Jimi Hendrix (A Slight Return)

I saw Hendrix twice: The first time in Boston in 1967, headlining a show with Cat Mother And The All Night Newsboys and The McCoys, and the second time on January 13, 1968, at the Sporthalle in Köln, West Germany.

It really bugs me that I can’t locate the Boston date in any Hendrix tour itineraries. This was a big moment for me, one I remember for several reasons. For one thing, I somehow—miraculously—convinced the headmaster for the boarding school I was attending in Concord, MA, that it would be a great idea to charter a bus and drag a bunch of blazer clad prep-school boys into Boston to see the show, which occurred at whatever Boston’s sports arena was called at that time.

And we did it!  And it was fabulous for me as a 10th-grader to witness Hendrix play music from Are You Experienced, which I’d discovered in the summer of ‘67.

Later, the headmaster—who attended the show as one of our chaperones—summoned me to his dining table to explain how he felt Hendrix obviously played guitar well, but the gymnastics and sexual overtones of humping his instrument were vulgar and unnecessary, and, in fact, detracted from the music. Of course, I thought the opposite, but I kept my opinions mostly to myself. After all, I was a new boy in an unfamiliar school.

Hendrix was—and still remains—my all-time favorite guitarist and musician. I know his records inside out and have spent many, many hours in indescribable states climbing deeply into his tones.

But guess what? There’s new Hendrix music coming our way. The album, Valleys Of Neptune, will be officially released on March 9. You want to hear two tracks in advance of the release? I thought so. Here ya go …

First up, the radio edit of the title track, “Valleys Of Neptune.”

Now another radio edit, Jimi’s version of “Bleeding Heart” by Elmore James …

This is cool stuff. Here’s the album artwork, which features a photo shot by Linda McCartney:

The cover is derived from a watercolor Hendrix painted in high school, called “Seattle Waterfront.”

If anybody knows the date of the circa ‘67 Hendrix gig in Boston, please holler.

Oh yeah: We’re planning a special edition of The Guitar Show to celebrate the new Hendrix album, so stay tuned.  Meanwhile, enjoy this music! ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

The Case for D-Standard Guitar Tuning

The superb British fingerstyle guitarist Martin Simpson first introduced me to the concept of keeping a guitar tuned a whole-step below standard pitch. Tuned this way, the guitar’s open strings are D, G, C, F, A, D (low to high), rather than the normal E, A, D, G, B, E. Because the intervals remain the same between strings, the fretboard stays completely familiar—the only change is that everything sounds a whole-step lower.

Simpson uses a lot of open and altered tunings, and, as we’ll explore in a moment, it makes sense to use “D-standard” tuning as the platform to shift into DADGAD, open D, and open G. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate other benefits of D standard too. I’m not proposing that D standard replace standard tuning, but I believe it makes sense to keep an instrument appropriately strung, set up, and tuned a whole-step lower than your other guitars. Ideally, you’d have both an electric and an acoustic configured this way.

Here’s why …

D standard allows you to use heavier strings—which offer more volume and sustain—without a significant increase in tension. On an acoustic flattop, try a medium set (.013-.056) turned a whole-step down. It sounds huge, yet doesn’t feel stiff.

With a set of stout electric strings—I like a .012-.052 set with a plain 3rd—you get more nickel or steel vibrating over your pickup pole-pieces than with regular light-gauge strings. Again, you get a bigger, bolder sound without losing playability or sacrificing your favorite string-bending techniques.

Transposition is fairly painless when you’re playing in D standard with another guitarist or an ensemble. Mentally raise the key by a whole-step and you’re good to go.

For example, let’s say another guitarist is playing Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in the key of G in standard tuning, and you’re wielding a guitar tuned to D standard. You’d simply snap into the key of A and follow the I-V-IIm harmonic structure. You’ll both be playing in the same key—G—yet using fingerings from different keys. This offers a tremendous sonic payoff: The mixed grips create a powerful, shifting texture of open and fretted strings that’s much more exciting than hearing two guitarists playing identical voicings throughout a song. If you’ve ever used a capo when playing with other guitarists to shift your voicings away from theirs, you know how cool this sounds. I like to think of D standard as a “minus capo,” where you’re essentially lengthening the fretboard rather than shortening it, as you do with a capo.

