rep-
ertoire mostly consisted of songs written
individually, but the two quickly began develop-
ing their duo voice. “The sound that we have
now has very much been developed through thisproject,” says Cloud. “We both sounded different
when we got together and had di fferent
approaches to arranging.”
Most of the duo’s songs originate with a
lyrical or musical idea from Quiles. “She’ll bring
a framework to me,” says Cloud. “It might be
half written and she needs a second opinion or
ear on lyrics, or structural things with the tune,
so I’m the person who comes in and tweaks the
arrangement a little bit or adds something to
the chord progression. Then there’s the whole
harmony process that we go through, where we
sit for a while and figure out what the nicenotes are to add color to the arrangement.”
Quiles and Cloud tune into music beyond
the folk world but feel most connected with
artists such as Punch Brothers, Aoife
O’Donovan, and Sarah Jarosz. Cloud says he
appreciates the open-ended way those musi-
cians cross-pollinate genres with the directness
and simplicity of acoustic folk.
“I spent a lot of time getting my tone from
amps and pickups,” says Cloud. “It’s really
refreshing to be in this scene and get all of your
sound just from your fingertips and the wood
resonating.” AG
RORY CLOUD
1976 sunburst Guild D-35 that
belonged to his mother, Cheryl
Cloud. Martin Retro Tony Rice
signature strings (MTR13 Monel).
BlueChip picks. Shubb capo.
Korg PitchHawk-G tuner. Cloud
uses a Walker strap from Flying
Possum Leather that loops over
the upper bout.
AMPLIFICATION
Ear Trumpet Labs Edwina mic.
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20 March 2016
L-R
Clayton Campbell, Eric Gibson,
Mike Barber, Leigh Gibson,
Jesse Brock
eigh and Eric Gibson were kids
working the family dairy farm when
bluegrass rocked their world. At the
time, the internet hardly existed and even cable
TV hadn’t yet reached their rural neck of the
woods. But if you’re thinking the Gibson boys
grew up in the hollers of Kentucky, Tennessee,
or North Carolina, think again.
“You’ll have a hard time finding anywhere
more remote than the northern edge of the
Adirondack Mountains,” Leigh Gibson says.
The Gibsons’ bond with bluegrass happenedin upstate New York less than an hour’s drive
from the Canadian border. Leigh Gibson admits
it’s “not exactly traditional bluegrass country,”
but says, “The way we grew up was similar to
the first generation of bluegrass people. The
subjects they wrote about, like family moving
away to find work, resonated with us.”
Formed in 1984, the Gibson Brothers Band
sought early on to balance the traditions of
seminal bluegrass artists like Bill Monroe with
innovations drawn from classic country. The
band has since amassed a devoted following
through 12 studio albums and a rigorous
touring schedule. Named Emerging Artist of the
Year in 1998 at the International Bluegrass
Music Association, Leigh Gibson went on to
host the IBMA’s 2013 awards ceremony.
Last year, the Gibson Brothers Band released
Brotherhood, a celebration of the music of
earlier brother acts, from the Louvins to the
Monroes to the Everlys.
Brotherhood drives home one key element
that’s enraptured GBB fans for years: the
uncanny, almost telepathic closeness of the
brothers’ entwined vocal harmonies. Yet, LeighGibson says the music and rhythm are equally
as important as harmony in contributing to the
band’s enduring appeal.
“We listen intently to one another, and try to
find common ground,” Gibson says. “At this
point, we have an intuition for one another. I
can sense what the other guy is going to do.”
FINDING THE GROOVE
“The key word is restraint,” Gibson says. “When
you listen to the great gui tarists, you fee l
restraint in their playing. They’re not filling
every hole and expressing every phrase.”
WHAT
LEIGH
GIBSON
PLAYS
A fire destroyed Gibson’s
beloved Martin in the late
1990s and nowadays he
plays a Brazilian rosewood
dreadnought built by Wayne
Henderson at Dream Guitars.
It’s one of a matching pairof D-28-style instruments
Henderson made for
both Gibson siblings.
L
BLUEGRASS BAND OFBROTHERS
Leigh Gibson tells how theGibson Brothers got their groove
By Pat Moran
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22 March 2016
GIBSON BROTHERS
The longstanding relationships among the
other members contribute to that groove.
Except for new mandolin player Jesse Brock,
who joined about two years ago, the players
have been locking in with each other for at
least a decade. Fiddler Clayton Campbell joined
the Gibsons in 2004. Bassist Mike Barber hasbeen playing with the brothers for 22 years.
“I can’t tell you how many times Mike
Barber and I have hit a walk-up together that
we’ve never done before,” Gibson says. “We
For the type of music the Gibson Brothers
Band does, playing rhythm guitar is Leigh Gib-
son’s most important job, he says, “because it
goes much deeper than keeping time.”
In bluegrass, it’s vitally important to “set a
groove and keep it going, to make every song
have its own identity and personality throughrhythm and groove. Once [the band] gets a nice
feel bubbling, then I can slash a bit with my
right hand, brush chords a little longer and
accent dynamically.”
both hear and anticipate it at the same time.”
Such synchronicity might seem magical, he
says, but “it’s magic that took countless years of
playing together to create.”
OH, BROTHERS!
Leigh Gibson’s parents gave him his first “realguitar”—a Martin D-28—when he was 13. “It
was way more guitar than I was player,” he
remembers. “It inspired me to get better.”
He and Eric took music lessons at Dick’s
Country Store and Music Oasis in nearby Chur-
ubusco. Eric was inspired by a Flatt and Scruggs
cassette; Leigh started by “learning the nuts
and bolts of the guitar neck” from a book on
flatpicking. While the boys looked for bluegrass
to emulate, the influences of its “close cousin—
classic country” kept creeping in, Gibson says.
“It’s the music that we grew up listening to
on the farm, in my dad’s pick-up truck. [It] wasinfluenced by Western swing and cowboy
music,” Gibson says. “When you think about it,
Monroe was listening to all that stuff, too. He
was singing Gene Autry.”
Gibson was attracted early on to Tom T. Hall’s
guitar playing, too, and “the kind of brushy
rhythm that Cowboy Jack [Clement] brought to
country music on Waylon Jennings’ records.
Once I became a guitar player, those sounds were
already in my head.”
Eclectic influences still hold sway for the
brothers. “Maybe some folks might see us as
rule-breakers, but I don’t think we are,” Gibson
says. “We do what we think makes us soundinteresting and unique. We’re a bluegrass band
but we’re also the Gibson Brothers.”
Although the Gibsons aren’t afraid to experi-
ment, they don’t do it for its own sake. “The
arrangement is critical to a song,” Gibson says.
“The best words, the best story in any song, can
be ruined by a poor arrangement.” That was
clear when the band was trying to work out the
right approach to a tune by a favorite duo. “We
couldn’t find a Stanley Brothers song that we
sounded good singing, and that hadn’t been
recorded to death,” Gibson says.
An offhand comment by Rounder Recordsfounder Ken Irwin gave the brothers a much-
needed epiphany: “If you slow down a fast song
or speed up a slow one, you’ll get a good inter-
pretation that nobody has ever heard.” Gibson
laughed and joked to his brother, “What if we
did ‘How Mountain Girls Can Love’ as a fast
waltz?”
It worked.
But Gibson cautions against “trying to force
fit anything into music. It either fits or it
doesn’t,” he says.
And that ’s where Gibson’s key word—
restraint—comes back into the picture. AG
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24 March 2016
L—R
Mother Maybelle Carter,
Merle Travis, Oswald Kirby,
and Jeff Hanna of the Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band. Photo taken during
the Will the Circle Be Unbroken
sessions in August 1971 at
Woodland Studios in Nashville.
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AcousticGuitar.com 25
By Mark Kemp
Remembering
an enduring
classic as the
Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band
celebrates a
half-century
of crossing
cultures and
generations
WILLIAM E. MCEUEN PHOTO
UNBROKEN
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26 March 2016
NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND
She laughed, told more stories, and helped
bring me closer to the music of my own region
and bloodline.
I will be forever grateful to the Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band for that.
BENEFICIARIES OF THE ‘CIRCLE’
“I can’t tell you,” John McEuen begins, and
then pauses. “I literally can’t tell you how many
times I’ve heard your exact same story, with just
a few details changed.” The Dirt Band’s fiddler,
banjo player, mandolinist, and guitarist has
been talking with me for an hour about the
unintended chain reaction he and his group set
off when they decided it would be cool to
record with Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle
Travis, Jimmy Martin, Roy Acuff, Mother May-
belle Carter, and other Nashville greats. “It was
a very magical thing that we didn’t predict,”McEuen says.
Will the Circle Be Unbroken did not come
about by magic, though. It took a lot of hard
work, lucky breaks, and a great career risk for
the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which celebrates its
50th anniversary this year with a tour the group
kicked off in September 2015 at the Opry’s most
well-known home, the Ryman Auditor ium in
Nashville. The sold-out show, which will air on
PBS in March, featured a string of famous admir-
ers, including singer-songwriter John Prine,
singer-guitarist Vince Gill, fiddler Alison Krauss,
mandolin player Sam Bush, and early Dirt Band
member Jackson Browne.“I was a freshman in high school,” Gill told
the audience as he joined the Dirt Band onstage
at the Ryman show. “‘Mr. Bojangles’ had come
out, and it was a huge hit. I played the banjo a
little bit . . . . There was a rock band in our area
in Oklahoma City that was the hottest rock
band—they were the coolest things ever. I was
kind of a dork, because I played the banjo. They
were going to do ‘Mr. Bojangles’ in their show
at the school . . . and they asked me if I would
play the banjo on ‘Mr. Bojangles’ with them. It
was one of the coolest things that ever hap-
pened to me, because I was accepted.”McEuen, speaking by phone from a plane
about to take off for Canada, laughs apprecia-
tively at all the stories he’s heard about the Dirt
Band’s impact. He reels off a few more memo-
rable quotes: “‘I was in my room, 16 years old,
playing rock ’n’ roll, and I put the Circle album
on, and my dad heard it and opened the door
and said, “Son, what are you listening to?” It
was the first time we’d talked in three years and
we’ve been bes t friends since.’ And, ‘I was
playing classical violin until I was 23, and then
I heard Vassar Clements on Circle and I never
picked up another sheet of music again.’’’
hat in the world are you listening to
in there?”
My mom was confused. It was the
early 1970s, and she was hearing acoustic
guitars, banjos, and fiddles blaring from the
wooden stereo console in our living room. Ordi-narily, mom would have been fussing at me for
cranking the Rolling Stones’ “Bitch” at full
volume. (“You don’t even know what a bi tch
is,” she’d once told me, with a grin. “It’s not a
nice word.”) At best, she would hear me
happily singing along to hits by the more
acceptable Beatles or Jackson Five.
But on this day, mom was hearing the
“Grand Ole Opry Song”—and it was telling her
story over music that was as familiar as the
collard greens we’d have with Sunday dinner:
It’s time for Roy Acuff to goto Memphis on his train
With Minnie Pearl and Rod Brasfield
and lazy Jim Day.
Turn on all your radios,
I know that you will wait
To hear Little Jimmy Dickens sing,
“Take an old cold tater and wait.”
Joan Carlton Kemp knew Little Jimmy
Dickens. She knew Roy Acuff. As a little girl, my
mom had lived in Nashville for a spell, before
the textile industry sent my grandfather to a
mill in North Carolina. Her older siblings,
Carolyn and Evelyn, had been members of theGrand Ole Opry, where every Saturday night
they’d performed onstage as the Carlton Sisters.
In those days, the Opry family would regularly
hold picnics out in the country. On one such
occasion, according to family lore, Acuff saved
my mom’s life when she wandered into a bull
pen, her red-and-white checkered dress flap-
ping in the breeze, teasing one of the hulking
animals. Acuff jumped the fence, grabbed my
mom, and brought her to safety.
I didn’t know any of this at 13, when I went
to my hometown record store and bought the
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s landmark 1972 album,Will the Circle Be Unbroken. All I knew of this
band of Southern California hippies was that
they’d had a hit with “Mr. Bojangles,” their new
album featured a bunch of old people from
Nashville—and everybody was talking about it.
To be sure, the music on this album was pretty
jarring to me. Mom feigned embarrassment. “I
don’t like that stuff,” she said, scrunching up
her face at the twangy chaos. “They called us
hillbillies. You can go back to listening to the
Rolling Stones now.”
It was clear to me, though, that my musical
choice that day had made my mother happy.
It’s impossible to overstate the importance
of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1972 triple-disc
milestone. Unlike other classic American
albums of the rock era—such as Bob Dylan’s
Blonde on Blonde, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, or
Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On—Circle is expo-nentially larger than the artist name on the
record spine. Its casual and genial musical com-
munication among a group of young California
hippies and older Nashville veterans was
healing in a way that no amount of introspec-
tion or public protest could be during those dif-
ficult years of Vietnam War demonstrations,
civil-rights struggles, and labor union losses.
“I think what came out of those sessions is
that there were these two gaps that were
bridged—a generation gap and also the cultural
gap,” Dirt Band singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna
said in a video interview at the time of Circle’s30th anniversary. “You know, there were peace
marches and Nixon—the country was divided.
“This was also around the time of the film
Easy Rider,” Hanna continued. “So, we’re think-
ing, ‘Man, the [rednecks] that shot Peter Fonda
[in the film] look just like those guys we’re
going to Nashville to record with.’ Of course,
the element that wiped out all of that miscon-
ception was the music. It helped take away
some of the prejudice on both sides.”
The Nashville musicians were getting push-
back, too. “I know that there was a lot of
explaining for the Scruggs family and for Mr.
Acuff and for the Carters,” Hanna said. “People were saying, ‘What are you doing making music
with these scruffy dudes from the West Coast?’”
Circle was also the culmination of a perfect
musical storm. By the early 1970s, country and
bluegrass already had begun to seep more and
more into popular music, sometimes as parody,
but more often as tribute. The Dirt Band played
a big role in this. Though rock bands had long
flirted with country—in 1965, the Beatles
released a cover of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally”
as the flip side of “Yesterday,” and that same
year, the Byrds released a shimmery folk-rock
rendition of the Porter Wagoner country hit “ASatisfied Mind”—few were doing the kind of
bluegrass hoedowns heard on the Dirt Band’s
self-titled debut album. Released in 1967, the
record produced a minor folk-rock hit, “Buy for
Me the Rain,” but it also included lots of jug-
band novelty songs and the McEuen-penned
bluegrass instrumental “Dismal Swamp.”
McEuen had been inspired by the Dillards, a
more traditional bluegrass band that made
inroads into the rock world via the folk boom of
the early ’60s.
“I was captivated by the Dillards,” McEuen
says. “I was playing the acoustic guitar, learning
W
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28 March 2016
how to play ‘Freight Train’ and things like
that—fingerpicking guitar, you know—and six
months into that, I saw the Dillards and
thought, ‘Golly, Doug Dillard—he’s really some-
thing. That looks exciting!’”
Between 1967 and 1970, the Dirt Band con-tinued to explore old-time country music, while
in the larger music world, others were doing
the same thing. In 1968, the Byrds released
Sweetheart of the Rodeo, featuring South Caro-
lina-born Gram Parsons, who’d left an earlier
proto-country-rock outfit called the Interna-
tional Submarine Band. With covers of songs by
the Louvin Brothers and Merle Haggard—and a
classic Parsons tune, “Hickory Wind”—Sweet-
heart put country music front and center in the
hip rock world. The following year, Parsons
formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, which
released another country-rock classic, TheGilded Palace of Sin.
By 1970, the Dirt Band had pulled out all
the stops and gone full-fledged country and
bluegrass on Uncle Charlie and his Dog Teddy ,
although much of the album was still well
within the folk-rock idiom. It included gorgeous
renditions of Mike Nesmith’s “Some of Shelly’s
Blues” and Kenny Loggins’ “House at Pooh
Corner” (both released as singles), alongside
old-time and bluegrass tunes such as “Chicken
Reel,” “Clinch Mountain Backstep,” and Earl
Scruggs’ “Randy Lynn Rag.” But the highlight of
Uncle Charlie was a cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s
“Mr. Bojangles” that rocketed to the Billboard Top 10.
All of that helped when McEuen and his
brother Bill, the Dirt Band’s manager and pro-
ducer, walked into the office of Liberty Records’
president Mike Stewart to make a case for
doing an album of purely traditional bluegrass
and Appalachian folk with a star-studded cast
of veteran Nashville players.
“When we went in to make the pitch, Mike
Stewart listened for about a half an hour and
then said, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to sell
this, but I’ll put up the money.’ And he did. He
put up $22,000.”
A SMALL CI RCLE OF FRIENDS
The future members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt
Band didn’t have 22 cents among them when
they first met as teenagers hanging out at
McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Long Beach, Califor-
nia. They did have a mutual love of folk and
jug-band music, though. They’d flop down in
the six or seven chairs around a coffee table
inside the store and jam on acoustic instru-
ments. “Everybody hung out at this place,”
McEuen remembers. “We’d look at the records
on the racks and try to figure out how Doc
Watson played ‘Black Mountain Rag’ and ‘Deep
River Blues,’ or how to play banjo songs by Earl
Scruggs or the Dillards or whoever.”
The “everybody” who hung out at McCabe’s
included a young Jackson Browne, guitarists
Hanna and Les Thompson, and harmonica and
jug player Jimmie Fadden. Those four formed
what would become the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band,
rehearsing in Hanna’s mother’s Long Beach
garage. On May 13, 1966, the group landed a
gig at the Paradox club in Tustin, an hour east
in Orange County. “The Dirt Band startedplaying at the Paradox, and I’d be there,”
McEuen remembers. “One night I sat in with
them—this was before I joined.” He laughs. “I
mean, it was no big deal or anything. I figured
I’d rather be standing onstage than be in the
dressing room waiting to go on. So I’m like, ‘I’ll
go play a song with you.’”
That gig marked the official beginning of
the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Before then, they
were all just kids messing around, hanging out
at McCabe’s playing jug-band songs, or at the
beach, surfing occasionally. But now, they were
onto something. Browne left to focus on a
career as a solo singer-songwriter, and McEuen
was in. “You gotta understand, we were really
young,” he says. “I was in my fir st yea r of
college, one guy was a junior in high school,
another was a senior in high school, another
was trying to figure out what he wanted to do
with his life. I think everybody still l ived with
their parents. I was over in Garden Grove, some
of the other guys lived in Long Beach. It was
just a bunch of kids from Southern California.”McEuen’s brother signed on as manager and
got the band its deal with Liberty. Within a year,
the Dirt Band had released two albums, a self-
titled debut and Ricochet, and performed its Top
40 hit “Buy for Me the Rain” on The Tonight
Show Starring Johnny Carson. In 1968, they
appeared as a jug band playing at a party in the
movie For Single s Only , starring Mary Ann
Mobley. That led to a role the following year in
the western Paint Your Wagon, in which they
churned out a ramshackle song called “Hand
Me Down That Can o’ Beans” in a rowdy scene
featuring a drunken Lee Marvin dancing andsinging along, and a typically cool and collected
Clint Eastwood watching from the sidelines.
