Bob Weir on singing Jerry Garcia's songs, 2008

From my interview with Weir in the August issue of Acoustic Guitar, available here. (Photo by Anne Hamersky) He was so extraordinarily generous with his time and his insights into the guitar and songwriting. I was lucky enough to meet Jerry for a long interview with David Grisman in 1993, and it was so gratifying for me to have a chance to learn more about Weir's point of view. Here is his closing thought on singing Jerry's songs with RatDog these days...

"I love singing and playing them mostly because they're great songs. I also feel something of a duty to keep them alive and growing. I was there when they were born, watched them grow, and had a hand in their development. I think I know where they live. Every time we play one, it grows, evolves a bit—shows us a new facet. Needless to say, that can be pretty rewarding.

"The music we played was of an intimacy that perhaps can only occur in a long, heavily improvisational relationship. We learned to intuit where each was headed, and then tried to be there with some kind of meaningful counterpoint. That required a lot of careful listening and feeling. After Jerry checked out, he didn't exactly leave: when I'm playing, I can still feel him—" Nah, nah, don't go there… yeah, there, go there." I can still hear the harmonics of what he's up to and react as I always would. I can still feel his sense of character development as the song tells its story. Maybe I should be telling someone this in a quiet room while lying on a couch, but it's real for me."

KT Tunstall on discovering the loop pedal and writing "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," 2007

From my interview with KT Tunstall, just published in Acoustic Guitar (read it here). This is the second in a run of three cover stories I've just done for the magazine (last month was Keller Williams, next up Bob Weir).

"It was after the first record was made. A few months before [the record was due out in the UK in 2004], I was going on a solo tour of coffee shops in Scotland. I'd just made this album and it sounded like a band, and I couldn’t face just going out with a guitar and being that girl in the coffee shop who sings about being dumped. I wanted to do something different. I'd seen this brilliant guy called Son of Dave, who beatboxes or uses a shaker or harmonica and then sings crazy old blues music. It was just brilliant what he did using this loop pedal. And then I saw Jim White, the American singer-songwriter, using it--sometimes with his voice and sometimes with his guitar but never together. My friend helped me work out how to put both of them through the same pedal, just by mixing them in a remote desk.

"I wrote 'Black Horse' while I was trying to learn how to use the pedal. Tom Waits was an early inspiration for me, and I used to listen to a lot of James Brown. I was really envious that these songs were over a constant groove, and singer-songwriter stuff was always reliant on constant chord movement. I really wanted to write a song over a groove that didn't change, and the pedal was obviously perfect for that."

New York Times songwriting blog

Some interesting thoughts here on the music life from Rosanne Cash, Suzanne Vega, Andrew Bird, and Darrell Brown...

http://measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes.com/

John Sebastian on meeting Lightnin' Hopkins and John Hurt, 2007

The May issue of Acoustic Guitar includes my interview with John Sebastian of Lovin' Spoonful fame, who recently released a nice duo set with David Grisman. The story is posted online. Here Sebastian talks about growing up in the thick of the Greenwich Village folk revival of the early '60s...

"Within maybe two years of this first contact between David [Grisman] and me, at 18, there were two really important things. One was my father did a television show that included Lightnin’ Hopkins. It also included Joan Baez, who was unheard of at the time. I sat under a camera and watched Lightnin’ Hopkins as far away as I’m sitting to you right now, and that knocked my block off. My dad said, 'I saw you leave home that day'--he told me that 20 years later. Lightnin’ needed someone to carry his guitar around and talk to the club owners and just be a New York guy for a Texas guy, so that’s what I did for a year or so.

"John Hurt was also coming to the Gaslight Café about once every six or eight weeks, and I became his occasional guitar carrier and harmonica accompanist. What I really wanted to know about was the guitar. The harmonica had been with me since I was five, and I was getting fluent on the little diatonic. But the guitar was a whole other mountain, and John Hurt was at the top of the mountain. So eventually I began to make friends, and he was a very receptive teacher. He was very different than Lightnin’, whose background had been street singing--you don’t teach somebody a song that’s going to come at you across the street from where you’re trying to make your living. John played guitar at parties and on back porches; his world was more of an agricultural world that had recreation on the weekends. Lightnin’s world was recreation. I learned a lot from both men--it wasn’t all about the fretboard."

