Vol_2_No_6

$4.00

Magazine Volume 2, Number 6

September/October 1998

Doc Watson

Webber Guitars Webber Molly Mason Craig Vance Jeff Autry Jim Nunally

Flatpicking Guitar Guitar Magazine Magazine

September/October September/Oct ober 1998

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CONTENTS FEA FE ATU TURE RES S

Flatpicking Guitar

Doc Watson Flatpick Prole: Jim Nunally Webber Guitars Columnist Prole: Craig Vance Masters of Rhythm Guitar: Molly Mason

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Magazine COLUMNS

Darlin’ Boy Craig Vance Beginner’ss Page: “Cripple Creek” Beginner’ Creek” Solo Dan Huckabee Flatpick Rhythm Guitar: Guitar: Off Chords Joe Carr Flatpicking & Folk/Acoustic Folk/Acoustic Rock: Context John Tindel Kaufman’ss Corner: “Dixie Hoedown” Kaufman’ Hoedown” Steve Kaufman Nashville Flat Top: “Nine Pound Hammer” Brad Davis Break Time: “Nashville “Nashville Blues” Chris Jones The O-Zone: “Take Me Back To Tulsa” Orrin Star Guitar Making: Doc’s Guitar Don Gallagher Doc Watson Watson & “Way “Way Down Town” Town” Dix Bruce Music Theory: Mastering the the Fingerboard Mike Maddux Vintage Voice: Bill Bush Flatpicking Fiddle Tunes: Tunes: “Bill Tenner’ Tenner’ss Reel” Adam Granger Exploring Bluegrass Bluegrass Guitar: Warming Warming Up Steve Pottier Eclectic Acoustic: “Belfast” John McGann “Beaumont Rag” Beppe Gambetta

Volume 2, Number 6 September/October 1998 Published bi-monthly by: High View Publications P.O. Box 2160 Pulaski, VA 24301 Phone: (540) 980-0338 Fax: (540) 980-0557 Orders: (800) 413-8296 E-mail: highview@atpick.com Web Site: http://www.atpick.com ISSN: 1089-9855 Dan Miller - Publisher and Editor Mariann Miller - Sales and Advertising Connie Miller - Administration Contributing Editors: Dave McCarty Bryan Kimsey Subscription Rate ($US): US $22.00 Canada/Mexico $27.00 Other Foreign $32.00 All contents Copyright © 1998 by High View Publications unless otherwise indicated Reproduction of material appearing in the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine is forbidden without written permission Printed in the USA

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New Release Highlight: Jeff Autry Reviews

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EDITOR'S PAGE Doc Watson Issue It is with great pleasure that we present this special issue focused on Doc Watson. After the previous issue, focusing on Clarence White, was mailed out, we got some great feedback from readers who liked that we tied in many of the columnists articles and tabs with the cover story. We have done the same thing here in this issue. You will nd that many of our columnists share their thoughts and ideas about Docʼs playing and how it has effected their their own playing. I hope you will enjoy this issue. Special thanks is due to Steve Kaufman and Jim Jim Rouse Rouse for helping with the Doc Watson article. I would also like to thank Steve Kaufman and Bill Bay, of Mel Bay Publications, for providing us the transcription of “Texas “Texas Gales.” This transcription is one of many which will appear in a new Doc Watson Anthology Anthology written by Steve Kaufman and published by Mel Bay. Bay. This book should be available from Mel Bay later this year.

Flatpicking ʻ98 CD This issue marks the end of our second year of publication and and that means that that the Flatpicking ʻ98 CD, featuring tunes that have been transcribed in the second volume of the magazine, is now available. available. If you would like to order this new CD, call (800) (800) 413-8296, with credit card in hand, and we will send one right out to you.

Correction In the last last issue (page 58) we failed to run the the photo credit credit beside the photo of Joel Stein with his Clarence White album collection. collection. This photo was taken by Lenard J. Eisenberg.

Dan Miller Editor and Publisher

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Flatpicking Guitar Magazine


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Doc Watson Over the past fty years the guitar has had a very powerful inuence on American music. Predominantly a rhythm instrument at the turn of the century, the guitar began to step out of the rhythm section in the 1930ʼs and 40ʼs and has maintained a dominant presence in every form of music from rock, to folk, to country, bluegrass, blues, and old-time. While Elvis, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other pop icons of the 50ʼs and 60ʼs certainly played a large role in bolstering the guitarʼs popularity, the man who has had the deepest, most enduring, and most profound inuence on the way the acoustic at top guitar is played as a lead instrument in folk, old-time, and bluegrass music today is Arthel “Doc” Watson. To those of us who have spent hundreds of hours slowing down Doc Watson records in order to learn the tastefully selected notes that he plays and emulate the clear, crisp tone he pulls out of his instrument, Doc is a legend. However, Docʼs influence extends far beyond the small niche of guitar players who try to faithfully reproduce his guitar breaks because Doc Watson is not just a guitar player and singer - he is an American hero. To be recognized as a “national treasure” by President Jimmy Carter, honored with the National Medal of the Arts by President Bill Clinton, and given an honorary doctorate degree from the University of North Carolina calls for being more than a ne musician and entertainer. Doc Watson received these accolades not just for his talent, but for the honor, integrity, humility, grace, and dignity which he has displayed throughout his long and distinguished career. While there are many, many great guitar players and singers; there is only one Doc Watson. Fans love Doc Watsonʼs smooth baritone voice, sharp wit and intellect, easy-going manner, good nature, country charm, and wonderful story-telling abilities almost as much as his guitar playing and singing. One fan commented, “I would pay to go hear Doc Watson read names out of the phone book!” Many other of Docʼs admirers agree, saying that no matter how big the performance hall, Doc makes you feel as if you are sitting with him in your own living room. He is comfortable, relaxed, laid-back, and plays, sings, and speaks from the heart. He appears 4

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Doc and Merle to be enjoying the show as much as you are, and he probably is. The tie that binds is his obvious life long love of music.

The Early Years The sixth of nine children, Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson was born in Stoney Fork, Watauga County, North Carolina on 3 March, 1923, to Annie Greene and General Dixon Watson. When he was born, he had a defect in the vessels that carry blood to the eyes. He later developed an eye infection which caused him to completely loose his vision before his rst birthday. He was raised, and still resides, in Deep Gap, North Carolina.

Written by Dan Miller

The Watson family lineage can be traced back to Tom Watson, a Scots pioneer who homesteaded 3000 acres in North Carolina around 1790. North Carolina homesteaders, like Watson, brought folk song and music to their new world and as it changed and evolved, passing from one generation to the next, it bound families, neighbors, and communities together through the best and the worst of times. In the introduction to the book The Songs of Doc Watson, folklorist Ralph Rinzler wrote, “Western North Carolina has long been recognized as one of the richest repositories of folk song and lore in the southeastern United States.” In the liner notes to The Doc Watson Family Tradition, A.L. Lloyd writes, “The northwest corner of North Carolina is still probably the busiest nook in the United



States for domestic music, singing, fiddling, banjo-picking, and itʼs no accident that when Cecil Sharp was collecting songs and ballads in the Appalachians (in 1916) it was precisely this small area that yielded the greatest harvest.” Western North Carolina song and lore are contained in some of Doc Watsonʼs earliest memories. Docʼs mother would frequently sing old time songs and ballads while doing chores during the day and she sung her children to sleep at night. In the evenings the family read from the Bible and sung hymns from the Christian Harmony, a shape-note book published in 1866. Docʼs father, a farmer and day-laborer, also led the singing at the local Baptist church. Doc has said that his earliest memories of music reach back to his days as a young child being held in his motherʼs arms at the Mt. Paron Church and listening to the harmony and shape-note singing. The rst songs he remembers hearing are “The Lone Pilgrim” and “There is a Fountain.” Singing led to an interest in making music and Doc says that he began “playing with anything around the house that made a musical sound.” At about the age of six, Doc began to learn to play the harmonica and from that time was given a new one every year in his Christmas stocking. Docʼs rst stringed instrument, not to include a steel wire he had strung across the woodshedʼs sliding door to provide bass accompaniment to his harmonica playing, was a banjo his father built for him when he was eleven years old. His father taught him the rudiments of playing a fretless banjo, the rest Doc learned by trial and error. Docʼs new banjo had a fretless maple neck and friction tuning pegs. His father had rst tried to make the head out of a ground hog hide, however, it didnʼt have good tone. When his grandmotherʼs sixteen year old cat passed on, Docʼs father used the catʼs skin to make the banjo head. In an interview conducted by Fretsm agazine in 1979 Doc recalls, “That made one of the best banjo heads you ever seen and it stayed on that thing, I guess, as long as I picked it.” Doc says that his father “got the notion” for using the cat skin from a Sears Roebuck advertisement of the Joe Rodgers banjo head made of cat skin. The rst banjo tune Doc remembers his father playing for him was “Rambling Hobo.” Looking back at Docʼs professional music career, it might be said that that little Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

banjo his father built for him was the most important thing the elder Watson could have done for his blind son. However, when asked, Doc will say that the most valuable thing his father did for him was put him at the end of a cross-cut saw when he was fourteen years old. In the same Frets magazine article (March 1979), Doc reects on the occasion by saying, “He put me to work and that made me feel useful. A lot of blind people werenʼt ever put to work.” In Bluegrass Unlimited (August 1984) Doc once again remembers that important moment, “He made me know that just because I was blind, certainly didnʼt mean I was helpless.” The condence Docʼs father instilled in him at this young age, by putting him at the end of a crosscut saw, taught him not to be afraid to do anything. Over the years, among other things, he has re-wired his house, built a two room utility building, and he has even been known to climb up on the roof to adjust the TV antenna. Regarding the utility building Doc built completely by himself with a handsaw and mitre box, Docʼs current partner, Jack Lawrence states, “I went there and looked at it and I was amazed. There was no way I could have built anything that looked that good. I was curious and I got a carpenterʼs square and started checking things and that whole building was only a half inch out of square. He is the most amazing man I have ever met in my life in that regard. He is not afraid to tackle most things in life. There is no stopping him when he has his mind set on something.”

the age of ten, he entered the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, North Carolina. In Raleigh, Doc was exposed to classical music and big band jazz, and he also was able to listen to guitar players such as Nick Lucas and Django Reinhardt. When asked about his reaction to hearing the great gypsy jazz guitar player, Doc said, “I couldnʼt gure out what the devil he was doing he went so fast on most of it, but I loved it.” It was while he was away at school that he also began to learn how to play the guitar.

Learning to Play the Guitar One year at school, when Doc was about thirteen, a school friend, Paul Montgomery, had shown him how to play a few chords (G, C and D) on the guitar. A short time later, when Doc was back at home, he was “messing around” with a guitar that his brother Linny had borrowed from a neighbor, Spencer Miller. One morning his father heard him trying to play the guitar and, not knowing that Doc had already learned a few chords, told him that if he could learn to play one song on the guitar by the time he got home from work that evening he would take him down to Rhodes and Dayʼs in North Wilkesboro that Saturday and combine his money with whatever Doc had in his piggy bank and help Doc buy a guitar. Since Doc already knew a few chords, it didnʼt take him long to learn how to accompany himself while singing a simple song. The

Docʼs earliest musical inuences came from his family, church, and neighbors (Carltons, Greers, Younces), however, by the time he was about seven years old his family had acquired a used windup Victrola and a stack of records from his motherʼs brother, Jerome Greene, and Doc was exposed to early county artists such as the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, the Carolina Tar Heels, and Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers. His musical horizons were to broaden again when, at


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song Doc learned to play that day was the Carter Familyʼs “When The Roses Bloom In Dixieland.” That Saturday his father, true to his word, helped Doc buy a twelve dollar Stella guitar. Not long after Doc got his rst guitar he and his brother Linny began learning how to play many of the old time mountain tunes that they had heard growing up, as well as some of the new songs they heard on the Grand Ole Opry. His early performances amounted to playing locally for family and friends. He also began to play music with another local boy named Paul Greer. When asked about his switch from playing the banjo to the guitar in an interview conducted by Dirty Linen magazine (June/July 1995), Doc said, “The banjo was something I really liked, but when the guitar came along, to me that was my rst love in music.” Doc initially learned to just “strum and play” the guitar, using a thumb pick, in order to accompany his singing. His rst attempts to play a bit of lead were in the old Carter Family “thumb lead” style. After he had learned to play the Carter style with a thumbpick, Doc says, “I began to listen to Jimmie Rodgers recordings seriously and 6

I gured, ʻHey, he must be doing that with one of them straight picks.ʼ So I got me one and began to work at it. Then I began to learn the Jimmie Rodgers licks on the guitar. Then all at once I began to gure out, ʻHey, I could play that Carter stuff a lot better with a at pick.” When Doc was seventeen his Stella guitar was replaced with a Silvertone from Sears that Doc paid for by working “at the end of a crosscut saw.” He and his youngest brother, David, cut wood for the tannery. Using the money they had earned, Doc bought a guitar and David bought a new suit of clothes. The guitar came with a book that contained various songs that you could learn to play with a atpick. It had photos of Nick Lucas illustrating how to hold a pick and David showed Doc how the photographs in the book demonstrated the way to hold a atpick. To this day, he still holds his pick as it was illustrated in that book. Docʼs rst Martin guitar was a D-28 that he acquired from a music store in Boone, North Carolina, in about 1940. The store owner, Mr. Richard Green, allowed Doc to make payments on the guitar and gave him a year to pay it off. In order to pay for the guitar, Doc began to play music in the streets. When the weather permitted, Doc would play for tips at a cab stand in Lenoire, North Carolina, sometimes making as much as $50 in a day. He had the guitar completely paid off in four or ve months. The street performing led to Doc being invited to play at some amateur contests and ddlersʼ conventions. It was at one of these local shows that Arthel received the nickname “Doc.” Doc acquired his nickname when he was eighteen years old. He was playing with his friend Paul Greer at a remote control radio show being broadcast from a furniture store in Lenoire. The radio announcer decided that “Arthel” was too long a name to announce on the radio and suggested they think of another name to call him. A young woman in the audience yelled out, “Call him

ʻDocʼ.” The name stuck and has been with him ever since. When Dirty Linen magazine (June/July 1995) asked Doc how he felt about his nickname, he replied, “I didnʼt pay much attention to it. If it hadnʼt happened . . . they probably would have called me Art for short, which is common, you know.” When Doc was around eighteen years old he traveled “way over across the mountain” to meet with an old-time ddler named Gaither Carlton. While he was there he was introduced to Gaitherʼs daughter, Rosa Lee. Since Rosa Lee was eight years younger than Doc, he didnʼt think much of the meeting at the time. However, six years later Gaither moved his family just a half mile down the road from Doc. Doc says, “I went out to their house and Rosa Lee and a neighbor girl were unpacking dishes. She turned around and said, ʻHello, I havenʼt seen you in a long time.ʼ Somebody might as well have hit me with a brick. I lost it. I thought, ʻWhere have I been all these years! There she is!ʼ It was like that, and it still is.” Doc and Rosa Lee were married in 1947. Two years later, in 1949, their son Eddy Merle (named after Eddy Arnold and Merle Travis) was born, followed by their daughter, Nancy Ellen, in 1951.

The Birth of “Flatpicking” After his marriage, Doc began tuning pianos in order to feed his family. It wasnʼt until 1953, when Doc got a job playing electric lead guitar in Jack Williamsʼ country and western swing band, Jack Williams and the Country Gentlemen, that Doc began making money as a professional musician. It was during his eight year stay with Williams that he began to develop his ability to atpick ddle tunes on the guitar. Doc was rst inspired to learn how to play ddle tunes on the guitar after he became frustrated trying to learn how to play the ddle. He had obtained a ddle when he was 18 years old, and says, “I used to try to ddle. I had a ddle for about eighteen months and my bowing hand werenʼt worth a stink. I stopped one day and said, ʻHeck, Iʼm going to sell this thing. I canʼt ddleʼ.” Although the ddle itself frustrated him, Doc liked the bounce and rhythm of the ddle music, so he work to “put some of those tunes on the guitar.” Williamsʼ band did not have a ddle player about 90% of the time, however, the dance halls that hired the band would usually want them to do a square dance set.



Jack Williams, who had heard Doc fooling around with a few ddle tunes on the guitar, suggested that Doc learn how to play lead on some ddle tunes on his electric guitar. Doc said to himself, “If Grady Martin and Hank Garland can do it, so can I.” (Garland and Martin had played some ddle tunes on the electric guitar with Red Foley.) Doc began to learn how to play tunes like “Black Mountain Rag,” “Old Joe Clark,” “Sugarfoot Rag,” and “Billy In The Lowground.” When Doc began playing with Williams he still owned his Martin D-28. He tried to play the Martin with a pick-up installed for a while, but eventually traded it in for a 1953 Les Paul Standard. Later, when the folk revival began, Doc transferred the licks and techniques for playing fiddle tunes on the electric guitar over to the acoustic guitar. Doc recalls, “The technical practice on the electric guitar helped me greatly in learning those ddle tunes. It was harder to do on the at top when I went back to it, but the basics had already been learned.”

The Folk Boom During his time with Williamsʼ band Doc had kept his hand in old-time music by playing with his family and friends, which included Clarence “Tom” Ashley, one of the original members of the Carolina Tar Heels. In 1960, as the “folk boom” was blossoming, two musicologists, Ralph Rinzler and Eugene Earle, traveled to North Carolina to record Ashley. Ashley had gathered together some of the best local musicians, Doc being among them, for Rinzler to record. During that trip Rinzler recorded what was later to be released as Old Time Music at Clarence Ashleyʼs, Volume 1( Folkways, FA2355). Rinzler, who was impressed with Docʼs banjo and guitar playing abilities, went over to the Watson home several days later and recorded Doc playing with Gaither Carlton and several of Docʼs other family members. At the session, Doc and Gaither expressed that they could not believe that people from the Northern cities were interested in their music, which had gone out of style since World War II. Ralph let them listen to a Folkways recording of early “hillbilly” music and Gaither said, “Sounds like old times.” One problem Doc had when Rinzler rst came to record him at Tom Ashleyʼs was that he did not own an acoustic guitar. He suggested to Rinzler that he could play his Les Paul with the volume turned down low. Not crazy about the idea of having an Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

electric guitar on these recordings, Rinzler convinced Doc that it would be best to have an acoustic guitar and so Doc borrowed a Martin D-18 from his friend Joe Cox. Doc says, “That was a ne old D-18. I wish I owned it.” Doc recollects that it was either a 1942 or 1943 model D-18. In 1961 Doc, Gaither, Tom Ashley, Fred Price, and his neighbor Clint Howard traveled to New York to perform a concert sponsored by Friends of Old Time Music. Docʼs guitar breaks were enthusiastically received. The word about this talented group of musicians spread and they were invited to perform at a number of colleges, folk festivals and clubs. With Rinzlerʼs encouragement Doc eventually began to also perform as a solo act, playing mostly coffee houses like Gerdeʼs Folk Club and the Gaslight in New York City while “trying to get a start in the business.” His early career was boosted when he was invited to perform at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and 1964. Rinzler also paired Doc with Bill Monroe together for a number of shows. Doc and Bill traded licks on hot ddle tunes and recreated that old Monroe Brothers sound with their duet singing. Recordings from these shows, which were desirable bootleg items for years, were released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1993 as Bill Monroe and Doc Watson: Live Duet Recordings 1963-1980.

In the very early days of his solo career, Doc traveled by himself on a bus when he


wasnʼt accompanied by Ralph Rinzler. Later, when Rinzler became involved in work that didnʼt allow him to travel, Docʼs life traveling to shows by himself got real tough. However, in 1964, Docʼs life on the road improved considerably when his son Merle joined him as his picking partner.

Doc and Merle Doc has said that when Merle was young he had shown no interest in playing the guitar. However, when he was about 15 years old, Merle had his mother show him a few chords while Doc was away on a road trip. From there Merleʼs playing took off like a rocket. After Doc returned from his road trip, road weary and almost ready to quit, he heard his son play the guitar for the rst time and said, “Son, youʼre going to California with me.” Amazingly, the rst time Merle went on stage with his father he had only been playing the guitar for three months. The rst show Merle performed with his father was the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1964. The rst album Merle played on was Doc Watson & Sonr ecorded (in November 1964), just eight months after he had begun to learn how to pick the guitar. For the rst two years Merle played rhythm and just went out with his dad on weekends and during the summers. When he graduated from high school, he began working with Doc full time. In an article printed in Bluegrass Unlimited m agazine (November 1997), Doc is quoted as saying, “Thereʼs no

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Doc with his current partner Jack Lawrence 7

Doc performing with his grandson Richard Watson way that I could have done the hard part of the dues paying days without Merleʼs driving and help on the road and taking care of business. Most people donʼt realize what it come to. He was doing the hard driving and things I could not do as far as the business.” With Merle on the road with him and Manny Greenhill, of Folklore Productions, booking gigs, Docʼs career began to take off. Although Merle Watson had been listening to his father play the guitar all his life, he did not copy his fatherʼs guitar style. He had his own interests, his own inuences, and his own style. Merle loved the blues and one of his rst inuences was Mississippi John Hurt. He also learned some blues scales from a black bluesman named Jerry Ricks. Merle took what he heard and made it his own. In 1973, inspired by the playing of Duane Allman, Merle began learning how to play the slide. Doc feels that Merle was the most talented picker in the family. In an article printed in Acoustic Guitarm agazine (March/April 1993) Doc says, “What impressed me the most about Merleʼs guitar playing was the tasteful style that he had developed and his ability to learn very quickly.” Doc has a number of interesting stories about Merleʼs ability to play a beautiful solo on a complex tune shortly after learning the melody. While Doc and Merle remain the Watson family musicians who have been in the focus of the publicʼs eye, Docʼs wife Rosa Lee, who was responsible for teaching Merle his rst guitar chords, is also a ne 8

singer and his daughter Nancy plays the hammered dulcimer. When asked about his wifeʼs music, Doc said, “I still think she has the prettiest singing voice I have ever heard. Simple, country, down to earth.” Merleʼs son, Richard, is also a very ne guitar player and has been performing with his grandfather at shows close to home for the past several years.

Landmark Recordings The album that inspired thousands of folk and bluegrass guitarists to lock themselves in their rooms with their turntables slowed down to 16 rpm was recorded in February 1964 on the Vanguard label and simply titled Doc Watson. This album was followed by seven more Vanguard releases: Doc Watson & Son (1965), Southbound (1966), Home Again (1967), Good Deal (1968), Doc Watson On Stage (1970), Ball ads From Deep Gap (1971), and Old Timey Concert (1977). Selected songs from these projects, along with Docʼs performances at the 1963 and 1964 Newport Folk Festivals, can be heard on the 4 CD Vanguard Doc Watson compilation called The Vanguard Years (1995). Incidently, the Martin D-18 that Doc played on the Doc Watson album was the earlier mentioned D-18 he had borrowed from Joe Cox. Doc had actually tried to buy the guitar from Joe, but Joe never wanted to sell it. Doc later acquired a 1945 Martin D-18 from Mark Silber, a store owner in New York City, which he used until the late

1960ʼs when he began playing a Gallagher. The ʻ45 D-18, which Doc played on such great recordings as On Stage and Strictly Instrumental (with Flatt and Scruggs) is currently owned by Jack Lawrence. For those of us who were not fortunate enough, or old enough, to be playing the guitar when Doc Watson recorded his rst Vanguard release, our ears were first graced with the sound of Docʼs voice and guitar on the Will The Circle Be Unbroken album (1972). When Doc was invited to participate in this recording with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and other country and bluegrass legends such as Mother Maybelle Carter, Merle Travis, Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs, and Jimmy Martin, he almost refused at first because his son Merle was not invited to be involved. In an interview printed in Bluegrass Unlimited in November of 1997, Doc explains, “Merle got me off in the corner and said, ʻDad, it did hurt my feelings, but do it. It will get us in audiences that have never heard us before.ʼ He had a head on his shoulders, buddy. Let me tell you that. He said, ʻDo it.ʼ He said, ʻI believe you ought to. It will help us out in the long run even if they didnʼt invite me.ʼ Now that was being a man.” The exposure Doc received as a result of participating on the Will The Circle Be Unbroken LP did exactly what Merle had predicted it would do. Doc and Merleʼs career, which had been in a slight slump, picked up considerably. For a year or two Doc and Merle put together the Frosty Morn Band with Bob Hill, T. Michael Coleman, and Joe Smothers. After that group disbanded Doc and Merle began playing as a trio, with T. Michael Coleman on bass, in 1974. The trio toured the globe during the late seventies and early eighties, recorded nearly fteen albums between 1973 and 1985, and brought Doc and Merleʼs unique blend of old time mountain music, folk, swing, bluegrass, traditional country, gospel, and blues to millions of new fans. Over the past three decades Doc Watson has won Grammie Awards for the following ve projects: Then and Now (Poppy LA002-F, 1974), Two Days in November (Poppy LA210-G, 1974), (both of these albums were reissued by Sugar Hill in 1994), Liv e and Pic kin (United Artists LA943H), Riding the Midnight Train( Sugar Hill 3752, 1986), and On Praying Ground (Sugar Hill 3779, 1990).



The Watsons and Gallagher Guitars Doc Watson has been playing Gallagher guitars since 1968. J.W. Gallagh er, of Wartrace, Tennesse, and his son, Don, had rst met Doc and Merle at a festival in Union Grove, North Carolina in the spring of 1968. On the way home from the festival, J.W. and Don stopped by Docʼs home in Deep Gap and showed Doc several of their guitars. Don Gallagher recalls, “Merle and I were just teenagers. Doc was sitting down playing one of the guitars and said to Merle, ʻSon, come over here and play one of these guitars.ʼ Merle said, ʻI canʼt daddy, there is a ground hog out here. Where is my gun?ʼ ” Doc was impressed by a mahogany G-50 that the Gallaghers had brought with them. That particular guitar had had a crack repaired in its side and thus the Gallaghers had not intended to sell it. J.W. said Doc could keep the guitar and play it as long as he wanted with “no strings attached other than those on the guitar.” The G-50 that Doc was given in 1968, nicknamed “Ole Hoss,” was the one that Doc played on the Will The Circle Be Unbroken album. In a conversation captured on that record between Doc and Merle Travis listeners heard Travis exclaim, “That guitar rings like a bell.” That guitar, which Doc returned to the Gallaghers after receiving his second Gallagher guitar, now rests in the Country Music Hall of Fame. After playing “Ole Hoss” for six years, Doc expressed interest in having a new guitar built which had a neck shaped like his old Gibson Les Paul. The Gallagherʼs built Doc a mahogany guitar with the desired neck and also added appointments such as an ebony ngerboard, voiced bracing, bound headstock and herringbone trim. This guitar was the prototype for the Gallagher Doc Watson model. The guitar Doc currently plays is a cut-a-way that was built by Don Gallagher and delivered to Doc in 1991. Doc has nicknamed this guitar “Donald.” Doc had received his rst Gallagher in April of 1968. Shortly thereafter Merle had expressed interest in one and received his rst Gallagher, a G-40, in October of 1968. At Merleʼs request the Gallaghers also built him a classical guitar in 1973. In 1974 Merle expressed interest in owning a guitar like his fatherʼs, only with a cut-away. The new guitar was delivered to him in September of that year. A second cut-away was built for Merle in 1976 because he Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

wanted to set it up for playing slide guitar. Two other cut-a-way guitars were built for Merle (1977 and 1980).

of that trip. Are you ready to go out and work? So we went back out on the road and that is how Doc dealt with it. He said, ʻMerle would have not wanted me to just lay down and quit on this.ʼ He is a very strong willed man.”

Life Without Merle In October of 1985 tragedy struck the Merlefest Watson family when Merle was killed in a tractor accident at the age of 36. Doc Doc, Jack, and T. Michael Coleman conWatson not only lost his son and partner, tinued to play together until Coleman left he lost, as Doc says, “the best friend I ever to play with the Seldom Scene in October had in this world.” After Merleʼs passof 1987. Since he left, Doc and Jack have ing, Doc found it difcult to go back out continued, to this day, to perform together as and play music, however, in an interview a duo. Although Doc does not tour as much conducted by Acoustic Musicianm agazine as he used to, one event that he has hosted (August 1997), Doc tells the following every April since 1988 in honor of his late story, “The night before the funeral I had son is the Merle Watson Memorial Festival, decided to quit, just give up playing. Well better known as “Merlefest.” Held on the that night I had this dream. Now, usually I campus of Wilkes Community College, the do have some light perception, but in this event was initiated by Docʼs close friend dream it was so dark I could hardly stand Bill Young and the director of development it. It was like I was in quicksand up to my at Wilkes Community College, B. Townes. waist and I felt I wasnʼt gonna make it out Young and Townes wanted to raise money alive. Then suddenly this big old strong to construct a memorial garden in honor hand reached back and grabbed me by the of Merle by putting on a benet concert. hand and I heard this voice saying, ʻCome They approached Doc with the idea and on dad, you can make it. Keep going.ʼ Then I woke up. I think the good Lord was telling me it was all right to continue with my music. Itʼs been a struggle, but I still have the love for the music.” About a year prior to Merleʼs death, he had become road weary and was not going out to perform with his father on many of the road trips. Merleʼs friend Jack Lawrence had been filling in for him and since Merleʼs passing, Jack has been Docʼs consistent partner on the road. Regarding Merleʼs death, Jack recalls, “We were supposed to go out on a two week trip the day after Merle died. I did not know what was going to happen and of course Doc didnʼt either. A couple of days after the funeral, Doc called me and said, ʻI only Doc and Tony Rice picking at Merlefest cancelled the rst week


9

l e t s o b n e d u D n n y L : o t o h P

Docʼs daughter, Nancy, suggested that they also invite other artists, who where close to Merle, to perform. At the rst Merlefest event, the performers played on the back of two atbed trucks to a crowd of about 4,000. In the ten years since the rst Merlefest, the festival has become one of the largest traditional music events on the East coast. The four day event supports 13 stages and the total attendance in 1997 was close to 45,000. Today the performances include a wide range of musical styles including: folk, country, bluegrass, blues, Cajun, Celtic, old-time, gospel, and acoustic jazz. Like Docʼs music itself, there is a little something for everyone to enjoy. One of the highlights of Merlefest for any avid guitarist is the opportunity to see Doc perform with his grandson, Merleʼs son, Richard. While Richard does not actively tour with his grandfather, he does occasionally play dates that are close to home and he can always be found at Merlefest. Of seeing Richard play a set with Doc in 1994, a correspondent from Mother Earth News (February/March 1995) writes: “Like Merle he was quiet, almost shy on stage. Like Merle, he sat on his grandfatherʼs right hand. Doc, especially, notices the similarities. ʻWe sit here and practice and itʼs like looking at Richard and thinking, ʻSon, you favor Merleʼ because Richard loved Merleʼs music and it comes out through his ngers.ʼ

” Richard is indeed his fatherʼs son when it comes to playing the guitar as anyone who has had a chance to hear this young man pick will tell you.

The Doc Watson Guitar Style Docʼs guitar style was certainly founded in the music that inuenced him in his youth. He rst learned to pick following the Maybelle Carter inspired thumb lead. Jimmie Rodgers music inspired him to try to use a “straight pick.” The playing of Hank Garland and Grady Martin introduced him to ddle tune leads on the guitar. He loved Riley Puckettʼs rhythm work and he worked to copy the “ripply licks” of Ernest Tubbʼs guitar player Fay “Smitty” Smith. Then there was the inuence of Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, and the Delmore Brothers. In an interview conducted by Acoustic Guitar magazine (March/April 1993) Doc says, “I guess I liked every guitar player that I listened to, but thereʼs some at the top of the list, like Chet, Merle, Smitty, Hank Garland . . . I like George Benson pretty much. And my son, Merle, of course. He was the best slide player I ever heard in my life.” While the aforementioned inuences put ideas in Docʼs mind, I think that the music he makes with his guitar can be primarily attributed to the traditional music that he grew up hearing around his home. His wide ranging repertoire certainly does not

conne itself to that music, however, the feeling, intensity, personality, and character of any tune Doc Watson plays comes from that place. It was there at home that Doc learned how to play from the heart and therefore, make the music his own. In an interview conducted by Ron Stanford in August of 1970 and printed, in part, in the introduction to the Oak Publications book The Songs of Doc Watson, Doc is quoted as saying, “When I play a song, be it on the guitar or banjo, I live that song, whether it is a happy song or a sad song. Music, as a whole, expresses many things to me—everything from beautiful scenery to the tragedies and joys of life. . . . Whether Iʼm playing for myself or for an enthusiastic audience, I can get the same emotions I had when I found that Dad had seen to it that Santa Claus brought exactly what I wanted for Christmas. A true entertainer, I think, doesnʼt ever lose that feeling.” Later, in an interview printed in Fretsm agazine (March 1987), Doc says, “There are so many players that play for show; and then there are some that play for the love. Man, you sure can tell the difference when you sit down and listen to them.” Playing for the love of music is what has sustained Doc Watson through the ups and downs of a professional career that has spanned nearly 50 years.

Texas Gales On the three pages which follow, we provide a transcription of Doc Watsonʼs break to “Texas Gales” from Docʼs Ballads From Deep Gap album. This break was transcribed by Steve Kaufman and will appear with many other of Docʼs tunes in Steveʼs upcoming Doc Watson anthology book to be published by Mel Bay Publications. This book will not only feature a complete Doc Watson biography with photographs, each tune will also be preceeded by a short interview with Doc, conducted by Steve, about each of the tunes. Here is the conversations Steve had with Doc regarding “Texas Gales.”

Steve: OK . . . “Texas Gales” from Ballads From Deep Gap. When and where did you learn this one? Doc: I learned “Texas Gales” from Charlie Bowmanʼs ddlinʼ. Do you know who he is? o, Iʼve just heard of him. Steve:N Doc: He played with Al Hawkins and the Buckle Busters on some of the old 78 records. They did “Texas Gales” on one side of the 78 and “Goinʼ Down The Road Feeling Bad” on the other side.

10

Steve: There is some confusion on the title . . . some people call it “Texas Gals.” Doc: Yeah . . . it was originally “Texas Gales.” “Texas Gals” . . . it would t ʻem I reckon. With the lilting little dance tempo . . . I love the way that thing goes. I was bent and compelled to learn that thing on the guitar. Thatʼs the only tune I heard that I almost got ahead of Chet (Atkins) on. We did that on Reections.

the whole damn album. We just knocked it out. We heard him call his wife and she said, “Well what did you do yesturday?” He said, “We threw that out.”

Steve: Thatʼs a great recording. How did that Reections come about? Doc: Chet called me one day and said, “Doc Watson, would you like to make an album together?” I said, “God, I donʼt know man . . . Iʼve always looked up to you . . . Iʼm afraid Iʼd feel like I was in your shadow.” And he said, “Aw hell, donʼt feel that way about it.” I think he felt as bothered about the idea as I did because, you know, there was something about my playinʼ as the way he plays and the virtuoso he is on the guitar. I couldnʼt understand why, but I think we bothered each other the rst day we went in there. We just got used to one anotherʼs pickinʼ. And the next day, in a session and a half, we did

Steve: So one day I asked Jethro how they ever told them apart and he said, “Oh, we never tried to.” (Doc has a great laugh). Doc: I think I met Chetʼs wife just breiy. Just enough to say “hello” once and I never me Jethroʼs wife, but they were pretty straight laced girls, both of them form what I could hear. And oh, they loved one another. She went and stayed with Jethroʼs wife until she checked out. And it wasnʼt long until Jethro hand to go too.

Steve: I used to work with Jethro Burns a little and he told me that he and Chet were married to identicle twins. Doc: They were.

Special Thanks to Steve Kaufman and Mel Bay Publications for allowing us to print this text and tab.



Flatpick Prole Jim Nunally by Dan Miller

If there were ever an award given out for the most tasteful atpicker on the planet, I think Jim Nunallyʼs name would have to be on the list of nominees. While there are atpickers who like to keep their audience on the edge of their seats with dazzling hot licks played at blazing speeds, and others who make us shake our head in amazement with their technical skill and dexterity by working out difcult runs and complex chords up and down the guitar neck, I would not categorize Jim Nunallyʼs style among either of those two groups of aforementioned artists. I put Jim in a third category of pickers - a group who donʼt always shoot off a lot of reworks, but are always solid, steady, clean, consistent, tasteful, and “in the pocket.” Iʼll admit that I am constantly in awe of the speed demons and the technologists and I love to watch them work their magic on stage, at a workshop, or in a jam session. However, to me, listening to someone like Jim Nunally play guitar is like putting on an old pair of comfortable shoes - it seems to t just right. It is the kind of music that I love to listen to while sitting out on the front porch on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon. I was not surprised to nd out that this w as exactly the kind of atmosphere where Jim learned to play. Jim Nunally learned how to play the guitar from his father, who, while a young boy growing up in Arkansas, had learned from his own father. The music they played was traditional country music and it is still very much alive in Jimʼs playing today. Listening to Jim and his partner Dix Bruce, one is reminded of the Delmore Brothers, the Monroe Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, and other early country duos. In fact, their CD From Fathers To Sonsi s a tribute to the music they had both learned from earlier generations of family members. Jim grew up in Concord, California, and rst made an attempt at playing the guitar when he was about eight years old, but he gave it up after a month. When he was about fourteen he came home and saw his father teaching his older brother how to play. Jim says, “I couldnʼt have him doing something that I couldnʼt do. So it was sibling rivalry that got me started again.” Jimʼs dad taught him songs like “Wildwood Flower,” “Old 16

Paint” and other old standard country tunes. Jim began to immerse himself in learning how to play the guitar and within a year he met his second early inuence, Bob Smith. Bob Smith was a local atpicker and banjo player who played in a bluegrass band in San Jose, California, with a guitar player named Tony Rice. Tony was living in California at the time and while he was playing in David Grismanʼs band, he also played in a local bluegrass band, Sweetwater, with Darol Anger, Bob Smith, and others. Jim had begun to play music with a friend of his family, Pat Dorn, who was learning how to play dobro. Pat is a ne guitarist and Jim started learning some of his music by picking with him. Jim and Pat decided it would be more fun to pick if they could add a banjo player to their jam. Jim put ads up around the community in search of someone who played the banjo. Bob Smith saw the ad in a laundry mat and gave Jim a call. Jim recalls, “It turned out that he lived just around the corner from where I was living at the time, so I strapped on my guitar, hopped on my ten speed and rode over to his house. He started showing me some stuff and we got to talking. I told him that my friend Pat Dorn had taken me to a bluegrass show in San Francisco and I had seen a guy who was the best guitar player I had ever heard. Bob said, ʻWas it Tony Rice?ʼ I said, ʻYea!ʼ and Bob told me that Tony was in his band in San Jose.” Bob Smith had a copy of Tony Riceʼs rst album and some tapes of Tony playing with Sweetwater. Bob wanted to teach Jim how to back up the banjo and so he would let Jim listen to the tapes and point out the way Tony was doing it. This was Jimʼs rst introduction to bluegrass. At this point in time Jim was playing a few leads, however, most of his attention was placed on learning to play rhythm. Jim says, “I really focused on rhythm for a long time. I jumped into playing bluegrass with a bunch of guys

who were really good, so it took me a while to get into the atpicking. Eventually Bob started showing me solos to songs like ʻSalt Creek,ʼ that is when I started getting into the atpicking.” When asked what kind of things he worked on to improve his rhythm playing Jim says, “My dad was a really good rhythm player. I think that the natural sense of rhythm that I have comes from him. I had always attributed my rhythm style to listening to so much of Tonyʼs rhythm playing. Later on, I was playing on a record and the producer said, ʻIʼm really glad that I had you on this record because your rhythm playing is great.ʼ I told her that it was because I listened to a lot of Tony Rice. She said, ʻThat is not who it sounds like though. You really sound like you.ʼ I got together with my dad that week and played and realized, ʻGosh, I sound like him!ʼ He and I have the same sense of time and the same sound. The natural sense of timing came from playing with him. When he was teaching me how to play the guitar, there was no discrepancy about where the time was. It was always good.” The rst three record albums that Jim owned were: a Bill Monroe “greatest hits” record, a Flatt and Scruggs recording The Versatile Flatt and Scruggs, and one of Tony Riceʼs albums. He says, “I listened a lot to Lester Flatt and Tonyʼs rhythm playing. I had these really great records right at the beginning. I sat there with my record player in my room and wore that stuff out.” These bluegrass recordings, jamming and learning from Bob Smith, and playing guitar with his father all fell upon Jim at the about the same period of time. He was still only fteen years



old and immersed in what amounted to a rhythm guitar college. When Jim was seventeen he joined a band called Spur of the Moment. He had met a guy, named John Blasquez, at an old time ddlerʼs convention who was learning to play the ddle. Jim and John started getting together to jam and formed a band with mandolin player Steve Varner, banjo player Phil Allen and bass player Steve Swan. Subsequently he also met a group of guys who played in a band called Wild Ride and joined in with them on rhythm guitar. Jim says, “I have always felt that I was really lucky to get to play with all of these really great players right from the ʻget go.ʼ I think it had to do with my dad having shown me how to play really good rhythm. Those guys were more into playing with someone who had good rhythm than somebody who was a real hot atpicker because they were all soloists.” While he was playing rhythm guitar with his rst couple of bands, Jim started to teach himself how to atpicking leads by listening to records at home. When he was eighteen he went to trade school to learn how to become a welder and subsequently got a job welding for a steel company. Around this same time he began jamming 2 or 3 nights a week with some friends, Paul Nester and Jerry Szostak, who insisted that Jim take solos during the jam sessions. At that point Jim became real serious about learning how to play lead guitar. Jim says, “I already new some lead solos, but I didnʼt know how to do improvisation. These guys were really into picking and were good at it. It was playing with those guys that I started learning how to improvise. They would just sit there in the living room and when your turn came around you were expected to play a solo just like everybody else, no matter what kind of tune it was.” As Jim began getting more comfortable with lead playing, he began to perform leads more often on stage with his various bands. In early 1983, Jim began playing with a band called Heartland. The band featured Amy Stenberg, Debby Cotter, John Blasquez, and Tom Enguidanos. Jim said, “They really had the singing down. Amy, Debbie, and Tom had been playing together a lot and they had had a lot of good players from around here in the band. When John and I joined the band it solidied into a working band and we started playing a lot. I decided to quit welding when I was with them and I began playing music full time.” Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

Jim stayed with Heartland from 1983 through 1989. During the late 1980ʼs, as band members moved in and out, Jim got a chance to play in the band with people like Rob Ickes, Tony Furtado, and Alison Brown. Jim and Alison also began performing on the side as a duet featuring twin guitar music. While working in the studio on Tony Furtadoʼs rst album, Jim met Mike Marshall and Mike was very impressed with Jimʼs rhythm work. Mike began referring Jim for other sessions including the soundtracks for a Snoopy cartoon “Snoopyʼs Reunion” for CBS (yes, Snoopy atpicks!) and the Beverly Hillbillies movie. The session work that Jim was doing in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to an interest in work as a recording engineer. Jim enrolled in a two year recording arts program at the same college where he had gone to welding school. He currently has his own home recording studio and frequently works in both Darol Angerʼs and Mike Marshallʼs studios. While Jim was performing with Alison Brown, he met Dix Bruce and the two began to pick together casually. Later, Dix began to invite Jim to back him up at some of his shows. In 1992, Jimʼs father passed away and his fatherʼs passing made him realize how much he missed performing with just two guitars. Jim and Dix began playing together more and more and eventually decided to record a CD. The result was their acclaimed recording From Fathers to Sons. Dix and Jim continue to perform together and have recently recorded another project which contains mostly original vocal music. In addition to working behind the sound board as an engineer and performing with Dix Bruce, Jim is also a sought after guitar teacher. He doesnʼt actually advertise himself as such, however, students at all levels often seek his advice and direction through private lessons. I conducted a short interview with Jim regarding his approach to teaching students how to atpick:

What is your approach to teaching? I encourage students to sing and, once they are singing, I encourage them to gure out the melodies. Many of the students I see already sing and play rhythm and they are interested in learning how to atpick. I say, “Letʼs try to gure out some of these solos based on what you are singing.” I have them gure out the straight melody that they are singing and then nd that melody


A Workshop On

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for: Bluegrass Guitar

14 techniques 39 tunes, 70 breaks “ Highly Recommended” says Acoustic Musician Magazine (August, 1996)

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on the guitar. I teach all of the students by ear and get them into soloing by rst getting them to identify the melody that they are singing.

Once they get to the point where they are pretty good at hunting out the melody on the guitar, how do you teach them how to ll in the notes that are played between the melody notes that make it a cohesive atpicked solo? That is when you get into playing licks and leading tones. Also involved in this is learning how to play around the melody. In other words, playing notes that work good in the chord structure and hint at the melody. What it comes down to is experimentation. I work with them on rst playing melodies and then listening to me playing an improvisation on that melody. Then I will show them how I did the improvisation and they will get some ideas from me. I will gradually add things to the melody like hammer-ons, pull-offs and things like that, then they start incorporating that into their solo. Or maybe I will play a different timing or phrasing than they did on their straight melody, or I will change the melody to a combination of melody and harmony notes. They can then get ideas from my improvisation and start incorporating that into their basic melody. When I give lessons we always play the songs together. It is the way my dad taught

me. When I learned a song I would rst learn the rhythm part, then I would back him up while he played the lead. After a while I would start playing those leads that he was playing and he would back me up and eventually we would go further and further with the same tune. That is the way I teach the students.

Do you ever have anyone come in and say, “Jim I just want to learn how to be a better rhythm player?” If so, how do approach that student? I usually sit with them and watch them play tunes they feel like they are having trouble with. We then hone in on places where I think they can improve either their timing or their technique. I really check it out and see where the trouble spots are. Once a atpicker gets to a certain point, it gets down to a renement of detail. It is such minute stuff. We really get into it and learn how to really loosen up the right hand and relax at those really fast bluegrass tempos. If you are a atpicker playing really fast rhythm through the banjo solo, the ddle solo, the dobro solo, and then here comes your solo and youʼve been playing this hard driving rhythm the whole time. You have to work on coming right out of your rhythm into the solo. The transition from the rhythm to the solo and then from the solo back into the rhythm are really key spots to iron out. I think a lot

Flatpicking ‘98

Featuring 20 of todayʼs best atpicking guitarists: • James Alan Shelton • Dan DeLancey • Charles Sawtelle • Richard Bennett • • Russ Barenberg • Bryan Sutton • Sean Watkins • Larry Sparks • Richard Starkey • • Luke Bulla • Craig Vance • Adam Granger • Jimmy Haley • Orrin Star • • Mike Maddox • Jim Nunally and Dix Bruce • Chris Jones • • Jeff Autry • John McGann • Joe Carr •

of players run into trouble there because they donʼt practice those transitions. One of the things I have always worked on is practicing my rhythm along with my lead on every tune.

What do you recommend to students who have timing problems? I think timing is something that you have to feel and if you play with people that have good timing, it helps your timing. I think that if you want to get good timing you get one of these great bluegrass records by Flatt and Scruggs, J. D. Crowe, Tony Rice, or other records that have great rhythm bands, and play along with them. If you want to work on your timing, get one of those Bluegrass Album Band records and play that stuff from beginning to end. When a solo comes along, play a solo with whoever is playing that solo. If you nd yourself getting off time, keep practicing until you get it right. Jim Nunally owns two Martin guitars. A 1946 Martin D-18 and a 1978 D-28. He travels with the D-28 while he will usually use the D-18 in the studio. He prefers a tortoise shell pick and DʼAddario J-17 strings. On the following pages, we present Jimʼs break to “Sally Goodin.”

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine Presents:

Flatpicking ‘98 Featuring 20 tunes that have been transcribed and presented in the second volume of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

A Great Flatpicking Guitar Sampler! Send a check or money order for $15 (includes paostage costs) to: Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, PO Box 2160, Pulaski, VA 24301 or call 800-413-8296

Listen to Want You Have Been Reading! 18



Sally Goodin (con’t)

œ œ œ œ œ . œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ # œ œ œ œ J & J J J . . J J J J ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œ # & œ D

G

D

G

26

7

5 8

7

0

8 10

7 8 10

10 10 8 7 10 8 7

10

7

8 10

7 8 10 7 8

G

10

7

0

8 10 7 8

D

G

31

8 10

20

7

8 10

10 8

7 10 8

7

10

7

8 10

7

8 10 7

8

10

7


8 10 7

8

0


œ œ œ œ œ œ#œ œ Flatpick Rhythm Guitar H.O.

3

0

1

2

0

2

0

0

by Joe Carr

“Off Chords” or Barred Chords, Them Danged Ol’ Hard Chords F

I rst heard the term “off chords” from some of my early picking friends. I learned it meant any unusual chord “outside” of the normal 1-4-5 progression. In the key of G for instance, E minor (6) and A minor (2) might be called “off chords.” Of course in the key of G, F (b7) and B minor (3) could also use the name. As I learned more about music I came to expect certain possible outside chords in a given key. These chords, I learned later, are derived from the major scale of the key in which the song is played. For example, here is the G major scale: G A B C D E F# G. Each note of the scale can be harmonized and it results in this chord progression: 1) G major, 2) A minor, 3) B minor, 4) C major, 5) D major, 6) E minor, 7) F#dim, 1) G major — Go ahead and play it, Iʼll wait. This works in every key. I began to notice that the “off chords” were usually one of the chords derived from the scale of the key. So now, when I try to learn the chords to a new song and an “off chord” appears, I naturally try out several of the chords derived from the scale. For example, (in G again) if I hear a minor sounding chord, Iʼll try out E (6), A (2) or B (3). In many cases, the chord Iʼm looking for will be one of these. Other columns in this magazine address these issues more completely, so check it out. Once you nd the chord you need, you have to form it with your ngers. Some of these chords are difcult, but many chord books make them harder than they need to be. Letʼs look at F for instance. I seldom if ever play a full barred F chord at the rst fret. In example one I offer some options I have seen professionals use. Each variation has its own advantages and applications. The B minor shape (second fret) is used in the first four frets for Bb, B, C, and C# minor chords, In the books it is often shown as a six string barred chord. YEOW! Most often I play this chord with the rst nger curved rather than fully attened. The tip of my rst nger plays the fth Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

Example 1

X

T

1

X

X

X

1

1

2

2

2

3 4

(3) 3

X

1

2

F add 9

F

F

X

4 (3) 3

3

( ) = Alternate bass note

Example 2

Bm

Bm

X

1

(1) 1

(1) 1 2

2 3 4

4

3


Example 3 Bb

Bb

Bb X

(1) 1

(1) 1

(1) 1

X

X

4

3

3 2 4


string B note while the side of the rst nger only frets two strings — the fth and the rst. If I want a secondary bass note, I move the tip of the rst nger over to the sixth string second fret F# note. If the song stays in B minor for a while, Iʼll continue to alternate with the rst nger — much, much easier than a full barre. Sometimes to simplify this chord even more, Iʼll mute the rst string with the side of the rst nger and just use strings 2,3 and 4 for the chord. See example two. A third shape that causes problems is the rst fret Bb chord. Iʼve seen this chord diagramed as a six string chord. Good luck with a D-28 and medium strings! I use the tip of my rst nger on the fth string and fret strings 4, 3, and 2 with my fourth nger. Many of you will nd that a barre with the third nger (ring) works for you,


but since my third nger will not collapse the way most peopleʼs ngers do, I use my fourth nger. Most often I mute out the rst string so that Iʼm only playing strings 4, 3, and 2 as the chord. I can then alternate the fth and sixth strings for bass notes. See example three. On the following pages I have provided the rhythm and lead to “Keep a Light on in the Window” a great Ed Marsh song from my new CD with Alan Munde Welcome to West Texas. Use the above information to help out with the F and Bb chords.

21

Keep A Light On in the Window - Rhythm Guitar

Verse III

œœ œœ # 4 . & 4 œœ œ œ œ œ . G

1

3 3 0 0

3 3 0

0

3

œœ # & œœ œ œ# œ œ 3 3 0 0

œœ # & œœ œ 3 3 0 0 3

S 3 4

2

3

G

# &

D

H

0 3

H

0 3

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3

1 1 2 3

0

2 3 2

H

H

0 2

0

0

3 3 0 0

G

C

1

3 3 0 0

2 3 2

S 3 4

0 1 0 2

0 1 0 2

3

3

2 3 2

0

0 1 0 2

0 1 0 2 3

œœ œœ œ

œœ œœ

3 3 0 0

3 3 0 0

0

3

C

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23

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DAVID WEBBER GUITARS by Todd De Groff

David Webber wants his guitars to play “lightly.” “If vintage guitars have a characteristic style and response, itʼs that they play ʻlightly,ʼ” Webber notes. “Theyʼre often light in weight, and they respond lightly and sensitively. Thatʼs how I build my guitars-to play lightly, like a vintage guitar.” Webberʼs start in the world of guitarbuilding had an unlikely entry point. In 1988, after four years of work, David completed a 32-foot cutter-rigged sailboat. He found himself with a highly developed set of wood working skills, a shop full of tools, and a lot of idle time on his hands. The idle time was the result not only of nishing the sailboat, but of winding down his career as a diver. For more than 15 years, Webber dived on construction projects, oil rigs, and other jobs in the North Sea, Africa, the Mediterranean, and almost everywhere else in the world. “I couldnʼt build another boat because it was too expensive and I already had one. (laughs) But I had to put my energy somewhere. I was playing a cheap guitar and felt I needed a better one, a classical, so I went to a store and looked at them. After looking them over I decided I could do that. So I did,” Webber recalls.

When did you build your rst guitar? 1988. What kind was it? A classical. Why did you pick a classical? Because I needed one. Or thought I needed one (laughs).

English guy. I suspect he built about 6 guitars and then wrote a book about his experiences. (laughs) After Iʼd sort of learned to do it, Cumpianoʼs book came out, which I nd to be the next best text.

Did you actually spend time in anyoneʼs shop? No, but I had access to Jean Larriveeʼs shop. I never built in Jeanʼs shop, but he was generous and would always answer my questions. Did you ever apprentice with or work for anyone? No. Never worked in the instrument-bulding eld. So how long have you been building for a living, or building full-time, assuming youʼre still not making a living at it? No. (laughs) I guess 5 or 6 years. There was never really a denite line. I havenʼt gone back to diving for about 3 years. How long have you had a shop? Iʼve been there at my current location for 3 years. Before that I had my first shop in North Vancouver for probably ve years. That was when Robb Eagle (Guitar Emporium, Seattle, Webberʼs rst American dealer) started handling my guitars.

How and where did you learn to build? Osmotically.

How many guitars have you built to date? I just built number 400 the other day.

And how did you absorb knowledge osmotically? By reading all the books I could get.

How many guitars do you build a year? About 10 per month.

Whose books did you read? I read the Irving Sloane book, but Doubtre was the one I actually used to build my rst guitar. Itʼs not a bad book. Heʼs an Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

About 120 a year? Thatʼs what Iʼm doing at the moment. Last year we did 93.


Where do they go? All over North America, all over the place. Iʼve got dealers in Seattle, California, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, the East Coast. Itʼs all on the website! (laughs) You work with one assistant? Yes, just a two-person shop. My assistant is a young luthier named Shelley Park. Besides working for me, Shelley is getting a reputation in her own right as a builder of Macafferi-type guitars. You use a computerized milling machine for certain tasks? Yes. I think weʼre unique in being the smallest shop to use a CNC machine. I call it “Igor.” Itʼs a Techno Isel computer controlled router that we run with Mastercam brand software. What led you to try it in the rst place? Hand carving ten necks at a time and making 25 bridges at a time. It leads one to say, “Thereʼs got to be a better way.” Because thatʼs just plain boring. So now Igor rough-carves necks and bridges, and cuts out inlay for us. 25

Were you also motivated by the uniformity you can get from the machine? Yes. When youʼre doing them by hand, you realize that the last batch of necks felt like this, and this batch feels like that, and you canʼt remember what theyʼre supposed to feel like. Plus, if cost is no object, then who cares? But cost is an object, so if you want to sell ʻem, they canʼt all be $10,000 guitars. All the critical tasks, such as shaping the braces, thinning the tops, and of course, assembling the instruments, are done by hand. What sets your guitars apart, in terms of construction and bracing? Well, everything is curved. There are no straight lines on my guitars. The back, for example, is curved in both the X and Y axes; itʼs almost cupped. The primary function of this is structural, but it also affects tone and responsiveness. But structure comes rst. If it doesnʼt hang together, itʼs no use. The top bracing is all cut on a radius so when the instrument is under tension the bracing and top match perfectly. I also match each set of backs and sides with a particular top at the start and then adjust the proportions of the bracing according to the properties of the top. Also, thereʼs virtually no plastic on my guitars. Do you use different bracing for different models? The bracing pattern is the same, but itʼs modied in the way itʼs scalloped. In general, itʼs the same pattern, but its proportions have changed. Do your cutaways demand a different pattern? No, other than the fact that almost half the top is cut off! Have your designs been inspired by anyone in particular? Only Martin, I would say. Iʼve purposely tried not to copy, but you inevitably end up following certain patterns because itʼs all been done before. What models do you build? Just about everything. My most popular model, and only truly original body shape in my line, is the Webber roundbody. The rest arenʼt really original, but theyʼre denitely not copies. The Roundbody has an hourglass shape with a rounded lower bout. Itʼs a medium-depth guitar, and is available in non-cutaway, soft-cutaway, or sharp 26

cutaway. Itʼs also available in almost any combination of materials. My customers and dealers tell me itʼs the most versatile model, but I barely play these things, how would I know? (laughs uproariously)

Well, donʼt you have a lot of nerve to build them, then? No, no, any fool can build ʻem! (laughs) What other models? Well, my dreadnaught shows my preference for evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary, design changes. From the front it looks like the traditional pattern, but the body is 4 1/2” deep at the bottom bout, not 4 7/8 to 5”, which I nd makes a huge difference in terms of projection, presence, and mid-and upper register response. They mike and record well but still seem to have the low-end you expect from a dreadnaught. Theyʼre also available in a non-cut or cutaway. I build an OM, available in non-cutaway or soft-shouldered, rounded cutaway, thatʼs extremely versatile. A great recording guitar, my customers report. I also build a OOO-12 fret, and Iʼve had some fun building variations that Martin never thought of. For example, I recently built one with a solid peghead, narrow neck, Western red cedar top, and amed maple back & sides. It turned out great. I build a OO grand concert thatʼs a particularly good guitar for ngerstylists. Years ago I started building a 12-fret parlor guitar, about the size of a single-O, and I still really like that size guitar. Itʼs got a really musical tone. Iʼm not sure what my customers use them for, but I like them! (laughs) I just started building a jumbo, 16” across the bottom bout, and I think this will be quite popular. It should be good for about any kind of music. The shape is roughly based on a tracing I took from an old Recording King archtop. I also build a classical, more or less a Hauser pattern utilizing a modied Bouchet bracing pattern, and have recently started making that available in a cutaway as well as regular body. What vintage features have you tried? The vee-neck, herringbone, all the purings that were available. In the end you invent your own style or what you like, anyway. And hopefully the public likes it, too.

What, if anything, have you tried to copy in terms of sound from vintage instruments? Not trying to copy, exactly, but trying to get a new guitar that sounds like a vintage instrument. Ainʼt that the trick? (laughs) “Vintage, out of the box!” Do you think alternate tunings, which are widely utilized, especially in New Age Music, require a different sound or a style of response, and have you specically tried to aim toward that? No, Iʼve tried to build guitars that can be played in an alternate tuning without going completely out of whack whenever you drop the “D.” In other words, Iʼve tried to address the technical problems to enable the players to take care of the musical problems on their own terms. What are you proudest of in your guitars? Iʼm proudest of the workmanship, I think, but never quite satised with it. Thatʼs what I like, and thatʼs what I look for in othersʼ guitars. Among modern builders, whose workmanship do you admire? Well, lots of people are doing good work, including Jean Larrivee, Richard Hoover (Santa Cruz Guitars), Jim Goodall, Ted Thompson, and others, but in my opinion, Bill Collings stands out. In terms of construction, heʼs denitely raised the goal posts. Billʼs stuff is very tidy. Whatʼs your preferred material for top wood? Sitka. Itʼs strong and reliable. I donʼt necessarily buy into the idea of ranking top woods in a status hierarchy. I believe the European builders originally used German spruce for tops because thatʼs what they had, and Martin used Adirondack spruce in the old days because it was the local wood. In my opinion, they all would have used Sitka if theyʼd been able to get it. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, builders didnʼt have ready access to Alaska and Pacic Coast Sitka. Is Sitka consistent? No, itʼs completely inconsistent, they all are. But itʼs wiry and tough, thatʼs why I like it. I like Engelmann for its looks, itʼs easily driven and is my favorite for nylonstring guitars. Both spruces vary widely in



terms of stiffness, color, and density. You try to apply absolute rules to them and they keep resisting. (laughs) I like Western red cedar for its tone, but its just not very strong, itʼs the lightest and softest top wood I use. It warms up the tone of a guitar and seems to work well with maple guitars. Cedar also responds well to nylon strings and sounds good even when itʼs rst strung up. I like them all in some ways and hate them all in others. They all have their attributes and uses.

What are your preferred back and side materials for the big guitars like the dreadnaughts? Rosewood, mahogany, and sapele, which Iʼve started to use a bit more frequently. Sapele is an African mahogany that often has a beautiful curly, shimmering appearance. Probably for my personal taste, mahogany and then rosewood, but I donʼt build for my personal taste that much. For a roundbody? Rosewood and spruce, but actually, a roundbody works with just about everything. What about more exotic woods like Macassar ebony? Iʼve built two or three of those. They were all big, dry-sounding guitars. Iʼve built, and will build, with just about any material. Some materials make a radically heavy guitar, and Iʼll warn the customer about what sheʼs getting into, but Iʼve used all the rosewoods, Indian, Bolivian, Brazilian, Honduran, Santos, and Cocobolo, as well as Big leaf maple, Koa, Oregon myrtle, Macassar ebony, Sapele, Black Walnut, Claro Walnut, Tasmanian backwood, Western yew, Padauk, Zebrawood, and Purple heart. I recently got some Black limba wood, and Iʼm really curious to see what kind of guitar it makes. I try to use a piece of w ood on the guitar on which it best ts. For example, a piece of wood might look good on a round body pattern, but would look silly on a OO. The smaller pattern would cut off all the interesting stuff. So you let the wood dictate the kind of guitar itʼs going to end up as? Yes. Quite often, Iʼll ask, ʻWell what does this back and side set need for a top?ʼ And you discover that this top will complement that back and side set, and you end up with a package. Then you assemble it and go Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

ʻWhat, I never knew it was going to sound like that!ʼ (laughs) The more I do it the less I know for sure. What kind of nish do you use? In the past Iʼve used nitrocellulose, precatalyzed lacquers, water-based products, ultraviolet-cured stuff and almost everything else, but I currently use a high-gloss polyester on the body, satin nish on the back of the neck, and a glossy nish on the head plate. Contrary to some misconceptions, I donʼt think thereʼs anything inherently evil about polyester, or morally superior about other nishes. Sure, a factory can quickly apply a heavy polyester nish and ship the guitar two days later, but you can also apply it thinly, let it cure properly for four weeks, thin it by sanding it, and buff it out. My experience is that this nish is acoustically transparent, resists checking in cold weather, and gets a lovely amber color as it ages. I use a semi--gloss or satin version of the same stuff for the backs of the necks. For more information on Webber guitars, check out Davidʼs website at www.webberguitars.com, or contact Webber Guitars at 1385A Crown St., North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V7N 3B5, (604) 980-0315.

Learn the tunes and solos of your choice, in any format. The Original Custom Transcription Service

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28



Flatpicking Flatpicking & & Folk/Acoustic Folk/Acoustic Rock Rock

THE DEFINITIVE SOURCEBOOK!

GRANGERʼS FIDDLE TUNES FOR GUITAR

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Keeping Context in Context Hey all you atpickers out there, howʼs your summer going? Are you playing everyday? Building those calluses up? Working on the left hand? No slacking just because its nice outside. This time out lets talk about context. Thatʼs what surrounds whatever particular thing weʼre paying attention to at the time. The context of a given situation can radically alter ones approach or response to it. For example, performing quiet, sensitive songs of love, longing and redemption on the acoustic guitar in the context of a loud, inebriated bar crowd would no doubt result in a rapid reassessment of oneʼs song selection! Conversely, pounding out rowdy sing a longs and drinking songs to a rapt circle of receptive and respectful folk fans would be equally inappropriate. However extreme these examples may be, context is the key to both. What we need to strive for is recognizing the more subtle contextual clues that surround us as we transverse our musical terrain. Well developed musicians all share the ability to absorb these contextual clues in an intuitive, almost unconscious way and respond to them as they occur. Try to be alert to the nuances inherent in any given song or piece of music and lot your playing reect that. For instance, a ery , amenco-inspired solo for “Mexico” by James Taylor perhaps? A languid slide solo for that slow blues tune? Smokin, string-bending Stevie Ray Vaughn licks in “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”? I donʼt think so . . . In the July/August ʻ98 issue, I mentioned the fth example in my article as containing some of the basic elements of the wonderful Beatles song “Blackbird.” This is just one of the many enduring, wholly acoustic songs from the minds of Lennon and McCartney and one that deserves a spot in every guitarists repertoire. Therefore, using the clues provided in exercise ve of the last issue, Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

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your homework this issue is to gure out “Blackbird” by ear-atpick style. I realize how radical it is to ask you all to learn a nger picked song in a magazine on atpicking. So, Iʼll be coming around to each of your homes to see how youʼre coming along. Iʼm not a vegetarian and will drink almost any wine. Iʼve also included tab and notation for a “starter” atpicked solo example. After youʼve gotten the song down, record it or teach it to a friend and play the solo I have provided over the verse section. This solo kicks of with a simple statement of the melody, followed by a second position G major arpeggio with embellishment added. Then, in measure 4, a lower interval G major arpeggio that leads us back to the melody, nishing with a snazzy descending G scale with some 12 fret harmonics for topping. Mmmmm, delicious! And rather contextually appropriate, wouldnʼt you say? Use this solo as a template for your own variations. You can make it as simple (strict restatement of the melody) or as fancy (16th notes galore, hammer-ons and pull-offs and grace notes and bent notes and, etc., etc.) as you want as long as you remember, above (and behind and around) all else, the (you guessed it!) Context! Until the next issue, keep on pickinʼ and keep on grinninʼ.


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30



Kaufman’s Corner by Steve Kaufman Dixie Hoedown In keeping with tradition through out the last several issues I have chosen yet another banjo tune to illustrate the art of Flatpicking. I understand that this issue is dedicated to one of the greatest atpickers of all time- Doc Watson. Most if not all of the songs in this issue are related to Doc in some way and this one is no exception. I played this tune with the cousin of a friend of the brother that sat in the same room with Doc while he played this tune. Now letʼs take a look at the arrangement. The rst places of warning are where youʼll nd hammer-ons in a nest of eighth notes. Whichever way you hit the first eighth note of the hammer on is the way youʼll hit the next note- faking the swing for the hammer note. This will keep your right hand in check with the timing of the eighth notes.

Another point I made while writing down this arrangement was the rocking back and forth around the melody note in a Texas Style. They hit the melody note and then hit a note (within the scale hopefully) on one side or the other of the main note and sometimes both times. An example is in measure 2 and 4. A second question comes up with the chord structure. I use a “C” chord after the Bm but some use an “Am”. Someone out there will undoubtably let me know which is correct and I appreciate the info. Well itʼs time for me to crawl back under a rock and get another book on the market. Be on the lookout for 2 new Homespun videos and 4 new Mel Bay books this year: The Norman Blake Anthology, Bullet

working title) and as youʼve read in this issue of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine- The Legacy of Doc Watson. All of which will be available by simply dialing 800-FLATPIK or 423-982-3808. The only book currently available is the Bullet Train Book. Others will come out one at a time over the next 6 months. Take care and Iʼll see you down the road somewhere. Steve K.


Flatpicking ‘98

Flatpicking ‘98

Featuring 20 of todayʼs best atpicking guitarists: • James Alan Shelton • Dan DeLancey • Charles Sawtelle • Richard Bennett • • Russ Barenberg • Bryan Sutton • Sean Watkins • Larry Sparks • Richard Starkey • • Luke Bulla • Craig Vance • Adam Granger • Jimmy Haley • Orrin Star • • Mike Maddox • Jim Nunally and Dix Bruce • Chris Jones • • Jeff Autry • John McGann • Joe Carr •

Train-The Book , “Twin Pickinʼ “ (a non-

Featuring 20 tunes that have been transcribed and presented in the second volume of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

A Great Flatpicking Guitar Sampler! Send a check or money order for $15 (includes paostage costs) to: Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, PO Box 2160, Pulaski, VA 24301 or call 800-413-8296

Listen to Want You Have Been Reading! Flatpicking Guitar Magazine


31

Dixie Hoedown

Arranged by Steve Kaufman

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© Sleeping Bear Productions 1-800-FLATPIK 1998 32





33

By Brad Davis BRAD DAVIS IS ENDORSED BY SIT STRINGS/COLLINGS/MARTIN/GRETCH/FENDER/PEAVEY/THUNDERFUNK/GIPSON/ ERNIE BALL/BAGGS/WILKINS GUITARS.

was "Nine Pound Hammer." It's that song you here at every festival, you love it, it's a part of your bluegrass heritage and it doesn't wear on ya like "Fox On The Run" - Heaven forbid!!!! I've heard Doc play this song many different ways using his style and below I've tabbed out a Doc like solo, not a lick for lick solo, but a compilation of Docisms (licks I've heard Doc use in the past). This way I'm not rehashing an older recorded solo many of you are probably familiar with.

"What's Up Doc!" When I think of Doc Watson, I instantly feel emotion, the kind of emotion that can only be described with a few choice words: Soulful, Methodically Melodic, Powerfully Bluesful. Okay granted these all aren't real words, but hey let's face it they do describe how Doc Watson makes me feel. I've listened to all of his recordings, seen him perform live numerous times and every time it's magical! One the first Doc tunes I learned

All companion tape orders wil l delayed several months due to the damaged sustained by the tornado that swept through Nashville in April.

To order a companion tape for this lesson send check or money order to:BDM Publishing / Box 890 / Madison, TN. 37116. Brad's instructional material can be ordered visa/master card @Junctionstudio.com on the world wide web. Also previous back issues (tape and article booklet format) are now available for $7.00. (Drop us a line and get on our mailing list for info on new instructional products)

"Nine Pound Hammer" Key G Line 1 -

part 1a-G

0 0

0 0

1

+

3

5

2 1

+ 3

3

+

2

0

4 2

+

Line 2 -C

1

+

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2 1

+ 3

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Line 3 -G

+ 1

4

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2

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1

+ 1

2 3

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3 2

+ 1

4

+ 1

1

D

0

+

+ 2

1

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+

3 1

+ 2

3

+

4 2

+ 1

2

3 4

+ 2

2

S

0 3

2

2

G

0 2

1

4

0

G

1 2 3 4 5 6

34

C

H

1

1 2 3 4 5 6

1 2 3 4 5 6

G

3 1

4

+

part 1b-G

1

+

2 2 3

+

3 2

+

4 2

+

G

1

+

2 3

+

2

0

2 2

+

3 2

+

4 1

+

+ 2

4

+ 1

C 1

0

1 4

0

3 1 2

+

2

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3

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0

3

1

+ 2

2

+

3 2

+ 3

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+ 2

1

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2 2

+ 3

3

+ 3

4 2

+ 1

1


+

3 1


Nashville Flattop Cont.(Nine pound hammer) Line 4-C G

D

H

1 2 3 4 5 6

1

3

1 2

1 1

+ 3

G

S

2 1

+ 2

0

3

+

4

+

1

2 1 2

1 1

+ 2 + 2 12

3

3 4 0

0

0 0

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4 2

+ 3

1

+ 3

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+

3 3

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0 2

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4 2

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1

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4

+

About the author: Brad Davis has many years of experience as an acclaimed bluegrass and country guitarist. With several albums to his credit, Brad's most widely heard flattop guitar work is on the Sweathearts of the Rodeo's new album titled "beautiful lies" on Sugar Hill Records, White Water debute album "N o Gold On The Highway" and Brad's new flattop sampler album titled "Climbin' Cole Hill" both on Raisin Cain. Brad's most widely heard electric guitar work is on Marty Stuart's gold record " This Ones Gonna Hurt You" and on Marty's most recent album "Honky Tonkin's What I Do Best." Brad debuted his patented "Brad Bender," the string bender for acoustic/electric guitars, and the unique style it offers, on countless national television shows with the Sweethearts of the Rodeo - bluegrass band. Brad also spent several years on the road with the Forester Sisters. Touring and recording w/ Marty Stuart and White Water, songwriting, record production, and the production of instructional material for Z-TAPE (BDM Publishing) instructional courses are wedged into his tight schedule. Brad's up and coming instructional course is "40 Trick Licks" (for the flattop guitar) and "The Acoustic Speed picking Blue book" featuring his incredible "Double-Down-Up" speed picking technique.

To order companion audio cassette for this lesson send check or money order for $5.00 and address to: BDM Publishing - P.O.Box 890 - Madison, Tn 37116 Att:Companion Cassette

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DROP US A LINE AND GET ON OUR MAILING LIST!

Flatpicking ‘98 Featuring 20 of todayʼs best atpicking guitarists: • James Alan Shelton • Dan DeLancey • Charles Sawtelle • Richard Bennett • • Russ Barenberg • Bryan Sutton • Sean Watkins • Larry Sparks • Richard Starkey • • Luke Bulla • Craig Vance • Adam Granger • Jimmy Haley • Orrin Star • • Mike Maddox • Jim Nunally and Dix Bruce • Chris Jones • • Jeff Autry • John McGann • Joe Carr •


Flatpicking ‘98 Featuring 20 tunes that have been transcribed and presented in the second volume of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

A Great Flatpicking Guitar Sampler!

Send a check or money order for $15 (includes paostage costs) to: Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, PO Box 2160, Pulaski, VA 24301 or call 800-413-8296



35

Break Time by Chris Jones

Nashville Blues

ment is different enough to avoid too many comparisons, and I hope I was able to do the song justice. Naturally, I couldnʼt resist including a guitar break in this tune, and Iʼve tabbed it out here to give you an idea of how you can use Docʼs inuence without trying to sound like him (if it was possible I would have tried). Doc Watson recorded this song on his rst Vanguard album (no, my copy is not for sale), and there is a high and a low break on it. The song comes originally from the Delmore Brothers, and the higher register breaks have a lot of the Delmore sound to them. My break borrows more from the lower break. In fact my break starts out as a direct tribute to Docʼs version (as Iʼve mentioned in this column before, “tribute” is my polite way to say “rip off”; call it atpicker “spin”), with lots of double stops in the rst couple of measures. From there I go my own way with the break, sounding very little like Doc Watson, but trying to maintain the spirit of what Doc played. He keeps his break

Like many guitar players, hearing Doc Watson play the guitar was one of the biggest reasons I picked up a at pick. Though I later became more involved in the vocal side of bluegrass,and playing lead and rhythm guitar in a full bluegrass band situation, thereʼs still nothing more inspiring for me than hearing Doc Watson pick and sing. Even atpickers who donʼt think of themselves as inuenced by Docʼs playing probably owe a lot of their style to him indirectly. Those of us who are concentrating on playing breaks to bluegrass songs would do well to listen to Doc Watsonʼs breaks on medium and uptempo songs, to hear his great use of melody, crosspicking and double stops, not to mention his characteristic clarity and punch. I recently recorded a new CD (“Follow Your Heart,” Rebel 1749) which has just been released, containing a song I learned from Doc Watson. Iʼve never recorded one of his songs before because I felt that once a song has been done by Doc Watson, itʼs DONE. In this case, though, the arrange

melody oriented, and seemingly simple, yet with some complex sections that include some crosspicking, and Iʼve tried to do the same, although with different note choice and crosspicking rolls. Vocally, the song uses a slide from the 6 to at 7 note (E to F in the key of G), and back down and I tried to capture this instrumentally by hammering on from 2 to 3 (Iʼm speaking tab language now) on the 4th string (measure 7) and cross picking using alternating pick direction. Variations on this are used (critics will say overused) a few times in the break. There is only one slide in this whole break, which is unusual for me. I guess I just wasnʼt in the sliding mood that day (perhaps having the “Nashville Blues” will do that to you). One other note: There is a G run variation at the very end that involves using the open D note (right after the strum in the second to last measure) as a deemphasized “ghost” note leading to the upsroke and hammer-on, then ending the lick with a strong rest stroke on the open G (as all good G-runs should end). Also, give the double stop in the 2nd measure plenty of sustain because it has to last through that whole bar and into the next. Thanks Doc!

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AcuTab Publications • P.O. Box 21061 • Roanoke, VA • 24018 [email protected] • 540-776-6822 • 540-776-6827 (FAX)

36



Columnist Prole:

Craig Vance by Dan Miller After we had published several issues of this magazine I got a call from a reader who said, “I am so glad to see that Craig Vance is one of your columnists!” I said, “Craig is a great player and we are glad to have him.” The caller continued, “Let me explain. Shortly after I started to atpick the guitar I went to a local club to see this band called “The McKrells.” The guitar player was so amazing that I got really discouraged about my own progress. I thought that if local guys were this good, I would never amount to anything. Now that I see he writes for a nationally published magazine, I donʼt feel so bad.” I guess it would be like growing up in Tony Riceʼs neighborhood. I have known Craig Vance since I was about ten years old. Craig and I grew up about a mile away from each other in Springeld, Virginia. We played on the same little league baseball team and went to the same high school. However, I did not nd out that Craig was a bluegrass guitar player until years later when one day in the mid-1980s I was looking through an issue of Bluegrass Unlimited and saw a picture of him with his band Summit. I was astonished! I knew that Craigʼs older brother, Mike, was a guitar player because Mikeʼs rock band played at the local school dances. Little did I know that at the same time I was dancing to his brotherʼs riffs on Eagles tunes in the high school gym, Craig was off at bluegrass festivals learning Norman Blake and Doc Watson tunes! Craig had become interested in learning how to play the guitar when he was about ten years old. His brother taught him his rst chords and he played folk music in church. It wasnʼt until about 1972 when a friend of

38

his fatherʼs brought over the Will The Circle Be Unbroken album that Craig began to become fanatical about learning how to atpick. He says, “I heard some of the brilliant atpicking of Doc Watson and right away I knew that that was what I wanted to do.” Craig is left handed and up until this point he was playing a right handed guitar flipped over to the left side. A guitar teacher suggested that he learn how to play right handed, so he switched over to be a right handed player. After hearing Doc on the Will the Circle Be UnbrokenA lbum, Craig began to search for other Doc Watson recordings. The rst he found was Ballads From Deep Gap. He says, “I spent a lot of time trying to mimic some of the licks that he was doing. Then I went on a wild album chase. I found some John Hartford stuff and eventually wound up getting really deep into Norman Blakeʼs material.” Craig had rst heard Norman Blake play live in about 1974 at a bluegrass festival in Culpepper, Virginia. He says, “I picked up the Home in Sulphur Springs album at that festival. I went home and spent months on the material from that album.” When asked about his early learning period Craig said, “The time that I spent with the Doc Watson stuff was probably my biggest growing experience in atpicking. When I got into the Norman Blake phase, that seemed more relaxed and more what my

approach would have been. Normanʼs right hand technique was something that really impressed me. I eventually got exposed to Tony Rice. I found that stuff a little more difcult and out of reach, however, eventually I started leaning in that direction.” While he was in high school Craig spent a lot of time going to bluegrass festivals to pick in the campground. He also frequently picked at home on weekends with friends. Sometimes the weekend sessions at home would go on for ten hours. Craig says, “Those were some serious sessions!” Regarding the festival jamming he says, “The on-hand experience of picking at festivals taught me a lot about technique.” After Craig graduated from high school, in 1976, he began playing as a solo act and



was successful enough to open for bands such as The Country Gentleman, Doc and Merle Watson, and Berline, Crary, and Hickman at prestigious bluegrass venues such as the Down Home Picking Parlor in Johnson City, Tennessee, and the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. In late 1981, Craig hooked up with a group of Washington, D.C. area bluegrass musicians and formed the band Summit. The band consisted of Craig on guitar, Steve Joseph on bass and Chris Leske on banjo and mandolin. Later, Danny Gotham joined the band to play mandolin, which allowed Chris to stay on banjo full-time. The band stayed together for nine years. They played in the D.C. area until 1984 when they moved to upstate New York and began doing a lot of college gigs. During the time he was with Summit, Craig and members of his band also spent some time playing with Bill Keith and Frank Wakeeld. In 1990, Chris Leske left Summit and pursued playing music with Kevin McKrell. Craig tried to keep the band together for a short while with Fred Lantz coming in to replace Chris. However, Summit began to zzle out and Steve Joseph moved back to

Virginia. Craig and Fred then hooked up with a few musicians from Pennsylvania and formed the band Burnt Toast. The members of this band, along with a few guests such as Chris Leske, got together and recorded a very well received CD called Synergy: The Noble Jones Project (still available from Second Fret Records). Craig stayed with the band for about two years and then left to join his current band, The McKrells. Most of the material the McKrells play is original material with the words penned and sung by Kevin McKrell and the instrumentation arranged by Craig and his old Summit bandmate Chris Leske. The music is a mix of Celtic, folk, bluegrass, country, and pop. Craig says, “We have been labeled a lot of different ways. Presently they have been calling it either ʻworld beatʼ or ʻrootsʼ music.” When asked about how his guitar playing has changed over the years, Criag said, “I would say that I have adapted different techniques to t into some of the stuff that is not bluegrass or straight out atpicking oriented. I would say that I have taken some of the Pat Flynn approach to some of the lead playing that I have been doing

lately in that I use a lot of pull-off and slides for embellishment.” Craig owns two Martin D-28s. One he bought new in 1973 and the other, a 1979 model, he acquired about three years ago in trade for 1976 Martin Sunburst D-18 and a tenor banjo. He primarily uses the 1979 D-28 for his stage guitar although he obtained a Larrivee L-03 about a month ago and is looking forward to trying that out as soon as a pickup is installed. He has kept the ʻ73 D-28 at home since it was damaged while traveling on an airline. Craig likes to use medium gauge strings and uses both Clayton Ultem 1.20 mm and Clayton standard tri-corner 1.52 picks. Craigʼs current lists of projects includes a brand new McKrells release and a soonto-be recorded project with Chris Leske. Craig promises that this new recording with Chris will be more bluegrass oriented than the material he and Chris play with the McKrells. Coming from two great musicians who have been picking together for nearly twenty years, it will certainly be something to look forward to.

DAN DELANCEY F L A T P I C K

G U I T A R “

Listening to him play, it is certainly evident that arrangement is something Dan does very well. His arrangements are interesting, exciting, tasteful and well performed.

NEW

CD

RELEASE

A FEW FAVORITES

”

—Dan Miller, Editor


Liner Notes— “A Few Favorites” by Dan DeLancey “From the rst note of “The Girl I left Behind Me” to the last lick in “Clarinet Polka” you can tell that Dan DeLancey is a powerhouse guitar player. His playing is up-lifting and soulful. The song selection is splendid! Dan is backed by a group of super musicians who know how to make a recording work. A nicely thought out project that will remain a favorite of mine as I know it will be of yours. The only down side—and it was hard to nd one—is that the recording is over too soon for me. It only means that I’ll have to hit re-play all d ay!! Enjoy “A Few Favorites” as I have. —Steve Kaufman • 3 Time National Guitar Champion

Titles include: The Girl I Left Behind Me, Redwing, Memories Waltz, Uncle Hermanʼs Hornpipe, The Shelter Of Your Eyes, Golden Eagle Hornpipe, Pass Me Not, Farther Along,

To order your CD, please send $15 to: DAN DELANCEY • 7911 HUNTER RAYTOWN, MO. 64138 • 816-356-1879



39

THE

O

- ZONE by

Orrin Star

Take Me Back To Tulsa— schwing! Ainʼt much to this little song, but we donʼt really care Weʼre gonnna sing it anyway, because we go right by there

For flatpickers looking to expand beyond ddle tunes and bluegrass songs the natural next stop is country swing. Exhibit #1: Docʼs repertoire. Along with “Black Mountain Rag” and “Wabash Cannonball” you will also nd “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Smoke That Cigarette”— swing songs performed with a country feel (ie different rhythmic setting but it still sounds like atpicking and at home on a dreadnought.)

“Take Me Back to Tulsa” was one of the signature tunes of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, the band that dened western swing. It is a great starter country swing song since it has only two chords and a very straightforward melody; any reasonably adept bluegrass player should be able to solo on it straightaway. This tabbed solo is one that I recorded in March (for my trioʼs forthcoming live concert CD). It combines a solid feel for the melody along with a notable swing attitude (as important as the actual notes you play; Exhibit #2: the Tulsa lyrics, in italics.).

The triplet phrase was borrowed from a clarinet solo on an old recording. Note the several grace notes and the rest strokes (which are, by definition , all ʻdownʼ strokes, and which are indicated by a > above the note). Whoʼs that gal with the green dress on, man now thereʼs a mini Take away a thread or two, then you ainʼt got any

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine maintains a

Transcription Index at our web site. Visit the following page: http://www.atpick.com/ Pages/Tab_Index/Tab_Index.html

This index includes an alphabetized list of every song that has been transcribed in this magazine and tells you which issue the tab is in, what page number it is on, and who transcribed it. Use this web page as a handy reference whenever you are itching to learn a new tune, but canʼt nd it in your stack of back-issues.

40



Masters of Rhythm Guitar:

Molly Mason by Joel Stein

“Sheʼs a great musician. She really has a very ne sense about the types of music that sheʼs involved with. I really trust her judgement in terms of musical decisions. Sheʼs got a great feel. Sheʼs a great rhythm guitar player...she does more than that... She brings a very strong sensibility to everything she does.”

— Russ Barrenberg

“Mollyʼs an extraordinary musician. She has a great harmonic sense. Her rhythmic feel is absolutely amazing. Her ears are just incredibly acute.”

— Matt Glaser, chairman of String Department at Berklee College of Music (in Sing Out magazine) “Many people will come up to me after a gig and talk to me about (Mollyʼs) guitar playing and say you really donʼt need a bass player when Mollyʼs playing the guitar because sheʼs so conscious of the bass notes and the bass lines.”

—Jay Ungar Sitting in the kitchen of Molly Masonʼs stone house in the Catskill region of New York, itʼs easy to see the qualities that make her such a strong accompanist. Everything she does, from making coffee to showing a recently purchased guitar, or showing some swing changes, makes a guest feel like theyʼve been friends for years. Making one feel comfortable is what being an accompanist is all about. Mason likens a solid accompanist to an overstuffed chair, that enables the soloist to have the maximum comfort and support to step out. “I love that role” says Mason, “of having a lead player, who is great, and (the) job is to provide the rest of the stuff that they need to make them comfortable and make them sound great and make a wonderful chunk of music.” Itʼs a role that Mason has perfected on guitar, piano and bass in a variety of musical styles in a career that has included stints with Garrison Keillorʼs Powder Milk Biscuit band, Fiddle Fever, Blue Rose, Swingology and in duets with husband Jay Ungar. 42

Mason grew up in Washington state in a musical family. Her father played mandolin and her uncle was a ddler in dance bands. Mason studied classical piano for a few years--”enough to learn how to read music” she says. By eleven or so, Mason convinced her parents to get her a guitar. After learning a few chords out of books, Mason learned folk guitar via the public television show hosted by Laura Webber. Mason played music with her sister who played a little banjo and her brother who played ddle (James Mason is a professional musician playing swing, and country and bluegrass ddle. In the liner notes to a 1996 recording with guitarist John G. Stewart, Matt Glaser says of Mason: “playing is uid, inventive, and always musical.”). In addition, Mason would sing harmony to Beatle songs with friends at the local playground. While the path for the majority of young women in the early Sixties when Mason was learning guitar would have led to imitating any number of a variety of folk singers Mason took a different direction, she decided to focus on playing the guitar well. “One of the things that pushed me into trying to play better--besides my curiosity and I loved it--was that I never sang well enough to be justied for being a mediocre guitar player. I never felt my singing was enough to carry me as a performer. I really needed to do something better then what my singing ability was.” In 1970 Mason accompanied her brother as he competed in the legendary Weiser, Idaho fiddle contest (one of the other contestants that year was a young Mark OʼConnor). Hearing Texas back up guitar was a revelation for Mason. “I had never heard this guitar style before with all these passing chords, changing bass notes every beat. It was like, wow, this is so right.” While learning the theory came later, “the rst thing I did was that I heard it and it made perfect sense to my ear, and I loved it and learned what that sound was. Then I learned where to put my ngers from an older guy from New Mexico, who was the guitar player for the fiddler Junior Daugherty. I learned how to make that

sound in the key of A. He taught me how to back up Sally Goodin, which was a very standard Texas thing. Of course there are many different ways and he only showed me one series of passing chords--one time through ʻSally Goodinʼ.” Over the next two years, Mason worked with different people and asked questions learning the theory behind the chords. Mason worked “with a great guitar player out of Seattle, Jack Hanson, who plays swing guitar. (He) was very generous with his time” she says. “We played two guitars together for several years. He answered a lot of my questions, and told me what he knew.” In the mid-Seventies, Mason spent ve consecutive summers teaching at the edgling Puget Sound Guitar Workshop concentrating mostly on Texas back up guitar styles along with bass runs and a little bit of theory. Teaching helped Masonʼs playing grow, “I had to organize what I did know,” she explains, “and gure it out and be able to relate it to people.” It helped Mason crystalize her own understanding of music and chord theory. “Previously,” she says, “I just put my ngers where they went, but when I was going to explain it to people I had to understand it better myself.” A few years later, Masonʼs brother was taking lessons from Texas swing legend Benny Thomasson. During that time, Mason got a chance to play back up guitar for the man who “pretty much invented what Texas fiddling is today.” Thomasson never told Mason what to play on guitar though “he might kind of give a little indication that there was more in there that you werenʼt getting, or thatʼs nice what you did,” she explains. During 1978, Mason did a tour with Thomasson. “He was an incredible person. He was a mechanic his whole life, he worked in a body shop. He was so unassuming. What a player. His improvising, his timing. This guy was incredible” Mason says, her voice taking on a mix of adulation and admiration for the legendary ddler. Around this time, a friend of Masonʼs took a guitar that she rarely used and traded it for a bass without her knowledge. Mason was surprised, but thought it was a good idea. It turned out to be a great boost for her career, because “everyone needs a bass player who can learn fairly quickly and be reliable” she explains. Just two months after getting the bass, Mason started getting requests for



her services on gigs. Masonʼs bass playing was a direct outgrowth of her knowledge of swing guitar and rhythm, just “one note at a time.” Masonʼs bass playing, like her guitar work, is grounded in listening to the lead line or melody of the tune and looking for the harmonies and rhythmic accents that accentuate the particular song. “Rhythmic licks, like ʻbucket of beans,ʼ” Mason explains singing the accents “bah da da da” can add a punch to a particular line. In choosing a particular chord voicing or rhythmic accent, Mason draws from her eclectic musical tastes. The key, she says is to have a “broad musical palette to work from.” As with her guitar playing, Mason views the key to all music as listening and nding the appropriate accompaniment as her goal. “Thatʼs what I shoot for,” she states. In the late Seventies, Mason found herself playing bass in the then regional radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. Mason found herself the challenging, and rewarding task of backing up different musicians each week. One of the musicians that appeared as a guest on the show was ddler Jay Ungar. Mason had worked with Ungar during one of her earlier trips east, and when she heard Ungar was going to be in the area she suggested to the showʼs musical director that Ungar would be a strong musical guest. Sometime around 1979, Mason decided to leave the “Biscuits” and head back home to Washington. After a few months, she got a call from Ungar who was putting together a band with three ddles, Fiddle Fever, and would Mason consider coming East to join the band on bass, “that precipitated the move, in 1980, to New York,” says Mason. Fiddle Fever featured Ungar, Evan Stover and Matt Glaser on ddles, Russ Barenberg on guitar and Mason on bass. On occasion, the band would open shows by walking onto the stage playing a Scandinavian ddle tune-with all ve members playing ddles. “Iʼm not a good ddler, though I sometimes play at home ʻcause itʼs fun,” she explains. For the walking tunes she “would play open strings,” she says, “thatʼs actually a traditional thing that you do, play chords and open strings as an accompaniment.” During this period Mason continued to play guitar on occasional sessions and gigs, but for the most part performed as a bassist. By the mid-eighties, Fiddle Fever had broken up and Mason and Ungar started working as a duo. While she “missed” playing guitar during the 10 years she actively worked as a bass player, it took her Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

n e s l e i r b a G n e K : o t o h P

Jay Ungar and Molly Mason a little while to regain her condence in performance on guitar. “Iʼve always had the accompanists thing,” she offers, “that feeling that what I do is not very important or very ashy. Itʼs not like Iʼm Russ Barenberg--some great hot picker. You donʼt feel like a hot picker when youʼre an accompanist, letʼs put it that way. You donʼt get put in the hot picker class,” she concludes. As Mason and Ungar developed their duo, a series of independent events led to take the duo to a world wide audience. A tune Ungar had written and recorded with Fiddle Fever, “Ashokan Farewell,” was used by Ken Burns in his PBS documentary about the Civil War. “Ashokan Farewell” became, for many, synonymous with the Civil War and helped propel sales of the re-released Fiddle Fever CD and a greater demand for Mason and Ungar as performers--both in Civil War material and their own blend of original, swing, Cajun and other styles. As a result of their success, Mason and Ungar have gone on to work on a number of projects with Burns and other film makers. They also received a Meet The Composers grant to “use music as a social medicine of some kind,” Mason explains, “making it a healing kind of thing to bring together communities.” Through the grant, Mason and Ungar have staged festivals in the Castkills with a variety of local artists,


conducted workshops, and worked with a local Chamber Orchestra. “Ashokan Farewell,” it should be pointed out, was written by Ungar in response to the conclusion of his Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp in 1982, Masonʼs rst year with the camp. The camp is a great outlet for both Mason and Ungar having grown since itʼs inception in 1980 to include three weeks (one each, for Northern, Southern and Western Swing styles) and a variety of holiday celebrations. Itʼs a great opportunity for Mason to teach something she clearly loves, accompanying dance styles. Her favorite, of course, is Western Swing. “One of my favorite things,” she says, “is to get people into playing swing music and opening those mysterious doors.” “Itʼs been really instructive for me to teach there,” Mason offers, “and meet the people weʼve had on staff like Larry Baione, from Berklee, teacher and guitar player, Tom Mitchell from the Baltimore area, a swing and Django type player--many over the years. As well as create an environment that our campers want to come to and learn from, itʼs an environment that I really want to be at. I try to make it to as many classes as I can and learn something new every year” she admits. One of the things that Mason has been working on lately is learning what she calls “melody playing” and even taking 43

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occasional breaks during performances. Mason views her soloing as a “personal challenge, but a good one, requiring a whole different energy.” As always, Mason brims with enthusiasm as she talks about guitar playing, at times sounding like a little kid full of wonder. Her face lights up when she pulls out her recently purchased 1950 Southern Jumbo, nicknamed “The Commander” by Ungar for itʼs strong, loud yet sweet tone. Mason purchased the SJ from Gruhnʼs while in Nashville working with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra on an original composition that she and Ungar were to record. The recording called for her to play some “solo work” and Mason felt her trusted early 50ʼs J 45 (actually Ungarʼs) while versatile, “it was more of a struggle to get a nice sound on lead stuff up the neck.” Mason starts playing a series of slow melodic lines and says the SJ “just sort of sang to me. I didnʼt have to do anything fancy, I could just play,” she says as she slides the A string to the seventh fret, going into a line from the recently recorded piece. Still the J45 offers “great sound for all kinds of music--our concerts cover a wide range...Itʼs done real well for me,”

she concludes. In addition Mason owns a mid-sixties D28, an old Kay bass, an early 40ʼs Vega arch top and a turn of the century six string banjo that was probably two different instruments that someone put together.Mason calls the hybrid banjo “totally addicting. You play it like a guitar but itʼs got this banjo sound. Itʼs so funky. Itʼs incredibly fun to play,” she adds. “You play your same old stuff on it and it sounds totally different.” Mason uses Pearse mediums and has recently started using a heavy Plec pick given to her by the folks at Cotten Music in Nashville. “Itʼs pretty fun. Music, since Iʼve been a little kid, has been a thing of wonder--constantly surprising and challenging, bringing new and wonderful things everyday. Iʼve been really lucky. Some people get jaded and burned out. Iʼve always done things Iʼve loved. I played on Garrisonʼs show, I was in Fiddle Fever, a great band with great musicians, now I get to go around the country and play with Jay, play on records. Iʼm incredibly lucky and I love it... And I have a lot to learn.” she adds with a smile.



Guitar Making by Don Gallagher

Doc’s Guitar Gallagher Guitars has always had a close connections with the people who have owned our instruments. Perhaps there is no better example of this type of maker-player association than that which exists between the Gallagher family as makers and the Watson family as players. My father (J. W. Gallagher) converted his cabinet shop into a guitar shop in the spring of 1965. I worked with my father summers and part time while I was in school. In order to help my father in his new enterprise I took my 1967-68 year of college off to work at the shop. I made the bodies, a gentleman by the name of Robert Reed made the necks, and my father supervised and did the nishing. In the spring of 1968, I encouraged my father to take some of our guitars to a music festival I saw listed in a magazine. Union Grove, in North Carolina, was the first music festival my father and I attended. It was quite and experience. The tune of choice was “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” We displayed our guitars from the trunk of my fatherʼs car. On Saturday the pretty weather and the overall atmosphere began to change. Rain set in and soon the festival grounds became a mud pit. That afternoon a rough motorcycle group hit the festival. Saturday evening as dad and I waded through the mud, avoiding the occasional drunken altercations, we heard some pretty good guitar music coming from a group of folks under a tree. It was Doc and Merle Watson. Dad recognized them because he had not too long before bought one of their albums. He was a real fan. Dad introduced himself to Merle. Merle, I am sure just being nice, said he had heard our guitars. He invited Dad and I to drop by their home in Deep Gap the next day as we headed home. Sunday afternoon, Dad and I stopped at the Watson home in Deep Gap. Quite a few young people who had been at Union Grove had stopped by to see Doc. Doc was setting in his living room playing guitar and obviously having a good time visiting with these young people. I quietly sat and soaked it all in. In April of 1968, I was 20 Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

years old, Merle was 19, my father was 53, and Doc was 42. This was the beginning of a relationship between our two families that has now spanned 30 years. There was an immediate afnity between my father and Doc. These two country boys seem to understand each other. Doc expressed his feelings about being an entertainer. He talked about how he felt it was important for a performer to stick to his musical roots. He did not agree with those folk musicians who were using political activism to promote their music careers. My father felt the same type of dedication to his craft as a woodworker. Compromising his craft for the sake of commercialization was not thinkable. We had 3 or 4 guitars with us. Doc played the guitars but there was one he particularly liked. It was the only mahogany guitar we had with us. The serial number of this guitar was 68001. It was the rst guitar body I put together in 1968. When I made the body I had sanded the side too thin, and it cracked after the guitar was nished. Dad xed it, but since the side had been cracked he didnʼt want to sell it. We took it with us because it was the only mahogany guitar we had. Doc was clearly partial to this mahogany guitar. It was a model G-50. So designated because it was the rst model Dad made. He was 50 years of age at the time. Dad told Doc that if he really liked the guitar he would let him use it, with “no strings attached except the ones that were on the guitar.” He did ask Doc to return the guitar if he decided he didnʼt want to use it any more. Years later back stage at Wineld Doc told me he used that guitar on every album he did for “Flying Fish” except one. Doc affectionately called this guitar “Ole Hoss.” In 1974, Doc asked Dad to make him a new guitar. He sent Merle to the shop with a Les Paul Gibson for Dad to see the neck. Doc liked the sound of mahogany. The individual notes were clear and distinct and it recorded very well. However, he wanted a 1-3/4” neck with wide frets like the Les Paul. Dad decided to add some other appointments that usually were reserved for rosewood guitars. The ngerboard and bridge were made


of ebony instead of rosewood. Herringbone was used for the soundhole and puring. The headstock was bound. The top bracing was voiced. Voicing the top helped to preserve the clarity associated with mahogany but give it a little fuller sound. Because it was for Doc, Dad had wanted to add those extra appointments. The serial number of this guitar was 662. The number 662 meant it was the 662nd Gallagher guitar made since the rst one made in May of 1965. This new guitar Dad delivered to Doc in September 1974 at Galax. Doc was happy with this new guitar, and told Dad, “If it pleases you, you can call this the “Doc Watson Model.” Later “Doc” would come to call this guitar “Ole Hoss II.” Doc, recalling that my father had told him if he ever stopped playing this guitar he would like to have it back, returned G-50, #68001, to the shop. Doc left his leather strap on this guitar. His name “Doc Watson,” was embossed on the strap. In 1975 the curator of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Ms. Diane Johnson, dropped by the shop for a visit. When she noticed Docʼs guitar, she wanted to acquire it for the Hall of Fame. Dad said he was willing to loan it to the Hall of Fame, if that was all right with Doc. Doc said it was a waste of a mighty ne guitar, but he guessed it would OK with him. Docʼs original Gallagher guitar now resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee, where it has been since 1975. In May of 1991 I made Doc a new guitar. This new guitar was a Doc Watson model cut-a-way, serial #2067. Doc has asked me to make him this guitar a couple of years earlier, but because of some supply problems with our nishing materials, its making was delayed. In May 45

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of 1991 I drove to Deep Gap to deliver this guitar to Doc. I wanted him to have it as a retirement present. He has since named this guitar “Donald” and occasionally talks to it on stage. Merleʼs inuence on our instrument making was no less profound than that of his father. After Doc got his rst Gallagher guitar in April of 1968, Merle was soon expressing an interest in getting one. Dad, Mom, Jean, and I met Doc and Merle at East Tennessee State University in October of 1968. Dad had two or three guitars with him for Merle to try out. The guitar Merle liked was a G-40—our most basic mahogany guitar (serial #68088.) A few years later Merle asked Dad about a classical guitar. Dad made Merle one of the few classical guitars he ever made. Doc and Merle came by the house to pick it up when it was completed in 1973. After Merleʼs death this classical was loaned to the Country Music Hall of Fame by the Watson family for a brief time. It is now back with the Watson family. In 1974 Merle talked with my father about a new guitar he wanted. He wanted one just like his fatherʼs except with a cut-a-way. He wanted it set up so he could play slide guitar. At the time Merle was very interested in learning the style of Mississippi John Hurt. The rst Gallagher cut-a-way was built by my father for Merle in September of 1974. This guitar was serial #664. The frame of another cut-a-way was started but not completed. In 1976 I completed our second cut-a-way for Merle. It bore the serial #665. Merle used one for slide and one for nger style playing. I made two other cut-a-ways for Merle in 1977 and 1980, serial numbers 899 and 1465, respectively. One of these was to

replace one of the original cut-a-ways that was destroyed during a concert in Atlanta. An amplier fell on it. Merle had wrapped it in duct tape and completed the show. The next day he brought the guitar by the shop to see if I could x it. I told him it would be easier to build a new guitar. In addition to these guitars made especially for Merle, we made at least three guitars Merle ordered for friends: serial numbers 811 (Jim Cole), 1433, and 1535 (Joe Shaping). The last time I saw Merle was in 1983. He came by the shop with the old G-40 he had received from my father and I in 1968. He said, “This guitar has been around the world about 3 times and it sounds so good now I want to save it just for recording work.” I, of course, was glad to make him a guitar to retire his road weary G-40. The last guitar I made for Merle was a Doc Watson Cut-a-way, serial #1728 that he received in June 1983. In addition to the guitars we made for Doc and Merle, in February 1977 we made Rosa Lee (Docʼs wife) a Grand Concert. This was serial number 1001. Number 1000 was placed on display at the shop. Number 999 we gave to Martha Norvell, who had worked at the shop for a number of years. In August of 1992 I made a cut-a-way for Richard (Merleʼs son). This was serial number 2092. In May of this year, when Doc and Richard performed at our 33rd Anniversary Concert in Wartrace, Richard and I discussed making a guitar for his daughter. Since the on-set of the guitar contest at Merlefest, we have donated a Doc Watson model cut-a-way like the ones we made for Merle for the rst place prize. Guitar making is certainly more than wood and strings.

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Doc Watson & “Way Down Town” by Dix Bruce Iʼve been working on a new book of Doc Watson transcriptions for Mel Bay Publications over the past few months. The material was originally released in the early 1960s in two volumes on Folkways as “Old Time Music at Clarence Ashleyʼs.” These historic recordings made between 1960 to 1962 helped fuel the following folk revival and introduced Doc Watson to new generations of old time, bluegrass, and folk fans. Smithsonian/Folkways recently reissued the recordings on two CDs with much added material. Iʼm transcribing all forty eight (!!!) selections including chords, lyrics, melodies, solos, and backup. It is an awesome task, but Iʼve found it unbelievably enlightening and great fun too. To a guitarist, this CD set is like the Dead Sea Scrolls. The individual songs include some of the most important and exciting material in the American traditional repertoire. A large number of the songs have become folk, bluegrass, old time, and country music standards. Docʼs playing is simply remarkable. These days hot acoustic guitar pickers are a dime a dozen, but in the early 1960s, Doc Watson was just about the rst to bring absolute virtuosic guitar playing to American traditional music. Doc pretty much invented and dened the “atpicking” style with his outrageously fast leads and the playing of ddle tunes on the guitar. And these recordings are his rst. Thereʼs no trace of a wind up here, Doc seems to have emerged fully formed as a player and singer, and that makes these recordings all the more remarkable. Of course thereʼs even more here than great tunes and Docʼs playing and I donʼt mean to diminish the contributions of the others, especially Clarence Ashley. All the songs are interesting and wonderful in their own right. The book is for guitarists so I concentrated on Doc, who incidentally also plays banjo and ngerpicked guitar on several selections. In the course of working on the book, titled Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley The Original Folkways Recordings: 1960-1962

(same title as the CD set), I have been Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

spending most of my time, as you would expect, on Doc Watsonʼs lead guitar playing. But as I listened again and again to these cuts, I found that Docʼs backup playing is incredible as well and many just begged to be transcribed and studied. “Way Down Town” is a prime example. The version on “Doc Watson & Clarence Ashley” is Docʼs “original.” It begins with guitar solo number one, a Carter-style melodic solo (M 0-16). In this and the second solo Doc mixes single (down) and double (down-up) strums (see M 1 on the F chord). The up stroke of the double strum is played much lighter than the down stroke and Doc usually plays only strings one, two, and sometimes three on the up stroke. It can be difcult to hear. I tried to notate all the instances of the double strums on “Way Down Town” as I think they make a difference to the sound Doc gets but they do add signicantly to the difculty of the piece. You can play them as written or as single strums. Youʼll notice that Doc makes frequent use of the hammers and pulls (M 2,3, 10, etc.) and they dene the basic shape and technique of the solos and much of the backup. In M 9 I assume Doc plays the F chord with his thumb on the low F note of the sixth string. (see chord diagram) You could also play this note with a barre (using the rst nger). In M 35 he plays C bass notes on beats 1 and 3. One might expect him to play the alternate sixth string G on beat 3 but he often breaks the strict alternatring pattern. When Doc strums, he sometimes articulates individual chord tones, almost like an arpeggiated strum, as in beats 3 & 4 of M 12. Notice how he sounds the C bass note (string 5, fret 3) and then the E note (string 4, fret 2) before the strum on beat four. If you get the timing right it makes for very nice, full, sound. Following the rst solo are the melody and lyrics. Of special interest here is Docʼs wonderful lick in M 23. Ralph Rinzler, the Smithsonian folklorist and musician who “discovered” Doc, refers to it in the CD booklet as “the lick” because it was so exciting and has inspired so many guitarists. Doc uses it several times in “Way


Down Town” and often on other songs in the CD set. The real backup guitar begins in M 33. Again Doc uses the F chord with the thumb. Notice the interesting hammers in M 39 & 40 and the mixing of single and double strums throughout. M 47 has “the lick” again. In M 49 Iʼve transcribed Docʼs playing behind the ddle solo. This chorus of backup is much more active than what he plays behind his vocal. It falls somewhere in the chasm between simple backup and ensemble lead with the ddle. Again, lots of hammers give the backup itʼs distinctive feel. Doc adds some short but hot connecting runs beginning in M 57. The guitar solo beginning in M 65 is quite similar to the opening guitar solo but with wonderfully subtle turns and differences, for example, the “arpeggiated strums” in M 73 and 76. Iʼve had a wonderful time dissecting the playing on these CDs and discovering so many things Iʼd never heard before. As Iʼm going over the transcriptions in nal preparation for submitting the book for publication, Iʼm continually nding more details, deeper levels, subtle differences from what I rst heard. The more I listen, the more I hear, and more awed I am by the great artistry of these players. This stuff is the real deal! We expect Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley The Original Folkways Recordings: 1960-1962t o be published sometime in late

Fall 1998. I know youʼll want to check it out the book and hear this incredible music. For information on availability of the book and CDs, contact Musix, PO Box 231005, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523. e-mail: Musix1@ aol.com PS-Jim Nunally and I have a web site! Hereʼs the address: www.ejthomas.com/ bruce-nunally We understand that soon Erik Thomas, our excellent web master, will have photos of our massive 1997 Alaska tour posted!

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Vol_2_No_6

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