DANNY GATTON, "REMINGTON RIDE"

More vintage Gatton, this time with Herb Remington's steel guitar classic "Remington Ride," which turns into one of Gatton's crazy medleys.
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JAMES BURTON w/RICKY NELSON, "STRING ALONG"

My colleague Alex McCullough says this is his favorite Burton solo.
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MARC RIBOT

It seems to me that most of what Ribot does here is pretty basic or standard rock vocabulary, but with unusual approach to time, staccato phrasing, etc. I think this shows that just thinking about time and phrasing in a slightly different way, you can immediately get away from rock territory. (With some exceptions, rock is mostly pretty conservative about use of rhythm and time.) Ribot seems to be drifting into some odder territory at the end, but sadly the clip is cut off.

I hope I'm not giving anyone the impression I didn't like his playing here! It's got some Beefheart, some Ennio Morricone, some "Ghost Riders in the Sky"-- what's not to like? I like it a lot, actually-- but it's certainly a lesson in how to avoid cliche without working too hard. Or, another take on it-- he shows how you can use cliched material, but in a slightly different way, and it changes it for the listener.
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NEW FREDDY KING TRANSCRIPTION NOW AVAILABLE, "NICKEL-PLATED"

I just finished a new transcription-- one of Freddie King's great blues instrumentals. Excerpt at right, the whole thing is six pages. See the catalog for ordering info--

straubcountryguitar.blogspot.com/2010/01/catalog-of-available-transcriptions.html

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EVAN JOHNS, "MADHOUSE"

This vintage clip of Evan provided "another piece of the puzzle" for me, to use Jim Stephanson's phrase. Years ago, around the time of this video, I used to go watch Evan play. An Evan show at the old 9:30 club in D.C. was a real experience-- dark atmosphere, plus a whole lot of trash and twang for a couple hours.

Evan used to do a lot of this kind of playing, especially in the key of E, where he'd get a raunchy howling effect by holding notes. At the time, I had no idea how he did this-- but it crawled into my DNA somehow. Now I can see that he focuses this kind of solo around certain bends that can give you an intensity in your playing. I believe this is what Robbie Robertson referred to as "that stinger thing" he got from Roy Buchanan. (Whether Evan was influenced by Roy, I don't know for sure, but it certainly seems likely. These three players, Evan, Roy, and Robbie, are all related to my ear because they rely more on intensity of expression than flash.) Sometimes Evan attacks a note with an extreme right-hand pick-dragging technique-- this technique enables him to get a similar "stinger" effect without bending.

It's hard to see a lot of either hand in this clip, unfortunately, but look for Evan
using positions where he can bend 4 to 5, and b7 to tonic. The G string gets a lot of bending, and E positions both low and high are used. This jumping between low E open position and the high one 12 frets up is a crude but effective gimmick. Easy to do, it perfectly illustrates the different emotional and coloristic effects of the two registers. Low, you can get snarling and guttural-- up high it's more of a screaming effect. When Evan uses the pick-drag technique without bending, it's often the b7 or b3 blue note, with a little vibrato.
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ROBBIE ROBERTSON WITH BOB DYLAN AND THE BAND, "LAY, LADY, LAY"

www.wolfgangsvault.com/

From the fabulous live music site Wolfgang's Vault, here are three different versions of this arrangement. Each one has lots of Robertson fills, plus a solo. I believe the first is the released version from 1974's "Before the Flood," but Robertson fans will find a few new ideas on the other versions here. Robertson gets a lot of mileage out of the high G position, but even though it's basically all pentatonic he never sounds stale, and he doesn't really sound like anyone else. (Aficionados will hear a little Roy Buchanan in Robbie's pinched harmonics, but the phrasing is his own.)
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WAYLON, TELE, AND PHASE SHIFTER, "CAN'T YOU SEE"

Here's some phase shifter, for Marty Lynds and anyone else who digs it. Nice Ralph Mooney solos, and nice chunky gloopy Waylon breaks too. It was country guitar in the 1970s, when twangy met gloopy--
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