Humming CD spotlight on Whole Wheat Radio

Quick addendum to my recent post about the new CD, Humming My Way Back Home, on Whole Wheat Radio. Today the CD is being spotlighted, so head over there to listen, rate, or request songs. And, of course, you can still hear the whole CD at my site.

CDs and downloads available direct from me, and from CD Baby, iTunes, and other online stores.

Depressing news from No Depression

No Depression, a good little music magazine covering the beat of alt-country/roots/Americana/indie rock, will cease publishing its print edition after its May/June issue--though plans are afoot to keep it going online. This letter from the editors outlines the reasons and says much about the tectonic shifts in the music and publishing businesses, and it's well worth a read. As the founding editor of another niche magazine, Acoustic Guitar (thankfully alive and well in its 18th year), I can well relate to both the pride and the sense of loss. The music world needs writers and editors who truly care about the music.

"Humming My Way Back Home" lesson in Acoustic Guitar

The April issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine includes my lesson on spicing up guitar accompaniment parts by playing reduced and simplified chord voicings. I show a number of chord examples and then share a guitar-only version of my song "Humming My Way Back Home," the title track of the new CD.

You can access the whole lesson online--text, tab, and audio too--at the AG site. And you can still hear the final CD version of "Humming" right here.

Google books preview of Rock Troubadours

My book Rock Troubadours, a collection of conversations about songwriting and the music life with Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Dave Matthews, Ani DiFranco, and more, can now be previewed on Google at this link.

As I write this, it's strange to think that two of the musicians in this book, Jerry Garcia and Chris Whitley, are no longer with us. Both are on the wall in front of me now, in photos taken when we met for these interviews, and are very much present in my own music.

Guitarist Billy McLaughlin comes back from focal dystonia

The new issue of Acoustic Guitar (March 2008) includes my interview with guitarist Billy McLaughlin, who's making a mind-boggling recovery from a neurological disorder called focal dystonia by learning to play the guitar left handed. Just a remarkable story. Read it here, and find out more about McLaughlin and his music at his own site.

Issa (formerly Jane Siberry) on "self-determined pricing" for music downloads, 2007

"The response from people is so positive that it confirms that it's the right way to go, and I'll sink or swim by it. People say, 'I can't believe you trust us,' or 'Thank you for not making us feel like the minute you take off the brakes we’re going to shoplift everything.'"

From my profile of Issa, formerly Jane Siberry, that aired today on NPR's All Things Considered. Listen to the whole piece at the NPR site. She stopped selling physical CDs and introduced pay-as-you-wish pricing on her website back in 2005.

Snuffy Walden on composing for film and TV, 2007

"What I'm trying to get is an emotional resonance that keeps the viewer inside the story. As soon as somebody's more aware of what I'm doing than they are of the story, then I've kind of defeated the producer’s purpose. I want to do something different and special that stands alone, but at the same time if I sabotage the story by expressing myself as an artist, I'm not doing the job that's being asked of me. So it's a fine line, and one that I don't always succeed at, but I try."

From a profile in Acoustic Guitar magazine, February 2008. Read the story here. Snuffy Walden broke into composing for TV 20 years ago on thirtysomething. He currently does the music for Friday Night Lights and In Plain Sight.

Spins: American Beauty Project

The Grateful Dead's American Beauty and Workingman's Dead are major parts of my musical DNA, and I'm getting a kick out of this contemporary reinterpretation of the former by a bunch of fine singers and players in the American Beauty Project. You can spin an entire live show (comprising the whole album) here.

New NPR music site

NPR is, in my entirely biased opinion as a contributor to All Things Considered, an indispensable source of coverage of contemporary music. In terms of national mainstream media, nothing compares to the depth and variety of what's done on various NPR programs each week, from the big news shows to Fresh Air and the World Cafe to the Web music show All Songs Considered.