And speaking of capos: To convert D standard back to normal tuning—E, A, D, G, B, E—simply slap a capo on the second fret. Now all your voicings and fingerings line up with regular guitar, yet you still have the enhanced projection and fatter tone of heavier strings.

Consider D standard in the context of open and altered tunings: Dropping light-gauge strings to enter an open tuning typically results in fret buzz, poor intonation, and a wimpy tone. Thin strings just don’t sound good when they’re slackened, and they’re also harder to keep in tune. It’s a mess.

As you can see in this chart, moving from standard tuning to open G, open D, or DADGAD requires dropping three or four strings a whole-step or half-step:

Tuning comparison chart

But when your guitar is tuned to D standard, you wind up raising three strings to enter open G, open D, or DADGAD. This slight increase in tension works well to support a slide or bottleneck, and you’ll find it easier to get open tunings in tune. The added tension is small enough you won’t need to worry about breaking strings or stressing your guitar.

I keep several guitars permanently strung and tuned to D standard, including a Fender Telecaster, a rockin’ ‘81 Dean V, a Taylor 512c, a custom Wechter roundneck resonator, and a great ‘72 D20-12 Martin 12-string. The 6-string acoustics sport .015-.056 sets, and the electrics have .012-.052 or even .013.-.056 sets (the heavier strings are for slide).

Most guitarists who play 12-string in standard tuning opt for the recommended .010-.047 extra-light set, but thanks to D-standard tuning, I can string my D20-12 with a Martin set gauged .012-.054 and not worry about playability or pulling the guitar apart. Wow—does that sound great. Huge and spangly. (Lead Belly tuned his 12-string even lower, which helps explain his immense sound.)

If you haven’t explored this tuning, give it a shot. Most nut slots are big enough to accommodate slightly thicker strings, so you can jump right into the D-standard world. You might have to make a small trussrod adjustment—this can occur whenever you change string gauges up or down—and you might want to lower your pickup height a tad, but these mods are reversible. ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

One Year Into The Adventure …

Though it’s hard for me to believe, The Guitar Show is now a year old. This week, as I prepare a special program to mark this first anniversary, I’ve been reflecting on my dream of having a weekly radio show, and where my efforts have led thus far.

It all started in fall 2008, when my producer, John Haring, offered to “loan” me his two-hour, Thursday night slot on Radio Free Nashville. I’d already visited the station’s website several times and toyed with the idea of pitching a guitar-centric show, but had never taken any action. Having a time slot dangled in front of me was all it took to get things rolling.

After discussions with the station’s program director, Beau Hunter (who also hosts several intriguing shows of his own, including a psychedelic beauty called “Strange Daze” that precedes mine each Thursday night), I was given the green light to launch my program.

Originally, I called it Guitarmania, and this moniker lasted for 32 shows. When John Haring was alert enough to grab the domain name theguitarshow.com when it came up for renewal, we decided that The Guitar Show better reflected the diversity of the music I was playing and would have less of a shred-fest, monster truck rally, or professional wrestling vibe. To differentiate my show from other events, such as vintage guitar conventions or TV programs in other countries, we tacked my name onto the program title and The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis was born.

Right from the start I’ve included interviews with guitarists along with eclectic music. At first, the interview clips came from my personal archives, recordings I’d made during my 15+ years at Guitar Player magazine. As the show gained momentum, I began recording new interviews specifically for each week’s program.

In addition to being exciting for me—I’m an active guitarist and have an insatiable curiosity about all things guitar—interviewing guitarists provides a way for their music and ideas to be heard in an increasingly restrictive radio environment. As commercial radio becomes more rigid and conservative, it falls to community stations—as small as they are—to provide a forum for creative musicians to be heard. I want to know what Kelly Joe Phelps or Mike Keneally is thinking, and how such adventurous players approach music in the early 21st century. I know I’m not the only one out there who enjoys exploring music that crosses stylistic borders and eras. If the big girls and boys aren’t going to let this happen, then indie broadcasters are going to step up to the plate and do the job. I’m honored to count myself among them.

There have been several milestones in this broadcast year. The first was a Q&A that Guitar Player published in their March ‘09 issue about my show (which was still called Guitarmania when the article was written), called “On-Air Guitar.” You can download a PDF of this piece at our site. The article expanded my audience tremendously—thanks GP!

