The Art of Fingerstyle Guitar featuring John Renbourn Stefan Grossman Peppino D’Agostino Martin Carthy Bob Brozman Martin Simpson Brad Jones Joe Miller
The Art of Fingerstyle Guitar by Mark Humphrey Art, the Oxford American Dictionary informs us, is “the production of something beautiful, skill or ability in such work.” Unlike other forms of art, which we experience as artifacts quite detached from their creators, musical performance gives us the experience of the artifact, the artist and in improvised music, the moment of creation all simultaneously. No wonder musicians get stagefright! They have a lot happening (and at stake) every time they perform. Imagine demanding other artists to reveal so many elements of their art all at once. It requires a special sort of concentration, a balanced sense of introspection and extroversion to excel at such a pursuit. But, risk taking aside, being such a complete means of expression is what makes music a joy for performer and audience alike. “Music,” asserts critic Edmund Hildebrandt,“...in a man’s hands is his chief means of self-advertisement, and it unites even the lone figure with the world around him...” The performers in this DVD bear witness to that unity through their music. The music (and musicians) express different traditions, personalities and stylistic approaches via their guitars. Yet there is a commonality, not only in the instrument and fundamental approach to it but also in the choice of these players to both take risks and to respect tradition. Bob Brozman plays Moana Chimes (Hawaiian Greetings) unlike any of the Hawaiian guitarists of the 1920s, yet his cheeky version overflows with love of his sources. John Renbourn plays renaissance lute music on a steel string guitar with a phase shifter. Joe Miller feeds his guitar an American fiddle tune and Stefan Grossman picks one from the Irish harp repertoire of Turlough O'Carolan. Peppino D’Agostino uses unorthodox techniques to transform his guitar into a Brazilian rhythm band. Brad Jones moves from classicism to fleet references to two of his major influences, jazz pianist/composer Vince Guraldi and country guitarist Jerry Reed. Martin Simpson deftly plays the spaces around notes in his solo spot, while his duets with Brozman explore modal music, one selection suggesting the Anglo-American The Cuckoo and the other the North Indian rag Yaman. The incomparable Martin Carthy shows what can be done with a mere five notes from a pentatonic Mixolydian mode in Seven Yellow Gypsies. For all the variety in these 14 performances, there is a unity of skill, passion and exploration. Starting from such unlikely in2
Duck Baker & John Renbourn
spirations as the English ‘skiffle’ craze which brought us such dim-witted delights as Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight, these musicians have continually explored new realms of sound until arriving at one which was absolutely personal and right and became the sound of their own voice through the guitar. The means of getting there are obviously different. One guitarist uses fingerpicks while another purely flesh and nails. Some play with a semiclassical right hand position and others anchor the ‘pinky’ on the guitar’s face, as was recommended in a 17th century manual for lutenists: “set your Little Finger down upon the Belly of the Lute, just under the Bridge...it steadies the Hand and gives a Certainty to the Grasp.” Various tunings and styles of guitar - classical, flamenco, steel string, metal-bodied express the musical personalities of these players. They tell us who they are by these means. The art of fingerstyle guitar? It’s playing with such self-certainty that a musical phrase unfolds into something as unique and identifiable as a fingerprint. Here are eight of the idiom’s finest artists clearly telling us who they are.
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Stefan Grossman Sarah & Stefan Grossman (Photo by Josephine Ayres)
A remarkable career in teaching and performing began for Brooklyn-born Grossman as a teenaged pupil of the legendary Rev. Gary Davis. “I was absolutely enamored by him,” Grossman recalled in a Guitar Player feature. He spent as much time as possible with Davis, documenting one of the most extraordinary repertoires in American folk music. This was the era of blues rediscoveries and soon Grossman was meeting (and learning from) the likes of John Hurt, Skip James, and Son House. By 1965, his knack for transmitting what he had absorbed was manifest in an instructional album, How to Play Blues Guitar for the Elektra label. A few years later, Grossman wrote an influential series of books documenting varied blues and ragtime guitar styles for Oak Publications. By then he lived in England, where he soaked up the music of everyone from Eric Clapton to John Renbourn, with whom he has performed extensively. With the formation of the Kicking Mule label in 1973, Grossman became the nexus of an international crop of fingerstyle guitarists who offered vital and varied music (as well as instructional material). Today Grossman continues to perform, teach, and document outstanding guitar stylists. He has reissued the best material that he produced for Kicking Mule on the Guitar Artistry Series for Shanachie Records. As evidence of his own eclectic artistry, Grossman the ‘Brooklyn blues boy’ here performs the lilting Irish tune, Sheebeg and Sheemore, attributed to the legendary blind harpist O’Carolan, as well as some hot acoustic funk in Danish Drone with Duck Baker. 4
Shining Shadows (Shanachie) Love, Devils and the Blues (Shanachie) Guitar Landscapes (Shanachie) How to Play Blues Guitar (Shanachie) Black Melodies on a Clear Afternoon (Shanachie) Yazoo Basin Boogie (Shanachie) Shake That Thing (Shanachie) Snap A Little Owl with John Renbourn (Shanachie) Keeper of the Vine with John Renbourn (Shanachie) Northern Skies, Southern Blues with Duck Baker (Shanachie) Videos/DVDs Stefan Grossman - A Retrospective (Vestapol 13036) Fingerpicking Guitar Techniques (GW 966/7) Bottleneck Blues Guitar (GW 902) How to Play Blues Guitar ((GW 903) Country Blues Guitar Parts 1, 2 & 3 (GW 90456) Advanced Fingerpicking Guitar/Blues Guitar (GW 928) Advanced Fingerpicking Guitar/Ragtime Blues Guitar (GW 929) Advanced Fingerpicking Guitar/Hot Fiddle Tunes & Rags (GW 930) Fingerpicking Country Blues Guitar (GW 931)
Bob Brozman
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Photo courtesy Rounder Records
No player is more closely identified with his instrument (or instruments) than Bob Brozman, who has spearheaded the revived interest in the National guitar. The Brooklyn-born Brozman came to the instrument via his discovery of such National-brandishing bluesmen as Son House and Bukka White (House praised the metal-bodied guitar’s utility as both a shield and weapon in barroom brawls). “I was into blues so heavily that I was buying every album with a picture of a National on it,” says Brozman, who found one such album offering not only blues but also the Hawaiian music of Sol Hoopii. The discovery of Hoopii’s astonishing technique prompted Brozman to seek out vintage Hawaiian 78s and replicate their sounds on his ever-expanding collection of vintage National guitars.
In the 1970s, Brozman was also honing his performing skills as a street busker in Santa Cruz: “I learned yodeling, scat singing and growling on the street,” says Brozman, who adds that the projection and visual appeal of National guitars helped stimulate tips. By the early 1980s, Brozman had moved off the streets and on to such coveted gigs as opening for the Grateful Dead and Bonnie Raitt. He has recorded and toured extensively since, authored the definitive history of vintage Nationals and worked as consultant to the new National company in the development of their Tricone guitars. Brozman’s performances here demonstrate both his technical range and some of the varied sounds of the Tricone and style “O” model Nationals. Moana Chimes (Hawaiian Greetings) becomes a showcase for Brozman’s use of harmonics on his Tricone, while his ragtime jaunt on his style “O” suggests the forgotten splendors of vaudeville tenor banjoists. A Truckload of Blues (Rounder Records) Devil's Slide (Rounder Records) Hello Central, Give Me Dr. Jazz (Rounder Records) Videos/DVDs Bob Brozman in Concert (Vestapol 13047) Bottleneck Blues Guitar (Homespun Tapes) Traditional Hawaiian Guitar (Homespun Tapes) Hot Guitar Techniques From Folk to Jazz Volumes 1 & 2 (Homespun Tapes)