So it's great that they're starting to put all these pieces together in this beta music site. Looks promising...

New Web forum for guitar pros

Over the last few months I've been working with my comrades at Acoustic Guitar to launch a new section of the magazine called Guitar Pro, covering career and craft issues for working musicians. Now there's an on-line forum for this topic too, just launched here.

These Guitar Talk forums are reliably busy and lively. Check them out.

On-line recording studios

Here are some links to sites offering on-line recording and production services. For more musicians' resources, see the Songwriting Toolbox, compiled for my book The Complete Singer-Songwriter.

Mixing and Mastering, www.mixingandmastering.com. A network of engineers and producers that offers audio mixing, mastering, and recording, with per-song rates and on-line submissions.

eSession, www.esession.com. A Web service connecting musicians (including some high-profile studio players), engineers, and producers for recording projects.

Session Players, www.sessionplayers.com. For booking Web-based sessions with studio pros.

Studio drum tracks: www.e-studio-drummer.com (Phil Robertson), www.daveweckl.com, www.drumsforyou.com.

Strings/fiddle parts: www.e-fiddler.com.
Horn charts and tracks: www.hispeedhorns.com.

Studio-Aid, www.studio-aid.com. Low-priced guitar, bass and drum tracks, geared toward the home-recording singer-songwriter.

Sterling Sound, www.sterlingsound.com. One of New York's top mastering studios offers reduced-rate AfterHours services for indie musicians.

StudioTraxx.com, www.studiotraxx.com. Web portal for hiring studio musicians and collaborating on-line.

NetMusicMakers.com (www.netmusicmakers.com)
and Indaba Music (www.indabamusic.com). Two sites that combine social networking with virtual studio capabilities, providing a platform for finding musicians and working together on songs and tracks.

CD recycling

I'm glad to know someone's thinking about all those gazillions of shiny plastic discs that go into the trash every year. Check out the CD Recycling Center here.

Songwriting software review

The November issue of Acoustic Guitar includes my review of three software packages--Lyricist, MasterWriter, and Finale SongWriter--aimed at aiding the songwriter's quest for great words and music. Read the full article here.

Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem review on NPR

All Things Considered just aired my review of Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem's CD Big Old Life, on the Signature Sounds label. The audio will be available shortly at the NPR site.

That page at NPR also has more or less the full text of the review, including a paragraph not heard on air that describes more fully the band's instrumental mix.

More about the band here.

Paul Reisler on songwriting, 2007

“In the kind of lives we live, with lots of stuff going on and lots of noise, it’s increasingly difficult to pick out the piccolo from the wind section. What we’re really doing is that kind of selective listening. I always like to say that composing music is merely remembering it before someone else does.”

From an article in Acoustic Guitar, October 2007, offering tips for songwriters. Read the full article here.

Find out more about songwriter and workshop teacher Paul Reisler at his site.

Martin Sexton feature in Acoustic Guitar

My interview with the acoustic soul man Martin Sexton is now posted on the Acoustic Guitar site. I first heard him sing in a hotel room in Toronto a decade ago--a spine-tingling experience--and loved having the chance to sit down in his tour bus and talk songwriting and guitar. It was especially interesting meeting him in his hometown of Syracuse, surrounded by more Sexton relations than I could count.

"Nowhere Man" arrangement in Acoustic Guitar magazine

My guitar-and-voice arrangement of "Nowhere Man" is published in the October issue of Acoustic Guitar--Richard Thompson is on the cover. The guitar part, played with a three-string partial capo (mine is a Shubb C7B), combines rhythm and lead. The capo facilitates some very cool sounds that mimic both Lennon's and Harrison's original parts.

Note to guitar players trying out the arrangement: the published notation has a few errors, which you can read about here.

