It is the early 1960s, in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a burly yet underfed guitarist fusses over a record player, the smoke from a lit cigarette curling around his head. He drops the needle again and again on a scratchy 78rpm record. As the strains of a turn-of-the-century piano rag Saint Louis Tickle warble forth, he is creating one of the first guitar arrangements for a classic ragtime piano piece. Once other musicians hear it, it will kick off what will become a movement of ragtime guitarists.
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Walter Strauss – Ishi
Walter Strauss has the most unique style. With strong compositional skills at his command, Walter makes use of techniques he has developed based on West-African music. Walter has thoroughly absorbed the feel of this music and informed it with his own feel for modern fingerstyle.
Playing on an Oneida Guitar also gives Walter a special sound. With the song he played for my camera, the sublime ‘Ishi’, Walter overcomes the ‘seen-it-all-before’ attitude, and amazes with powerful rhythms and intricate picking, with no need for flashy pyro-technics.
Garrin Benfield – Unbound
I’ve known San Francisco based singer-songwriter Garrin Benfield for some time. In the mid ‘oughties’ (this century has turned out sucky for decade names so far,) we were booked on the same bill at a local SF acoustic music showcase night. At the end of the evening, Garrin and I jumped onstage for an impromptu [...]
Obsessed With Guitar
For thousands of years humans have plucked things. Today as ever, the guitar inspires and is an obsession.
The focus of this blog is on fingerstyle acoustic guitar, with an emphasis on old-school fingerpicking and and folk-blues styles originated by the great bluesmen of the 1920s, 30s and 40s.
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