Electric Bard

I saw Michael Hedges in 1993 at Bumbershoot. I had taken the day off work to drive down to Seattle with my wife and our friends Stu and Teri to attend Bumbershoot and in particular to see Michael Hedges perform. He was nothing like I expected. Based on the cassette album I had of his called Taproot, I expected he would come out on stage probably wearing some sort of African pill box hat, sit on a stool and not look up for the whole concert. How wrong I was. He came out wearing bright red Everlast boxing shorts and a bowler hat. He had some wireless transmitter taped to the hat. He started playing a song and at first I didn’t recognize it, but when I did – woah! He opened with Madonna’s “Lucky Star”. And so it went, full of surprises. But in that one set, he completely changed how I could approach playing the acoustic guitar, and it had a lasting impact on my ideas for arranging songs in unexpected ways.

Mrs. Electricbard came across this article from Gregg Braden that also expresses the impact that Michael Hedges had on him. If you aren’t familiar with Michael Hedges, do check him out. Read Gregg’s article now.

Cool, cool, cool. Check this out if you know who Andy Partidge is. Check this out if you don’t…XTC Rules!

Live in Vancouver on April 20. It was a great show. Here’s a little taste, from my iPhone.

Here’s a video of The Malarkeys performing an original song called Walk Out to the Edge.

Here’s a video playing the Gibson J45 through a BOSS GE-7 pedal into a Bose line array system. We played a 35-minute set in the atrium ahead of the Steven Page concert (which was excellent, by the way).

I don’t know if this will help you play guitar better, but in a way maybe it will. I’ve been inspired by Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why. It makes sense to me.

I am very much at a point in my life where I want to simplify things. I have a long history of embracing new technologies; sometimes slowly and reluctantly, and sometimes I’m in the ‘early adopter’ crowd. Lately though, it just seems to me that along with all the cool things that a technology can bring (Twitter can be useful) there is also more noise. We are turning up the noise all the time. Sure there are lots of ideas and products and services and bright shiny things, but ultimately what is it all for? Or maybe I can ask, WHY is it all for?

Is it right to be all excited about the next iPad when our local food bank is still needed (and in fact is growing yearly)? Okay, a new iPad might be exciting news, but it’s a question of perspective. I get excited by new guitars from Fender and Gibson, because I love guitars. But I really don’t believe that whoever dies with the most toys wins. It ain’t so. It’s about being here now, being awake. And I think starting with why is part of that process of staying in the moment, of being awake to life.

Anyway, Nico Boesten has put up an excellent post that includes an 18-minute video I recommend anyone watch, along with a transcript of the talk that Simon Sinek gave at TEDx explaining the idea behind Start With Why. Do check it out.

Like some people I’ve seen, I learned how to play Blackbird but not quite right. Here’s the right way to play it.

Guitar tone. Guitars matter, amps matter, effects (or lack thereof) matter, strings matter, cables matter, it all matters but ultimately tone comes from you. It’s in your fingers. It’s in how you play. And that’s what makes the guitar such a great instrument – it’s so expressive. It’s you.

OK, that’s the punch line. Now here’s my story. This past Saturday we did a gig for Festivals Kelowna. A company called SPL provided the kickass sound system and backline. It was a gig at Kelowna’s outdoor skating rink. We showed up 30 minutes early, being the seasoned and serious performers that we are (The Malarkeys, that is). I was delighted to see the amp they were providing was a Fender Deluxe Reverb, one of my very favourite amps in the world. In fact, I’d been practising that morning with my Robert Cray Strat and my own ’67 Deluxe Reverb at home.

About 10 minutes before we were to start we fired up their Deluxe, and let it warm up for a minute. The temperature was just a notch above freezing. With the tubes warmed up I plugged in my pedal board, a BOSS LS-2, TU-2 and GE-7, cranked up the Strat and…nothing. No sound came out of that amp. So we started trying different guitar cables, checking the speaker to amp connection, etc., all the usual troubleshooting stuff. That speaker was blown.

At precisely 1PM, show time, the MC stepped up to the mic and introduced us to a round of applause. I then stepped up and said thanks, but we’re having a little technical difficulty. Standby. SPL had made a call, another amp was on its way.

Gail suggested rather than wait, since we only had 45 minutes and then another act had to go on, we try plugging the Strat right into the DI on the stage. Crazy, right? We decided to try it. Thank God for my great sounding Stratocaster. It sounded pretty good, straight through my pedals into the DI. I didn’t even turn the EQ pedal on. And away we went.

We sounded good, the stage sound was good, and we got on with our set. We could see people enjoying it. After the set, a few people came up and bought our CD. Yes, with no amp tone I had to skip any wailing solos, plus for the first 30 minutes I was wearing a fingerless glove on my left hand and blowing on it between songs, but I learned that after 30 minutes I warm up enough in cold weather to play just fine. And I was reminded that tone comes from those chilly fingers.

The audience didn’t care that I didn’t play any smoking distorted solos. They liked our choice of cover and original songs, they liked our sound, they liked our arrangements, and everybody had a good time. I got to play my guitar, and I got paid, so really, how does it get any better than that?

Here’s a really nice video lesson from Arlen Roth for Gibson Guitars, featuring Buddy Guy’s Mary Had a Little Lamb. Arlen does a great job of explaining it in this video.