Brad Jones Photo by Stefan Grossman
Brad Jones grew up surrounded by pickers. Wh e n h i s d a d w a s n ’ t working on the Ames, Iowa police force, he was starring on one of those once-ubiquitous ‘live’ country radio shows, The Buster Jones Show. Older brother Ron was fingerpicking a la Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, so it was natural for Brad Jones to follow in the family tradition. As is evident from the autographs on his c l a s s i c a l - s t y l e g u i t a r, Jones wears his influences proudly, primarily that of the wise guy who wrote, “To Brad, My Hero” 6
- Jerry Reed. Also known as ‘the Claw,’ Reed took Atkins’ style to another dimension in the 196Os and Jones says, “I went crazy with Jerry’s stuff. I do a lot of his licks but I do ‘em different.” The influence of left-handed brother Ron contributed: Ron played a right-handed guitar upside down, picking the bass notes (a la Libba Cotten) with his fingers. “I just never learned to play right,” says Jones. “I double pick a whole lot on the bottom and get a kind of funky sound.” (Notice that he sometimes cross picks up and down with his thumbpick as if it were a flat pick.) Jones has three albums out on the Virginia-based Flat Five label, and in 1992 won the fingerstyle guitar competition in Winfield, Kansas. He has played in Europe in the company of such legends as Albert Lee, Larry Coryell and Marcel Dadi, but Jones doesn’t lean on the guitar for his livelihood. “I move furniture,” he says. “I go on tour when I can, but I don’t take it all that serious. I tried that a while, but I got severely overweight, so I had to go back to work.” Live at Five (Flat Five) Backporch Boogie (Flat Five) Videos/DVDs Guitar Portraits (Vestapol 13096) Bag of Tricks, Pocketful of Licks (GW 925) Styles & Techniques of Jerry Reed (GW953) Hot Licks, Rhythms & Grooves (GW955) Legacy of Country Fingerstyle Guitar Volume One & Two (GW962 & GW963) Back Porch Picking (GW964) Songs of Inspiration & Joy (GW965)
Martin Simpson Wr i t e r s h a v e t i e d themselves in knots of adjectival ecstasy describing Simpson’s playing (“understated b e a u t y. . . , ” “b re a th ta ki n g m u si cal clarity,” “tunes..like glistening jewels”). Simpson first inspired praise on the English folk club circuit, where he trailed in the wake of the seminal 1960s folk revival guitarists (Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Mar tin Car thy, John Renbourn) and absorbed a fair measure of American blues and ‘oldtimey’ music in the bar7
gain. He was sharing bills with the likes of Richard Thompson and Steeleye Span while still in his teens and made a quantum artistic leap in 1977 when he embarked on a decade long venture as accompanist to singer’s singer, June Tabor. Simpson’s work with Tabor not only brought him greater attention but focused his attitude towards interpreting traditional songs. (He became hooked on them when he learned Barbara Allen at school in Scunthorpe at age seven.) “I started playing the guitar because I wanted to tell stories like Marty Robbins,” says Simpson. “I still feel I’m much more influenced by singers and songs than I am by guitar players.” And that’s how Simpson approaches his arrangements of traditional songs: “I don’t learn the tunes,” he says. “I learn the songs...I know exactly what the lyrics are about. If I don’t, I don’t play.” Since moving to America in 1988, Simpson has found ample opportunity to flaunt his blues chops as well, even performing at blues festivals with pianist Henry Gray, onetime Howlin’ Wolf band member. “When the British became aware of black music,” says Simpson, who has played blues as long as he has ballads, “the effect was unbelievable.” His duets with Bob Brozman are thus no great stretch for this gifted multi-stylist. Simpson is the author of The Acoustic Guitar of Martin Simpson (Accent on Music) Leaves of Life (Shanachie) When I Was On Horseback (Shanachie) The Collection (Shanachie) A Closer Walk With Thee (Gourd Records) Red Roses w/Jessica Simpson (Rhiannon Records) Videos/DVDs Martin Simpson In Concert (Vestapol 13046) Acoustic Guitar Instrumentals/Arrangements in Alternate Tunings (Homespun Tapes)
Peppino D’Agostino Messina, Italy was the birthplace of Peppino D’Agostino, who has since taken in much of the world’s music and become, according to San Francisco Examiner critic Phillip Elwood, “a poet on acoustic guitar, handling the instrument as if it were a dance partner...” D’Agostino took his first steps with guitar at age 11 and was moving smoothly enough by age 18 to be performing across Italy. Paco DeLucia was an early influence, but soon D’Agostino was writing his own distinctive material incorporating influences from across Europe as well as Brazil and North America. His debut album, Bluerba, was a collaboration with Enzo Ponzio and Alfredo Morabito. 1983s Silk And Steel presented D’Agostino in the company of Duck Baker as well as several noted Italian guitarists, among them Giovanni Unterberger. D’Agostino’s mastery of varied ‘attacks’ and repertoires came in 8
Photo by Irene Young
handy that same year when Berben-Italy had him write a bluegrass and country guitar flat-picking instructional book. In the decade since, D’Agostino’s reputation has gone international and he has expatriated to the West Coast. He has shared stages with the likes of Doc Watson, Leo Kottke, Chet Atkins, John Lee Hooker and Michael Hedges Whimsically calling his style “minestrone music,” D’Agostino says of the guitar, “You embrace it. It’s intimate. Unlike a keyboard, the guitar can be held close to the heart.” Sparks (Shanachie) Acoustic Spirit (Shanachie) Close To The Heart (Mesa/Blue Moon) Silk And Steel (Lizard Records) Bluerba (Drums)
John Renbourn London-born and nurtured on American folk music via ‘skiffle,’ Renbourn became deeply entrenched in the vibrant London music scene of the 1960s. Inspired by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Big Bill Broonzy and other seminal American influences, Renbourn played Jimmy Reed tunes with English R 'n' B bands before absorbing the eclectic music of Davey Graham and the jazz/blues tinged traditionalism of Bert Jansch. Renbourn’s friendship with flat-mate Jansch produced some legendary guitar duets (Bert & John/After the Dance, Shanachie Records), and provided the core for the uniquely adventurous ‘folk baroque’ ensemble, Pentangle. Since the dissolution of Pentangle in 1973, Renbourn has maintained an active solo career as well as performing and re9
Photo by Josephine Ayres
cording duets with Stefan Grossman (Snap a Little Owl, Shanachie Records). Readers of Renbourn’s prose in Guitar Player and elsewhere know he is also a passionate scholar of guitar music from varied genres and eras. Dick Weissman wrote of Renbourn in Acoustic Guitar: “He always has a clear vision of what can and cannot be done on the steel-string guitar and he can coax an almost classical sound out of the instrument, with all the subtle gradations of tone that the best classical players can create.” Renbourn’s performances here illustrate his expansive renaissance-to-rock artistry. “I think the most enjoyable approach to the guitar,” Renbourn told Stefan Grossman in a Frets magazine interview, “ is to regard it, if you can, as something like as keyboard instrument, with the possibility of playing the separate parts, rather than embracing a style of music which you then have to fit all the music into...My concern is playing the type of music I like. How it actually sounds is an accident.” The Black Balloon (Shanachie) Sir John Alot... (Shanachie) The Hermit (Shanachie) The Lady And The Unicorn (Shanachie) Snap a Little Owl w/Stefan Grossman (Shanachie) Live In Concert w/Stefan Grossman (Shanachie) John Renbourn Group/A Maid In Bedlam (Shanachie) John Renbourn's Ship Of Fools (Flying Fish) The Nine Maidens (Flying Fish) Videos/DVDs John Renbourn 1965-1995 (Vestapol 13032) Folk, Blues & Beyond (GW 907) Celtic Melodies & Open Tunings (GW 908) The Jazz Tinge (GW 917) Medieval & Renaissance Music for Fingerstyle Guitar (GW947)
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Martin Simpson & Bob Brozman
How did this seemingly unlikely duo come to be? Simpson and Brozman met at the 1993 NAMM (National Association of Music Merchandisers) Show in Los Angeles, testing and demonstrating instruments at the National guitar company display. “It was a seemingly telepathic relationship from the start,” says Brozman, who admits to “a prejudice against...Celtic stuff” prior to meeting Simpson. Common ground, however, was provided by the blues. “What makes it work,” says Simpson, “is that Bob and I are well grounded in traditional forms...We have a similar vocabulary of music and it works wonderfully.” Enough so that a Simpson/Brozman album is in the works.