We passed another milestone when a second station picked up my weekly program. Broadcasting out of San Antonio, Texas, Dewberry Jam also increased my audience by broadcasting the program on Friday and Saturday nights. Between Radio Free Nashville and Dewberry Jam—both of which stream online—The Guitar Show can currently be heard three nights a week, around the planet via the web. Like Radio Free Nashville, Dewberry Jam is an indie operation with a big soul. Click here for their program schedule.

Over the course of 52+ shows, I’ve slowly discovered my voice and refined my programming instincts. Of course, I’ve got a long way to go before I’m satisfied, but, just like playing in a band, you get better the more you step up to the mic.

I’ll let you decide if I’m going forward or backward in my hosting skills. Here’s my intro to show 01, broadcast on October 23, 2008.

And this is my intro to show 53, broadcast a year later on October 22, 2009.

Okay, I don’t possess that “big DJ” voice. (Frankly, I abhor that hyped-up sound.) But nerdiness aside, one thing I’m proud of: Each week I play music that stretches back to Blind Blake and Charley Patton and forward to Explosions in the Sky and Russian Circles. No barriers!

I’m also happy that amazing players like Shane Theriot, Cindy Cashdollar, and Monte Montgomery, who don’t get much love from commercial radio, get equal time on my show with such legends as Wes Montgomery, Andrés Segovia, and Django Reinhardt.

Coming up in The Guitar Show’s second year are several new features, including “New Faces”—a segment designed to spotlight up-and-coming guitarists—and various special programs modeled after our Les Paul Tribute, which remains the most popular show we’ve done so far and ranks as another milestone in our brief history. We’ll also keep expanding our interview archive. Here you can stream at your leisure the conversations I’ve had with a wide variety of guitarists.

If you’ve been tuning in online to The Guitar Show, thanks for listening, and I hope you continue to enjoy the interviews and music. And please tell your friends about the program. If you haven’t heard my show, I invite you to check it out (the broadcast times and streaming links are below).

With a little luck and several gallons of midnight oil, I’ll get to do this for another year. Cool! ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

Bottleneck Basics

To play slide well, you need to master three skills: touch, intonation, and damping. Here are some tips to get you started on the road to bottleneck nirvana.

Touch. There’s no “right” slide-wielding finger. Duane Allman favored his 3rd finger, as did the great Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Bonnie Raitt uses her 2nd. To leave strong digits free for chording and riffing, however, many players—including Sonny Landreth and Ry Cooder—wear their slide on the 4th finger. It a good idea to experiment before deciding which finger you prefer.

Press your slide against the strings hard enough to keep it from rattling or bouncing when you pick or strum, but not hard enough to stretch the strings sharp or push them against the frets. This calls for a light, firm touch. If you’re regularly crashing into the frets, try a lighter slide (for instance, instead of a burly glass bottleneck or brass slide, try a Duane Allman-style medicine bottle) or switch to a heavier string gauge.

Intonation. To play a note in tune, park the slide parallel to and directly above the corresponding fret. Trust your ears—not your eyes—for fine tuning, and add vibrato after you’ve zeroed in on a note. When practicing, frequently reference and calibrate your intonation to open strings. For instance, when playing blues in A, use your open A, D, and E strings as pitch guides.

Damping. Use both hands to mute strings. To tame those “behind-the-slide” sounds, lightly trail your 1st finger along the strings (see Photo 1). However, those whirring noises can add character to your picked notes, so don’t feel obliged to always mute with your slide hand.

Photo 1. To mute spurious string noise, lightly trail your 1st finger along the strings behind the slide.

Muting with your picking hand is another matter. If you don’t acquire this skill, you’ll be doomed to sonic chaos. Most great slide guitarists play fingerstyle so they can mute selected strings with their fingertips while simultaneously plucking others. The basic playing position is the “all notes off” clamp (Photo 2). Lay the side of your thumb across the bass strings and press the tips of your index, middle, and ring fingers onto the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st strings, respectively. Unless a string is being plucked, it stays muted.

Photo 2. Use a picking hand "clamp" for serious string damping.

In Photo 3, I’m plucking the first string while keeping the others damped. This selective plucking takes a lot of finger independence, so be patient. When thumbing bass notes, you can also mute the treble strings with the karate-chop edge of your picking hand. Notice how the slide is tipped in this shot. When playing along on the first string—which is most often used for bottleneck melodies—tilt your slide to prevent it from scraping unused strings. Photo 4 shows another view of this essential technique. ♦

Photo 3. Here's the clamp in action—I've plucked the first string while muting the others.