Joni Mitchell video of "Night Ride Home"

A friend pointed me to this lovely, informal footage of Joni in Amsterdam, singing "Night Ride Home" with acoustic guitar by the water. Gorgeous singing and playing... Here's the link:

http://home.tiscali.nl/hejira/

Online recording feature and Chris Whitley review in Acoustic Guitar

The September issue of Acoustic Guitar includes my feature about online recording--a follow-up to my NPR story that gets into the nitty-gritty about hiring a session player online or playing long-distance sessions yourself. Read the story here.




The same issue includes my review of the great Chris Whitley and Jeff Lang CD, Dislocation Blues, also posted at the AG site.

Music festivals for families

My article on music fests that appeared in the June issue of Travel + Leisure Family is now posted online, with three additional festivals not covered in the print edition. The events included are Kerrville, Old Songs, Telluride Bluegrass, Strawberry, City Stages (Birmingham, Alabama), Vancouver Folk, Wheatland, and Merlefest, plus a few family-friendly summer music camps. Just typing these names brings back a lot of happy memories...

Check out the article here.

Resources for house concert performers and hosts

Here are a couple of good resources for people who want to play or host house concerts. (Read more about my own house concert experiences in this earlier post.)

House Concerts. Free, comprehensive guide to playing and hosting house concerts. (This is what I used to plan my first house concert, and it was right on the mark.)

Concerts in Your Home. Resources for house-concert performers and hosts.


For lots more links and info for musicians, see the Songwriting Toolbox, created for my book The Complete Singer-Songwriter.

Music festivals for families

My story about great music festivals for families--Strawberry, Kerrville, Vancouver, Old Songs, and others--appears in the Summer 2007 issue of Travel + Leisure Family. A longer version of the piece, with more fests plus info on music camps, will be posted soon on the website.

Live video of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

Taped in January at the Syracuse Center for the Arts:

Joni Mitchell Tribute

On April 28th I'll be emcee for a Joni Mitchell tribute concert featuring singer Maria De Angelis with a group of jazz-oriented friends. See show details at jonimitchell.com. This has gotten me revisiting my conversation with her about guitar and songwriting, published in its fullest form in the book Rock Troubadours. What an amazing creative mind she has, and what incredible music she's given us.

Meanwhile, a tribute CD is coming out with tracks by Prince, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, James Taylor... The label's site offers side-by-side clips of the original tracks and the new versions, and some interesting reflections from the artists on Joni's legacy. It's well worth a visit.

Online recording story on NPR today

All Things Considered just aired my story about online recording--in which I hired online session players to flesh out a home-studio demo of my song "Wasting Time No More." The audio will be posted at the NPR site later tonight at this link.

The full band track is posted on MySpace.

You can also see a solo performance video of "Wasting Time No More" on YouTube.

More about this story soon...

Copyright law and Internet radio

I've blogged before about Radio Paradise, a great Internet station, and recently received the letter below about changes in copyright law that threaten Internet radio. Thought I'd share it with fellow music fans who want to get involved.

As a fan of Internet radio, I was alarmed to learn that music royalty rates were recently determined by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which, if enacted, would certainly silence most or all of my favorite online listening services. For most webcasters, this royalty rate represents more than 100% of their total revenues!

The shuttering of the webcasting industry would be a loss for not only independent business owners, but also for musical artists, for copyright owners, and for listeners like me who enjoy the wide variety of choices available via Internet radio.

As a fellow fan of internet radio and radioparadise.com in particular, I am writing to enlist your support in the fight against the CRBs decision. Specifically, I am writing to request that you to contact your Congressional representatives and notify your customers of the threat to internet radio. Further, I request that you use any contacts you may have in the recording industry to help speak out on behalf of internet radio.

Sincerely,

Eric B. Greynolds

p.s.- For further information, please see www.saveourinternetradio.com, www.saveourstreams.org, & Bill@radioparadise.com

New JPR performance video

This clip of my song "Wasting Time No More" is from a show in January at the Guitar League in Syracuse, New York. Video by Daniel Ball.