Martin Carthy The premier singer/guitarist of Britain’s folk revival was inspired to take up the guitar by Big Bill Broonzy and has quipped: “Basically, what I do is Travis picking trodden upon to make it work for English music.” But there’s little mistaking Carthy’s oblique yet commanding attack on his lovably battered 000-18 Martin for any American antecedent. His triumph has been creating a style which is uniquely personal and singularly right for traditional English music. Carthy has been a mainstay of the English folk scene since the early 1960s, during which time he influenced such visitors as Bob Dylan (Lord Franklin came from Carthy) and Paul Simon (Scarborough Fair). His punchy, angular playing and penchant 11
Photo by Stefan Grossman
for ballads rife with murder, myth and magic made him a sensation, and yielded several classic albums for the Fontana label in the 1960s. He was then just developing his unique guitar tuning and rhythmically challenging approach to such songs as the pentatonic Seven Yellow Gypsies. The 1970s found Carthy occasionally engaged in the folk-rock bands of bass-playing enfant terrible Ashley Hutchings (Steeleye Span and Albion Country Band), sometimes solo as a singerguitarist and others a cappella in the traditional vocal quartet the Watersons. The 199Os find Carthy again teamed with fiddler Dave Swarbrick, who accompanied him on many of his most memorable 1960s recordings. Widely acclaimed as one of the most creative living acoustic guitarists (Musician magazine once ranked him among the ‘Hundred Greatest Guitarists of All Time’), Carthy downplays his achievement as an instrumentalist and says, “Your business is to transmit the song.” The Collection (Green Linnet) Life and Limb w/Dave Swarbrick (Green Linnet) Martin Carthy (Topic Records) Video/DVD Martin Carthy: British Fingerstyle Guitar (GW 927)
Stefan Grossman & Duck Baker Fingerstyle funk on an acoustic guitar? No sweat for Duck Baker, ably assisted by Stefan Grossman. Baker, it’s tempting to say, took to music like his namesake to water. “The first musical experience I can recall,” he says, “was when I was in kindergarten and one of the kids’ parents came in dressed up like a gypsy and played the fiddle. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.” Though violin lessons bored him, Baker later managed to become something of gypsy, living variously in Vancouver, Torino, London before recently returning to his native Virginia. 12
In Gitano tradition, Baker embraced the flamenco guitar, though he’s more apt to play swing than soleraes on it, as well as a potpourri of folk and jazz from Appalachia to Manhattan (and a few foreign ports besides). The guitar usurped the ukulele’s place in Baker’s world when he was 15 and trying to learn Doc Watson’s arrangement of the Delmore Brothers’s Deep River Blues. But the influence of Richmond ragtime pianist Buck Evans plunged Baker headlong into a lifetime of arranging keyboard music, principally jazz, for guitar. “The way you learn to compose,” Baker told Michael Crane in an Acoustic Guitar feature, “is to learn to arrange...The instrument will teach you what you can and can’t do when it comes to arranging. Go out there and try it.” Opening the Eyes of Love (Shanachie) The Art of Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar (Shanachie) Videos/DVDs Celtic Airs, Jigs, Reels & Hornpipes (GW 909) Guitar Aerobics (GW 910) Classic American Folk Blues Themes (GW 919) Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar (GW 920, 921 & 922) Introduction to Gospel Fingerstyle Guitar (GW312) Introduction to Swing Guitar (GW313)
Joe Miller The Smothers Brothers aren’t often cited as seminal influences by virtuoso guitarists, but as a kid Joe Miller enjoyed the fun he saw them having and followed Tom’s example. But the guitar wasn’t the only instrument in Miller's world. Growing up in Toronto, which has a large Indian community, Miller studied sitar with Shambhu Das, a student of Ravi Shankar’s . “It had a big effect on me,” Miller recalls of his sitar lessons, “learning about rhythms and the way I think about scales.” Mandolin, clas13
