Comments on: Dave Van Ronk, the Real Folk Blues http://mokaimusic.com/guitar/2009/04/dave-van-ronk-the-real-folk-blues/ FOLK BLUES, FINGERPICKING & FINGERSTYLE GUITAR Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:21:13 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Theo http://mokaimusic.com/guitar/2009/04/dave-van-ronk-the-real-folk-blues/comment-page-1/#comment-4 Theo Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:03:31 +0000 http://mokaimusic.com/guitar/?p=21#comment-4 Dave Van Ronk is incredibly underrated, not as a guitar technician, but as a teller of stories, someone who let the story - the material itself - suggest the way it should be played. A lot of other players will bring a single playing style to a repertoire of material, and sometimes it can all end up sounding kind of flat after a while. Not Dave. He is the real deal. Not yer nerdy imitator. It has a hard-bitten working class edge to it and a love of poetry that makes it somehow urbane and bohemian at the same time that it digs into what is mostly southern, rural, black roots. And, many will disagree but to my mind he is just about the only white guy who can do traditional blues with emotional conviction. Sure now and then his husky voice relies too much on gut bucket effects, but this is the exception. Beside him, everybody else sounds like a skinny necked college kid putting on airs. In comparison all other white guys who play folk blues sound to me like they're playing out of a book, not out of real life. With Dave, you felt that he had lived something of what he sang about. And that was what I felt to be so compelling in his work. Thanks Dave, I raise this dram to you ! -Theo Dave Van Ronk is incredibly underrated, not as a guitar technician, but as a teller of stories, someone who let the story – the material itself – suggest the way it should be played. A lot of other players will bring a single playing style to a repertoire of material, and sometimes it can all end up sounding kind of flat after a while. Not Dave.

He is the real deal. Not yer nerdy imitator. It has a hard-bitten working class edge to it and a love of poetry that makes it somehow urbane and bohemian at the same time that it digs into what is mostly southern, rural, black roots. And, many will disagree but to my mind he is just about the only white guy who can do traditional blues with emotional conviction. Sure now and then his husky voice relies too much on gut bucket effects, but this is the exception. Beside him, everybody else sounds like a skinny necked college kid putting on airs.

In comparison all other white guys who play folk blues sound to me like they’re playing out of a book, not out of real life. With Dave, you felt that he had lived something of what he sang about. And that was what I felt to be so compelling in his work.

Thanks Dave, I raise this dram to you !

-Theo

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