Hello Troubadourians! I’m writing this column before Thanksgiving for you to read in December. So, I’m going to take some timing liberties and offer some thanks. As always, I’m forever thankful to Liz Abbott for taking a chance on me, an untested and inexperienced writer, to take over as a columnist for Jim McInnes who was, and is, a legend in the San Diego Scene. Thanks Jim.
The concept was simple enough; I’d write about musical gear from the perspective of the performing musician—from instruments, amplifiers, effects devices and sound systems to how to interact with stage personnel at venues—with the intent that more people would become better informed and feel encouraged to participate in live music and help make them better performers. Over time, the concept has evolved and expanded into areas such as exploring the physics of sound, practice habits, choosing an instrument, relating to an audience, and telling some of my stories about my experiences as a performing musician. Many of you who read this column have come up to me at gigs or sent me an email to tell me how much they enjoyed this or that column and how it helped them or got them thinking about something differently or from a new perspective. I return those thanks to all of you! It has been, and continues to be, my honor and pleasure to write for you.
In the process, I have also become a better writer. I suppose if you do something long enough and take it seriously, you’ll get better at it. But that also assumes that you are willing to let the work inform you, let it teach you the process, and how to find your own voice. That doesn’t mean that it gets easier. On the contrary, the better you get, the more serious you take your writing, the more difficult it becomes. The bar is continually raised and you’re less tolerant about repeating yourself. Yet, some repetition is inevitable and, I would argue, necessary for establishing your voice. In my column from last month, I wrote that you have to embrace some repetition in your playing to maintain high quality and to reinforce your style. The same idea holds for writing, or for any artistic pursuit. Sometimes its deliberate and sometimes its just a function of our limitations, but becoming uniquely ourselves is the destination we should be aiming for.
While we’re thinking about style, I’ve written that my playing has been rewritten and rebuilt several times during my years of playing the guitar. Sometimes it has simply been a function of getting better as a player, refining the techniques that are beneficial and discarding those that aren’t. Other times it has been a deliberate change initiated by the requirements of the music I was performing or just incorporating something new that I enjoyed playing. That doesn’t mean that I disliked who I was or what I played, I just needed to adapt to a changed environment. The tendency, at least for me, is to think, “Well, I’m here now, I like what I’m playing, so this is who I am.” Sure, until something or someone wants you to play like you used to. I find myself in that situation now. When I played with the Wild Truth almost 20 years ago, I had a very deliberate approach to my playing. I would target the “middle four” strings of the guitar for the majority of my solos. I wasn’t exclusive to those strings of course, but by not basing all of my thinking on the outside E strings, I could get “inside” and “outside” in the same position. I focused on chord shapes on those four strings for melodic ideas and used the E strings to add extensions to those shapes. I looked for the “connecting notes” between positions, notes that you wouldn’t usually think would work, to play things that were unique and not a part of the standard pentatonic scales. That approach worked well for the music we were playing then and helped define the sound of the band. When I started playing with Folding Mr. Lincoln, literally none of that approach worked. It was wrong for the music in general, and really was an approach specifically crafted for the electric guitar. It became clear that the music demanded a different instrument and a different approach. I switched to acoustic guitar and using the same chord-based thinking, created a style focused more on ‘inside’ melodies and double stops. It sounds like I’m describing a radical change, and on the surface, it was. But fundamentally, it was still what I had been doing, just refocused to enhance the music I was playing and take advantage of the differences—and limitations—of the acoustic guitar. My concept was to be able to play any chords and melodies that I wanted to, but still retain the sound and tonality of a traditional dreadnaught acoustic guitar. That didn’t mean I never played ‘outside,’ but it was more melodic and selected, like this example:
But as I’ve said before, if you play for any length of time, your past will find you again and someone will ask you to, “Play that like you used to…” It’s really a weird feeling to have to go back and relearn your own solos on songs that used to be second nature. It’s not really the playing that feels weird, its more having to get back into your head to remember what you were thinking and why, when you played something. That’s what I’ve been doing for a few months now since my friend Sven and I decided that we would start performing as a duo, playing new songs, revisiting TWiT classics, and some interesting covers. I find myself straddling at least three versions of myself whenever we rehearse; what I do now, what I did then, and being ‘studio cat’ copping the correct vibe for an old cover song. And I still do ‘me’ on Outliers gigs too…
Once again, thank you for reading this column; you’re why I write it. Please come to see me play with Outliers and with Sven. We have shows in December and well into 2025. Please continue to support live music in San Diego. And please continue to support the San Diego Troubadour!