sical guitar, electric bass, and even viola da gamba were among the succession of stringed instruments Miller explored before devoting himself to the acoustic steel-string guitar. His move to Berkeley in 1978 put him in the midst of what locals deem ‘the music capital of the West,’ and opportunities to play with the likes of mandolin virtuoso David Grisman and to teach Country Joe McDonald. Miller took home the gold from the Olympics of fingerpicking at Winfield, Kansas in 1987. Active on the American folk festival circuit, Miller has made two albums on his Rising Sleeves label, which inspired England’s Folk Roots magazine to marvel at his “rare combination of technique, humor, and panache.” West Coast Music for Guitar (Rising Sleeves) Semi-Traditional Guitar Solos (Rising Sleeves)
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Repeat: VERSE 1 BRIDGE VERSE 2, to Then:
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26
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27
The performers in this collection express different traditions, personalities and stylistic approaches via their guitars. Yet there is a commonality, not only in the instrument and fundamental approach to it but also in the choice of these players to both take risks and to respect tradition. Bob Brozman plays Moana Chimes (Hawaiian Greetings) unlike any of the Hawaiian guitarists of the 1920s, yet his cheeky version overflows with love of his sources. John Renbourn plays renaissance lute music on a steel string guitar with a phase shifter. Joe Miller feeds his guitar an American fiddle tune and Stefan Grossman picks one from the Irish harp repertoire of Turlough O'Carolan. Peppino D’Agostino uses unorthodox techniques to transform his guitar into a Brazilian rhythm band. Brad Jones moves from classicism to fleet references to two of his major influences, jazz pianist/composer Vince Guraldi and country guitarist Jerry Reed. Martin Simpson deftly plays the spaces around notes in his solo spot, while his duets with Brozman explore modal music, one selection suggesting the Anglo-American The Cuckoo and the other the North Indian rag Yaman. The incomparable Martin Carthy shows what can be done with a mere five notes from a pentatonic Mixolydian mode in Seven Yellow Gypsies. For all the variety in these 14 performances, there is a unity of skill, passion and exploration. One guitarist uses fingerpicks while another purely flesh and nails. Some play with a semiclassical right hand position and others anchor the ‘pinky’ on the guitar’s face. Various tunings and styles of guitar - classical, flamenco, steel string, metal-bodied - express the musical personalities of these players. They tell us who they are by these means. The art of fingerstyle guitar? It’s playing with such self-certainty that a musical phrase unfolds into something as unique and identifiable as a fingerprint. Here are eight of the idiom’s finest artists clearly telling us who they are. STEFAN GROSSMAN Sheebeg An Sheemore BOB BROZMAN Hawaiian Greetings, Steel Guitar Stomp JOHN RENBOURN Medley: Lament For Owen Roe O'Neill/Mist Covered Mountains Of Home/The Orphan, Sweet Potato BRAD JONES Funky Fingers MARTIN SIMPSON Medley: Lord Gregory/Bob's Song JOE MILLER Lime Rock MARTIN CARTHY Seven Yellow Gypsies PEPPINO D'AGOSTINO Grand Canyon, Ponteio MARTIN SIMPSON & BOB BROZMAN Bentonia, Chimes Of Timbuktu STEFAN GROSSMAN & DUCK BAKER Danish Drone ISBN: 1-57940-996-2
Vestapol 13021 Nationally distributed by Rounder Records, One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 Representation to Music Stores by Mel Bay Publications © ® 2004 Vestapol Productions / A division of Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop Inc.
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