But the members of the Dirt Band weren’t
satisfied with the pop sound Liberty was impos-
ing on them, and the band took a breather after
the initial whirlwind. Everything changed when
they returned to the studio to record Uncle
Charlie. They’d recruited multi-instrumentalist
Jimmy Ibbotson and gained a tremendous
amount of creative freedom. Most importantly,
they’d picked a great batch of songs to cover:
Walker’s “Bojangles,” two Nesmith songs (in
addition to “Shelly,” they recorded his moody
NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND
‘IT CAME TOGETHER
SO FAST IT’S HARD
TO BELIEVE NOW.
BUT THE TIMES
WERE VERY
DIFFERENT THEN—
THIS COULD NOT
HAPPEN NOW.’
JOHN McEUEN
NGDB today
John McEuen, Jimmie Fadden,
Jeff Hanna, and Bob Carpenter
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AcousticGuitar.com 29
“Propinquity”), four Loggins tunes (along with
“Pooh Corner,” they recorded his bluesy, rocking
“Prodigal’s Return,” the fiddle-fueled “Yukon
Railroad,” and the breezy “Santa Rosa”), as
wel l as an acoust ic-gui tar-based version of
Randy Newman’s aching, poetic piano song“Livin’ Without You.”
Uncle Charlie was a bona fide masterpiece. But
the following year, when the group attempted to
repeat its success on All the Good Times—with
covers of Browne and Hank Williams—it seemed
forced and came off more like a subpar Poco
album than prime Dirt Band. No matter. McEuen
had bigger fish to fry. He was busy doing some
serious negotiating with bluegrass royalty.
FORMING THE ‘CIRCLE’
“Earl Scruggs came to see us at Vanderbilt Uni-
versity in November of ’70, and by 1971 we’dkind of become friends,” McEuen remembers.
That year, Scruggs and his sons, the Earl
Scruggs Review, played a five-night stand at the
storied Tulagi club in Boulder, Colorado, and
McEuen aimed to talk to the three-finger banjo
stylist. “I went to see him every one of the five
nights, and I’d take him back to his hotel,”
McEuen says. “Jeff [Hanna] came one night and
I told him, ‘I’m going to ask Earl if he’ll record
with us.’ Jeff doesn’t ask questions like that. But
he was in the car, in the back seat, on the way
to the hotel after the last show.”
That’s when McEuen got up the nerve to
pop the question.“I said, ‘Earl, do you think maybe . . . uh . . .
would you record with the Dirt Band?’
“He said, ‘I’d be proud to!’”
The Circle was beginning to form. A week
later, Doc Watson played at the same club in
Boulder, and McEuen was back, ready to pop
the question to the famed flatpicker. “I’d
already talked to his son, Merle, a few months
earlier in Pasadena, and it turned out Merle
was a big fan of the Dirt Band. I had wanted to
meet Doc that night, but ended up just chatting
with Merle. He said, ‘You’re with the Nit ty
Gritty Dirt Band? Cool, man!’ I told him, ‘Well,I’ll see you in Colorado.’ I didn’t say anything
else to him other than, ‘It sure would be great
to record with your dad someday.’”
In Colorado, McEuen told Doc that the Dirt
Band had already enlisted Scruggs, and that
was all the guitarist needed to hear. “He got
excited when I told him Earl was in, so I put
Doc on the phone that night with my brother.
Then later on that night, I talked to my brother
on the phone for hours, and he said, ‘I’m going
to get Roy Acuff and Merle Travis.’ And I said,
‘Maybe we can get Jimmy Martin.’ And that’s
pretty much how it all came together.”
The big catch was getting the matriarch of
modern country music (and inventor of lead
guitar), Mother Maybelle Carter. “Earl had done
an album in 1963—which had a big influence
on me, by the way—that was a tribute to the
Carter Family,” McEuen says. “He knew them, you know, so we asked him if Maybelle Carter
might want to be part of this, and he made it
happen.”
The project came together quickly. “From
the time that I asked Earl if he would record
with us, to the start of the recording session, it
had been eight weeks,” McEuen says. “It came
together so fast it’s hard to believe now. But the
times were very different then—this could not
happen now. I don’t know if these types of
people are even around anymore.”
By August 1971, the whole cast—Scruggs,
Watson, Martin, Acuff, Carter, Travis, Pete“Oswald” Kirby, Norman Blake, and fiddler
Vassar Clements—were holed up with the Dirt
Band at Woodland Sound Studio in Nashville.
The atmosphere was positively electric. They
recorded 33 songs in six days, including now-
classic performances of Martin doing “Grand Ole
Opry Song,” Carter singing “Keep on the Sunny
Side,” Acuff moaning “The Precious Jewel” and
“Wreck on the Highway,” Travis picking and
singing “Dark as a Dungeon” and “Nine-Pound
Hammer,” and Watson flatpicking and telling the
story of the “Tennessee Stud.” As they played
and sang and talked, 105 photos were snapped.
“We ran a tape recorder the whole time tocapture all the between-song stuff—all that
great talking,” McEuen says. “And that really
makes the album.” He’s referring to such golden
moments etched into music history as Doc Wat-
son’s very first meeting with Merle Travis.
Between “Lost Highway” and “Way Down-
town,” you can hear Watson telling Travis that
he’d named his son Merle after the inventive
fingerstylist. There’s also the endearing
moment just before the group launches into
“Tennessee Stud,” when the good-natured
Watson instructs Vassar Clements on when to
take his solo: “Now, your fiddle break comesright after I get back and wup her brother and
her paw and sing a chorus.”
In 2002, when McEuen was remastering
Circle for its expanded 30th anniversary release,
he discovered more gems. “I went into the
runoff tape and I found Vassar and Jimmy
Martin talking, and more stuff from Maybelle.
It was so much fun going through it again,”
McEuen says. He adopts a Southern twang to
imitate a Martin and Clements exchange:
“‘Vassar, now who wrote ‘Uncle Pen?’
“‘You wrote the bridge, Jimmy.’
“‘I know, thank you very much.’”
McEuen’s fondest memories of the Circle
sessions are incidents that could never happen
in today’s music world, in which record
company executives keep close tabs on every
minute an artist participates in a project that’s
not associated with his or her label. One suchincident happened when Carter was at the
microphone. “She was in there getting ready to
start one of her songs and I took a phone call in
the control room,” McEuen remembers. “It was
a Columbia Records attorney, who was calling
to say, ‘OK, you’ve been approved to do one
song with Maybelle Carter.’ And I went, ‘OK,
thank you very much. I’ll let everybody know,’
and I hung up.” McEuen laughs. “We were
starting the fourth song.
“My brother turned to me and said, ‘Who
was that?’ I said, ‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter. Not
important.’ I mean, could you imagine tellingPicasso, ‘Hey Picasso, only this much blue—no
more’? It’s a good thing there were some
hippies behind the glass.”
Hanna, in the video interview, recalled
Carter as the glue that kept the proceedings
grounded. “What Maybelle brought to the
session aside from her wealth of talent was just
this great, sort of spiritual calming. She was
just like [adopts a serene look], ‘Boys, this is no
big deal.’ ”
Years later, Carter’s daughter, June Carter
Cash, told Hanna that her mother had a fond
way of referring to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
“She used to call us ‘them dirty boys,’” Hannasaid. “That’s what June told us, which I loved!
She said, ‘You know, mama always called you
guys ‘them dirty boys.’ I thought that was the
sweetest!”
When Circle came out the following year, it
did better than anyone could have imagined,
inspiring young rock fans around the world to
explore traditional music more deeply. The
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band went on to do many
other things: In 1974, the group released a live
album, Stars and Stripes Forever (whose humor-
ous between-song banter I memorized as a
teenager); briefly changed its name to just theDirt Band in the late ’70s and began playing
more predictable soft rock; switched to main-
stream country in the 1980s; and returned to
form in the ’90s with Acoustic and two more
volumes of Circle that were good, though not
monumental. If the members had stopped after
the original Circle project, the Nitty Gritty Dirt
Band would have more than made their mark
on music history.
“When we got together, we wondered if we
would be together after ten years as a band.
That’s kind of a long run, actually,” Hanna
recently told Billboard. “But 50 years is a run.”
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30 March 2016
THE ‘CIRCLE,’ UNBROKEN
Two days after my interviews with McEuen, I’m
driving to the Acoustic Guitar office when the
phone rings. It’s McEuen. He’s back from
Canada.
“I just wanted to make sure you got every-
thing you needed from me,” he says. “I got a voice message from you and didn’t know what
day it came from.”
“I’m good,” I tell him, and pause. “Well . . .”
I feel a need to tell McEuen how much I
appreciate the Dirt Band for bringing me closer
to my mother, to my family’s connection to the
Grand Ole Opry, to my personal connection
with our shared musical roots. As a reporter,
I’m also feeling a little silly about this. It’s not
exactly the ideal objective distance from my
subject. Besides, I’m sure he’s heard it a million
times. Still, this is important to me.
“I just want to thank you for doing Will theCircle Be Unbroken,” I stammer. “To me, it is
absolutely one of the most important albums
ever recorded, and yet it wasn’t even on Rolling
Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums list. I don’t think
you guys have gotten enough credit for spur-
ring the whole country-rock thing. The Byrds
rightly get a lot, and so do Gram Parsons and
the Burrito Brothers. You guys are easily as
important to that music as those artists, particu-
larly in terms of bridging the gap between gen-
erations. Without that, there would be no
Americana movement stil l inspiring so many
artists of all ages.”
“Hey, man, that’s what it was all about,”McEuen says. “And everybody involved deserves
credit. It happened because Jeff and Jimmy
picked the right songs to release as singles from
our earlier records—songs that got us on the
radio. It happened because my brother and I
told the record company we wanted to make an
album of traditional folk music, and the record
company trusted us enough after Uncle Charlie
to let us do it. And it happened because all
those musicians agreed to record with us. Roy
Acuff and Maybelle Carter didn’t have to do
this, but they did. Because of the band’s success
with Uncle Charlie, we were able to do Circle and have it be heard by kids like you and so
many others.”
There’s a moment of silence before McEuen
speaks up again. “Hey, do you mind saying that
in your story—you know, the stuff about us
being as important to this music as those
others?”
Done.
Former AG editor Mark Kemp is the author of
Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New
Beginnings in a New South (Simon & Schuster,
2004; University of Georgia Press, 2006).
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32 March 2016
TONI DEMURO
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AcousticGuitar.com 33
TO THEWELCOME
JUNGLEBy Mark Kemp
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34 March 2016
THE TREE
mahogany that’s coveted by some of the most
respected makers and players of acoustic
guitars.
“When I picked it up, I was completely
humbled. It was a shock-and-awe moment. It
changed everything I’d ever thought about
acoustic guitars leading up to that point,” Slashcontinues, with a boyish wonder that betrays
the reverence a head-banging kid might have
for Slash himself. “It was the most amazing
acoustic guitar I’d ever played or heard.”
What was it about this particular guitar that
made such a powerful difference to the guy
who wrote GN’R’s most famous acoustic song,
“Patience,” on an old beater he didn’t even
own? “It’s perfect,” Slash says. “I was amazed
that you can actually make a guitar that’s
perfect—perfect intonation, perfect tension on
the neck, perfect sound. And it’s beautiful. I
was just floored. ”
aul Hudson was eager to see his new
guitar, but he wasn’t expecting
manna from heaven. After all,
Hudson, better known as Slash, is the cele-
brated former Guns N’ Roses guitarist who’s
owned some of the finest instruments in his
neck of the rock ’n’ roll woods, from big-name vintage acoust ics—a Mar tin D-18, Gibson
J-200, and Guild D-100—to a string of signa-
ture Les Pauls.
What more could he want?
“I thought, ‘OK, let’s get this over with: I’m
going to open the case and be happy and sur-
prised and then we can move on,’” Slash says
with a laugh.
He’s talking about the day the guitar maker
Reuben Forsland dropped by to deliver a jumbo
acoustic he’d built for Slash from wood that
came from the Tree, a mythic source of unusu-
ally dense and beautiful, centuries-old quilted
he figured mahogany that makes up
the back and sides of Slash’s guitar was floored, too—some 50 years ago,
when it tumbled to the floor of a forest in
Central America. There’s an old philosophical
riddle that asks, “If a tree falls in the forest and
no one’s around to hear it, does it make a
sound?” In the case of the Tree, a 500-year-old
hunk of wood that once towered 100 feet and
had a massive base ten feet in diameter, the
answer is a resounding yes—a thousand times
over. Discovered a little more than ten years
after it was chopped down in 1965 and left in a
ravine in the Chiquibul Jungle of what is now
Belize, the Tree has been making beautiful
S
T
‘WHEN I PICKEDIT UP, I WASCOMPLETELY HUMBLED.IT WAS A SHOCK-
AND-AWE MOMENT.IT CHANGEDEVERYTHING I’DEVER THOUGHT ABOUT
ACOUSTIC GUITARSLEADING UPTO THAT POINT.’SLASH
G O
R D O N
R O S S
P H O T O S
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AcousticGuitar.com 35
sounds for decades in the form of boutique
guitars crafted at shops including Forsland’s
JOI, as well as Santa Cruz, Bedell, Greenfield,
Froggy Bottom, and even the Big Two acoustic
makers, Taylor and Martin.
The legend of the Tree really begins in the
late 1970s, just after the birth of the boutique-guitar movement, when luthiers at small shops
were beginning to find big success. A friend had
told Robert Novak, a wood importer in what was
then British Honduras, about the felled mahog-
any tree. “When the guy told me he had this
stuff, he asked, ‘How much will you pay for it?,’”
Novak remembers. “I said, ‘What’s it look like?’”
It looked like nothing Novak had ever seen.
When he went to check it out, he was stuck by
its rich, wavy figuring. “It was just very beauti-
ful,” Novak says. He’s talking by phone from his
home—still in Belize—amid shrill sounds of
chirping birds that nearly drown out his voice
at times. He’s no longer in the wood-exporting
business—he left that behind long ago for a
career as a chiropractor. “And the wood was
stable,” Novak continues, as if he’s talking
about a patient’s back. “That’s unusual for
something that had sat in the forest on the
ground for so long.”Lying in that jungle ravine in the era of
rugged Indiana Jones explorers and Jimmy
Buffet pirates, Novak saw 13,000 feet of virgin
lumber—and dollar signs. “I knew I could sell
it,” he says, “but not because it was mahogany—
you couldn’t really make much money selling
mahogany unless you were dealing with millions
of feet. What I made my money on was the
unusual qualities of wood. Like everybody else, I
was attracted by this tree’s quilted quality.”
Getting the wood out of the jungle was no
easy task. First, Novak’s crew cut it in half, but
it still wouldn’t budge. “So then they had to cut
it in four sections and drag the logs out,” he
says. “But in order to load them onto the trucks,
they had to quarter those four sections—turn
them into 13-foot pieces. Sometimes they
couldn’t get but one piece on a logging truck at
a time.”When the crew eventually got the wood out
of the forest, they had to truck it some 90 miles
to the coast, where they floated the logs out to
a saw mill. “There was an old mill that was on
the river that the Belize Estate Co. had had,”
Novak says. “This redneck guy who had saw
mills in Honduras and Nicaragua ran it.”
The process of getting the wood into the
hands of customers in the United States was
painfully slow, but Novak was determined. “We
started bringing it up, 1 /16th at a time, and
sawing it,” he says. “I wanted big boards, I
wanted as wide a boards as possible.”Of the 13,000 feet of tree he’d seen in that
jungle ravine, Novak harvested about 500 feet
of high-quality, defect-free wood from the
middle, 3,000 feet of heavily quilted wood, and
five or six different patterns. By 1982, he was
delivering his special mahogany to anybody
who would buy it. “I just contacted everybody
I’d ever sold to, and we had sold rosewood to
Martin,” Novak says. “So I figured I’d call
people who looked like they could handle
something like this and were willing to pay
enough money for it.”
An article on Novak’s mahogany in a 1985
issue of Fine Woodworking magazine got atten-tion from independent guitar builders, making
it a hot commodity in the lutherie world. Novak
ended up buying back some of the wood he’d
initially sold, reselling it at higher prices.
Though he won’t say how much he sold the
wood for, the article quoted it as $10 to $30 per
board—today, wood from the Tree fetches as
much as $1,500 per 12-by-12-by-1-inch board.
Guitar maker Michael Greenfield saw the
Fine Woodworking article in the mid-1990s. “It
was real ly spectacular stuff, but back then I
never really paid much attention to it beyond
that,” he says. However, “sometime rightaround the year 2000 I was visiting my friend
Tom Ribbecke, who had just finished a 335-
style guitar for Seal, along with a very early
Halfling for another client, which was made of
the Tree. He had just strung it up, possibly the
prototype.
“This is great mahogany, period,” Greenfield
adds. “I love mahogany guitars and this timber
is as good as any I have heard.”
As for Novak, he wishes he could find
another Tree. “If I found another one like that,
I’d clone it,” he says, “but it takes hundreds of
years for a tree to grow that big.”
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36 March 2016
lash was impressed by the “esoteric
locales” Reuben Forsland scavenges
for the materials he uses in his
guitars. When Forsland approached the guitar-
ist with a menu of options for his custom
jumbo, Slash chose 2,800-year-old glacier Sitka
spruce for the top; another piece, he says, came
from a house Jimi Hendrix once occupied; and
for the back and sides, of course, he chose
mahogany from the Tree.
“The Tree was mentioned as this very
special prized wood that had this great history,”Slash says, “so I picked it based on that.”
Forsland had come across the Tree a few
years earlier and thought it was stunning to
look at, but it wasn’t something he wanted to
work with at the time. “I had other woods I was
focused on working with, but then earlier this
year, Kevin Hennig and I were talking about
sought-after tonewoods and the Tree came up
as a great wood to combine with my ancient
glacier Sitka spruce tops.”
Hennig, owner of Symphontree Guitars in
Vancouver, Canada, had been looking for
guitars made from the Tree, but was neverbowled over by one until he played the Santa
Cruz 1929 00 Custom that Richard Hoover had
made entirely out of mahogany from the Tree—
back, sides, top, everything.
“I had played a few guitars that claimed to
be Tree,” Hennig says, but none of them
sounded like the Santa Cruz. “That one did not
sound at all like a traditional mahogany guitar.
The look is stellar and the tone is enveloping
and lively.”
Like most builders, Hoover had been inter-
ested in working with Tree mahogany for some
time, but not because the wood has some magical
sonic quality. He was drawn to its stunning good
looks. “It’s the beauty of the wood that’s desir-
able,” Hoover says. Making a Tree guitar sound
good, he explains, is just part of the craft of build-
ing a great instrument. “When it comes to Tree
wood, not all of it is suitable for a top—some of it
is too flexible and too random in density,” Hoover
says. “We chose a particular piece that was stiffer
than most Tree wood you would find, and made
it with proper bracing and thickness.”
Hennig, though, maintains that mahogany
from the Tree does have unique tonal qualities.“Tree mahogany is denser than traditional Hon-
duran mahogany,” he says. “When I think of a
traditional ’hog guitar, they tend to have a
snappy box with a dry fundamental. Tree ’hog
is like traditional ’hog on steroids—thus, you
get a very snappy box and thicker, wetter tone.”
About ten Tree guitars have passed through
Hennig’s hands over the years, but he’s never
seen the one that most captures his interest and
imagination. “I imagine the G4.2 Michael Green-
field to be the ultimate Tree, but unfortunately,
I never had a chance to play it,” Hentig says.
“Michael is known as the ‘wood whisperer,’ and Ican imagine the signature Greenfield tone paired
with this wood would be intergalactic.”
That was Greenfield’s first Tree guitar. “It’s
the model that Andy McKee plays,” Greenfield
says. “It is quite exceptional to have a 17-inch
set of Tree, let alone matched sides. The guitar
had a cutaway, ‘Grit’ Laskin-inspired arm and
rib rests, and is bound and veneered in ebony.
The black ebony is an extremely dramatic and
striking contrast to the deep, red-brown of this
mahogany. The Tree was married with a very
old Adirondack red spruce soundboard from my
personal reserve.”
THE TREE
Shen Novak hears people talk with
such reverence about the mahogany
he dragged out of a Belizian jungle
nearly 40 years ago, he’s not just a little
amused. “It wasn’t until last year that I heard
people were referring to it as ‘the Tree,’ ” Novak
says with a laugh. “I was surprised, so I looked
it up and was like, ‘Oh geez, I never even saw
any of this!’ But it’s cool the amount of atten-
tion this tree has gotten. It’s very beautiful and
it should get attention.”
But does the legend of the Tree precede theactual wood? Is Tree mahogany any better than
other mahogany, or has its appeal become the
stuff of myth? “I wouldn’t say it’s mythic,”
Hoover says. “But to me, it’s about the beauty
of the wood. That’s its appeal.
“Let’s use the Tree and Brazilian rosewood
in the same explanation,” Hoover continues.
“Both woods are really beautiful, and that
makes them desirable; both are also rare,
which makes them desirable. From there, it
takes on a mythos that goes above and beyond
the actual material. To ascribe sound quality to
Tree wood is a very general statement, because wood from the Tree varies greatly. It would be
hard to make a specific statement about the
sound of the Tree.”
Slash doesn’t seem to care why his new
instrument made from Tree mahogany and
ancient Sitka spruce sounds so good and plays so
well. But he’s absolutely sold on the way Reuben
Forsland put it all together in a perfect mix of
sound and vision. “It just has this very smooth,
very neat and tidy sound, but it’s also really
warm and it resonates beautifully,” the guitarist
says. “I have it up in the bedroom and still, every
time I pick it up, it just blows my mind.” AG
W
IT WASN’T UNTIL
LAST YEAR THAT I HEARD
PEOPLE WERE REFERRING
TO IT AS ‘THE TREE.’
ROBERT NOVAK
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BUILT
F O R T HE
PURSUIT
A NEW GENERATION OF
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AcousticGuitar.com 39
TEXAS
BLUEGRASS40
Happy Trails
Robert Earl Keen takes
a detour into bluegrass
46
Their Roots Are Showing
5 musicians who are helping the spirit of Texas bluegrass evolve
48
Lucky 7
Don’t miss these
Texas bluegrass events
SPECIAL FOCUS
A M M A R
D A S H T I
SPECIALFOCUSTEXASBLUEGRASS
Slim Richey was
a fixture of the
Austin music scene
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40 March 2016
SPECIALFOCUSTEXASBLUEGRASS
HAPPY
TRAILSs high school juvies in Houston,
Robert Earl Keen and his best friend
Bryan Duckworth would hop into
Duckworth’s 1970 Ford Maverick, pop a few
Texas Pride beers, shove eight-tracks of Bill
Monroe or the Stanley Brothers into the tape
deck, and cruise around town. Other kids were
in VW microbuses listening to the Beatles or
Black Sabbath. But Keen and his buddies pre-
ferred the rustiest, twangiest, old-time country
music they could find.
“It wasn’t the kind of music that was of thetimes,” Keen admits, “but it was what we liked.
And one of the great things about that old-
timey music is that it wasn’t as expensive as the
new stuff. You could get a hell of a lot of it for
cheap.”
Anyone who knows anything about REK
knows that this is hardly the first time the story
of Robert and Bryan’s youthful transgressions
has been told. Way back in the late 1980s, the
Texas singer-songwriter recorded a live version
of a song he wrote called “The Bluegrass
Widow,” wherein he spins the same yarn to a
packed house at the Sons of HermannHall in Dallas to explain how he came up with
“quite possibly the worst bluegrass song ever
written.” It ’s not , of course, but Keen has
always been wary of performing songs in the
genre he loves and respects so much.
Until now, that is.
Last year, Keen released Happy Prisoner: The
Bluegrass Sessions (Dualtone) , his first all-blue-
grass album in his more than 30-year career. It
started when Keen wrote down 100 bluegrass
A
Robert Earl Keen’s road
still goes on forever, but it’s
taken a detour into bluegrass
By Mark Kemp
and folk standards he wanted to perform with
old-time instrumentation. Then he phoned up
some famous friends—Lyle Lovett, Natalie
Maines, fiddler Sara Watkins, mandolin player
Kym Warner, banjo picker Danny Barnes, and a
few others—and booked a recording date for late
2014. Keen chopped the list down to 30 songs,
and he and his friends recorded 28 of them.
The final version of Happy Prisoner features
15 classic tracks (20 on the deluxe edition) that
span folk and bluegrass history, from Monroe’s
“Footprints in the Snow” to Monroe and PeterRowan’s “Walls of Time” to Richard Thompson’s
“1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” It was a project
Keen had long dreamed of doing. Problem was,
he was scared. After all, he’s the guy who wrote
the “worst bluegrass song ever.”
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AcousticGuitar.com 41
JOEY LUSTERMAN
Davey Graham
Robert Earl Keen
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42 March 2016
een—sporting a cowboy hat, black
blazer, orange-and-gray striped button-
down shirt, and multicolored shoes—
leans back in his chair in a conference room at
Acoustic Guitar’s office in Point Richmond, Cali-
fornia, and lets out a big Lone Star laugh. He’ssurrounded by instructional books on everything
from improving your jazz vocabulary to master-
ing the art of flatpicking. Intimidating stuff, to
say the least. “I knew the whole deal with blue-
grass—a lot of it is about the singing, the high-
lonesome harmonies, the incredible playing,”
Keen says. “So I put off doing this album because
I was never comfortable with that.
“I was not comfortable with my voice
singing bluegrass.”
Minutes earlier, Keen had performed two
simple, gritty songs with profound storylines
for AG’s online video series Acoustic Guitar Ses- sions. Cradling a battered Collings OM2H, he
dedicated one of the tunes, “Mariano,” a tender
song about a Mexican immigrant, to his late
mother, who would always request it. What
Keen says is true—his shaky baritone rasp is not
the typical voice of a bluegrass singer, and he
isn’t a virtuoso guitarist. He’s a storyteller—and
that was his entry point for Happy Prisoner.
“I always had an affinity for bluegrass
lyrics—the songs themselves, how cool the
stories are,” Keen says. “So I eventually worked
my way through the idea that I couldn’t do
bluegrass, and I invited all these friends of mine
to come in and pick with me.”No one gathered in a meadow the following
day at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is com-
plaining about Keen’s gruff harmonies when he
launches into “Footprints,” “Dark as a Dungeon,”
and other tracks from Happy Prisoner. He’s per-
forming on the Rooster stage at the Hardly
Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and he even does a
few bluegrass versions of some of his more
famous electric originals, like “The Road Goes on
Forever,” a song that Texas road warrior Joe Ely
transformed into his own anthem when he
released it on his 1992 album Love and Danger.
Though Keen is not a household name ineither country or pop, he’s written songs for
many artists who are: The Dixie Chicks teamed
up with comedian Rosie O’Donnell in 2000 for a
hilarious version of his holiday novelty song
“Merry Christmas from the Family.” George
Strait recorded a beautiful lilting cover of Keen’s
Mexican-flavored “Maria” for his No. 1 country
album of 1998, One Step at a Time. And Nanci
Griffith included Keen’s twangy family song “Sing
One for Sister” on her 1987 commercial break-
through Lone Star State of Mind. But Keen’s fans
are rabid, and the ones in this meadow at Golden
Gate Park are singing along with every word.
SPECIAL FOCUS TEXAS BLUEGRASS
obert Earl Keen vividly remembers
the first time he thought music might
be a good way to earn a living. He
was doing a pretty crappy job of chaperoning
for his younger sister, who at 16 was a foosball
champion in Houston bars. “She’d go out there with her pack of Benson & Hedges and people
would buy her shots and she’d kick their asses
in foosball,” Keen remembers. “But in the other
part of the bar somebody was playing a guitar
in the corner—covers of Loggins and Messina,
and that kind of ’70s folkie stuff, you know—
and I was like, ‘Man, that’s the deal!’ To actually
get up really close to somebody who was
playing in a bar? That really turned the switch
for me. I thought: I could do that.”
When he packed up to go to Texas A&M
University in the mid-1970s, Keen took his sis-
ter’s old nylon-string Alvarez along with himand learned to play a few basic country songs.
“I got this songbook called The Ten Greatest
Country Songs Ever Written. It had stuff in it like
‘Country Roads’ and ‘Cold Cold Heart,’ so I
learned all those songs. The first one I learned
was the Willie Nelson song ‘Hello Walls.’ The
only song in that book that I didn’t learn was
‘The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.’”
Before long, Keen and his old pal Duck-
worth, who’d started playing the fiddle, formed
a band and began working up versions of the
bluegrass songs they’d listened to on eight-
tracks as teenagers. “We ran into some kids
who were from very rural areas,” Keen says.“We were from Houston, you know, so we were
city slickers, but these kids were from places
like Tampa and Levelland [Texas]. They loved
country and bluegrass and western swing, and
they’d be playing fiddle and mandolin, and it
was great. So we just started hanging out with
them and playing and it morphed into this
thing called the Front Porch Boys. Over the
years, we had about ten different members.”
The band played, literally, on the front
porch of a house on Church Street in the Texas
college town of College Station, right across the
road from a Presbyterian Church. The scene wound up as the subject of Keen’s wry 1984
tune, “The Front Porch Song.”
“At that point, we weren’t playing in bars
because we didn’t have a sound system,” Keen
says. “We played at a few flea markets and spa-
ghetti suppers at churches, and did a mixture of
bluegrass stuff like Stanley Brothers and Bill
Monroe, but also country stuff that’s pretty close
to bluegrass, like Hank Williams’ ‘Lost Highway.’”
Eventually, the Front Porch Boys caught the
ear of fellow A&M student Lyle Lovett, who was
studying journalism and was known for booking
country-rock and folk groups around town.
When Keen’s band mates left town during a
school break, he and Lovett became buds. Lovett
would change Keen’s life—as well as his musical
direction. Keen, an English major, knew he wasn’t
a great singer, but he could spin a great story, and
when he graduated from A&M in 1980, he set offfor Austin, where he began playing original songs
to whoever would listen. Four years later, Keen
released his debut album, No Kinda Dancer, and
bluegrass had become a tiny glimmer in his rear-
view mirror. Within another three years, he
would record the live album that included the
story about that song he was playing—you know,
the “worst bluegrass song ever.”
And yet, bluegrass never stopped tapping on
Keen’s shoulder. “I didn’t stop loving bluegrass,”
he says. As a lyricist, he found himself drawing
from the same deep, dark well. “The thing
about bluegrass is that it’s this really happy-sounding music, but the stories are tragic. If
you pick it apart, there’s a lot of dead bodies
throughout the history of bluegrass. And I love
that kind of thing—that great outpouring of
emotion in these really simple songs.”
By the early 2000s, Keen knew he had to
man up and record the damn bluegrass album
he’d always dreamed of. But it still took a while
to get all the players together. “What makes this
record work—what I think probably shines
through the most—is that I got people like
Danny Barnes and Sara Watkins, who also had
K R ‘THE THING ABOUTBLUEGRASS IS THATIT’S THIS REALLYHAPPY-SOUNDING
MUSIC, BUT THESTORIES ARE TRAGIC.IF YOU PICK IT APART,THERE’S A LOT OFDEAD BODIESTHROUGHOUTTHE HISTORYOF BLUEGRASS.
AND I LOVE THATKIND OF THING.’
CONT. P.44
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AcousticGuitar.com 43
After learning how to play on his
sister’s Alvarez classical, Keen
got a Martin D-35. “My parents
were notoriously cheap,” he
says. “They were the kind ofpeople who would say, ‘Son,
that costs $12. You can get one
for $5.’ But when I came home
from school after my first year,
my mother, from out of nowhere,
said, ‘We’re going to go get you
a good guitar.’ I said, ‘Great,
whatever.’
“So we went down to this little
music store and she said, ‘I want
the best guitar in this place.’ And
the guy said, ‘Well, we have this
Martin D-35.’ I was thinking,there’s no way my mom’s going
to buy me a Martin guitar, no
way. And she said, ‘Okay, does
it have a case with it?’ And he
said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ I thought,
God, this is really going to
happen. She just wrote the
check. I couldn’t believe it.
“When I got that guitar, it was
one of those things where I took
it in the backyard and just played
and played, non-stop, day after
day after day, writing songs,
just doing whatever I could
do to get fairly good on it.
“I had that guitar for several
years before I got a D-28,
and since then I’ve had allkinds of guitars.”
Eventually, Keen became a
Collings player. “I’ve known Bill
Collings for years. We were pals.
We’ve even gotten into some
trouble together, because
Collings. . . .” He trails off.
“He knows how to have fun.”
Collings is also serious about
his guitar business, Keen says. “I
used to take my Martins to him to
get them repaired—fret job, neck
reset, that kind of thing—
andone day, in the early ’90s, he says,
‘I’m not going to do this for you
anymore.’ I said, ‘What?’ He says,
‘Because you need to buy one of
my guitars.’ I said, ‘You’re right.’
“So, we sat down and decided
what he would make for me, and
we drew up the plans for this
C-10—it’s a beautiful guitar—
and I played it for about a year
and I felt like I was going to bust
it up. I was on the road a lot.
So, I got on this record—
a compilation of Merle Haggard
songs called Tulare Dust, on
Hightone Records. I recorded
my song, sent it in, and
somehow I got a check for$1,800. And I thought, ‘Man,
I am going to get another
Collings so I won’t smash up
my C-10. I cal led Collings and
said, ‘I want something just like
the C-10, but a little broader
and something that, if I break it,
I’m not going to freak out about
it.’ It’s this great OM2H that
I still have.
“But after I paid for it, Larry
Sloven at Hightone called me
up and said, ‘Oh, that check wasa mistake. I sent you too much
money!’” Keen laughs. “I guess
I knew something was weird,
because I had gotten paid so
quickly and you never get paid
that quickly—or that much—from
an independent record company.
I said, ‘Too late, man, it’s already
spent. I spent that money on
this guitar.’ He says, ‘You’re
gonna have to send me that
money.’ And I said, ‘You can’t get
blood out of a stone.’ I haven’t
seen Larry Sloven in years, but I
guess I still owe him. I always
liked Larry.”
Keen’s had several Collings
guitars over the years, and nowhe has a brand-new one. “About
two years ago, they called up
Charles Ray, my road manager,
and said, ‘Come over here.’ And
Charles says, ‘What for?’ It turns
out they gave me this guitar! It’s
a replica of a guitar that I play.
It has the same kind of pickup
stuff in it, so when I break a
string on stage I just grab this
new guitar and plug it in, and
it sounds just like my old guitar.
I love it.”For Happy Prisoner , Keen
played three guitars: his older
Collings OM2H, a dreadnought-
size mahogany Collings, and
a 1946 Martin tenor guitar he
bought from Tony Williamson in
North Carolina. “That tenor is just
the most beautiful sounding
instrument,” Keen says. “It doesn’t
have a ton of sound, but it’s just
so fragile and so beautiful. It’s
like champagne or something—
just kind of bubbles out.” —M.K.
WHATROBERTEARLKEENPLAYS
J O E Y L U S T E R M A N
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44 March 2016
left this traditional, old-timey, backwoods kind
of bluegrass behind long ago.”
Barnes had been a member of the Bad Livers,
an Austin band known in the ’90s for doing
banjo- and fiddle-fueled cover versions of punk
and rock songs by the Misfits, Butthole Surfers,Slayer, and Iggy Pop, alongside original tunes
with provocative titles like “Shit Creek.” These
days, when he isn’t writing and recording fairly
straightforward singer-songwriter albums,
Barnes releases cassettes of experimental music
that mix banjo with avant-garde noise rock.
Watkins, of course, is the former Nickel Creek
singer and fiddler who’s since moved more
towards indie-folk on her solo albums. None of
the musicians on the Happy Prisoner sessions
were doing standards like “Dark as a Dungeon”
anymore. “So when we all got in there and
started playing these old songs, there was a littletrepidation about whether we could do this old
music again,” Keen says. “It was like going back
and riding a bicycle without gears.”
Or, as Barnes puts it, “like going a few
rounds with Joe Louis.” The banjo player
laughs but then gets serious. “For people who
love this kind of music, it’s like a language,”
Barnes says. “You can run into somebody from
the opposite end of the globe and you have a
common parlance. And I’ve known these people
for years. Robert and I go way back.”
Everything gelled quickly when the musi-
cians started jamming together. “We got in there
and all of that childlike thinking and feelingcame out,” Keen remembers. “Everybody was
having a great time. We were just laughing and
having the best time. We’d play through ‘99
Years and One Dark Day,’ and everybody was
like, ‘Yeah! That’s so great!’ And then we’d play
another song and then play another. We were
just so happy. All of us had left this stuff behind,
but we’d never quit loving it. We just hadn’t had
a reason to play it in a while.
“Of all the records I’ve ever made, this was
the most fun and exciting.”
he fun and excitement shines throughat the outset of Happy Prisoner, as the
scratchy, percussive guitars of the
Flatt & Scruggs song “Hot Corn, Cold Corn” get
the engine turning. Keen and company trans-
form the unconventional bluegrass tune into a
blues stomp, with a deep, bass vocal singing the
words along with Keen’s raspy baritone, and an
electric slide slithering in between lines like,
“Old Aunt Peggy won’t you fill ’em up again /
Ain’t had a drink s ince the lord knows when”
and “Yonder comes the preacher and the chil-
dren are a-cryin’ / Chickens a-runnin’ and the
toenails a-flyin’—yes sir.”
The feel of Happy Prisoner is casual, remi-
niscent of the sessions that spawned the Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band’s cross-generational classic Will
the Circle Be Unbroken. One of the highlights is
Peter Rowan’s spoken-word story about how he
and Bill Monroe came to write “Walls of Time.”
It’s the same yarn Rowan had spun during an
appearance on Acoustic Guitar Sessions several
months ago—and he delivers it on Happy Pris-
oner with the same dramatic flair.“That was totally coincidental,” Keen says.
“We were at this studio called the Zone, in Drip-
ping Springs, Texas, and Peter had come out
there just to visit with Mike Morgan, who owns
the studio. Peter didn’t even know I was there,
so when I saw him I said, ‘Man, we did your
song and I’d like for you to come in and hear it.’
He’s listening to it and he starts telling this
story about driving Bill Monroe’s bus and I said,
‘Would you mind if we recorded this?’ He said,
‘Sure,’ so I just went in there and said what you
hear on the record”—the intro has Keen asking,
“Peter, can you tell me about ‘Walls of Time’
and how it came about?”—“and he just startedtalking. It was amazing!”
Keen duets with Lovett on the Jimmie
Rodgers classic “T for Texas”—which features
some dazzling acoustic-guitar and banjo runs,
and a warm, rubbery bass—and with Maines on
a spare version of the bluegrass standard “Way-
faring Stranger.” But two of Keen’s favorite
moments are “Poor Ellen Smith” and “Dark as a
Dungeon,” the latter included on the deluxe
edition of Happy Prisoner. “‘Poor Ellen Smith’
just kil ls me every time I hear it ,” he says,
“whether it’s by a full-blown bluegrass band or
solo, like Norman Blake’s version. When I hearthat song, all I hear is the story. And I think,
how great is that? It’s just pure description.
“It’s the same with ‘Dark as a Dungeon,’”
Keen continues. “When I hear that song, I see the
dungeon and the sort of blue light surrounding
it, and I feel the darkness and moisture. I’m
transported right there. And that’s what I love
about bluegrass. So when we did this album, I
felt like I wasn’t going to betray the music
because I have such a great love for the lyrics.
It’s just great poems set to music. And if you take
away the music, it’s powerful on its own—it’s
poetry, a painting in your brain.” AG
SPECIAL FOCUS TEXAS BLUEGRASS
T
‘WHEN WE DID THIS ALBUM, I FELT LIKEI WASN’T GOING TOBETRAY THE MUSIC
BECAUSE I HAVESUCH A GREAT LOVEFOR THE LYRICS.’
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46 March 2016
SPECIALFOCUSTEXASBLUEGRASS
These 5 musical acts have kept
the spirit of Texas bluegrass evolvingBy Mark Kemp
ho talks about Texas bluegrass?
Hardly anyone. That’s partly because
the Lone Star state is better known
for producing great singer-songwriters,
outlaws, and big-hat country stars. But fiddles,
banjos, mandolins, and hard-driving, flat-
picked acoustic guitars have a rich history in
Texas. And like every kind of Texas music, the
players twist it and turn it and make it some-
thing altogether new and exciting.Bluegrass first made its way to the panhan-
dle town of Dimmitt, near the New Mexico
border, around 1950. That’s when the Mayfield
Brothers left their family’s ranch to pursue a
sound inspired by Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass
Boys. When the folk revival of the 1960s hit,
bluegrass bands were waltzing all across Texas.
By the 1970s, Texas hippies were taking fiddles
and banjos where they’d never been before. It
continues to be a major part of the diverse
Texas music scene.
Here are five influential Texas acts that have
kept the spirit of Lone Star bluegrass evolving.
1. SLIM RICHEY
Born in the east Texas town of Atlanta, Slim
Richey was a hot jazz guitarist who opened
Warehouse Music in Fort Worth, selling instru-
ments and instructional materials to all kinds of
musicians, many of them bluegrass players. By
the late 1970s, Richey was merging jazz with
banjos and fiddles, and in 1977 he released the
pivotal jazz-bluegrass fusion album Jazz Grass.
Richey was still playing music and living inDripping Springs, near Austin, when he died
last year at 77 from lymphoma.
2. THE DIXIE CHICKS
This chart-topping trio may be best known for
country-pop hits and outspoken singer Natalie
Maines, but the Dixie Chicks started out in 1989
as a straight-up bluegrass band. When sisters
Martie and Emily Erwin left an earlier bluegrass
act, Blue Night Express, to form the Chicks with
guitarist Robin Lynn Macy and bassist Laura
Lynch, they all were heavily steeped in fiddles,
banjos, high-lonesome harmonies, and kitschycowboy music. Macy and Lynch soon moved on,
replaced by Maines, whose honeyed soprano
brought mainstream appeal to the Chicks. One
thing is certain: the Dixie Chicks—in all its
forms—inspired scores of younger bluegrass-
playing girls, such as the members of Della Mae,
who were waiting in the wings.
THEIRROOTS ARESHOWING
Slim Richey
W
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AcousticGuitar.com 47
3. BAD LIVERS
After watching long-haired banjo player John
Hartford duel with guitar-god Glen Campbell on
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, young Danny
Barnes knew what he wanted to do when he
grew up. He started playing banjo and acoustic
guitar, but was also drawn to the avant-garde.
When Barnes and upright bassist Mark Rubin
formed the Bad Livers in Austin, in 1990, they
began mixing bluegrass-based covers of songs bydada rocker Captain Beefheart with blues tunes
by Mississippi John Hurt. But they soon found
that post-punk audiences particularly liked the
group’s twangy takes on songs by experimental
Austin punk band the Butthole Surfers, as well
as covers of the metal band Motörhead, ghoul-
rockers the Misfits, and Detroit mad-man Iggy
Pop. In more recent years, Barnes has brought all
of that together on his solo singer-songwriter
albums and underground cassettes of experi-
mental ambient and noise music. In 2015,
Barnes won the Steve Martin Prize for Excel-
lence in Banjo and Bluegrass.
4. STEVE EARLE
Growing up in San Antonio, Steve Earle was
inspired by Texas songwriter Townes Van Zandt
to start playing and singing his own material.
Earle started out by helping to pioneer alterna-
tive country on his 1986 album Guitar Town
(MCA), an album often identified with Nash-
ville. He then moved on to more of a literate
Southern-rock sound before bottoming out on
drugs and booze. When he returned from hell,he’d transformed himself into an outspoken
protest singer and storyteller. Like fellow Texan
Robert Earl Keen, Earle felt the need to reach
back into his bluegrass past in 1999, and he
teamed up with the Del McCoury Band for The
Mountain (E-Squared), an all-original, all-blue-
grass album dedicated to Bill Monroe, who had
died three years earlier.
5. SARAH JAROSZ
Before Sarah Jarosz became a sensation in her
teens and 20s for her astonishingly nimble
mandolin runs and acoustic-guitar fingerpick-
ing; a sublime cover of Radiohead’s “The
Tourist;” and her nuanced original songs in the
indie-folk vein, she was a 12-year-old bluegrass
prodigy. Jarosz’s early experiences jamming
onstage with Ricky Skaggs and David Grisman
inform every gentle pluck heard in her complexcompositions, whose mature, deeply moving
lyrics betray an old soul—a longstanding Texas
tradition. At just 25, Jarosz already has three
albums and one live EP under her belt, and
numerous collaborations with such progressive
bluegrass royalty as Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck,
and Dan Tyminski. She’s brought Texas blue-
grass traditions into the new millennium with
style and grace.
Opposite
Danny Barnes
Top
The Dixie Chicks,
1992 L—R:
Martie Erwin,
Robin Macy,
Laura Lynch,
Emily Erwin
Bottom
Steve Earle T E D
B A
R R O N
C O U R T E S Y O F P O O R
D A
V I D ’ S
P U B
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48 March 2016
lan your 2016 waltz across central
and eastern Texas for bluegrass festi-
vals large and small—from Sherman
to the north, Kerrville and Driftwood to the
south, and Nacogdoches to the far east. But
first, check out AG’s Lucky 7 guide to some of
2016’s hottest offerings.
OLD SETTLER’S MUSIC FESTIVAL
APRIL 14–17
DRIFTWOOD, TX
Since 1987, the Old Settler’s Music Festival has
presented a wide array of rootsy American
music, much of it bluegrass. The 2016 lineup
includes the Del McCoury Band, Jerry Douglas
& the Earls of Leicester, the Wood Brothers,
Sarah Jarosz, Della Mae, Jay Farrar, the Hell-
benders’ bluegrass Tommy , and many others.
oldsettlersmusicfest.org
LONE STAR FEST
APRIL 22 & 23
ARLINGTON, TX
The top-notch lineup for the 2016 edition of this
annual event sponsored by the Dallas-based
Bluegrass Heritage Foundation includes Interna-
tional Bluegrass Music Association winners Flatt
Lonesome and the Kenny & Amanda Smith
Band, as well as Bobby Giles & Music Mountain,
Pine Island Station, the Herrin Family, Robertson
County Line, the Coleman Brothers & Lone Star
Boys, and Pearl & the Polka Dots.
lonestarfest.com
KERRVILLE FOLK FESTIVAL
MAY 26–JU NE 12
KERRVILLE, TX
It’s not exclusively bluegrass, but bluegrass lovers
won’t feel out of place at the legendary Kerrville
Folk Festival, one of the longest-running and
most-respected folk fests in the United States.Since 1972, and over 18 continuous days and
nights, Kerrville has brought a who’s who of
American folk music. This year’s all-star lineup
features Judy Collins, Sheryl Wheeler, Matt
Nakoa, Kenny White, Johnsmith, Vance Gilbert,
Terri Hendrix, Slaid Cleaves, Mary Gauthier,
Ruthie Foster, and Trout Fishing in America, as
well as blues-guitar clinician the Rev. Robert B.
Jones, Jay Mankita, children’s concerts, and more.
kerrville-music.com
SANDYLAND BLUEGRASS REUNION
MAY 13–15, SEPTEMBER 16–18NACOGDOCHES, TX
Each year on the second weekend in May and
third weekend in September, the good people
of east Texas (and beyond) descend on Sara
and Cowboy Barrett’s Triple-B Farm for a pair of
no-frills holiday weekends filled with local and
regional bluegrass gospel. Past acts have
included the Herrin Family of Fort Worth,
Church Hill Bluegrass of Henderson, Harmony
Ridge of Rusk, and the Herzog Family Band of
Bremond. Keep checking that website for the
2016 lineups. And can we get a Hallelujah?
sandylandbluegrass.com
DEEP SUMMER BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL
AUGUST 26–29
SHERMAN, TX
Bill and Annette Hayes throw their Melody
Ranch Deep Summer Bluegrass Festival each
year on their 18-acre expanse of flat , north
Texas ranch land during the last weekend of August. The 2015 lineup included Oklahoma’s
hard-driving Mark Phillips & the IIIrd Genera-
tion Bluegrass Band, along with Texas bands
Dueling Hearts of China Spring, the Upper
Grassmen of Calder Howe, Copper Canyon of
Lewisville, and lots more. For the 2016 lineup,
keep checking the website.
melodyranchbluegrassfestival.com
SPECIALFOCUSTEXASBLUEGRASS
LUCKY 7 Don’t miss these 2016
Texas bluegrass events
By Mark Kemp
P
Mary Gauthier
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SALMON LAKE PARK LABOR DAY
BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL
SEPTEMBER 1–4
GRAPELAND, TX
Floyd and Fanny Salmon of Salmon Lake Park
hold all kinds of gospel and bluegrass music
events at their Grapeland campground, includinga Memorial Day weekend bluegrass fest, but one
of the most popular is the Labor Day weekend
bluegrass festival, now going on its 40th year. The
lineup this year features regional acts from
throughout the South including the Farm Hands,
Saltgrass, the Tennessee Gentlemen, the Little Roy
and Lizzy Show, Run Boy Run, Gold Wing Express,
and Catahoula Drive. (If you’re in Bellville on the
last weekend of October, some of these same acts
will be at the Pickin’ & Grinnin’ fest.)
salmonlakepark.com
BLOOMIN’ BLUEGRASS FESTIVALOCTOBER 14 & 15
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One of the hottest Texas fests (for both music
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27-acre Farmers Branch Historical Park, just 15
minutes from the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, the
terrific 2016 lineup includes the Del McCoury
Band, the Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Hot
Rize, Lee Ann Womack, Balsam Range, the Gras-
cals, and the Helen Highwater Stringband.
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AcousticGuitar.com 51
Peggy Seeger is no stranger to folklore. Her father
was the famed folklorist Charles Seeger; her
mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a trailblazing
avant-garde composer. Her folk musician brother,
Mike Seeger, co-founded the New Lost Ci ty
Ramblers, one of the most influential groups in
the 1960s folk revival. And her half-brother, Pete
Seeger, became one the most famous folk musi-
cians of the modern era. In 1964, Peggy Seeger
and her husband Ewan MacColl recorded the
influential Folkways album Traditional Songs
and Ballads , which included two songs from the
American scholar and folklorist Francis JamesChild’s exhaustive compilation of 305 English
and Scottish folk ballads, along with their Amer-
ican versions. For Seeger, that album marked the
beginning of a lifelong association with The
Child Ballads , which also would be recorded by
the likes of Joan Baez, Fairport Convention,
Pentangle, and Steeleye Span, to name a few. AG
correspondent Andy Hughes caught up with
Seeger, 80, backstage at the 2015 Cambridge
Folk Festival and discussed her connection to The
Child Ballads.
How did you find ‘The Child Ballads’and what have they meant to your music?
When I was a child, about three years old, I
developed very bad croup. My mother put me to
bed, and she put a kettle of boiling water next to
my bed, because the steam was reckoned to help
breathing for a child with croup. One day, I
stepped out of bed, right into the kettle—I still
have the scar on my right foot. I was raced off to
hospital, where I immediately caught strep
throat. I remember lying on a shelf, and they
were feeding me Jell-O, which I couldn’t stand
for years after, and my parents came to visit me,
and I remember seeing them look at me through
Peggy Seeger, 1960
G E M S
R E D F E R N S
C O L L E C T I O N
Child’s PlayPeggy Seeger marks her lifelong
commitment to ‘The Child Ballads,’
a treasure trove of folklore
BY
ANDY
HUGHES
PLAY54Basics
Three chords
and the truth ys
58Weekly Workout
Learn to be a betteraccompanist
62Woodshed
How to play ‘Pete’sBarrelhouse Rag,’ pt. 2
SONGCRAFT
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52 March 2016
SONGCRAFT
a window. They told me afterward that the way
they had found me was by following the sound
of a little voice singing “Barbara Allen.” That
was the first ballad that I ever learned, and it
has been a very good friend to me ever since.
I learned lots of The Child Ballads growing up,and I loved the stories—really loved them. Then I
went to college—I was very much in demand at
the local hootenannies. I attended the female
equivalent of Harvard, which was Radcliffe, and
so I had access to the Harvard Library. And Boston
is where Francis Child had lived—his house is
there. So I virtually lived in that library, and col-
lected umpteen versions of ballads. I didn’t really
think a whole lot about how to sing them until I
got together with Ewan MacColl, and we started
to discuss the way that you sing ballads. It does
matter, because there are a lot of ballad singers
who just deadpan their way through, and I think you have to do more than that.
You have to use your imagination when you
sing these ballads, not necessarily to jazz them
up. I started using theater techniques to sing a
nine-minute unaccompanied song. It’s fascinat-
ing—you re-live it every time, you really do. I
talk about it, and describe it in the memoir that
I am writing, about how to think when you are
singing these songs. It’s not just about words
and music; it really isn’t. It’s a lot more than
that. So I am a member of the middle class,
singing songs that were written by the working
class, and that talk about lords and ladies, so I
have to work out the motivations behind the
ballads—why they were written and performed
in the way that they were.
The Child Ballads represent a big challenge to
anyone who is going to sing them. At the Folk Awards this year, one singer, who is well-known,
sang one of my favorite ballads, accompanied by
a nine-piece band. And it was too much, it
drowned the ballad, absolutely drowned it.
There seemed to be very little concentration by
the singer, and all anyone could think about was
the instrumentation playing here and there and
everywhere, and not a thought for the poor little
ballad. This person is a good singer; I couldn’t
figure out why anyone thought she needed nine
instruments behind a Child ballad—I just found
myself very distracted.
When you say you collected the ballads,
did you literally write them down?
Oh, yes, I have a book that I have been
collecting ballads in since I was about 15. It has
a stave for the melody line, and I write the
words in. I am a folklorist’s nightmare because
a lot of the time I cannot remember where I
have heard a ballad from. I also am unaware of
how much I have changed it, but I have been
listening to that method of singing all my life. I
am not really a traditionalist. I sing folk songs,
but I am not a folksinger in the traditional way.
Was it the appeal of ‘The Child Ballads’
that got you interested in folk music
in the first place?
I loved the texts and the stories. I think in my
early days, I over-accompanied them, and I sang
them awfully fast. Now, in my dotage, because Ican’t play such complicated guitar lines any
more, I am paying more attention to the words,
and I am singing them more soulfully. The impor-
tant thing about The Child Ballads is that they are
bones—they are the bones of songs, and the vital
thing about the ballads is how sparsely they are
clad. This was very clearly brought home to me
when Ewan MacColl and I were working with the
Critics Group [a master class for folksingers]. We
had lots of discussions on the proper way to sing
The Ballads, and the answer was, as simply as
possible, without a lot of histrionics and changes
of tempo, and rising and falling of pitch.One of the members of the Critics Group
was a teacher, and he taught 11 and 12 year
olds. He sang “The Twa Sisters” (The Two
Sisters) to his class, and then he asked them to
draw pictures based on the ballad they had
heard, and the result was mind-blowing. He
asked them what color was the dress that the
drowned sister was wearing? One said red, one
said green, one said blue. That’s an example of
the bones of the song, and each listener clothes
it depending on what their vision is of what
they heard. If you present the scenario where
‘The Child Ballads
need very careful
handling when
you perform them.
They are a
beautiful collection
of stories that
have been handed
down and downand down through
the generations.’
PEGGY SEEGER
Ewan MacColl and
Peggy Seeger, 1977
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one sister is drowned, every listener will picture
it individually and differently. He brought the
pictures to the room where we met, and put
them on the wall for us to look at, and the
majority of pupils had remembered the sisters,
and not the suitor who came to call.The story, for those who don’t know it, is
that there are two sisters who both fall in love
with the same man. In the Scottish version of
the ballad, the older sister is plain, and the
younger sister is beautiful. The etiquet te in
those days was, if you came courting, you
courted the older sister first—the youngest
sister was not supposed to marry before the
older sister had been spoken for and married.
So the suitor comes to call, and falls in love
with the younger sister, and the older sister
pushes her into the river, and she floats down.
Depending on which version you hear, themiller pulls the girl out of the river, steals her
ring and her beaver hat, and pushes her back
into the river again. In an older version, a fiddle
player comes along and he makes a fiddle out
of her breastbone, and he makes strings from
her long yellow hair, and he takes it along to
the wedding of the older sister to the suitor of
the younger sister.
This is one of the major Child ballads, and
this is why they are so strong—it’s because the
words are just bare bones. The listener is left to
imagine a whole lot, there is never too much
detail telling us what to think. There is almost
no descriptive language used. There is no heav-enly choir of angels telling you to feel sad at
this point. Of the pictures, I remember two of
them. One is painted as though the artist is
standing behind the older sister, who is looking
down the river, and in the distance there is a
hand waving, the drowning sister. The other
picture, which was placed right next to it, is a
close-up view of the drowning sister, and in the
distance is a stick figure of the older sister, with
a huge smile on her face.
You can identify with people in a ballad,
and if the ballad is sung strongly, you can iden-
tify with this and that. I do go into this in somedetail in my memoir. I have been singing these
ballads for over 70 years, and at one point, I
sang one of them at every concert I did for a
three-year period. When you sing a song that
often, you find different ways to clothe it in
your own mind.
Is it fair to say that ‘The Child Ballads’ are
a cornerstone of your work because you
learned them so early on in your life?
I would say it is, yes. I have written several
songs that sound like ballads, with that same
bare aspect of description in them. The Child
Ballads are very special. They are not like The
Broadside Ballads—they are very different. The
Broadside Ballads were cheap, and sold by the
yard, so the more complicated and the longer it
is, the better. The Broadside Ballads are very,
very wordy, long lines usually, and many, many verses—too much in format ion. The Child
Ballads are the opposite—every line matters,
every particle. In The Child Ballads, there is
narrative, and there are verbs, there are hardly
any adjectives, and no adverbs. And whether
there’s an “a” or “the” matters. The Child
Ballads need very careful handling when you
perform them. They are a beautiful collection
of stories that have been handed down and
down and down through the generations.
What do you think about the influenceof ‘The Child Ballads’ on other acoustic
musicians? Do you think that they serve
as a good grounding, or that they should?
I’m not sure that they should, but they are
wonderful traditional songs, and sometimes I
do think that traditional is best. AG
Smokey darkness
Escape the expected. Experience graphite. www.rainsong.com1.800.788.5828
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54 March 2016
B
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Ex. 1c
The I chord is built from the first note of the
scale, a C—when you stack two other notes
from the scale on top (moving up the scale, you
add the third and the fifth notes, E and G), you
get a C major chord. The I is the tonic chord in
the key—the harmonic home base—and gives
the key its name. The IV chord is built similarly
from the fourth note of the scale (F, with A andC then stacked on top) and is an F major; and
the V chord, built from the fifth note of the
scale (G, plus B and D), is a G major. An upper-
case Roman numeral means the chord is major;
lowercase is used for minor.
You can find the I, IV, and V chords in any
other key the same way—by building from the
first, fourth, and fifth notes in the correspond-
ing major scale. Here are the I, IV, and V chords
you get in the five easiest keys on the guitar.
I IV V
C F G
A D EG C D
E A B
D G A
Since these groups of chords are all built
from the same pattern in their respective keys,
they fit together the same way. A song that
The chord trinity known as I–IV–V is one of
the most useful theoretical concepts for
any musician. The I–IV–V is a skeleton key for
countless songs in folk, country, rock, blues,
and beyond, revealing the basic similarities of,
say, “Louie Louie,” “Ring of Fire,” “Johnny B.
Goode,” “Helpless,” “Three Little Birds,” “I Still
Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “ThisLand Is Your Land,” “Man of Constant Sorrow,”
and “I Fought the Law.” Understanding I–IV–V
progressions can help you jam along with
songs you’ve never played before or change a
song’s key without using a capo, and it can get
you started writing your own songs, too.
In this lesson, I’ll explain what I–IV–V
means and how these chords lay out in various
keys. Then you can play through some exam-
ples as used in classic songs.
CHORDS BY NUMBER
In a nutshell, the I, IV, and V are the most
commonly used chords in any major key. Allthree chords are built from notes in the key’s
corresponding major scale. Take the key of
C major, for instance. Here are the notes in the
C major scale, numbered 1 to 7.
C D E F G A B
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Three Chordsand the TruthUnlocking I-IV-V chord progressions
BYJEFFREYPEPPER
RODGERS
goes, say, from C to F to G in the key of C is
using the same underlying progression as a
song that goes G–C–D in the key of G, or
another song that goes D–G–A in the key of D.
These songs are all I–IV–V.
TAKE TWO
To get a handle on how the I, IV, and V worktogether, start by focusing on pairs of chords—
first, the I and IV. Think of these as the “amen”
chords: in a typical ending of a hymn, the IV
comes with the “ah” and resolves to the I on
“men.” Some songs use only the I and IV. One
classic is Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday
People,” which is the basis of the first set of
examples.
Play the two-bar rhythm pattern in the key of
G in Ex. 1a As you can see, the IV (C) makes
only a brief appearance at the end of measure 1.
Use the G fingering shown, with the ring,
middle, and pinkie, to speed up the change to C
and back. Take it slowly and loop the example—all examples in this lesson are designed to be
looped. In Ex. 1b, play the same pattern in the
key of A, where the I is A and the IV is D. (Note
that I’m using a less common fingering for A that
makes for a smooth change to D because the
index can stay planted on the third string, but
you may prefer another fingering.)
THE BASICS
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Now try this pattern in three other keys: C
(Ex. 1c, where I is C and IV is F), D (Ex. 1d; I is
D and IV is G), and E (Ex. 1e; I is E and IV is
A). Can you hear how these are all the same
progression transposed to different keys?
Try singing a bit of “Everyday People” over
each one of the examples (“and so on and so on
and scooby dooby doo . . .”). You just need to
find the right starting note for the melody in
each key.
Next, check out the I and V. The V is the
crucial chord that resolves most powerfully to
the I. Hank Williams’ ever-popular “Jambalaya”
uses only the I and V in a repeating eight-bar
pattern. Try it out in Ex. 2a, in the key of C: I is
C and V is G. Play an alternating bass/strum
pattern with a short bass run in measure 6. Then
play the same basic pattern in D (Ex. 2b) and in
A (Ex. 2c). Regardless of the key, the relation-
ship between the I and the V is the same.
At a jam session,
when someone
kicks off a bluegrass
or traditional folk
song, you can bet
good money it’ll
use the I, IV, and V.
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56
March 2016
B
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Ex. 2c
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Ex. 3a
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.
Û Û Û Û Û Û
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THE BASICS
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VIDEO LESSONACOUSTICGUITAR.COM
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Ex. 3c
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THE BIG THREE
Now put the I, IV, and V together. With a nod to
Richard Berry, who waited far too long to get
proper credit and compensation for writing
“Louie Louie,” play that song’s signature
rhythm in the key of A in Ex. 3a. The progres-
sion goes I–IV–V–IV (in A, that’s A–D–E–D),
climbing up and back down. Once you’ve got
that rocking, try it in G (Ex. 3b, G–C–D–C) and
in C (Ex. 3c, C–F–G–F).
The I, IV, and V can be reshuffled in any
order in a song. The final set of examples shows
a strumming pattern similar to what Neil Young
uses in “Helpless,” which goes I–V–IV. In the key
of D, that’s D–A–G (Ex. 4a). In G, I–V–IV is
G–D–C (Ex. 4b), and in A it’s A–E–D (Ex. 4c).
HOW TO USE THE I–IV–V
Once you can quickly find the I, IV, and V in
various keys, all sorts of useful things become
possible.
If you’re singing a I–IV–V song in G and it’s a
little low for your voice, rather than capoing up
the neck you could just play the I–IV–V in A. At
a jam session, when someone kicks off a blue-
grass or traditional folk song, you can bet good
money it’ll use the I, IV, and V—and you’ll know
where to look for the next chord. Whenever
you’re learning songs, you’ll see these three
chords at work, by themselves or in conjunction
with other chords.
And as the saying goes (usually attributed
to Nashville songsmith Harlan Howard), all you
need to write a song are three chords and the
truth. Now you know a great place to find the
three chords. Take the I, IV, and V in any key,
shuffle them around, find a groove, startsinging, and see what happens.
As for the truth . . . well, it’s out there. AG
Whenever you’re learning songs, you’ll see
these three chords at work, by themselves
or in conjunction with other chords.
LISTENTO THIS!
HelplessCrosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Deja Vu
Atlantic
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58 March 2016
B
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Play the Right StuffThese tried-and-true tacticscan help you be a better accompanist
Many professional guitar players find
themselves onstage or in the studio
accompanying singer-songwriters, some of
whom also play guitar or other chordal instru-
ments. In such cases, the singer-songwriter
rarely tells the sideperson exactly what to play.
It’s usually up to the player to come up withmusical parts that complement the singer and
vitalize the song arrangement. Creating cool
parts from scratch may seem to be a mysterious
art form but it needn’t be an intimidating pros-
pect. In this Weekly Workout, I’ll offer some
tried-and-true tactics, that—if practiced and
comprehended—will ensure that you’ve always
got a few aces up your sleeve.
WEEK ONE
Knowing a variety of voicings for any particularchord is an invaluable asset to any sideperson.
This is especially true when working with a
singer-songwriter who plays guitar, because you
need to keep what you’re playing out of the way
BY
ADAMLEVY
BEGINNERS’
TIPWhen a song uses a
common chord progres-
sion, look for a way to
play it that sets this song
apart from any other.
1
WEEK 1
WEEKLY WORKOUT
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AcousticGuitar.com 59
of what they’re playing. As a general principle,
using opposites can be a good starting point for
crafting your part. For example, if the artist is
playing voicings in a low register, try playing
higher voicings. If the artist is up high, try
playing below. If they’re using full-voiced chords,
try smaller shapes, such as triads. If they’re
playing rudimentary chord shapes, try adding a
seventh, ninth, or other colorful chord tone.
Ex. 1a–1d illustrate all of the close-position
inversions of a G major triad playable within
the first 12 frets. (Close position means that the
three notes in each of these triads are within
the same octave. In open-position chord voic-
ings, the notes are more spread out.) It would
behoove you to memorize these shapes in all 12
major keys so that you can complement virtu-
ally any other voicing in any other register.
That said, rudimentary triads are not the
right sound for every musical situation. It’s
important to have other types of voicings at
your fingertips. You’ll find interesting examples
of G-major voicings in Ex. 2a–2d. Ex. 2a offers
a high-and-wide sound. (While this particularshape would be nearly impossible to replicate
in other keys without the aid of a capo, it’s still
worth learning for the concept at work: Open
strings can be used to render voicings with
BEGINNERS’
TIPSome songs may only
need a second guitar part
in one section—
perhaps
the chorus—so don’t be
afraid to not play for awhile.
2
some wide gaps.) Ex. 2b is a first-inversion G
triad in an open-position spread. It’s an ear-
pleasing chord on its own and can sound even
sweeter when strummed or plucked along with
another guitarist’s run-of-the-mill G chord. The
G (add2) in Ex. 2c is a little more jangly, thanks
to the very close proximity of the two highest
notes, A and B. In Ex. 2d, the third of the chord
(B) is eliminated for a droning sound.
You’ll need to know how to get around with
minor chords as well, so check out the triads in
Ex. 3a–3d and the specialized voicings in Ex.
4a–4d. In Ex. 4a–4d, you’ll mostly find minor
versions of the same chords you played in Ex.
2a–2d. The one exception is Ex. 4c. The non-
triadic note here is the fourth, not the third,
simply because this shape lays more easily under
the fingers than a Gm (add2). Again, you’ll want
to memorize these in all 12 minor keys.
WEEK TWO
The focus this week will be on rhythmic oppo-
sites. To really get the gist of these exercises, be
sure to repeat the Guitar 1 part several times sothat you can keep it going in your mind while
you play the Guitar 2 part. Better yet, record
the Guitar 1 part—using your smartphone,
looping pedal, or whatever tech tool you have
handy. Then play the Guitar 2 part along with
Guitar 1 to hear how they work together.
In Ex. 5, Guitar 1 plays a familiar C chord,
using a typical strumming pattern. To go with
that, you could play something like the Guitar 2
part, in which all of the chordal attacks are
offset from the Guitar 1 part. When the two
parts are played together, this can give the com-
bined feel some buoyancy. Notice that the
chord voicing in Guitar 2 is in a higher register
than Guitar 1 and contains no third (E). Since
the standard C chord already contains two
thirds (the Es on strings 1 and 4), choosing a
voicing without the 3 wil l help the overal l
harmony sound more clear.
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AcousticGuitar.com 61
KEY C A G E D
C no capo capo III capo V capo VIII capo X
F capo V capo VIII capo X capo I capo IIIBb / A# capo X capo 1 capo III capo VI capo VIII
Eb / D# capo III capo VI capo VIII capo IX capo I
Ab / G# capo VIII capo X capo I capo IV capo VI
Db / C# capo I capo IV capo VI capo IX capo XI
Gb / F# capo VI capo IX capo XI capo II capo IV
B capo XI capo II capo IV capo VII capo IX
E capo IV capo VII capo IX no capo capo II
A capo IX no capo capo II capo V capo VII
D capo II capo V capo VII capo X no capo
G capo VII capo X no capo capo III capo V
What’s notable about Ex. 6 is how the two
parts don’t change chords with the same fre-
quency. In measure 1, Guitar 2 hangs on the Am
chord while Guitar 1 goes to G. In measure 2,
Guitar 2 is more active than Guitar 1—with a C
shape that gives the static F some melodic motion
(in the lower two voices) and an Am that antici-pates the repeated downbeat. Both of these serve
to give this part some forward momentum.
Remember, you don’t always have to take a
song’s chord progression literally—that is chang-
ing chord by chord, right on the beat. Experi-
ment with anticipation and delay, and perhaps
skip a chord or two. When the singer-songwriter
(or someone else in the band) is laying down the
primary changes, you don’t necessarily have to,
and what you don’t play can be as musically
valuable as what you do play.
WEEK THREE
This week you’ll be using common first-posi-
tion forms you most likely know already. What
makes them valuable here is the use of the
capo, which—once again—will allow you to
keep your part out of the way of another guitar-
ist’s part. This is accomplished by playing the
song in a different key (C, A, G, E, or D) that
favors first-position chords, then using the capo
to match your chords to the song’s actual key.
For example, the singer-songwriter (or other
guitarist) is playing Ex. 7a, which is in the key
of C major. If you want to get into a different
register, you could play Ex. 7b (key of A, capo
III), Ex. 7c (key of G, capo V), Ex. 7d (key of E,
capo VIII), or Ex. 7e (key of D, capo X). If the
other guitarist is already capoed up the neck, you can choose to play below or above them.
The table shown in Ex. 8 will help you use the
capo to get around in any key. For further prac-
tice, take a simple song that you’re familiar
with in first position and learn to play it with a
capo in two or three different registers, main-
taining the original key.
WEEK FOUR
Of course, playing chords is not all you get to do
as a second guitarist. You’re just as often asked to
play fills and hooks, and even full-on solos. When
playing melodies in any capacity, you need toconsider some of the same principles you’ve been
working with all along in this series so that you
don’t clutter the musical arrangement.
In Ex. 9a-9c, you’ll see the same two-bar
phrase in three different registers—high, middle,
and low. Can you hear how different they sound,
even though the notes are the same?
This is just one short example to illustrate
the point. Your homework is to choose a couple
BEGINNERS’
TIPIt can be very informative
to sing the song you’re
working on a part for,
even if you don’t consider
yourself a singer.
3
B
c
J
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13 12 10 88
F C
Ex. 9a
q = 106
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5
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WEEK 4
of short melodies that you know well and trans-
pose each of them up and/or down to as many
registers as are practically playable on the
guitar. If you’re feeling particularly adventur-
ous, transpose these melodies to other keys as
well. In the course of your career, you’ ll be
asked many times to change the key of amelody or chord progression. Being able to do
so on the spot is a feather in your cap.
Adam Levy is guitarist and songwriter based
in Los Angeles, where he is chair of the guitar
performance program at Los Angeles College
of Music. His guitar work has appeared on
recordings by Norah Jones, Tracy Chapman,
and Ani DiFranco, among others. adamlevy.com
BEGINNERS’
TIPSolid rhythm is the
backbone of any great song,
so don’t shirk practicing
rhythmic stuff.
4
Ex. 8
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62 March 2016
WOODSHED
thirds (suggesting E). For the A7 chord, you’ll
use a shortened version of a C shape. In the
second bar of this passage, remove your third
finger from string 3 and place it on string 5, fret
12 and then on string 6, fret 12. Then use yourthumb on the ninth-fret C on string 6. The D
chord once again uses thirds to descend the
neck; for the G chord, some minor seconds
close out this verse with a quirky flavor.
Variation 6 is essentially a repetition of the
opening verse from the previous lesson, but
with a single-string run at the end. This segues
into a half-time section, which is built on
Last month, this column focused on my
ragtime piece “Pete’s Barrelhouse Rag”—
inspired by the piano-based jazz-blues form
that’s heavyily syncopated and that was
popular in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Now, aspromised, here’s a look at three additional vari-
ations on the piece.
Variation 5 returns to the standard eight-
bar format, but gives the bass line a rest and
allows you to navigate up and down the neck
with a series of single-string runs. You’ll start
out with some ascending sixth intervals (which
suggest a C chord), then some descending
The Rag Picker, Pt. 23 more variations on ‘Pete’s Barrelhouse Rag’
BYPETE
MADSEN
four-bar phrases that are divided between G
and C chords. The first four bars have you
playing open G and G7 chords; the second two
bars contain a turnaround in C that I borrowed
from Robert Johnson’s “From Four Until Late,”moving between the chords C, C7, F, and Fm.
The second four-bar pass uses a series of
CAGED-voiced G7 chords, followed by another
Johnson-style turnaround. The third pass
through these adds another higher voicing to
the G7 and returns to the “From Four Until
Late” changes. You exit the half-time section by
bouncing back and forth between G7 and G7
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64 March 2016
chords, then hitting a chromatic octave run that
lands on a C chord.Play Variation 7 a tempo at 180 bpm. The
last seven bars use the C–C7–F–Fm turnaround,
which switches back to half time at the end.
The last phrase is a nod to the Third Man theme
by Anton Karas, the Viennese zither player and
composer who scored the 1948 soundtrack to
the British film noir.
A lot is going on in these variations, and
they’re a bit of a workout. To make them more
VIDEO LESSONACOUSTICGUITAR.COM
WOODSHED
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approachable, try one eight-bar section at a
time. And don’t be afraid to compose or, better yet, improvise your own variations—a practice
that’s in keeping with the ragtime tradition.
Pete Madsen is a San Francisco Bay Area-based
author, instructor, and performer who specializes
in acoustic blues, ragtime, and slide guitar. His
latest titles are A Guide to Bottleneck Slide Guitar
and Improvising and Variations for Fingerstyle
Blues , both available at learnbluesguitarnow.com.
Anton Karas, 1951
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ent t ats o ing
or a change. We
ur oca B ueri ge
mate conversation
tar that will bring
st in you.
t o tone lies in the
esign, se ection
ials and the skilled
t e cra sman. e
is more Bang…
io !
W
- rea naug e about Blueridge Guitars,
v s www.sagamusic.com/AG
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66 March 2016
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
The
BondGirl007 inspired this fingerstyle
Tommy Emmanuel ballad
BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
throughout the piece, will make it easier to add
the first-string grace notes.
As for the pick hand, Emmanuel performs
the piece with a thumb pick and bare fingers.
Try doing the same, or if you’d prefer, use
straight fingerpicking. Generally speaking,picking the notes on the lower strings with your
thumb and the upper strings with your other
fingers should do the trick; use your thumb to
strum the chords containing more than four
notes.
The tune features a couple of nice examples
of harmonics. In bar 37, assign your index finger
to the harmonics at fret 7 and your fourth to
those at fret 12. Remember to let the notes
cascade together for a shimmering effect.
The harmonics that end the piece are less
straightforward. Here, while your fret hand
holds down the B chord indicated in tablature,position your pick hand about 12 frets above
that shape, and lightly press its palm against
strings 6–4 as you strum, causing that bottom
quartet to sound an octave higher than fingered.
It might take a bit of experimenting to pull this
off, but the effect is worth the effort. AG
Some years ago, Tommy Emmanuel was
watching the James Bond movie Moonraker
(1979) when an interesting harmonic moment
tickled his ear: in the theme song, the sound of
a B chord with the addition of the raised fifth,
moving to an E minor-major ninth chord.Emmanuel then took this idea in a new direc-
tion in his ballad “Ruby’s Eyes.”
The composition, excerpted here from a new
Tommy Emmanuel songbook, offers an excellent
introduction to Emmanuel’s trademark contra-
puntal approach, which earned him the honor-
ific of Certified Guitar Player from the country
legend Chet Atkins. Emmanuel is known to sail
effortlessly at impossibly fast tempos, but
“Ruby’s Eyes” is taken at a moderate clip, around
108 bpm, making it approachable.
Coming up with efficient fret-hand fingerings
is key to mastering the piece. For instance, in theB-chord measures, fretting strings 4, 3, and 2
with your second, third, and fourth fingers will
set you up for adding the hammer-ons and pull-
offs to the chord with your fourth finger. In bar
23–26 and elsewhere, fretting the sixth-string
notes with your thumb, as Emmanuel does
Tommy Emmanuel
Little by Little
Guitar Tab Songbook
Hal Leonard
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68 March 2016
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AcousticGuitar.com 69
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70 March 2016
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
As with many songs that date back before
the 20th century, it’s a little difficult to
trace the exact origin of “Will the Circle Be
Unbroken?” An early version bearing this title
was published in a book of hymnals, arranged
for four-part choir and attributed to Ada R.Habershon and Charles H. Gabriel. The song’s
melody and phrasing are similar to contempo-
rary interpretations, as performed and recorded
by Doc Watson, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (see p.
Mama’s Gone‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’
is sad but can be uplifting
BY DAN APCZYNSKI
versions—including at least one fantastic record-
ing on Willie Nelson’s 1978 album Willie and
Family Live (featuring background vocals by
Emmylou Harris)—offer an uptempo gospel feel
that turns the depressing subject matter on its
ear. Use the simple quarter-note boom-chuckrhythm shown below for a melancholy interpre-
tation, or kick up the tempo and experiment
with more upbeat strumming patterns like the
one shown in measures 5 and 6. AG
24), Willie Nelson, and many more, but with
different lyrics. Today’s renditions bear a much
closer lyrical resemblance to the song recorded
by the Carter Family in 1928 under the title
“Can the Circle Be Unbroken.” While I’ve based
this arrangement on the Carter Family’s version,I—like Watson, Nelson, and most others—have
kept the original title.
While the song’s narrative is sad, the song
doesn’t need to be performed that way. Some
The Carter Family
Can the Circle Be Unbroken
Banner
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72 March 2016
ACOUSTIC CLASSIC
Twisted
Sister‘O the Wind and Rain’
is a murder ballad about
squabbling siblingsBY ADAM PERLMUTTER
The Child Ballads aren’t really songs for the
young. Rather, they’re songs collected by
the Harvard professor and folklorist Francis
James Child (1825–1896), who in the mid- to
late-1800s assembled the 305 traditional
numbers that appear in the ten-volume series
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (see
the interview with Peggy Seeger on page 51).
Included in the collection is the haunting
murder ballad “The Twa Sisters” (Child 10)—
also existing under such variants as “The Cruel
Sister,” “The Bonny Swans,” and “O the Wind
and Rain”—about a fratricide in which the
victim is reborn as a musical instrument. The
song has been interpreted by everyone from
Bob Dylan and Tom Waits to Jerry Garcia and
Peggy Seeger.
This arrangement is based on Seeger’s
recording of “O the Wind and Rain,” from her2008 album, Bring Me Home (Appleseed). It
could be played as an accompaniment or as a
stand-alone solo. Seeger’s version doesn’t have
any guitar and is dominated by a harmonium
rendering a harmonically static backdrop in longPeggy Seeger
tones. Here, the droning quality is captured on
guitar through the use of open-G tuning and an
alternating bass pattern that’s identical in every
measure, lending a hypnotic effect.
Before you play the piece, note its unusual
structure—a nine-bar verse, played 13 times.
Al l of the ve rses have a so rt of ca ll -and-
response pattern in which the first line is
answered with the lyric “O the wind and rain”
and the third line with “Cryin’ the dreadful
wind and rain.”
When you delve into the arrangement, pick
the bottom three strings with your bare thumb
or a thumb pick and the higher strings with
your index, middle, and ring fingers. Give the
chords falling on beats 1 and 3 of most mea-
sures a little roll, and let all of the notes ring for
as long as possible.
Overall, the fret-hand fingerings should bepretty straightforward, but those in bar 5 could
be a little tricky. Try grabbing the fifth-fret A
with your third finger and the seventh-fret B
with your fourth, making sure to play the notes
in a smooth and singing way. AG V I C K I S H A R P
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AcousticGuitar.com 73
Tuning: D G D G B D
let ring throughout sim.
B
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.
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Ear ly one morn ing in the
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2.–13. See additional lyrics.
1.œ œ
month of May.
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O THE WIND AND RAIN TRADITIONAL
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2. Two sweet sisters side by side
O the wind and rain Both of them want to be Johnny’s bride
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
3. Johnny give the young one a gold ring
O the wind and rain
Didn’t give the other one anything
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
J
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4. The sisters went a walking by the water’s brim
O the wind and rain
The older one shoved the younger one in
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
5. Shoved her in the river to drown
O the wind and rain
And watched her as she floated down
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
J
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74 March 2016
O THE WIND AND RAIN
10. He made a fiddle bow of her long yellow hair
O the wind and rain
He made fiddle pegs of her little finger bones
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
11. He made a fiddle of her little breast bone
O the wind and rain
With a sound that could melt a heart of stone
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
12. And the only tune that fiddle could play
O the wind and rain
The only tune that fiddle would play was
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
13. Was yonder’s my sister sittin’ on a rock
O the wind and rain
Tyin’ my Johnny a true love’s knot
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
.
.
œ œ
6. She floated on down to the miller’s dam
O the wind and rain
Father father there swims a swan
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
7. The miller ran for his drifting hook
O the wind and rain
And pulled that poor girl from the brook
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
8. He laid her on the bank to dry
O the wind and rain
A fiddler man came walking by
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
9. He saw that poor girl lying there
O the wind and rain
He took 30 strands of her long yellow hair
Cryin’ the dreadful wind and rain
œ
SHUBBThe best performers will settle for no less.
[email protected] • www.shubb.com
707-843-4068
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MitchellGuitars.com
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Classic Balanced Consistent Authentic Original True
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AcousticGuitar.com 77
AG TRADE88New Gear
A Blueridge jumbowith a modern twist
A Storied PastStaten Island’s Mandolin Brothers
guitar store is up for sale
BY KENNY BERKOWITZ
84New Gear
Martin 00-15E isin a mellow tone
86New Gear
Taylor baritonepacks a wallop!
Joni Mitchell wrote about it in “Song for
Sharon.” Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, George
Harrison, Ed Helms, Sarah McLachlan, Don
McLean, Graham Nash, Bruce Springsteen,
Stephen Stills, and Dave Van Ronk all shopped
there. Paul McCartney had his Höfner violin
bass repaired in the basement. Now, 45 years
after Stan Jay opened Mandolin Brothers onStaten Island, a short ferry ride from down-
town Manhattan, his children are trying to sell
the shop where they grew up.
“In a way, it’s like the death of a person
who’ s been in the hospital for a year,” says
Alison Reilly, 37, who works in the store with
her brother, Eric Jay, 34. “This has been going
on for such a long time that it sinks in, little by
little every day, until you get to the point where
you’re expecting it to happen. You’re prepared.
You understand.”
In December, a little more than a year after
Stan Jay died of lymphoma, his family put
Mandolin Brothers on the market, hoping to
find a buyer for the store, its inventory, or both
before the end of 2015. In its prime, the show-
room was filled with 900 instruments, mostly
acoustic and mostly high-end, with a focus on
guitars, banjos, and mandolins. These days,
fewer than 100 remain, including a 1934
Martin 000-28 Herringbone guitar (Eric’s favor-ite) and a 1919 Gibson F4 mandolin (Alison’s
favorite), along with other treasures, like a col-
lection of molds from the estate of luthier John
D’Angelico.
As of press time, the Jays had entertained
some “serious inquiries,” but hadn’t yet
received any offers. That leaves Alison and Eric
working in the store four or five days a week, as
they have for most of their lives, and packing
up some old memories.
And what memories!
There was the time Conan O’Brien stopped
by, looking for a guitar. “I was surprised by how
SHOPTALK
tall he is,” says Eric. “And he’s actually a good
guitar player, which was nice to see as well.”
There was the time Sheryl Crow asked to have
a couple of guitars brought to her Manhattan
studio. (“When she was done, I asked, ‘Could we
take a picture?’” says Alison. “She brought us over
to a microphone and told us to stick our fingers in
our ears and pretend we were singing. So now Ihave this really awesome picture that looks like
I’m singing with Sheryl Crow. Which was not the
case, but it makes a really great photo.”
“If we can’t sell the company itself, we still
have to sell the stuff that’s here,” says Eric, who
lives in an apartment above the showroom.
“We’ll be doing that for as long as it takes,
essentially. It’s been a daunting thing to come
to grips with, but we’ve dealt with the realities
every single day for months now, over the
whole last year. And if it doesn’t happen, we’l l
shut the place down and go our merry way.
“Find some other line of work.” AG
Eric Jay strums
through memories at
Mandolin Brothers,
which is up for sale.
N E W Y
O R K T I M E S
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78 March 2016
MAKERS & SHAKERS
A Fearless InnovatorCustom-build pioneer—and Pat Metheny collaborator—
Linda Manzer is no stranger to experimentation
BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
N I G E L D I C K S O N
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AcousticGuitar.com 79
As one of the world’s great luthiers, Linda
Manzer handcrafts stringed instruments of
uncommon beauty, both aesthetically and soni-
cally. But her first creation didn’t show much
promise. “When I was in grade school I took a
handsaw to an acoustic guitar”—after seeing theBeatles on television—“trying to turn it into an
electric guitar with papier-mâché wings put on
it to make it look like John Lennon’s Ricken-
backer. The experiment failed!” Manzer says.
In her shop in Toronto, Ontario, Manzer’s
experiments—and innovations like the Manzer
wedge—are the big winners. She makes steel-
strings, nylon-strings, archtops, and other
guitars and fretted instruments that have
changed the way guitarists play. Though she
offers standard models—like the Manzer, a
concert-sized flattop, and the Au Naturel, an
elegant 17-inch archtop—her instruments areusually made-to-order and one-of-a-kind.
Manzer makes between eight and ten guitars
each year. Her lowest priced are about $19,000.
Working in such limited capacity has allowed
her to fulfill her original vision as a luthier. “I’ve
always wanted to keep a close connection with
each guitar from start to finish,” she says.
Carlos Santana, Bruce Cockburn, Paul Simon,
Liona Boyd, Milton Nascimento, and Julian Lage
are among the prominent and wide-ranging gui-
tarists who have close connections with their
Manzer instruments. But the luthier has enjoyed
a particularly intimate and rewarding relation-
ship with the jazz wizard Pat Metheny, for whomshe’s made dozens of fretted instruments of all
types: conventional guitars as well as instru-
ments ranging from soprano guitars and sitar
guitars to a cubist-looking creation, dubbed
Pikasso, with 42 strings.
“Linda has been an amazing collaborator for
me over years,” Metheny says. “Besides her work
as a conventional guitar maker, she turns out to
be quite fearless. She is able to take a fairly wacky
idea for variations on the basic idea of what a
guitar is from me and not only figure out the
engineering issues required to make it happen,
but find a way to also craft an amazing-soundinginstrument that is quite beautiful as well. What is
also notable about her instruments is that they
continue to get better year after year.”
Manzer, who is 63, grew up in Toronto and
was equally inspired by her father’s collec-
tion of big band and classical records and by folk
music. As a teenager, she once canoed to Toronto
Island and, being short of cash, snuck into the
Mariposa Folk Festival to see Joni Mitchell play.
Mitchell sang “A Case of You,” accompanying
herself on the dulcimer, and Manzer became
enchanted by the rustic Appalachian instrument.
When Manzer went to buy a dulcimer for
herself, she found that a kit for making one cost
half the price of a finished instrument and went
with the budget option. That turned out to be a
pivotal decision. “That was the moment I dis-
covered the joy of gluing a bunch of pieces of wood together, then putting strings on it and
bringing a musical instrument to life,” she says.
Manzer made several more dulcimers while
in high school, then went off to art college,
ostensibly to study painting. But after trying
two different schools, she realized the scene
was too conceptual for her liking—she pre-
ferred making things, rather than ideas. While
at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design,
she says, “I kept finding myself in the wood-
working shop making more dulcimers. Then I
realized that I wanted to make guitars and
sought out a teacher.” Finding a teacher in the 1970s—long before
the internet made lutherie readily accessible—
was no mean feat. Manzer wrote or telephoned
any possible lead she could think of and eventu-
ally scored the name of one Jean Larrivée, whose
workshop happened to be in her hometown.
“He rarely hired people, but he had a
waiting list as long as your arm. And also, at
that time, there were no women doing anything
like this. So basically, I just bugged him until he
hired me,” Manzer says.
In 1974, Manzer began working with Lar-
rivée, sweeping the floors of his shop and
making coffee runs before polishing nuts andsaddles and later strutting all the backs and
tops on his guitars. In the process, she devel-
oped a strong foundation for making her own
instruments. “It was a very magical time,”
Manzer says. “I learned all aspects of guitar
making, and I figure we produced about 1,500
guitars over the course of my apprentice-
ship. Jean was—and still is—one of the most
gifted builders on the planet.”
After three and a half years of apprenticing
with Larr ivée , Manzer opened her own
business, crashing on friends’ couches so shecould afford the shop’s rent. It was during those
salad days that she first encountered Metheny. “I
had been a fan of Pat’s music from the first note
I heard him play in concert with Joni Mitchell in
1979,” she says. “I sent a letter backstage to him
in 1981 when he played in Toronto and we met.
He tried a guitar and he ordered one from me,
which he’s done about every year since.”
The first guitar can be heard on “Lonely
Woman,” Metheny’s reading of the Horace Silver
composition on his 1984 ECM album, Rejoicing.
Before he met Manzer, Metheny had been
approached by other luthiers angling to build
him guitars, and he always politely declined.
But he couldn’t resist Manzer. “Linda’s guitar
really offered me something I have not ever
found quite anywhere else,” he says. “There is a
clarity and evenness to the sound and the feel
of the guitar that I can only compare to what a
great piano is like. Each note leads to the next
note in a way that is totally coherent and con-
nected. It’s an incredible instrument.”
After a few years at the workbench, Manzer
began to feel restless, and in 1981, she took a
year off to travel the world by herself, and with
a knapsack on her back, went from the Carib-bean to China. Not long after she returned to
Toronto, she got a grant from the Canada
Council for the Arts. In 1983, she used the
money to travel to Long Island, New York, to
apprentice with archtop luthier James
D’Aquisto, a protégé of John D’Angelico.
“Watching him work was magical,” Manzer
says. “His whole being was focused on making
the best guitar in the universe. His method was
very intuitive . He would pick up a piece of
wood, and just from feeling its weight and
rubbing it with his hands, he would know what
he could do with it and exactly how it would
Left
The Manzer Wedge
BelowThe 42-string
Pikasso
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80 March 2016
sound. He taught me the simplicity of trusting
your intuition and applying reason.
“Working in his shop was like stepping into a
time machine to the richest culture of American
guitar making,” she continues. “I worked at
D’Angelico’s former workbench to build my firstarchtop, carving the top and back using
D’Angelico’s beautiful little hand planes. By the
time I finished the top and back plates, a day or
two of hard work had passed and I had a deep
sense of the wood’s acoustic properties. It was an
incredible learning experience that is the foun-
dation of how I build archtop guitars today.”
In 1984, after Metheny bought several con-
ventional guitars from Manzer, he engaged her
with a challenge: build an instrument with as
many strings as possible. After spending time
with this puzzle, Manzer determined that the
upper threshold was 42 strings. The four-neckedPikasso (sic) took a year to build and is one of
the most unusual fretted instruments ever real-
ized. “Whenever Pat gets a guitar idea, I do my
best to bring his concept to life,” Manzer says.
“The incredible thing about working with him is
how he pushed my envelope and encouraged me
to explore what the guitar could be.”
The making of Pikasso produced a less
radical, but more influential, design
feature: the Manzer Wedge, an ergonomic
tapered body shape that has become standard
among guitar makers. Manzer arrived at the
design through a discussion with fellow guitarmaker Tony Duggan-Smith, also a former
Larrivée apprentice. “The idea was to lean the
top back by squeezing the side under the arm
so you would have a better visual of the 42
strings,” she explains, “and to widen it on the
knee side so the internal air volume of the body
was the same. It turned out to be very comfort-
able as well and I started doing it on all my
guitars.”
Just as Manzer had to figure out how to
build Pikasso, Metheny, more than 30 years
later, is still learning to play it.
“Honestly, when Linda delivered it to me, ittook me about a year of just staring at it before
I figured out how I wanted to try to play it,”
Metheny says. “Figuring out the different ways
of tuning it is an ongoing thing as well. I feel a
long way from mastering it.”
In her fifth decade as a luthier, Manzer con-
tinues to thrive. Not long ago she made a
limited-edition series of 30 Metheny-Manzer
Signature guitars ($32,000 each), which has
almost sold out—Paul Simon is among the
lucky owners.
“The guitar is designed to be a tribute to our
journey and is patterned after the very firs tguitar I made for Pat,” Manzer says. “But it also
includes many features he and I incorporated
into the guitars over the years, including the
Wedge and a very elaborate, hand-cut 200-
piece inlay featuring Pat’s art on the finger-
board and peghead.”
Manzer’s got a waiting list of one year; on her
workbench are three archtops, a 17-inch, 16-inch,
and 14-inch; and she has an interesting collabora-
tion in the works. She and six other Canadian
builders are each making a guitar inspired by a
prominent Canadian painter, and she’s in the
rough-drawing stage of an instrument based onthe work of Lawren Harris. “It’s been easy to stay
inspired,” Manzer says. “I love what I do and I can
actually make a living doing it. Plus I get to inter-
act with some of the most inspiring, greatest
artists and know truly wonderful people in the
world of guitar-making. I pinch myself that I got
so lucky.” AG
MAKERS & SHAKERS
• Trad. Song Week, July 3-9• Celtic Week, July 10-16
• Old-Time Week, July 17-23• Contemporary Folk Week, July 24-30
• Mando & Banjo Week, July 31- August 6• Fiddle Week, July 31- August 6
Guitar Week, July 24-30, with Pat Donohue, Peppino D’Agostino,Del Rey, Greg Ruby, Al Petteway,Muriel Anderson, Steve Baughman,Tony McManus,Sean McGowan,Robin Bullock,Pete Kennedy,Vicki Genfan,
Josh Goforth,Steve James,Scott Ainslie,Gerald Ross,Paul Asbell,& more.
Folk Arts Workshops at
Warren Wilson College
PO Box 9000
Asheville NC 28815828.298.3434
www.swangathering.com
Want to Pass it On?
The Guitar Legacy Program
Learn More Today!
guitarsintheclassroom.org
Rock On.
ALL THE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
TO UNPLUG YOUR ROCK AND ROLL
Acoustic Rock Essentials
Get the video
lessons from store.
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today.
Ten Great RockStrumming Patterns ACOUSTIC ROCK ESSENTIALS
Addtenpopularrock rhythms(andtheirvariations)to yourstrummingvocabulary.
n Strummingpatternsbasedonmusicbythe Beatles,Coldplay,theStrokes,BuddyHolly,andmore
n Tipsforfindingthe rightrhythmpatternsforyourownsongs
Includes
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ByAndrewDuBrock
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MORE GREAT TITLES FROM RED HOUSE RECORDS
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82 March 2016
Hide glue, animal glue, and protein
colloid glue are names for adhesives
made from the connective tissues of
various animals. Used by woodworkers in a
wide variety of forms for millennia, animal glues
are made by boiling hide, bones, sinew, or hoofsand refining the residues into granulated solids.
Glue is prepared by dissolving granules in warm
GUITAR GURU
Why is hot hide glue
preferred by someluthiers, while others use
synthetic glues, and what are its
advantages and disadvantages? Doug MacKenzie
Cary, North Carolina
GOT A QUESTION?
Uncertain about guitar care and
maintenance? The ins-and-outs
of guitar building? Or a topic
related to your gear?
Ask Acoustic Guitar ’s
resident Guitar Guru. Send
an email titled “Guitar Guru”
to editor Blair Jackson
and he’ll forward it
to the expert luthier.
If AG selects your question
for publication, you’ll receive
a complimentary copy of
AG’s The Acoustic Guitar
Owner’s Manual.
Dana Bourgeois
A
Q
The GlueQuandaryDo bonding agents
affect a guitar’s sound?
The jury is still out
BY DANA BOURGEOIS
reheated many times is ideal for joints intended
for future disassembly, such as top-to-rim and
fingerboard-to-neck joints. Clean disassembly is
easily accomplished by the application of mod-
erate heat or by administering a well-directed
shock—old glue is entirely removable with
warm water and a rag.
Common wisdom holds that modern polyvi-
nyl wood glues impart a damping effect on
vibrating surfaces, while animal glues are vibra-
tionally inert. I attempted to test this theory for
several years by making a pair of identical
guitars, one constructed entirely with hot rab-
bit-hide glue and one using only Titebond poly-
vinyl aliphatic resin glue. The two OMs were
built simultaneously and with adjacent-cut
tops, backs, sides, necks, and braces; tops and
backs were voiced as closely as possible. The
pair of newly finished guitars was informally
blind tested by quite a few players of all levelsof ability, many of whom reported hearing
subtle or distinct differences. The funny thing
is, player preference was nearly evenly divided
between the two instruments. (Unfortunately,
follow-up testing of well-played guitars is no
longer possible.)
A number of makers whose work I hold in
the highest regard swear by the sonic virtues of
animal glues, and I freely admit that they may
know something I don’t. In my shop, animal glue
is typically used on our more expensive guitars,
the ones that, not incidentally, also get the most
desirable woods. I personally love the sound ofthese guitars, but I attribute their success to
more than the glue. I’ve always believed—others
may reasonably disagree—that design, selection
of individual top and back woods, and individual
voicing accounts for perhaps 75 percent of the
sound of a guitar. If neck, bridge, brace wood,
finish, and countless other factors account for
the remaining 25 percent, how much influence
can we attribute to glue? Like fine cuisine, a
guitar is about its ingredients. But it’s also about
how they are combined.
In the end, it’s the meal that matters.
Dana Bourgeois is a master luthierand the founder of Bourgeois Guitars
in Lewiston, Maine.
water to form a gelatinous protein compoundthat can be refrigerated and stored for future
use. When heated in a double boiler, the gelatin
liquefies into a workable glue that quickly sets
after cooling to room temperature.
Unfortunately, animal glues offer users
many opportunities to produce flawed joints.
Room temperature and wood surface tempera-
ture must be carefully controlled; working time
is short, even under shorter, less-than-optimal
conditions; glue strength decreases with each
reheating; viscosity requires constant adjust-
ment; and gelled glue will eventually degrade
even under ideal conditions, or rot if improp-erly stored. In addition to difficulty of applica-
tion, even the best animal glue joints are
susceptible to failure in hot and humid condi-
tions, and under cold conditions are less toler-
ant to shock. It’s little wonder that, up until
their recent revival, animal glues had largely
been replaced by modern adhesives that offer
greater ease of application, longer work time,
improved shelf life, and greater consistency.
In expert hands, however, disadvantages
become assets. Violin makers traditionally use
their freshest glue for permanent joints, such as
the center joint of carved tops and backs. The
same pot of glue can be reheated and used forless critical joints, such as block assemblies,
linings, and the like. Glue that has been
R Y A N
F I T Z S I M M O N S
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ACOUSTIC GUITAR MAGAZINE + ANDREW WHITE GUITARS
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DON’T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO WIN! ENTER BY MARCH 31, 2016
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Form at AcousticGuitar.com/Win/Andrew-White-Guitars and received by March 31, 2016; facsimiles may not be substituted. Prize drawing will be made on or around April
15, 2016. The grand prizes will be fulfilled by Andrew White Guitars within 60 days of receipt of winner’s written acceptance. Employees of Acoustic Guitarmagazine, and
Andrew White Guitars 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 receiveinformation from Acoustic Guitar and Andrew White Guitars. For the name of the prize winner, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Andrew White 2016 Giveaway,
c/o Acoustic Guitar magazine, 510 Canal Blvd, Suite J, Richmond, CA 94804. This offer ends on March 31, 2016. Taxes are the responsibility of the winner. No prize
substitutions are permitted
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84 March 2016
NEW GEAR
High-Tech RetroMartin’s new all-mahogany 00-15E pairs
a vintage look and feel with modern electronics
BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
samples, work in tandem with an undersaddle
pickup to make this modern Martin sound likea miked golden-era model.
The multi-function controls are not straight-
forward to operate—for instance, the volume
control also engages the tuner and phase
control—but they offer flexibility in editing both
the images and the sound of the pickup, as well as
the compressor and anti-feedback controls. On
the other hand, the default Easy Mode gives a nice
sampling of the electronics’ possibilities, having
three preset images and the dry pickup and a
single tone control, for adjusting the mid scoop.
The staunch purist should be impressed by the
Aura+, which is miles ahead of the traditional
When most people think small-bodied
mahogany guitars, they think blues finger-picking or folk strumming. But Martin’s 00-15E
sounds as good when you flat-pick Thelonious
Monk’s Latin-tinged jazz standard “Bye-Ya” as it
does when you fingerpick arrangements of piano
pieces by Erik Satie. On “Bye-Ya,” the guitar has a
surprising amount of headroom, while the Satie
pieces reveal a wide range of tonal colors as you
move your hand between the fretboard and bridge.
The 00-15E’s mahogany soundboard isn’t as
excitable as spruce, but the guitar is responsive
whether I’m playing gently or digging in with a
pick. Single-note lines and complex chords alike
are clear and brilliant up and down the neck.
Guitarists who don’t like to plug in will be
glad to know that the 00-15E’s voice is warmand mellow, clear and balanced throughout the
sonic spectrum. There are no dead spots any-
where on the neck—all of the notes ring clearly
and are buzz-free, and the intonation is perfect.
AMPLIFIED OLD-SCHOOL
If you want to plug in, though, you’ll love the
electronics system: Fishman’s F1 Aura+, which
is designed specifically for Martins. For this
clever system, the guitar company recorded a
tone donor—a 1935 Martin 00-55, which is
essentially today’s 00-17S—with nine high-
quality microphones. The images, or timbral
Ebony bridgeSolid
mahogany
top
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AcousticGuitar.com 85
BODY
00 size
Satin finish with 15-styleburst on soundboard
NECK
Mahogany neck
24.9-inch scale length
MARTIN
00-15ERETRO
AT A GLANCE
VIDEO REVIEWACOUSTICGUITAR.COM/GEAR
electronics system. It delivers an exceptionally
natural and “old” sound on all of the images, andits miked sounds are convincing—a Neumann
M147 and a Telefunken ELA M260, among
others, were used in the recording sessions for the
electronics. The system makes for an incredible
tool for performing and recording alike.
LOOKS SHARP
With its subtly shaded top, fretboard inlays
shaped like diamonds and squares, and open-
geared butterbean tuners, the 00-15E has the
understated good looks of a classic vintage guitar.
The lack of body binding and other decorative
embellishments is not only visually appealing,
but it keeps the price down. So do the A-frame X
bracing and simple dovetail neck joint.Inside and outside the box, the craftsman-
ship on the review model I received is as good
as what I’ve found in review models of other
recent high-end Martins. The builders paid
meticulous attention to everything from the
fretwork to the kerfing.
But the guitar plays better than your typical
vintage instrument. Right out of the box, its
action and neck adjustment are perfect. What’s
more, the shape of the neck—which Martin
calls Modified Low Oval with Performing Artist
Taper—makes it as good to cradle in the open
position as it does beyond the 12th fret. And it
has the winning combination of a short scale
(24.9 inches) and wide nut (1.75), making it aseasy to fingerpick as to play chords involving
wide stretches.
Martin’s 00-15E Retro is an awesome little
guitar that, when played unplugged, stacks up
favorably to the company’s top-of-the-line models.
The guitar’s Fishman F1 Aura+ system
takes things over the top, making it rich with
tonal possibilities and one of the most compel-
ling acoustic-electrics on the market.
Contributing editor Adam Perlmutter
transcribes, arranges, and engraves music for
numerous publications. adamperlmutter.com.
ELECTRONICS
Fishman F1 Aura+
EXTRAS
Martin SP Lifespan phosphor
bronze light strings (.012–.054)
Hardshell case
PRICE
$2,549 list
$1,999 street
Made in the USA
martinguitar.com
Ebony fretboard
TopOpen-geared tuners
with butterbean knobs
BottomSolid mahogany
back and sides
1.75-inch nut
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86 March 2016
NEW GEAR
BODY
Grand Symphony size
Solid mahogany top
Solid sapele back and sides
Ebony bridge
Satin finish
NECK
Mahogany neck
Ebony fretboard
27-inch scale length
1.78-inch nut
Taylor nickel tuners
Satin finish
EXTRAS
Expression System 2 electronics
Elixir baritone strings
(.016–.070)
Hardshell case
PRICE
$2,318 list/$1,799 street
Made in the USA
taylorguitars.com
AT A GLANCE
AYLOR 32BARITONESEB
Six-StringSymphonyThe Taylor 326e baritone
offers a wide tonal palette
BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
At first I wasn’t sure what to do with the
Taylor 326e. Like any six-string baritone
guitar, the instrument—tuned a perfect fourth
lower than standard—sits between the register
of a standard guitar and a bass guitar, and not
always gracefully. My go-to chord-melody
arrangements sounded murky and it felt tonally
disorienting to play the instrument.
But digging deeper and experimenting with
both repertoire and register, I began to appre-
ciate the tonal possibilities inherent to this
nicely executed modern baritone with a throaty
low voice.
DEEP SONG
Despite a 27-inch scale length—1.6 inches
longer than the standard dreadnought or OM
scale, and 2.1 longer than short scale—it feels
natural to play the 326e. I can pull off low-
position chords requiring large stretches with
the same ease as on a regular guitar. The
strings on the baritone, gauged .016–.070, are
much thicker than the 12s that makers use on
most modern guitars, but thanks to the bari-
tone’s comfortable low action and its low-
profile neck, it’s not straining on the fret hand.
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AcousticGuitar.com 87
VIDEO REVIEWACOUSTICGUITAR.COM/GEAR
Overall, the 326e has a firm and imposing
voice—it’s the nightclub bouncer of guitars. Its
registral balance is pretty good, though the
treble isn’t quite as present as the bass and the
mid. Single notes in the guitar’s lowest quarters
sound warm and cello-like, not in small partbecause the baritone’s sixth string is just a minor
second apart from the lowest string on a cello.
With this in mind, I placed a capo at the
first fret, to play the prelude from J.S. Bach’s
Cello Suite No. 3 in C major. The baritone
sounded rich in this context, and it was particu-
larly satisfying to play low notes that aren’t
unavailable on a standard-tuned regular guitar.When strummed, the 326e packs a wallop—
it’s got great projection and sustain. But it can
get slightly muddy, as it did, for instance, when
I strummed a low open Gmaj7 chord with a D
in the bass—the individual voices blended
together in a way that wasn’t ideal. Strumming
voicings with fewer notes—for example, two-
note seventh chords with only thirds and sev-
enths, in the manner of Freddie Green, the
longtime Count Basie guitarist—tends to yield
better results. I remembered that Pat Metheny
had recorded an entire album, One Quiet Night,
on the solo baritone acoustic. Using guitarin-structor.com, I purchased scores from this
album. Playing Metheny’s interpretations of
Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why” and Gerry and
the Pacemakers’ “Ferry ’Cross the Mersey”
revealed that when fingerpicked, the guitar has
a sort of symphonic effect that lends itself to
solo fingerstyle guitar.
Whatever the approach, when plugged into a
Fender Acoustasonic amplifier, the 326e’s
onboard electronics—Taylor’s Expression System
2—does a terrific job of capturing the guitar’snatural acoustic sound with a minimum of fuss.
THE NITTY GRITTY
The 326e, with its Shaded Edgeburst finish on
a mahogany soundboard, is good-looking.
Taylor is known for its consistent high-level
craftsmanship, and overall the review model
hits most of the marks. Its fretwork is clean and
tidy, as are its nut and saddle slots. The decora-
tive work is precisely articulated and flush with
the body.
Plenty of players are satisfied with the range
of a standard guitar, but the 326e brings addi-tional tonal possibilities—and delivers them
with authority. This US-made instrument isn’t
necessarily easy on the wallet, but those com-
mitted to the baritone, should definitely check
out this brawny contender. AG
The 326e brings
additional tonal
possibilities—
and delivers them
with authority.
Those committed
to the baritone,
should definitely
check out this
brawny contender.
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88 March 2016
NEW GEAR
AT A GLANCE
BLUERIDGEB -1500E B
VIDEO REVIEWACOUSTICGUITAR.COM/GEAR
Defying theLaws of Tradition
A Blueridge super jumbo with a modern twist
BY GREG CAHILL
T
he first thing you notice when you strum
the Blueridge BG-1500ESB Jumbo is therobust warmth of its tone—like a splash of
sunlight filtering through tall trees in the Smoky
Mountains that give this company its name.
OK, the allusion to the Smoky Mountains is
a bit misleading, since this guitar has several
modern appointments that defy the laws of tra-
dition. Those include a bright orange sunburst,
Art Deco-style rosewood bridge and headstock
inlay, and vintage-style keystone tuners.
Overall, the effect is Gibsonesque. But strum-
ming an open-G chord, unplugged, delivers a
full, rich sound with punchy bass, clear mids,
and shimmering treble—a sparkle that is char-acteristic of Blueridge guitars.
Add to that the low string action that makes
even a barred F chord easy to play, loud volume
(the super-jumbo body boasts a 17-inch lower
bout), a solid Sitka top, and stunning flamed
maple back and sides, and you have a guitar
that delivers the goods.
While Blueridge has made its name manu-
facturing affordable unadorned dreadnoughts
with high-end tonewoods that are popular with
bluegrass players, the BG-1500ESB is a kin of
the company’s flagship BG-2500, but with less
ornate woods and inlay.
An afternoon picking session with AG con-
tributing editor Mark Kemp finds the BG-1500ESB to be a well-rounded, versatile guitar.
It’s low action, thin neck profile, and 111 /16-inch
nut are comfortable for fingerstyle while
playing Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train,” using
my thumb to bar the descending bass line on
“The House of the Rising Sun,” and noodling a
parcel of moody chord shapes.
Strumming the Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week”
produces a woody tone, and that signature
intro-outro riff is blessed with a chiming effect.
Kemp’s bluegrass licks fly effortlessly from
the rosewood fretboard. He found the guitar’s
high register a bit bright, a product, in part, ofthe maple back and sides, but I also attributed
that to the new strings.
The BG-1500ESB really shines when played
through a Henriksen “Bud” acoustic amp—
lightly picked folk songs sparkle and country
ballads have a suitably warm glow.
The onboard Fishman Presys Plus electronics
deliver a natural tone and add fire to Kemp’s ren-
dition of the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil.”
At a street price as low as $799, the BG-
1500E holds its own against many higher-
priced jumbos, offering a unique blend of the
modern and the traditional. AG
BODY
14-fret super jumbo
Solid Sitka top
Flamed maple back and sides
Rosewood bridge
Orange sunburst
high-gloss finish
NECK
3-piece laminate maple
Rosewood fingerboard
25.6-inch scale
111/16-inch nut
ELECTRONICS
Fishman Presys Plus
EXTRAS
Bone nut and saddle
Hardshell case
PRICE
$995 MSRP/$799 street
Made in China
sagamusic.com
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When art is your life
We focus on every detail so we’re worthy
of sharing that journey with you.
www.alvarezguitars.com
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90 March 2016
FEATURES
Active DI/preamp with
-12dB to +26dB gain
1/4-inch 10 Megohm
impedance instrument input
Two outputs:
DI and unbalanced line
Input gain andoutput volume controls
Saturation and multiband
compression/EQ controls
Anti-feedback notch filter
Ground lift switch, mute
footswitch, phase switch, high
pass filter switchable between
40, 80, 120, and 200Hz
Powered by XLR Phantompower, 9-volt battery, or external
power supply (not provided)
Battery check button
DIMENSIONS
1.5 lbs. 6.25 x 4 x 1.75 inches
PRICE
$359 list/$249 street
Made in USA
lrbaggs.com
E I N ACOUSTI
Not Your TypicalStomp BoxLR Baggs Session Acoustic DI
puts studio magic at your, er, toes
BY DOUG YOUNG
Any acoustic guitarist who plays through an
amplifier knows how frustrating live sound
can be. You’ve got a great-sounding guitar, but
as soon as you plug in, you’re hearing the sound
of a pickup that inevitably fails to deliver what
your guitar is capable of. Although pickups havedefinitely improved over the years, manufac-
turers have also started to turn to electronics as
a way to overcome the limitations of pickups
and deliver more pleasing sounds. LR Baggs has
been at the forefront of working to build both
better pickups and better electronics, although
their electronics offerings have focused on fairly
traditional approaches—until now.
The inspiration for LR Baggs’ latest device,
the Session Acoustic DI, began when Lloyd Baggs
and his team noticed that the studio recordings
they made to promote their pickups always
sounded surprisingly good. The Nashville
engineers they were using were clearly injecting
some special magic, and the Baggs team began to
wonder why they couldn’t capture the processes
they used and create the same sounds live. They
focused on two somewhat complex effects that
are commonly used in the studio recording andmastering process: saturation and multi-band
compression, packing them into an easy to use
preamp/DI.
COMPETITIVE CORE FEATURES
At its core, the Session Acoustic DI is a simple
active direct box that combines a high imped-
ance input with a line out (for amplifiers) and
balanced XLR output for a PA, a gain control,
mute switch and a notch filter for controlling
feedback. The Session DI can run off a battery,
an external power supply, or run off phantom
power from a mixer. Rounding out the feature
NEW GEAR
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set, a ground-lift switch helps eliminate hum,
and a configurable high pass filter allows you
to reduce unwanted low frequencies. All in all,
the Session DI’s core feature set is competitive
with many other active DIs without even
considering the extra signal processing.
STUDIO MAGIC
With the Session Acoustic DI, Baggs has distilled
two fairly complex studio mastering tools down
to two simple knobs. The easiest control to under-
stand is called “saturate.” Saturation is essentially
harmonic distortion. As guitarists, we associate
distortion with overdriven electric guitar
sounds—not usually desirable for acoustic tones.
But in small doses, distortion adds pleasing
aspects to music: think of the “warmth” of a good
tube amplifier compared to solid-state, or the
analog sound of tape compared to digitalrecording. Turning up the saturate control on the
Session DI has the audible effect of adding
warmth and fatness to your tone in a way that is
different than what you can get with EQ. It seems
to produce an increase in the lower midrange in
the 200Hz to 1KHz range and also appears to add
complexity at higher frequency ranges. A little
saturation goes a long way, and higher settings
produce audible distortion, so just as in recording,
you’ll want to use the effect with care.
The second knob is called “comp EQ,” and
requires a little more explanation and experi-
mentation. A studio multiband compressor
basically consists of multiple compressors, eachof which limit the dynamic range over a specific
frequency range without affecting other fre-
quencies. As implemented by the Session DI,
the process acts like a dynamic EQ that tames
spikes by cutting certain frequencies when you
play hard, but leaving them untouched when
playing quietly. Using multiple bands means
that the effect can, for example, reduce harsh-
ness by limiting higher frequencies without
affecting the guitar’s bass response.
Studio multiband compressors can have
dozens of knobs and be quite complex to set up
properly. With the Session DI, there is a single“comp EQ” knob, but in reality there are two
knobs that interact to control the effect. The
Session DI’s compressor/EQ has a fixed thresh-
old—the level at which the effect kicks in and
reduces the gain—but you can control the
amount of compression by adjusting the gain
control; basically changing how loudly or softly
you need to play to activate the effect.
The “comp EQ” control determines the blend
between the raw signal and the compressed
signal, which affects how much effect you hear.
The audible effect of the comp/EQ is to
smooth out your sound. The behavior seems
most pronounced in the upper midrange,
between 1kHz and 5kHz, where the Session DI
tames some harshness, while still retaining the
bass and sparkling highs. The effect allows the
warmth of the guitar to come through when
you play softly, but prevents both a buildup ofmud and limits the aggressiveness of the upper
mids as you dig in and play harder.
SLEEPER EFFECT
In use, I found the Session Acoustic DI to be
pleasant to play through. Both effects are quite
subtle—this isn’t a typical stomp box effect that
you will switch on to radically change your
sound. The overall effect is much like what
happens when a mastering engineer puts the
final touches on an already good recording—
things just get a little bigger, fuller, smoother,
and more polished. I found the benefits of theSession DI to be most noticeable when I used it
for a while and then turned the effects off—it
was most obvious that I missed what had been
added after it was gone.
There is a bit of overlap between the satu-
rate control—that tends to add fatness and
lower mids to your sound—and the comp EQ
that tends to tame the mids, at least when you
play hard, so some experimentation with
adjusting the gain, saturate, and comp EQ con-
trols is called for.
When playing fingerstyle guitar, I enjoyed the
added warmth of just a bit of saturation, and a
little compression enhanced the way the guitar felt more than how it sounded. With heavy strum-
ming, I had to be careful not to use too much
saturation, but it was much easier to hear—and
feel—how the comp/EQ smoothed out my sound.
Although I did not try the Session DI with a band,
I suspect it would help an acoustic rhythm guitar
sit in the mix more consistently.
Part of the Session Acoustic DI’s appeal is its
simplicity. Some guitarists may be concerned
about the lack of EQ and other features, but
because the device offers its own way to sculpt
your sound, you may not need additional EQ.
Yet another option is to use the Session DI as aneffect in conjunction with another preamp that
provides other features. For example, inserting
the Session DI into the effects loop of Baggs’
Venue preamp allows you to use the Venue’s
five bands of EQ while adding the Session DI’s
saturation, and compression.
The Session Acoustic DI is a sort of “sleeper”
effect. It’s difficult to demo because it doesn’t
produce a clearly identifiable sound like a
chorus effect or reverb.
The audience won’t notice you’re using it,
but they may comment on how your guitar
sounds just as good as a recording! AG
Songwriting Basics for Guitarists.
store.AcousticGuitar.com
Download 21
Songwriting Tips
from the Masters
and you’ll learn to
write better songs
with advice from
from Pete Seeger,
Joni Mitchell,
Jakob Dylan, Elvis
Costello, and more!
© 2012Stringletter SONGWRITING BASICS FORGUITARISTS • 21Songwriting Tipsfromthe Masters 3
6 TWEAK THE CHORDS. “It’s amazing
how much cooler it gets when you
changeonenoteinachord,”SeanWatkins
oncesaidina conversationwithhisthen-
band mates in Nickel Creek. His guitar
parts often use modal chords (with no
third) and suspensions that add a nice
opennesstothesound.Checkout thedif-
ferences between Examples 1a and 1b ,
andbetweenExamples2aand2b,tohear
howaone-fingerchangeina chordmakes
abigimpact.
7 UNCHAIN THE MELODY. An insight
about chords and melodies from a
youngDavidWilcox—interviewed20years
ago—stillringstrueforme.“Ilearnedfrom
listening to James Taylor that you don’t
want your melody to be the root of the
chord,”Wilcoxsaid.“Youwantthe melody
tobeaninterestingnote inthechord.And
ifyouhavea givenmelodynote,thereare
differentchordsthatgowithit,sopick one
wherethemelodyisa fifthora seventhor
athirdora ninth,butnotthetonic.”
To make this concrete, take a look at
Examples3aand3b(playthesameaccom-
paniment—showninExample3a—forboth
examples). Notice that in Example 3a the
melodynotes arethesameas theroots of
the chords, while in Example 3b the mel-
odyis shifted ontoother notes. In this ver-
sion, themelodylifts freeof thechords and
has much moreimpact.
B
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SONGWRITING BASICSFOR GUITARISTS
By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
21SONGWRITINGTIPS FROMTHE MASTERS
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PLAYLIST
MIXED MEDIA
94Playlist
Eric Bibb doesLead Belly
94Playlist
Punch Brothersrelease outtakes
94Playlist
Nouveaux Honkieslive the Gypsy life
Acoustic AllmansUniversal reissues padded versions
of a simple acoustic-based classic BY MARK KEMP
Forty-five years ago, the Allman Brothers
Band went acoustic. Sure, Idlewild South
was only the group’s second album, but from
Duane Allman’s joyous strumming that kick-
starts “Revival” to his ominous acoustic riff that
drives the mournful “Midnight Rider,” the
record was quite a departure from the
sustained scorch of raw electric blues on the
band’s 1969 self-titled debut.
Not that Idlewild South is bereft of searingelectric blues. “Don’t Keep Me Wondering” and
“Hoochie Coochie Man” burn as hot as anything
on the first album, and “In Memory of Eliza-
beth Reed,” the song that brought second
guitarist Dickey Betts into the limelight, is a
sweet, fluid, Latin-flavored, instrumental elec-
tric-guitar classic. But Idlewild South ’s gentle
acoustic guitars, and such piano-based songs as
“Please Call Home,” showed a side of the
Allmans that indicated they were more than
just blues-rock shredders.
Some of that acoustic ambiance—particu-
larly in the gospel-tinged “Revival,” with its
“love is everywhere” lyrics—may have come
from the setting of many of the rehearsals: a
cabin just west of the band’s home base of
Macon, Georgia, dubbed Idlewild South, after
Idlewild Airport (now JFK) in New York City.
In the liner notes to the 45th anniversary
expanded reissue, Allmans expert John Lynskey
quotes the late bassist Berry Oakley’s wife, Linda,
recalling a party during the holidays just before
the recording sessions: “We all sat around, with afire going in the fireplace, and at midnight we all
got in a circle, arms locked together, and we sang
‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’ That was a pivotal
moment, a testament of love.”
Universal Music’s expanded versions of
Idlewild South come in the now-familiar three con-
figurations: a single-CD basic remastered edition,
a two-CD deluxe edition that adds another 12
songs, and a super-duper deluxe package that
adds 14 tracks and Blu-ray sound. Most of the
extra tracks are remastered versions of live record-
ings already available on the official bootleg Live
at Ludlow Garage: 1970 released in 1990, but
Duane Allman plays slide
in his hotel room before
a 1970 Allman Brothers’
performance in Spartanburg,
South Carolina.
M I C H A E L O C H S
A R C
H I V E S
/ S T R I N G E R
PLAYLIST
there also are outtakes or alternate studio versions
of “Statesboro Blues,” “One More Ride,” “Eliza-
beth Reed,” “Midnight Rider,” and “Revival.”
The alternate mix of “Midnight Rider” will
be of special interest to acoustic guitar fans.
The Allmans recorded the version that
appeared on the original album in Macon in
February 1970, but worked on it again in March
at Criteria Studios in Miami. The latter version,
Lynskey writes in the liners, included “a new vocal track from Gregg, strong harmonies from
Duane and Berry, as well as an acoustic slide
part by Duane and a funky little outro.”
The slide riffs are amazing to hear, but for
an album so important for its acoustic textures,
one would have hoped for even more of the
Allmans’ acoustic flirtations.
Perhaps no more exist, but it’s a shame
there’s so much remastered electric music
from an already-available source of great live
performances and so few extras revealing the
subtle acoustic brush strokes that distinguish
Idlewild South.
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94 March 2016
PLAYLIST
Eric Bibb and JJ MilteauLead Belly’s Gold
Stony Plain
A stunning acoustic tribute
to the legendary Lead Belly
If you’re going to cover Huddie Ledbetter, you
need to reach back to a time before the blues, to an
earlier tradition of “musicianers,” singer-guitarists
who traveled from town to town, performing on
plantations and street corners. That’s where Lead
Belly (1889–1949) got his start, playing in Shreve-
port’s red-light district. Bibb wisely has chosen
songs in which Lead Belly’s anger still resonates,
drawing contemporary parallels in “On a Monday”
(about being unjustly imprisoned), “Bourgeois
Blues” (liberal white hypocrisy), “Titanic” (racistsgetting their just desserts), and “Grey Goose” (an
old bird who’s too tough to die). Bibb balances
that protest side with gospel (“Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot”), skiffle (“Stewball”), folk (“Pick a Bale of
Cotton”), and heartache (“Where Did You Sleep
Last Night”), and includes Lead Belly’s No. 1 hit
(“Goodnight, Irene”).
Finally, Bibb has written three new songs
from Lead Belly’s point of view, tracing his
journey from “cotton picker to city slicker” and
returning from beyond the grave to confront
John Lomax, the “big boss man” who helped
make Lead Belly famous.It’s a potent combination, made in France
with a small band of Parisians and Americans—
mostly Jean-Jacques Milteau, playing harmonica
with a sweet, accordion-like tone, but also Gilles
Michel (bass), and Larry Crockett (percussion)
on the album’s live cuts—jamming alongside
Bibb, who alternates between six-string and
12-string guitars, and guitjo in an effortless, easy-
going rhythm. Bibb has been listening to Lead
Belly so long that he’s made these songs his own,
finding his own ex-pat groove in a mix of North-
ern soul, Southern folk, and European blues.
—Kenny Berkowitz
Punch BrothersThe Wireless
Nonesuch
5 outtakes connect with
awe-inspiring musicianship
Recorded during sessions for last year’s The
Phosphoresc ent Blues, then included on the
double-vinyl version of the album, these five
songs are almost as good as the 11 that made
the original CD, and that’s saying a lot. Punch
Brothers are thinking, writing, and playing at
such an incredibly high level that each new
track reveals how far they’ve pushed beyond
bluegrass and into some undefinable place: Did
I just hear what I thought I heard? How did
they do that?On “I Wonder,” the only previously unre-
leased track, the sense of adventure begins in
the falsetto sadness of Chris Thile’s singing and
keeps going in the droning legato of Paul Kow-
ert’s bass, the crispness of Noam Pikelny’s
banjo, the quiet, steadying flatpicking of Chris
Eldridge’s guitar, and the gracefulness of Gabe
Witcher’s fiddle. It’s also in dynamics that rise
and fall, the neo-classical arpeggios and Beach
Boys-like harmonies, the weightiness of lieder,
the drive of bluegrass, and the momentary stab
at pop. That’s just the first song. Other cuts are
more old-timey, or more clearly comical, ormore Tin Pan Alley, and one, the almost-new-
grass “The Hops of Guldenberg,” has become a
showstopper for Eldridge.
Like Phosphorescent Blues, this album is
about technology and connectedness, with a
stunning combination of intellect, technique,
and adventurousness that makes this band
unlike any other. And like that previous album,
this EP finds the band moving closer to warmth,
toward humanity that isn’t easy to hear in their
music, using the simple, lonely tragedy of
Elliott Smith’s “Clementine” to begin exploring
a new direction. —K.B.
Nouveaux Honkies Blues for Country
The Nouveaux Honkies
Husband-and-wife duo
draw from their Gypsy life
Many bands write about the road. The Nouveaux
Honkies live it. Year-round, husband and wife
Tim O’Donnell and Rebecca Dawkins roll
through America’s southland in a renovated RV
with a fully equipped recording studio. The
couple’s restless, rambling existence informs
their third album, Blues for Country , in the
braided stream of roots genres—country, blues,
honky tonk, R&B and Texas swing—that runs
through their music. Built on the chugging
rhythms of O’Donnell’s Guild guitar, theNouveaux Honkies craft lived-in songs, which
draw on the band’s modern-day gypsy experi-
ence for subject matter.
Propelled by Dawkins’ spinning-wheel fiddle
and O’Donnell’s swaying, swinging guitar, “Life
Ain’t Easy” laments the troubadour’s tough road
with playful, self-deprecating wit. In contrast,
“Whiskey’s Getting Harder to Drink” is a clear-
eyed catalog of the wear and tear that honky
tonkin’ takes on body and spirit, and “Hours into
Days” details how distance dissolves love over
the melancholy Celtic lilt of Dawkins’ violin.
Yet Blues for Country balances the mythol-ogy of the traveling musician with a celebration
of music making. On the title track, O’Donnell
insists that bookers find the band “too blues for
country, too country for blues,” but his lament
is leavened by the lively swagger in his vocal
and the coquettish seesaw of Dawkins’ fiddle.
Likewise, a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s
“Pancho and Lefty” counters reverence with
exuberance when O’Donnell uncoils a silvery,
Spanish-spiced lead on his Guild guitar.
Blues for Country is a paean to wandering
minstrelsy that feels right at home.
—Pat Moran
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MARKETPLACE
LUTHERIE INSTRUCTION
GOSPEL SONGS FORFINGERSTYLE GUITAR
NEARER,MY GOD,TO THEE
BySteveBaughman
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LEARNFINGERSTYLE
ARRANGEMENTSOF TRADITIONALGOSPEL SONGS
Availble to download atstore.AcousticGuitar.com
Each chapter inGospel Songs for
Fingerstyle Guitar contains
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Acoustic Guitar, acousticguitar.com/subscribe. . . . . . . . . . 99
Acoustic Remedy Cases, acousticremedycases.com . . . . 72
Alvarez, alvarezguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
American Music Furniture, americanmusicfurniture.com . 56
Andrew White Guitars, andrewwhiteguitars.com . . . . . . . 30
L.R. Baggs, lrbaggs.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Berklee Online, berkleemusic.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Bose Corporation, bose.com/live1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Bourgeois Guitars, pantheonguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Bread and Roses, breadandroses.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Breezy Ridge Instruments, Ltd., jpstrings.com . . . . . . . . 49
C.F. Martin & Co., Inc., martinguitar.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
California Coast Music Camp, musiccamp.org . . . . . . . . 74
Collings Guitars, collingsguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
D’Addario & Company, daddario.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59, 76
DR Music, drstrings.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Dr. Banjo, drbanjo.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Eastman Strings, Inc., eastmanstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Elixir Strings, elixirstrings.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Ernie Ball Music Man, ernieball.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
ESP Guitars, esptakamine.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Fender Acoustic Guitars, fender.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
G7th, Ltd., g7th.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Guitar Center, guitarcenter.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Guitars in the Classroom, guitarsintheclassroom.org . . . 80
Homespun, homespun.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Ibanez Guitars, ibanez.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
IK Multimedia, ikmultimedia.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Janet Davis Music, jdmc.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Kyser Musical Products, kysermusical.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Levy’s Leathers, levysleathers.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Music Dispatch, halleonard.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92, 95
P.K. Thompson Guitars, pkthompsonguitars.com . . . . . . . 70
Paul Reed Smith Guitars, prsguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
RainSong Graphite Guitars, rainsong.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Red House Records, redhouserecords.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Saga Musical Instruments, sagamusic.com . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Sam Ash Direct, samash.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Santa Cruz Guitar Company, santacruzguitar.com . . . . . 11
Shubb Capos, shubb.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Steven Kaufman Enterprises, Inc., flatpik.com . . . . . 30, 49
Stewart-MacDonald’s Guitar Supply, stewmac.com . . . 30
Sweetwater Sound, sweetwater.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Taylor, taylorguitars.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Acoustic Music Company Ltd.,
theacousticmusicco.co.uk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Swannanoa Gathering, swangathering.com . . . . . . . 80
Yamaha Corporation of America, yamaha.com . . . . . . . . 50
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98 March 2016
MeettheMilkCartonKids
Vintage Gibson
and Martin guitars
join in perfect harmony
BY GREG CAHILL
GREAT ACOUSTICS
Acoustic Guitar (ISSN 1049-9261) is published monthly by String Letter Publishing, Inc., 501 Canal Blvd, Suite J, Richmond, CA 94840. Periodical postage paid at Richmond, CA 94804and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send changes of address to Acoustic Guitar , String Letter Publishing, Inc., PO Box 3500, Big Sandy, TX 75755. Changes of address may alsobe made on line at AcousticGuitar.com. Printed in the USA. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Imex Global Solutions, PO Box 32229,
Hartford, CT 06150-2229.
Ask the Milk Carton Kids the secret of their
sound and the question prompts good-
natured ribbing between the musicians. “Thehardest thing about playing together became
apparent the first time we ever played
together,” says Joey Ryan, referring to his
musical partner, Kenneth Pattengale. “My
instinct, at least as a guitar player, is to be very
straight timewise. . . .”
“I know, that is so annoying,” Pattengale
interjects.
“Yeah, but with Kenneth . . . if I’m Newton then
Kenneth is Einstein, in regards to our concepts of
time,” Ryan explains. “Kenneth’s concept is very
elastic, very relative. And mine is more absolute.”
“Did Newton have the big head?” Pattengale
asks, eliciting a chuckle from his duo partner.Moments later, the pair are tightly locked in
musical reverie, their vocals blending in angelic
fashion and their guitars—a vintage Gibson and
a vintage Martin—equally harmonious.
Ryan plays a Gibson J-45 (circa 1951–
1954)—a gift from an anonymous fan who once
VIDE O ATACOUSTICGUITAR.COM
asked him to describe his dream guitar and then
bought it for him on eBay. Ryan tunes the guitar
down a whole step. The Gibson, he says, has ashort decay: “The notes sound like a poof of air
coming from the soundhole, and it has a thumpy
low end. I always liked it just to sing along to by
myself, but then when we got together it turned
out that it really complemented the sonic range
of Kenneth’s guitar.”
That’s Pattengale’s 1955 Martin 0-15. He
had the top and back shaved to .0095 of an
inch in thickness, making for a lively response.
Martin Guitars is working to create a replica of
his 0-15—which Pattengale says is in desperate
need of a neck reset; he famously ties a hanker-
chief around the third fret to damp the string
buzz—for a possible limited-edition signaturemodel. “It’s a very boxy-sounding guitar, but it
has all the warmth retained,” Pattengale says.
He agrees that the Martin complements Ryan’s
Gibson, and then adds with a smile, “Together,
the two of us achieve the sound of one guitar
player.” AG
Left
1955 Martin 0-15
Right
1951–1954
Gibson J-45
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