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Raise a Glass to the Mountain: Hunter's Guitar Journey Part 1 (Tommy Shaw, Paul Kossof, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and more) Part 1
16 Plays5 days ago
Hunter talks and plays about some of his favorite guitarists, and how they have shaped his guitar journey.
House of the Rising Sun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4bFqW_eu2I
All Right Now by Free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wiF6b4rxno
Be My Friend by Free (Hunter's favorite): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P00-KBLqPwI
Joe Bonamassa on Paul Kossoff and Free: https://www.guitarworld.com/lessons/joe-bonamassa-paul-kossoff
Crossroad Blues by Robert Johnson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ_7nYEpkBo
Please don't take my word for it. Read and watch more about Robert Johnson and blues history: https://www.amazon.com/Up-Jumped-Devil-Robert-Johnson/dp/1641600942
https://www.aaihs.org/the-historical-roots-of-blues-music/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_blues
Other guitarists important to the blues:
Muddy Waters, BB King, Albert King, Freddie King, Son House, Leadbelly and many more.
Jimi Hendrix's effects and partnership with Roger Mayer (a sound engineer who designed the fuzz face and Octavia): https://reverb.com/news/nailing-it-achieving-the-tones-of-jimi-hendrix
Origins of slide guitar: https://www.byarcadia.org/post/the-hawaiin-roots-of-blues-slide-guitar
More on Slide guitar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_guitar
Romans 8:26 "...the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words."
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Setup
00:01:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Raise a Glass, the podcast where we talk about the stories and storytellers that shape us. My name is Hunter Danson.
00:01:13
Speaker
And my name is Eric Lintola. And we are so happy to bring you this episode live from Rochester.
00:01:25
Speaker
Woo, woo, woo. And, uh...
00:01:32
Speaker
We're going to be doing guitarists
00:01:39
Speaker
and that have shaped me and my guitar guitar journey.
00:01:45
Speaker
But before we get to that, as we always do... What's in our glasses? Yes. Hunter, since we were together this week, we've had multiple things in our glasses.
00:01:57
Speaker
Right now, we both have tea. I have a lemon ginger tea. And you? Ginger turmeric.
00:02:07
Speaker
Mmm.
00:02:19
Speaker
It's nice. We've done a lot of talking today. So it's nice have something to soothe the throat yeah later on. What are you raising and pouring your glass for?
Tribute to Chuck Manjone
00:02:31
Speaker
Hunter, since we're spending this week talking about guitars, musicians, guitarists, and your journey, I figured I would think about a musician that's impacted me. um And so I'm pouring in one raise raising one, um, for Chuck Manjone who recently passed out, passed away. That's the pour out.
00:02:52
Speaker
Um, but raising one for for him and his legacy is a Rochester native. Um, huge impact on the jazz scene in Rochester, huge, huge impact. I think on jazz throughout much of our country. Um, remember growing up playing a lot of his music and orchestra and jazz ensemble.
00:03:10
Speaker
Um, Jackman Jones is well known for his songs like Children of Sanchez, Land of Make-Believe, Feel So Good, which actually made an appearance at the beginning of the Doctor Strange movie while Doctor Strange is performing a surgery.
00:03:29
Speaker
um Yeah, it's a it's a real miss, a real sad miss to have have him gone. and highly recommend checking out Children of Sanchez in particular.
00:03:41
Speaker
It's such an epic song that involves an entire range, not only of dynamics, but large different types of musical ranges even within it. um Many great memories playing it and and listening to it.
00:03:57
Speaker
That's me.
Emotional Themes in Cars 3
00:03:58
Speaker
Hunter, what are you raising and boring them out for? Well, I am raising Glass 2, Cars 3. cars three
00:04:08
Speaker
which we both recently watched with our kids. I watched it with my son and cried multiple times. I'd seen it before, but the themes of passing on wisdom to another generation and learning when it's time to pass it on, to step down from being the fast and the glorified...
00:04:38
Speaker
And just a really well done movie. Yeah. yeah And the ways that they tell the story. I think we're going to have to do an episode on cars at some point. Yeah. The movie's got a lot of soul. Yeah. yeah and And it was great to see my son. He's at the age where he's really starting to ask questions and understand what's going on and really get engaged in the story.
00:05:11
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm pouring one out for previous recording that we did of this episode. We made it nine minutes and 45 seconds in, and the SD card ran out storage. I forgot to check. was such a good episode, too. It's like an hour and a half of recording time gone. Not all which would have made it to the episode, but... Ugh.
00:05:38
Speaker
So here we are again. Next day, trying it out again. Yeah. And, you know, hopefully it'll be a little bit more structured. It'll be more polished. Yeah. But I think it'll lose some of the characteristic like energy we have.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah. um Just because it won't feel like the first time yeah we're having a conversation. Even though it will be a different conversation. It will also be a different conversation because of that.
Guitarists as Storytellers
00:06:06
Speaker
Right. Still, I'm thankful for the pearl that we were able to find. Those first nine minutes? Yes. What's the pearl? The unheard rest of it.
00:06:20
Speaker
oh Oh, yes. Yeah. This is beyond VIP exclusive information. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:36
Speaker
So Hunter, what are we but are we discussing today? And give me a brief overview of of why. So this is an episode that I've thought about doing for a while about guitarists.
00:06:51
Speaker
Because to me, guitarists are storytellers. A good guitar solo tells a story. Probably one of the most famous...
00:07:05
Speaker
examples that I love is the Hotel California solo. um There are guitarists that will impress you with their skills, who are very entertaining to watch, but to me, what's valuable as a guitarist is being able to use the sound to tell the story and make sounds that people remember.
00:07:27
Speaker
They're not overawed by your technique or anything, but just totally entranced in the moment. When you hear...
00:07:52
Speaker
You can keep listening to it in your head. If you've heard that solo before, you know, it keeps coming. Yeah, many ways, music, instruments help communicate what our soul is trying to communicate, what we might not have the words for.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah. So, um yeah, so this is going to be about guitarists that... have influenced me in my playing journey. I've been playing guitar since I was 14.
00:08:26
Speaker
So that's over 15 years now. 15, 16 years. Sorry, just, just reality check. Your numbers are off. You're older than you think.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah. Sorry. Continue.
00:08:46
Speaker
And
00:08:49
Speaker
I don't know, because rather than...
Hunter's Blues Journey
00:08:52
Speaker
but There's lots of content out there by guitarists who are a lot more accomplished than am.
00:09:00
Speaker
You know, about just just talking about those instrumentalists specifically and what they're doing musically. I figured we'll we'll try and just talk about the guitar journey itself and how the they've shaped me.
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's what our podcast is all about. Yeah. So hopefully it comes across, it's not totally indulgent, and I'm going to be relying on Eric to make it interesting to other people.
00:09:30
Speaker
Hunter, help us help us by setting the scene. you You said your guitar journey started when you were 14. Is that also when your journey with guitarists began, or do you think it was beginning even before then?
00:09:46
Speaker
It was probably before then. um
00:09:51
Speaker
The first guitarist, I would say, that led me to want to pick up the guitar was probably Tommy Shaw of Styx. Okay.
00:10:04
Speaker
I was just totally entranced by Styx. I listened to my dad's CD collection growing up. um And so I listened to, know, Come Sail Away.
00:10:16
Speaker
and seven master my surprise yeah and i was just totally like blown away by Tommy Shaw's playing the sort of stuff that i I haven't really learned to do. It's sort of like hard hard rock shredding. and It's very fast.
00:10:39
Speaker
I don't know if I can really do much of it, but... Yeah, I can't do it. Yeah, I don't know.
00:10:59
Speaker
yeah I never really learned to play that fast or with that much gain. But the sound of it just made me want to pick up an electric guitar.
00:11:13
Speaker
So let me pause you right here. Because you've already said something that's a little bit surprising to me. It might be as surprising to others.
00:11:20
Speaker
You just made the statement that there are different ways of playing the guitar. Which might be obvious to you, but you're telling me that just because somebody is a professional musician, great at the guitar, doesn't mean they can play every other... like That there are other styles of the guitar that might be... Or type of playing that might be harder for them?
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's necessarily harder. and It's what...
00:11:50
Speaker
comes naturally to you and what moves you emotionally. So Tommy Shaw might have led me to pick up guitar, but um I found myself pretty early on like gravitating towards blues.
00:12:07
Speaker
Okay. And playing blues. And blues is very...
00:12:16
Speaker
There are ways to play it impressively, but it's a very simple scale, very simple notes, very, you know, it doesn't overaw you, but it's just...
00:13:04
Speaker
So that was blues, is what you're telling me. Can you can you define a little bit more kind of what blues is? So the Western musical tradition would probably zero in on like the blues scale, or what's traditionally known as the blues scale, which I started with the pentatonic scale, the A minor pentatonic, which is just...
00:13:39
Speaker
And those are just the notes.
00:13:46
Speaker
But the blues as a genre comes from... really comes from Africa and African rhythms and notes and came from slaves that sort of brought this musical tradition and sang songs while they were picking cotton and things like that because...
00:14:09
Speaker
They couldn't do much of anything else besides sing, you know. um And... um that That's where the blues comes from. And and it's it's hard because you can't really...
00:14:28
Speaker
Define the blues because there's not a lot of like hard records that would satisfy our modern historical understanding. Like because slaves were so undervalued and because people didn't keep records or anything. Yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
So... um You know, you can point specific artists and recordings, but there's so little known about those recordings and stuff and the artists and their lives.
00:14:57
Speaker
Most of them died pretty obscure deaths.
00:15:02
Speaker
and But what we have is this musical tradition that has been carried on by artists and artists and that has inspired some of the most famous guitarists. of all time and so much of rock and roll and the notes that we play come from the blues and and the blues scale
00:15:44
Speaker
Not the best demonstration, but those notes all come from the blues and the notes that...
00:16:04
Speaker
not the best demonstration but those notes all come from the blue the notes that
00:16:14
Speaker
all the way back to what slaves were singing. Okay. So, 14-year-old Hunter, in his room, got a guitar, because of sticks.
00:16:28
Speaker
And what came next? what what um An instrument tells us a lot about a musician. Yeah. Can you can you share with me a little bit about the the guitar that got you started and from there the music that led to your growth?
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:46
Speaker
I had...
00:16:49
Speaker
I had my first electric guitar was an Esteban electric guitar. My parents brought bought for me. and And not s stmon Esteban, Esteban.
00:17:03
Speaker
And Esteban sort of like, kind of like a beginner guitarist brand. Okay. um And one of the first things I learned was the E major chord.
00:17:20
Speaker
minor chord. And those were like the first things that I was playing back and forth to myself.
00:17:34
Speaker
And that was what I built my most of my calluses on. and And he sort of taught it. He was teaching those chords so that you could eventually play House of the Rising Sun.
00:17:45
Speaker
Okay. Okay.
00:17:49
Speaker
There is a house in New Orleans They call the rising sun It's been road
00:18:17
Speaker
For many a poor boy, I know I'm one man.
00:19:02
Speaker
Sorry for my poor vocal addition there That was good though Yeah, that's a, you know, bluesy song Yeah, I remember the first time I heard that Ooh Yeah You're lost in the talk of the town The sing-off One of the founders acapella.
00:19:21
Speaker
Oh, all right. was a big deal. Yeah.
00:19:25
Speaker
But, uh, yeah, that was one of the first things I learned to play. Um, and
00:19:35
Speaker
I just, I just wanted to learn. i just wanted to learn to improvise really, I think. And you think about learning to improvise, you either go to the jazz or the blues. And the blues is what spoke to me.
00:19:48
Speaker
And so I learned this scale.
Influence of Paul Kossoff
00:19:52
Speaker
And from that scale, you can get all your blues licks.
00:20:00
Speaker
and from that scale you can get all your blues
00:20:16
Speaker
I just learned, you know, which notes you could bend.
00:20:21
Speaker
And which notes go well together. And, um, uh,
00:20:39
Speaker
and
00:20:44
Speaker
i would I would listen to blues. would listen to backing tracks in my room and try to play along with them. You know, yeah like slow blues backing tracks. or I would try to play along to House of the Rising Sun, you know....
00:21:13
Speaker
you know,
00:21:17
Speaker
going and going.
00:21:20
Speaker
But before long, i sort of honed in on on a particular guitarist, and that guitarist was Paul Kosov. Okay. Probably the one that i would talk about the most if I talked about electric guitars that I love.
00:21:40
Speaker
And he was in a band called Free. Their most famous song is probably all Right Now. um i can't really do sufficient cover of it.
00:21:57
Speaker
at
00:22:00
Speaker
a it's you know It's like a rock and roll song, but that's not my favorite song theirs. My favorite, probably, solo of his is this obscure live recording Be My Friend.
00:22:16
Speaker
And I'll link a bunch of things in the show show notes. But the particular thing about Paul Kossoff is that He played a lot less notes than lot of the other guitarists.
00:22:30
Speaker
But he could put so much more emotion into those notes. um so So rather than playing something like...
00:22:44
Speaker
He would play something like...
00:23:04
Speaker
not Not the best demonstration, but you know, it's it's just the difference between playing a lot of modes that that don't mean a whole lot. Just like noodling on the blues scale versus really picking your particular notes.
00:23:23
Speaker
and trying to say something that means something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:24:02
Speaker
but because, you know, as you play more you learn the blues scale, you can learn a certain amount and you can just sort of noodle. I like to call it being a blues dad.
00:24:15
Speaker
blues dad? Yeah. What does that mean? That means, you know, just just playing your like your favorite songs or whatever and just kind of noodling with the scale.
00:24:31
Speaker
Rocking out on your own, which is totally fine, you know.
00:24:41
Speaker
Like, I could do that sort of thing for hours, but it's not really making me a better guitarist. Anyway, getting lost on that tangent.
00:24:52
Speaker
But yeah, so Paul Kossoff was a big, huge influence on me in really learning to, or trying to, put feeling into my notes, because paul he He lived for such a short time.
00:25:09
Speaker
He died at like 25. well Related to heroin overdose.
00:25:18
Speaker
But he's he's not one of the most well-known guitarists, but other guitarists do talk about him. Joe Bonamassa, who's probably one of the most celebrated blues guitarists, plays very fast and plays pretty much everything.
00:25:34
Speaker
Um... he He talks about Paul and the way that he just puts so much emotion into a note and could just... Paul Kosov's vibrato technique was really celebrated.
00:25:47
Speaker
There's a legend that Eric Clapton asked Paul Kosov about his vibrato technique, which I don't know if it's true or not, but you listen to Paul's playing and just the way he could... just going to...
00:26:02
Speaker
try and demonstrate it to show the contrast. Like one guitarist would be like and Paul Kostoff would be like.
00:26:19
Speaker
I'm on the same fret.
00:26:25
Speaker
But the amount of that to me is one of the strengths of the guitar is that you can put so much variation into one note. Um, and in my personal journey, I think that is the great strength of guitar versus other instruments is no matter how fast you can play, you're never going to get faster than a, than a keyboard or a synth or something.
00:26:49
Speaker
Um, because they just have all the notes in front of them and they don't have to, You know, do as much. You have to pluck the string, but that is the strength, is that you can you can pluck the string in different ways. You know, I'm just going to not move my my fretting hand, and just with my picking hand, I can be like...
00:27:18
Speaker
There's so many different ways to play one note. Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:24
Speaker
And, and, uh, yeah, so that's, that's where I started is really loving sticks to, to get me into it. And of course, all lots of other classic, classic rock legends and sort of zeroing in on Paul Kossoff as a real inspiration.
00:27:41
Speaker
Okay. So you landed in blues. Yeah. You kind of jumped in.
00:27:50
Speaker
How did you grow as an artist or as a musician or what other musicians as you continue to learn more about blues, continue to listen to music, be inspired?
00:28:01
Speaker
ah how did that impact your story? and What are those other stories maybe that yeah were necessary for your growth? Well, I think as i as I learned more about the blues, um I think...
00:28:19
Speaker
It's important to mention like the hardest the black artists that inspired the blues.
Racial History of Blues
00:28:27
Speaker
So eventually i want to talk about you know Clapton and Jimmy Page and and Jeff Beck eventually. And we'll get those on the next episode. We'll get there, yeah.
00:28:35
Speaker
And you'll notice that most of them are white. English rockers. They're very skilled in their own right, but much of the... of rock and roll history is sort of white artists inspired by blues songs, and they would do, like, sort of rock and roll covers of blues songs, and then profit and get famous.
00:29:07
Speaker
And... It's not that... I don't i don't blame the inch the artists so much as just the industry and the society that... you know Because it takes ah a certain amount of privilege to be in a band, to have an instrument app and an amp.
00:29:28
Speaker
Especially early on, in the 60s. Oh, yeah. And be able to record and... you know It was much harder for black artists, and even when they did get recorded, they weren't usually weren't the ones who were profiting the most off of it.
00:29:41
Speaker
So, you know, i anyone who starts learning about the lo the blues and rock and roll has to learn about Robert Johnson.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I don't know if you've heard of... Robert Johnson. Tell tell us everything. Tell us about Robert Johnson. So Robert Johnson is kind of, he's a legendary figure.
00:30:04
Speaker
Not a whole lot is known about him. um His life wasn't very well documented. But there's a sort of legend about Robert Johnson where...
00:30:15
Speaker
He was a blues player, sort of depression era. and you know, at that time, a lot of guitarists would travel around and, you know, just play at bars and things like that. And, um, Robert Johnson apparently was terrible.
00:30:33
Speaker
He was, he would show up and he was just a bad guitarist. Um, But then he like went away for a while, nobody heard him for a while, and the legend was that he went down to the Crossroads, which is one of the most famous songs of his, his Crossroads.
00:30:48
Speaker
And he sold his soul to the devil. And when he came back, he was Robert Johnson. And he was playing and doing things that no one had...
00:31:02
Speaker
heard of before um and if you go back and listen to his recordings i think there's 29 of them there's sort of like a legendary 30th recording um there's like a ah movie uh with the karate kid actor was it ralph machio yeah i think it's ralph machio um An interesting movie, but I don't know if I strictly recommend But the the movie's about trying to find his 30th mythical recording.
00:31:35
Speaker
But if you go back and listen to those recordings, they're just like lightning in a bottle. Just sounds and things that you've never heard before.
00:31:48
Speaker
And it's still, even in today's age, you go back and listen to them and you
00:31:55
Speaker
Nobody could could make those sounds except for Robert Johnson. And a lot of the techniques from the Delta Blues, and and not just the Delta Blues, he he employed a lot of different things, too, in his playing.
00:32:09
Speaker
There's still... People are trying to emulate them. And so, like, Eric Clapton is a good example. Clapton is a good... clapton is ah is a good is an inspiration to me because he was so devoted to the blues.
00:32:26
Speaker
Um... And he... really just spent his life trying to play the blues. And that's one of the things I admire about Clapton, is that he just was so devoted to the blues. And... Um...
00:32:42
Speaker
didn't really deviate. Especially, even through the, you know, the eighty s and 90s, and it's the whole era where people were experimenting with effects and things, clapping, it was just playing the blues. Um,
00:32:54
Speaker
But, it's like Clapton, when he was learning to play, he's he said in his ah autobiography that he listened to, i think it was Bill Brunzi, who was a ah blues artist, and he said it it hit him like a bolt of lightning, and that sound, and that playing.
00:33:17
Speaker
Um... And what Clapton did is he would he had you know he didn't he couldn't look up tabs or YouTube tutorials or anything like that. So he would just listen to it.
00:33:32
Speaker
And he got his grandparents to buy him a like a tape recorder thing. And he would listen to it and play it back and just try to learn it by ear. yeah And that's how...
00:33:45
Speaker
That's how you had to learn music back in the day. And it, you know, it really teaches you a lot in how to, you know, because when you're playing, no matter how much musical knowledge you have, all you have to tell you that it sounds, what you're playing sounds good, especially when you're improvising, is is your ear. