[jaskosarek]

im taking a 12 hour road trip on a charter bus this spring break. on board will be 2 acoustic guitars and a tambourine and possibly of flute of sorts. ive already learned mr tambourine man by dylan for the occasion. any thoughts as to other songs for such an opportunity would be greatly appreciated

[raewyn]

Talk to whoever has the other guitar and learn some of their songs and get them to learn some of yours. Nothing more frustrating than when you have two guitarists who want to play togther but do different stuff (unless you just want to jam for 12 hours which might upset the other passengers). I have the same problem with my brother in law - all he plays is Eagles and I'm a bit more pop/rock or fingerpicking.

[SmoothD]

im taking a 12 hour road trip on a charter bus this spring break. on board will be 2 acoustic guitars and a tambourine and possibly of flute of sorts. ive already learned mr tambourine man by dylan for the occasion. any thoughts as to other songs for such an opportunity would be greatly appreciated

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Try Black by Pearl Jam. It is played with acoustics and I'm sure that you could incorporate a tamborine into it! The chords are simple and you and your friend could learn in a day.

Good luck!

[ibanezdude70]

You could play "Don't Fear The Reaper", by Blue Oyster Cult, and substitute Tambourine for cowbell!

[dadfad]

Possibly a tamborine-tip that might be useful... Attach the tamborine to your ankle with an elastic or velcro strip and you can use it as you play guitar just by stongly tapping your toe or heel (either mic'ed or un-mic'ed).

[deamhain]

Possibly a tamborine-tip that might be useful... Attach the tamborine to your ankle with an elastic or velcro strip and you can use it as you play guitar just by stongly tapping your toe or heel (either mic'ed or un-mic'ed).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Getting a bit Morris Dancer-ish there MacFad!!

...warr and with a wock fol a diddle dye doh oh!

[dadfad]

Possibly a tamborine-tip that might be useful... Attach the tamborine to your ankle with an elastic or velcro strip and you can use it as you play guitar just by stongly tapping your toe or heel (either mic'ed or un-mic'ed).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Getting a bit Morris Dancer-ish there MacFad!!

...warr and with a wock fol a diddle dye doh oh!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

(You should see me with my veils! )

J/k (honest!). It isn't something I do often (in fact only rarely). One time at a music workshop the instructors were all required to give a performance concert. There were several styles of traditional music being taught including guitar, fiddle, bodram, harmonica, etc. I chose to do an extremely percussive arrangement of an old slide-tune Fred McDowell taught me named "Diamond Ring" (which entails a lot of string-snapping, body taps, "spankin'-the-baby" (a percussion technique used on National steels), etc. For the sake of keeping the concert reasonable in length several of the "lesser instructors" were paired-off (harp-guitar, fiddle-guitar, etc). There was this woman who was a bodram instructor and I was paired off with her to do a tune (how do you do a bodram solo tune anyway, right?). So she asked me what I wanted to do beforehand and I showed her the tune, figuring a percussive tune like that would work well for her too. She chose to use a tamborine instead of a bodram, standing off to the side on stage. I never knew there was such thing as a "skilled tamborinist" but she was definately one of them. Her tamborine added a lot to the tune (and I mean a lot). As driving of a tune as it was without it, her tamborine and the jangles added to it greatly. It was the only standing-ovation tune of the concert (and there were several much better guitarists than me in it). So much so that I later bought a tamborine and messed with it to work it into the tune with me doing it solo (actually it wasn't a tamborine, but a very closely related instrument, with an Indian name that escapes me. Like a long wooden tamborine-stick with brass-jangles on it. It strapped to my ankle well. I had often mic'ed my foot on a "sound-board" before for the percussiveness it adds and so it was no big stretch to do so. It worked really well, although to be honest, I rarely go through all the trouble out of sheer laziness! But on some tunes a tamborine can add a lot. (Although on most tunes I do it wouldn't work at all.)



(Dadfad goes back to polishing up his finger cymbals...... )

[jaskosarek]

we have just aquired a harmonica for the trip and are learning helpless by neil young.... keeping this in mind more suggestions would be grand

[TheJosh]

oh snap yall- check out xavier rudd www.xavierrudd.com- he plays slide guitar harmonicas and didgeridoos, but he plays stombbox too- which is just him taping a barefoot on a micd apparatus. i myself mess around w/ a lil' mini tamborine and my harmonica on a rack. its fun

dadfad- did you say fred mcdowell SHOWED you something, as in you met/knew him? duuuuuuude- hes the freakin shiz. i love his music

[dadfad]

oh snap yall- check out xavier rudd www.xavierrudd.com- he plays slide guitar harmonicas and didgeridoos, but he plays stombbox too- which is just him taping a barefoot on a micd apparatus.  i myself mess around w/ a lil' mini tamborine and my harmonica on a rack. its fun

dadfad- did you say fred mcdowell SHOWED you something, as in you met/knew him? duuuuuuude- hes the freakin shiz. i love his music

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, in 1969 I was just getting into acoustic blues. I made a road-trip down to the Delta during my summer-break. I didn't have much luck but on my way back at a guitar shop in Memphis a guy told me about an old bluesman who lived not far back down across the Mississippi state line I might want to look up, and it was Fred McDowell. I posted about Mister Fred before. Let me try to find it. (I'm lazy about typing.....) (Believe it or not! ) Okay, I found it.....

I found him driving a tractor in a cotton field near Como, Mississippi. I walked out to talk to him and he said he'd give me some pointers when he had a little time later. I spent a week sleeping in an abandoned pick-up truck down the road from his place. I practiced all day, and spent the evenings learning what I could from him (and I couldn't slide for sh!t back then so I needed a lot of help). The day I left, he laughed at the slide-version of the tune "The Pusher" I'd come up with and said "Not bad, keep at it." and told me to keep the old deep-well socket he'd loaned me from under the seat of his tractor when he saw my slide was a thin chromed slide from a music-store up north ("Hahaha... that won't do. You need something with a little meat to it.... Here, try this.") I returned a couple of years later and he'd died. He's buried in a little cemetery next to his wife at Hammond Hill Baptist Chuch just outside of Como. His headstone was inexpensive, just a poured block of cement with his name cast in it. And his name was even spelled wrong...Fred McDewell. I told myself I was going to by him a real headstone someday. I mentioned it to the old woman back at the general-store in Como who had told me how to find the cemetery. (Very out-of-the-way). She said "Why you wanna go an' do that? His people bought what they could afford. It'd be disrespectful of them for some white-boy to buy him another one." Her statement had a big impact on me. I'd never considered that. I've bought two gravestones since, but only for un-marked graves with no known family. A couple of years ago on my way to New Orleans, I stopped in Como again to pay my respects to Mister Fred's and Miss Mae's (who had also been very kind to me) graves. I played one of his tunes and shared a whiskey with him and then went on my way. On my way back to the inter-state highway, I happened to drive down that same dirt-road I went down years before when I had hitch-hiked down to find him. The same old rusty abandoned pick-up truck was still there, looking the same as it had thirty years earlier. The hot sun beat down on the dirt-road and the cotton-field, just as it had then. As if nothing at all had changed, except the calendar. And me riding in a Buick instead of walking on foot. A very......blue, un-easy feeling sort of. Very hard to explain. So, yes. It was him. Bonnie (who he mentioned..."a young white gal" he called her. I'd never heard her name before) had been there a year or two before me to learn from him. I give her a great deal of credit, a young white teenaged-girl hitching deep into the South (where segregation and racism were just a matter of fact back then). Things weren't like they are now down there. (Well, maybe not that different after all in some ways.)

[ibanezdude70]

oh snap yall- check out xavier rudd www.xavierrudd.com- he plays slide guitar harmonicas and didgeridoos, but he plays stombbox too- which is just him taping a barefoot on a micd apparatus.  i myself mess around w/ a lil' mini tamborine and my harmonica on a rack. its fun

dadfad- did you say fred mcdowell SHOWED you something, as in you met/knew him? duuuuuuude- hes the freakin shiz. i love his music

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, in 1969 I was just getting into acoustic blues. I made a road-trip down to the Delta during my summer-break. I didn't have much luck but on my way back at a guitar shop in Memphis a guy told me about an old bluesman who lived not far back down across the Mississippi state line I might want to look up, and it was Fred McDowell. I posted about Mister Fred before. Let me try to find it. (I'm lazy about typing.....) (Believe it or not! ) Okay, I found it.....

I found him driving a tractor in a cotton field near Como, Mississippi. I walked out to talk to him and he said he'd give me some pointers when he had a little time later. I spent a week sleeping in an abandoned pick-up truck down the road from his place. I practiced all day, and spent the evenings learning what I could from him (and I couldn't slide for sh!t back then so I needed a lot of help). The day I left, he laughed at the slide-version of the tune "The Pusher" I'd come up with and said "Not bad, keep at it." and told me to keep the old deep-well socket he'd loaned me from under the seat of his tractor when he saw my slide was a thin chromed slide from a music-store up north ("Hahaha... that won't do. You need something with a little meat to it.... Here, try this.") I returned a couple of years later and he'd died. He's buried in a little cemetery next to his wife at Hammond Hill Baptist Chuch just outside of Como. His headstone was inexpensive, just a poured block of cement with his name cast in it. And his name was even spelled wrong...Fred McDewell. I told myself I was going to by him a real headstone someday. I mentioned it to the old woman back at the general-store in Como who had told me how to find the cemetery. (Very out-of-the-way). She said "Why you wanna go an' do that? His people bought what they could afford. It'd be disrespectful of them for some white-boy to buy him another one." Her statement had a big impact on me. I'd never considered that. I've bought two gravestones since, but only for un-marked graves with no known family. A couple of years ago on my way to New Orleans, I stopped in Como again to pay my respects to Mister Fred's and Miss Mae's (who had also been very kind to me) graves. I played one of his tunes and shared a whiskey with him and then went on my way. On my way back to the inter-state highway, I happened to drive down that same dirt-road I went down years before when I had hitch-hiked down to find him. The same old rusty abandoned pick-up truck was still there, looking the same as it had thirty years earlier. The hot sun beat down on the dirt-road and the cotton-field, just as it had then. As if nothing at all had changed, except the calendar. And me riding in a Buick instead of walking on foot. A very......blue, un-easy feeling sort of. Very hard to explain. So, yes. It was him. Bonnie (who he mentioned..."a young white gal" he called her. I'd never heard her name before) had been there a year or two before me to learn from him. I give her a great deal of credit, a young white teenaged-girl hitching deep into the South (where segregation and racism were just a matter of fact back then). Things weren't like they are now down there. (Well, maybe not that different after all in some ways.)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Please write a book Dadfad!!! I would buy it in an instant! Please!!!

[meth]

Ditto...

[TheJosh]

wow- pretty awesome story there dude. that is the very essence of the blues right there.

[dadfad]

I was just lucky. Back then blues weren't as popular as they are now, and a lot of these guys were still alive. A few of them had been found and "dusted-off" for the brief folk-revival of the sixties, but mostly they just did what they did. Plowed fields, dug graves, worked as janitors, or junk-men. And if you took the trouble to find one, they ususally had no problem showing you a little of their music.


EDIT: I just came across a big box of old cassettes that I know includes the taping of that work-shop concert I mentioned above somewhere inside it (although I rarely bothered to date or title individual cassettes, I always dated boxes of cassettes.). Sometime in the next few days or so, I'll try to find it, transfer it to CD, and put it on Soundclick for a little while. It's very un-like Mister Fred's recorded version of Diamond Ring. As good as his recordings were, it seemed he was sort of shy and restrained during concerts and recording sessions. This was not the case once he became comfortable around you and could open-up (even show-off!) a little. He could play with a drive and.... "ferocity" I guess.... that doesn't come through on any recordings by him I've ever heard. On his recordings he would sit and play and sing excellent Delta-slide blues into the mic or camera. In person, after a "nip or two" into the night, he would "snarl" the words, with both boots driving out a beat with his slide and both hands alternately sliding and thumping rhythms on his guitar. My version, although it could never begin to match his, is done much closer to that "informal" version as I heard it than to his his recording of the same tune.