Photo 4. Tilting the slide when playing along the 1st string eliminates scraping sounds on strings 2-6.

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

DIY Acoustic Lap-Slide Conversion

Do you have an underutilized flattop lurking in your closet? If so, here’s how you can convert it into a lap-slide guitar that’s perfect for open-tuned riffage. Requiring only a few basic hand tools, it’s a fairly easy project that costs less than 20 bucks, including a fresh set of strings. Toss in a grooved tonebar (the Stevens slide is a classic, and modern versions, such as Dunlop’s Ergo and Lap Dawg, or Shubb GS Steel are well worth the investment) and you’ll be in business.

If you decide the world of Hawaiian-style overhand slide isn’t for you, the conversion is quickly reversible. Chances are, however, you’ll dig having an instrument that opens the door to funky licks and grooves you can’t duplicate with bottleneck technique.

The photo below shows the slotted, arched extension nut and bone saddle blank you’ll need for this project. If your local shop doesn’t stock these items, you can get them from online luthier supply outfits, eBay, or folk-music stores. Prices vary—at stewmac.com, the arched metal nut costs less than $4 and the bone saddle blank is about $6. A bone saddle blank provides excellent tone, yet is easy to cut and shape. Bone blanks have a straight top, which puts the strings on a flat plane to correctly match the playing surface of your tonebar, and are almost a half-inch tall. Before you go dashing off to acquire these parts, a little homework is in order.

Arched metal nut and bone saddle blank.

Bone blanks generally come in two thicknesses—1/8″ and 3/32″—so you’ll need to determine which size fits your guitar. First remove the strings and put the bridgepins somewhere safe. Next, carefully remove the original saddle. With a little coaxing, it should pop out, but if the saddle acts stubborn, pad your guitar top with a few hand towels, and use a pair of pliers to gently rock the saddle out of its slot. If the fit is really snug, use an object with a narrow, pointed metal tip (like a dental tool) to slowly pry the saddle up from one end of the slot. Save the original saddle in case you want to reconfigure your guitar for fretting.

Now measure the saddle slot width (see photo below). If the gap falls between 1/8″ and 3/32″, buy the thicker 1/8″ saddle, and plan to shave off a little width by rubbing the blank lengthwise along a piece of fine sandpaper.

Measuring the saddle slot width.

Once you’ve got your saddle blank, you have to trim it lengthwise. Measure the saddle slot, mark the saddle accordingly, and use a small hobby saw to remove the excess length. Take your time and watch your fingers.

Trimming the saddle blank.

Saddle shaping comes next: To prevent the string windings from separating and the plain strings from snapping, you’ll need to put a gentle slope in the saddle’s rear (bridgepin) side. Start rounding the back edge with a small, flat file (an automotive ignition file is perfect for the job), and then smooth your work with fine sandpaper. You don’t have to remove much. The goal is to keep the saddle’s top perfectly flat and maintain a crisp right angle on the leading edge (which faces the soundhole).

While you’re at it, round off the two upper corners so they won’t poke your picking hand. The photo below shows a finished saddle: The strings climb across the slope and then leave the saddle precisely at its leading edge. These angles resemble the top of a capital “D”—perpendicular on the front and curved on the back.

The finished saddle.

Hey, we’re almost done. Now slap a set of medium-gauge (typically .056, .045, .035, .026, .017, .013) acoustic strings on your guitar. Tighten them a bit so they’re basically aligned, but leave enough slack so you can lift them up to slip the extension nut over the guitar nut. The metal nut will hang over the sides of the neck—that’s okay. Center the extension nut, drop the strings in their respective slots, and then add tension to both outside strings to hold the new nut in place.

The arched nut extends beyond the fretboard edges.

Finally, tune up the guitar. Most lap sliders use open-D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D, low to high), but open G (D, G, D, G, B, D) is another sweet option. Don’t worry if string tension shifts the arched nut slightly to one side or the other, that’s normal. Gently tap one side or the other of the extension nut so the strings run parallel to the fretboard.

After your guitar settles in and you sense it can handle a little extra tension, try increasing the gauges of the second and first strings—the two plain ones—to .018 and .014, respectively. This increased girth helps support the tonebar and adds more booty to your melody notes.

Need inspiration to tackle this project? Listen to these excerpts from two amazing lap-slide players—Ben Harper and Kelly Joe Phelps.

Here’s the intro to Harper’s version of “Whipping Boy.” Harper is playing lap slide on a vintage Weissenborn hollowneck 6-string:

And here’s the intro to Phelps’ “Hobo’s Son.” You’re hearing him play a regular flattop converted to a lap-slide guitar. Very different from the sound of a squareneck resonator guitar—the most common choice for lap-slide. The tone is sweet and woody, without the nasal “holler” of an aluminum cone.

Happy lap sliding! ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

Baby Blue

Late summer 1964, Köln, West Germany.

I was taking a Friday evening stroll through the city streets when I saw it: a blue sparkle electric guitar calling my name from behind a music store window. As a 13-year-old boy, I’d seen electric guitars played onstage and been thrilled by their reverb-drenched twang, but this was the first time I’d come face to face with one. It was the most beautiful instrument I’d ever seen. A blue guitar that sparkled. Mouth slack, I stared until my parents dragged me away.

That weekend I walked around in a trance. I already owned a nylon-string acoustic and was making headway with my chords and fingerpicking—this was the folk era, so I was listening to Pete Seeger, the Weavers, and Lead Belly, and learning songs like “In The Pines” and “Nine Pound Hammer”—but until encountering that blue guitar glinting in the window, it never occurred to me that I could actually go electric.

After brooding for two days, I finally came clean to my folks: I wanted an electric guitar. I couldn’t think of anything else.

Okay, we have to put this in the context of the times. No one in my school had an electric guitar. I’d briefly met a guy in his early 20s who purportedly had one, but that was it. Electric guitars were rare in the early ’60s. And adults suspected—rightly so, it turned out—that the electric guitar was about to transform society in ways they didn’t want to contemplate. Electric guitars spelled trouble. I might as well have announced a desire to join the circus or sweep floors in a brothel. (Learning to play “The House Of The Rising Sun” had already given me that idea.)

After a long discussion that involved me making elaborate promises about my grades and attitude, we agreed that Andy could get an electric guitar. When we returned to the music store, the blue sparkle beauty was gone. (At that time, I had no knowledge of makes and models, so the only way I could identify the instrument was by its color.)

I was crushed.

No worry—we’d find another blue guitar, my parents assured me. And we soon did, a baby blue Kent. True, the color didn’t have the wicked allure of blue sparkle, but I saw the opportunity to get an electric guitar, so I ran with it. That turned out to be a wise decision because I didn’t see another blue sparkle guitar for many, many years.

Here’s a picture of a Kent just like mine, which I now know was a PB-24-G model made by Hagström, a Swedish company.

Photo credit: Haskin’s Hagstroms.

Mine was identical to the guitar on the left. Covered with blue vinyl and topped with a molded lucite pickguard, my Kent sported a cheese-grater “soundhole” grille, two pickups, four switches, a volume knob, and a vibrato bar.

Here’s a crisp photo of a red 1963 PB-24-G:

Photo credit:  Vintage Guitars of Stockholm, Sweden.

I didn’t know electric guitars required an amp. When I got home gripping the new baby blue 6-string, I managed to figure out how to plug it into my old Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder—which had a tiny built-in speaker—and start making noise. It was glorious. Flatwound strings and glowing tubes … my fate was sealed.

Photo credit: Bassboy.com.

I used that Kent/Grundig rig when I demonstrated electric guitar to my seventh-grade classmates in a show-and-tell. Luckily for me, the Kinks had just made distortion cool with “You Really Got Me.” (In Germany, circa 1964, we got a weekly dose of English music via the BBC Top 20 and heard cutting-edge invasion music before it was released in the US.)

Eventually, I joined a band and got a real guitar amp, a Dynacord Jazz 2×10 combo. So cool—20 watts of tube power! Wish I still had it.

Photo credit:  Orchester Electronic.

As I trawl the data stream, fishing for images from these early days of my musical odyssey, I’m happy to see I’m not the only one who still has fond memories of discovering guitar. Many others remain inspired by the sounds and sights of their first encounters. Motivated by a passion for the instrument, rather than financial reward, they build elaborate temples to the goddess of twang.

For example, here’s a wonderful site devoted to guitar tunings—dozens and dozens of ‘em, including tunings used by Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and Sonic Youth. The site is created and maintained by Warren Allen, a guitarist whose passion for tunings is so great, he needs to share it with the world. Cool!

Warren Allen’s Encyclopedia of Alternate Guitar Tunings

Another amazing find is the Atlas of Plucked Instruments. The level of historical detail about plucked instruments from around the world, ancient and modern, is truly mindblowing. This too is a labor of love from another guitarist, Henny de Bruin.

Atlas of Plucked Instruments

The other day, I heard Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” and thought about my old Kent, and how completely and irrevocably it changed my life.  Still making music, Baby Blue? ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

Feed Your Head

I got the bug when I was 12, in Paris. I remember the moment well: It’s been the ruin of many a poor soul, and Lord, I know I’m one.

All I asked for was a harmonica, but my folks thought a guitar would be more musically rewarding. Okay, twist my arm. At the time, there was an area near the Gare Saint-Lazare train station that had a row of guitar shops. Entering one, and seeing all the guitars hanging from the ceiling, I was smitten. Never really recovered. We walked out with a classical guitar (it cost 100 francs—about $40—as I recall), and I was on my new journey.

Decades later, I’m still the little kid with his new guitar (which, amazingly, I still have). I know a few more chords, sport serious calluses on my fingertips, and have many miles of gigs under my belt, but some things don’t change … I’m still eager to learn about my instrument. Eager to play it, record it, tweak it, and use its sound to make new friends.

During this lifelong journey I’ve met many amazing players. On one gig (circa 1976), I remember handing my archtop to Joe Pass in a little restaurant in Lincoln City, Oregon, so he could entertain the patrons. He was on vacation and simply dropped by to have dinner. I was the lucky house guitarist.

Though most of the customers didn’t know who Pass was, they all literally put down their utensils and turned around to listen. Dinner could wait—at least while he was playing. (Of course, when I was playing, it was a different story. Chow down!) Playing my guitar—a late-’60s Framus Attila Zoller model—Pass sounded just like he did on the then new Virtuoso albums: dynamic, sophisticated, swinging, and utterly unique. Funny, when I picked up my guitar for the next set, that mojo followed Pass back to his table as he rejoined his wife, Alison, and the restaurant returned to normal. A marvelous lesson.

In my ongoing exploration of all things guitar, I’ve found several sites that I find myself returning to time and again. You might find them inspiring too. For example, if you like to wrench on guitars, Frank Ford—one of the world’s finest repairmen—offers inspiration and guidance by way of Frets.com. Brilliant!

Stewart-MacDonald, the planet’s leading source for guitar parts and luthier supplies, also offers a wealth of free info for those who like to tinker with guitars.

Maybe you’re drawn to steel guitar. If so, you really have to visit Brad’s Page of Steel. This is the bomb, my friends.

Perhaps your taste runs to cutting commentary about the demise of the monolithic music industry? Bob Lefsetz pulls no punches in his Lefsetz Letter.

Finally, here’s a wonderful guide to the long-tail world by the visionary Chris Anderson, who coined the term and wrote the book. His essential concept guides my efforts in The Guitar Show. I read his cover story in Wired (“The Long Tail,” Oct. 2004), then bought his book when it came out. Not everyone agrees with Anderson’s thesis, but if you’re an author, musician, or filmmaker (or indie radio-show host), you owe it to yourself to digest his message.

If you dig Anderson’s cover story, consider his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

Finally, I can’t leave without a nod to The Jefferson Airplane, whose “White Rabbit”—from the band’s 1967 debut, Surrealistic Pillow—still inspires me in my quest for more guitar knowledge. Sometimes I get stuck or run out of gas, but then I remember, feed your head! ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
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Eardrums Versus Eyeballs

When I was a staff editor at Guitar Player magazine, I always looked forward to doing interviews. As a guitarist myself, how could I not get completely jazzed about talking to—okay, grilling—those who’ve achieved success playing our cherished instrument? What could I learn from this brief, but intense encounter? And, more importantly, what could I pass along to others striving to connect more completely with the guitar?

Ah, a sense of mission … I felt responsible for bringing the juiciest bits, the choice wisdom to the readers.

The readers. Words on a page. But every interview I’ve ever done starts life as an audio recording. Being a writer, I’d transcribe the audio into text and then edit my way into what I hoped was a cool story. During that long transcription process, I’d often pause and think, “I wish others could actually hear this conversation. The voices, the sound of our exchange.”

My written words could only hint at—or at best, reflect—the spirit of the interviewee and the dynamics of our encounter. It was frustrating to absorb this info through my eardrums, only to rework it into an eyeballs format. Something was lost in translation.

How things change.

Thanks to the web, Internet radio, and the transformative force of digital audio, I can now keep my interviews in the eardrum realm and feature them in my weekly radio show. As someone who loves the art of interviewing, I believe this is a significant improvement.

Let’s compare text to audio and see if you agree. Here are three brief excerpts from interviews I’ve aired with Duane Eddy, Pete Anderson, and Sharon Isbin. Absorb the info both ways—first through your eyeballs and then your eardrums—and decide which you prefer.

# 1. Duane Eddy, the father of twangy guitar, is describing the water tank his producer Lee Hazlewood and recording studio owner Floyd Ramsey converted into an echo chamber in the late ’50s …

Eddy: They held about 2,000 gallons. They were old, sitting tanks, water tanks. They were just sitting there, rusting, so they bought one and moved it up to the studio, put a speaker in one end and a mic in the other, and that was our echo. It was sitting out on a little platform in the back parking lot behind the studio. We had to go chase birds off of it. Couldn’t work late at night.

One night we were working at about 11:00 o’clock and the next-door neighbors—there was a little residential street behind the studio, and there was a house over there—came over and said, “We keep hearing these strange, weird sounds, it’s keeping us awake.” Stuff going through the echo chamber, you couldn’t make it out as music. We went out and listened—played a tape—and sure enough, it was bizarre sounding. You know, whirrz, whirrz, whirrz. So we had to shut down about 9:00 o’clock at night.

Now the audio version: Duane Eddy clip

#2. Honky tonk bluesnik Pete Anderson, talking about stirring jazz lines into jump blues, and how T-Bone Walker and B.B. King helped pioneer this uptown approach to blues guitar …

Anderson: And you know, when you listen to T-Bone, these guys were getting on the front edge of some of that stuff. There’s a video of B.B. King and T-Bone playing together and B.B. plays some outside [beep]. It’s like, wow. He’s just laying in the weeds on you—at least when he was a younger man—and going [sings blues lines] and then all of a sudden [sings bop lines]. You’re like, what? B.B.!

And now the audio version: Pete Anderson clip

#3. Classical guitarist Sharon Isbin talking about meeting Joan Baez, who sang two songs on Isbin’s latest album, Journey To The New World …

Isbin: If anybody had told me 20 years ago that a year ago Joan Baez would be knocking at my door and coming in and rehearsing with me in my home in New York, I would have thought they were nuts. And yet there she was. It was a beautiful experience. She wanted me to play for her, so she put a chair four feet in front of mine and sat down, and I serenaded her for half and hour, and she had tears streaming down her face. And it was so powerful, moving, and intimate, and remarkable to be able to have this interaction with someone who has made me cry for years, and there she is, and we’re sharing this moment together. It’s something I’ll never forget.

And here’s the audio version: Sharon Isbin clip

Text and audio interviews have one thing in common: They both require careful editing. I cut, paste, trim, and reorder the spoken word like I once manipulated its written counterpart. Audio editing is tricky, and I’m still learning the craft. To evaluate my efforts thus far, click here to find a free archive of streaming interviews culled from The Guitar Show broadcasts.

While we’re on the subject of audio interviews, I’ll just say it now: Terry Gross is my hero. Through the medium of her long-running Fresh Air show on NPR, she reveals her guests’ personalities with artful conversation. So inspiring! ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

Can You Hear Me Now?

As a music lover, you may have been following the ongoing brouhaha about the loudness wars. In a nutshell, the term describes the modern trend to produce CDs and digital audio files that sound louder than anything else on your sound system or iPod.

Mastering engineers—often against their will—are increasingly pressured by labels or artists to process digital masters to sound as loud as technically possible. CDs have a finite amplitude, so past a certain point the only way to make the music louder is to reduce its dynamics. By attenuating loud sections and pumping up quiet ones, engineers can make a recording sound bigger, more intense. But the price is steep: When a song’s peaks and valleys are drastically reduced, it’s essentially flattened into a stream of roaring sound.

Loud, yes. But less dimensional.

This loudness trend is most egregious in commercial pop music, so it’s not a significant issue in programming my radio show. Still, I routinely have to deal with different levels in recordings from different eras. We’re not talking about balancing, say, a 1950s recording of Andrés Segovia with a modern band like North Mississippi Allstars. Even songs from “similar” artists can vary in their overall loudness.

Let’s take two great singer-guitarists, Ry Cooder and Richard Thompson, and compare waveforms from two of their tunes, “All Shook Up” (from Cooder’s 1987 Get Rhythm) and “Sneaky Boy” (from Thompson’s 2007 Sweet Warrior). Both songs are bouncy rockers, but for whatever reason, Cooder’s track (the top waveform) is simply quieter. I suspect this has to do with the mastering practices of ‘87 versus ‘07.

I played these songs back to back in a recent show, which required a slight raising and lowering of their respective levels. No biggie—nudge the faders and we’re good to go. But the point is, records vary in their volume levels, and you can see this by looking at the waveforms.

Click here to compare waveform images of The Beatles’ “Something,” which has been mastered on CD four times since 1983. (This file is from the Wikimedia Commons and is in public domain—cool!) You can clearly see how in each subsequent remastering, the waveforms increasingly fill the stereo tracks. Does the 2000 version sound squashed compared to earlier ones? I’ll bet the answer is yes.

If you want to explore the lively debate on the loudness wars:

Turn Me Up! is a non-profit music industry organization campaigning for more dynamic records.
http://www.turnmeup.org/

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on loudness wars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Of the 20-25 tracks I play in a two-hour show, I have to make slight adjustments to about half of ‘em to keep the average program level reasonably consistent. Again, this isn’t so much about making inherently quiet pieces compete with burly tunes, but simply to balance older recordings with newer ones. And I must say, some of the newer records feel pushy. I’d rather be drawn in. ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com

Eclectic? Or Too Extreme?

When I gather CDs and rip tunes for my weekly radio show, I always strive to program an eclectic mix of music. Consequently, the playlists contain recordings from the late 1920s to the present and include almost every conceivable genre. (I say almost because I don’t include any shred or happy jazz in my shows. More about that in another post.)

Sometimes one of my musician buddies will say, “How can you follow Blind Blake with John Scofield? Or Doc Watson with Explosions in the Sky? The stylistic changes are too extreme. Wouldn’t each show work better with a central theme—like Memphis R&B or fingerstyle jazz?”

Maybe so.

But for me, there already is a central theme in every show: exploring the guitar’s extraordinary versatility. The instrument is at home in more styles and eras of music than any other. From Hawaiian and Indian lap slide to ambient space-rock, from bebop to blues to bluegrass, the guitar provides a mind-blowing variety of melodies, rhythms, and timbres. Even the piano—arguably the most universal instrument—can’t venture into many sonic areas the guitar calls home.

The problem is, many folks simply aren’t aware of the guitar’s rich heritage or vast sonic palette. They don’t hear all the superb players making innovative and entertaining sounds today—mainstream radio and TV aren’t helping matters, are they?—nor do they hear pioneering sounds from our past. I believe this exciting music should be accessible to anyone willing to search it out. The best way I’ve figured out to do this is through an Internet radio show.

Of course, the concept of celebrating the guitar’s eclectic nature is not new. Fact is, it’s the world’s guitar festivals—events that typically emphasize variety and stylistic diversity—that lead the way.

For example, check out Ellnora | The Guitar Festival (ellnoraguitarfestival.com), scheduled for Sept. 10-12, 2009.

The festival’s artist roster includes Ani DiFranco, the Keb’ Mo’ Band, the Derek Trucks Band, Bill Frisell’s Disfarmer Project, Junior Brown, the Jerry Douglas Band, Alex de Grassi, the Leni Stern Quartet, the Frank Vignola Trio, the Brazilian Guitar Quartet, Debashish Bhattacharya, Richard Julian and Jim Campilongo, Luciana Souza and Romero Lubambo, and much more.

Wow! This promises to be a fabulous weekend of guitar music. Hats off to Mike Ross and David Spelman, the festival’s director and artistic advisor, for their adventurous spirit.  ♦

The Guitar Show with Andy Ellis streams online. Here’s our weekly broadcast schedule:

• Thursday 10:00p CST streaming on WRFN Radio Free Nashville
• Friday 10:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX
• Saturday 8:00p CST streaming on AM1670 Dewberry Jam, San Antonio, TX

• For weekly playlists, archived audio interviews, and more guitar lore visit theguitarshow.com.
• Follow The Guitar Show on Twitter … our name is theguitarshow.
• My Twitter name is twangmon.
• andy@theguitarshow.com