Frets? I don't need no steenking frets!!!

[Mark Hammer]

Regards from Ottawa's Bluesfest and that most modern of phenomena, the festival laptop salon, where folks can do whatever it is they do with the net.  Given the relentless heat, I'm happy for a bit of shade and air conditioning.

It's like frets aren't allowed today.  Just caught Harry Manx, and caught Kaki King earlier.  David Lindley is in a couple of hours, Bill Frisell and the New York Dolls after that, at the same time as a "Steel Summit", which I gather will assemble the huge assortment of pedal and lap steel players at the festival.  Also caught a kid named  Johnathan Candler who is this weeny little grade 8 kid who is a monster on pedal steel.  Funny to hear this huge, very mature control over all those pedals coming from this teeny, tiny voice.  Kaki King is magnificent.  Imagine that Joni Mitchell kicked away all her lyric sheets, said "Screw this!!", went instrumental and invoked the spirits of Robert Fripp, Hector Villa-Lobos  and Stanley Jordan all at once.  Wonderful chording, terrific use of looper/samplers and train-like rhythms.  Like Joni Mitchell, she loves the explosions of fresh bronze slapped against a fingerboard, complex chords and unusual tunings.  A major, major talent who is this wee thing that looks like the typical girlfriend of a grade 12 student in the A-V club.  Harry Manx is a festival regular and favourite, playing some rather bizarre stringed things (including the mohan vina and some bizarre thing that seemed to use a cigar box), accompanied by a tabla player and blues harp player.  I have no idea how his guitar necks hold up under the bizarre sorts of pressure he imposes on them.  He appears to use either one or two bass strings on the bass side, and some droning strings, slapping out the bass line as he plays slide and taps rhythm on one of those little mic'd up foot-tapping boards.  He did a quasi-Indian version of "Foxey Lady" that was interesting and fun.

Okay, off to see the sacred steel of the Campbell Brothers.  More tomorrow or later today.

[petemoore]

Sounds too cool Mark, I wish we could all be there !!

[puretube]

be sure to get David!

[1wahfreak]

I caught Kaki King here in Milwaukee a few weeks ago when she opened up for Eric Johnson. She was really good. Cute too!  
She was pretty nervous opening for Eric knowing there would be a bunch of guitar nuts in the audience checking out her every move. She pulled off a pretty good show. She did this really cool two handed tapping thing, sort of like Stanley Jordan. She impressed me, but then again that doesn't take much. :wink:

[bwanasonic]

I'm wondering if you meant Bill Frisell AND the New York Dolls, as that sounds like quite the *Personality Crisis*  :wink: ! Enjoy, and the field reports are welcome. Had the pleasure to play an outdoor gig in Boston this evening, and it sure is wonderful weather for playing outdoors!

Kerry M

[Mark Hammer]

An update.

I'm amazed I can type.  After posting yesterday, I caught a sacred steel group called the Campbell Brothers, who provided essentially the same show as Robert Randolph would (same tones, too), except there were two steel players.  Just absolutely rockin joyous music.  Lindley came next, providing lots of sardonic commentary within and between songs, with titles like "When a Man Gets Boobs" (about age and the cost of self-indulgence), "Where's Jimmy?" (about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa) and "Catfood Sandwiches" (about really, REALLY bad backstage food).  He sits hunched over his Weissenborn like a rabbinic student or a talib, poring over it, studying it, immersing himself in it.  Sadly, a storm caused the stage to shut down and the set to be cut short.  Under the circumstances, Dave understandably declined to head over to the autograph tent.  We'll see if Sunday brings success.

Bill Frisell came next, and was wonderful.  A sound that was at once spacious and intimate and awfully reminiscent of one of Garrison Keilor's homey concerts.  His quartet included a violin, lap steel, and banjo in addition to himself.  With a goofy smile that reminded me a lot of author Stephen King, Frisell coaxed his signature tones out of a thinline Tele, occasionally using his DL4 to produce intricate reverse-tape loops.  Sounding sometimes like legendary world/New age pioneers Oregon, and sometimes like a bluegrass band that had been kidnapped en route to a show, held hostage in a remote camp and brainwashed by Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus, they put on a terrific show.

We had been "warned" about the steel summit that evening, but were simply unprepared for what an absolute assault on our sense of reality this would be.  Lindley hosted it, and bit by bit every pedal, slide and lap steel player in the joint (except for Kaki King) came up on stage, until finally there were SEVEN slide players all jamming at once.  Duos between Frisell and Lindley, as well as between Harry Manx and Lindley, were magical.  The Henrys, featuring delicate dobro playing by Don Rook, and a tiny bizarre ancient keyboard of some kind, were also magical.  As players started accumulating onstage, Frisell continued to grin like a fool, lapping up every nutty moment.  The Campbell Brothers' guitarist (who may well be a Campbell himself) artfully used a synth-equipped guitar to nurse the ensemble through the Miles Davis/Gil Evans arrangement /chart of "Summertime".  The sight, and sound, of Lindley jamming to a cool-swing version of Summertime on a Weissenborn was something.  The other players (including Frisell's fellow player Greg Lees or Leese) more than held their own.  The whole gang jammed on the Jimmy Smith nugget "Chicken Shack", and teeny Johnathan Candler (up well past his bedtime) drove the crowd wild when he turned on the absolute fuzziest sound he could from his dual neck pedal steel and just ripped it up with hyperkinetic picking.  All the other guys were beaming from ear to ear.  The Campbell Brothers and their band pretty much hijacked the decorum of the rest of the set, and the boogie-gospel thing the stage ended with left one and all jumping, clapping, dancing, and exhausted.  Two solid hours of slippery-slidey amazement.  I'm sorry you all missed it.

The New York Dolls were on another stage elsewhere at the festival, with Cuban music on another and current Canadian thrash-pop darlings Alexisonfire on another.  Kind of a pity that all the 14-16 year old crowd was at that latter show, because there was so much for them to learn from the other stages.  At one point, during a momentary break during his band's set,  Bill Frisell scrunched his face up in response to the din coming from the direction of one of the other stages where clearly Marshalls on 11 were ruling the day, and pondered into the mic "Hmm, is THAT blues?  Or is THIS blues?  I don't know".

What a day.  Today promises to be every bit as good, with Colin Linden, John Hammond, Frisell, Manx, Lindley and the Campbell Brothers again (now THERE's punishment), and topped off with Sonny Landreth.  Should the end of the world come and I decide Sonny Landreth ain't for me, I can saunter over to the All-Star Cuban Jam and see if I can catch this Elmer Ferrer guy everyone's been talking about.  More later.  Pictures tomorrow.

[Mark Hammer]

Okay, couldn't resist. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/mhammer/Dscf1255.jpg

Left to right on the front line:  Rob Taillefer of the Royal Crowns, just behind him the head of Johnathan Candler peeking out over Rob's guitar, the two Campbell Brothers, Greg Leisz, Bill Frisell, David Lindley.  That white thing sticking up between the drummer and the bass player is the neck of one of Harry Manx's bizarre creations that seems to be a sort of combo bass and slide dulcimer.  You can't see the cigar-box body.

[Paul Marossy]

I would love to be able to see Bill Frisell sometime.

[Doug_H]

So Mark, I wonder what your concept of "relentless heat" is... :lol:  I can't imagine any weather in Ottawa this time of year being anything near what I would call "heat". :lol:  :lol:  Haha! :lol:

Sounds like you are having fun.  

Enjoy, and good luck with David.

Doug

[Mark Hammer]

Monday morning, and I'm stiff as a board, crunchy like yesterday's toast.

I have just two words.  Sonny.......aw geez, I got drool all over the keyboard.  I need a sec to wipe it off.  There, that's better.  Sonny....aw crap, not again!  Hold on, I have to stroll down the hallway and get some paper towels from the washroom.  Just talk amongst yourselves for a bit.........................................There, okay wiped up now.  Let me stick a few under my chin and try this again.

Two words.....Sonny......Landreth.

Ohmygodohmygod....oh...my...god.  I have been playing guitar for over 40 years now,  On some nights (less so recently) I have been a force to be reckoned with.  I have 6 guitars currently, and let me tell you that ain't none of them notes live around these parts!!!  Nope, I looked for them all over the fretboard.  Even tried to sneak up on them in case they were easily frightened or something, but they just ain't there.  I was right up front leaning against the barrier, a mere 15 feet away from his fingerboard, and I watched what he did like a hawk.  And I STILL have no idea how all those notes came from his guitar.  I don't doubt that some of it came from alternate tunings, but even so, much of the time I'm staring at his fret hand and he may as well have been bar chording with his thumb like Joni Mitchell or formerMember1 Havens for all the finger movement I'm seeing.  I've had the pleasure of seeing Duane Allman, and Muddy Waters, and plenty of other slide legends, but I have never seen anything so close to magic in my life.

It helps that the guy has absolutely immaculate tone.  The Dumble amp and Marshall bottom, paired with his 2-Tek equipped Strat, had a crunch and sustain that was heavenly.  The sort of thing you dream of having.  Of course I had to ask myself "What the hell would *I* do with it?", and realized very quickly that having such tone was a bit like having a Formula 1 car in the driveway or a 12-inch penis: it's one thing to HAVE it, and quite another to know what to do with it, or have a reason to use it.  I'm content, then, to leave that tone to Sonny, who knows extremely well what to do with it.  http://www.sonnylandreth.com

He started the set with this tune: http://www.sonnylandreth.com/SonnyMP3s/ZRider.mp3
I have to say the recorded tune has "less" to it than the live version.  This one is a little more like the live show, and also something he played: http://www.sonnylandreth.com/SonnyMP3s/Native.mp3  Just staggering.

Another pleasant surprise was former Torontonian Colin Linden, also a slide master, and Nashville man-about-town with an all-star band.  In the band was none less than Wayne Jackson on trumpet, aptly described by Linden as "someone who has played on more hit records than everyone at the festival put together" (try just about everything in the Stax-Volt catalog for starters).  In his honour, the band played the Mar-Keys' 1961 R&B classic "Last Night".

Finally, on a friend's recommendation, I went to see the Pernice Brothers, who were every bit as good as he promised.  Very high end alt-country.  Great songs, great melodies, great playing.

[Doug_H]

Two words.....Sonny......Landreth.

Absolutely... No more needs to be said...

I'm waiting for the day when he shows up around here.

Doug

[Ben N]

Landreth--mmm, hmm.  Tone to die for, chops to kill for (as if it would help).  Not that it matters much, but based on interviews I have heard with him, Landreth appears to be a genuinely nice guy (on top of being a guitar god).

Ben