David Wilcox guitar lesson online

As previously noted, the April issue of Acoustic Guitar includes my feature lesson with David Wilcox, focusing on his adventures with alternate tunings. Now the Acoustic Guitar website has posted MP3 audio for all the guitar examples in the article. Magazine and online subscribers (or anyone with a copy of the April issue) can access the audio at www.acousticguitar.com.

Uke attack

There's been some kind of harmonic convergence around ukuleles in my life this week. My brother, who plays with the northern California band RoofTop Four, is a uke fanatic, so the instrument is already well established in my family... But then I was talking the other day with luthier Harry Eibert, builder of the incredible airplane uke and submarine uke (check them out here). And after I performed "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (on guitar), this showed up in my in box: a link to YouTube footage of this spectactular uke rendition by Jake Shimabukuro.

We've come a long way from Tiny Tim, eh?

Musical new year

Pardon the long absence from these pages--too much going on during the holidays. The year kicked off with a feature in the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper (available as a pdf here) about my work as a writer, editor, and musician, in anticipation of a presentation for the Guitar League.

Lots of good music in the air too. I caught a show last night by William Nicholson, an accomplished and versatile guitarist who does fingerstyle instrumentals in the vein of Michael Hedges and Stanley Jordan, plus folk-rock singer-songwriter material. Meanwhile, in my car I've been serenaded by the acoustic swing/cabaret/cowgirl sounds of the Ditty Bops--great stuff, and more on that later.

Happy new year.

Erin McKeown on recording Sing You Sinners

Erin McKeown's photo journal of making her new record, Sing You Sinners, is worth a look. An interesting glimpse into the day-to-day process in the studio.

She's an articulate artist whose thoughts on making it as a DIY musician are included in my book The Complete Singer-Songwriter.

JPR on CNN.com, "How to Be a Guitar God"

This recent post on CNN International offers a five-step plan to guitar deity and includes a soundbite on barre chords from my book the Beginning Guitarist's Handbook.

Animated Coltrane: "Giant Steps"

A conversation with fusion guitar great Larry Coryell the other day got me thinking about John Coltrane's "Giant Steps"...and a few clicks later I found myself watching this mesmerizing visual interpretation of the bebop classic. It's well worth a look--fascinating to think about solo improvisation in geometric terms.

JPR music update

I've been revamping and expanding my music pages at MySpace (which includes four tracks from the Traveling Songs CD and info on upcoming Syracuse-area gigs) and on my own site. Plus lots of new photos can be found here, and you can sign up to receive periodic updates on gigs and news.

Readings: How to copyright your songs

Here's my primer on copyright, published in the December '06 issue of Acoustic Guitar and available online.

JPR music on MySpace

JPR's original songs can now be streamed at www.myspace.com/jeffreypepperrodgers.

Kids and songwriting

Feeling jaded about contemporary song craft? Visit the site of the music-education organization Little Kids Rock and listen to a few tracks (or watch videos) written and recorded by kids who participate in their school programs. Pure, straight-shot expression--a reminder of why we make music.

Listen to my All Things Considered profile of the music teacher/comedian/opera singer known as Songflower Man at the NPR site.

Acoustic guitar care and feeding

Guitar repair guru Frank Ford's site at www.frets.com (no relation to Frets magazine) is a real labor of love, packed with useful information and step-by-step photos on everything from how to change a string to what happens in a major guitar repair.

For more music links, see my Songwriting Toolbox.

Readings: Louis Menand on Bob Dylan

I've gotten more than a little weary of all the hyper-intellectual essays on Dylan in various magazines, but what a nice surprise it was to read Louis Menand's great piece in the current New Yorker, which uses Jonathan Cott's Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews as its excuse to muse about the larger significance of Dylan's music. I particularly like Menand's analysis (backed by quotes from Dave Van Ronk) of the Dylan-goes-electric moment and the whole murky idea of authenticity in music. Check it out.

Free health insurance advice for musicians

Good news for musicians without day jobs and benefits packages: The Future of Music Coalition is offering a new, free service called HINT (Health Insurance Navigation Tool). Online articles give some general advice, and you can arrange to speak to an actual human being about your insurance situation. Learn more here.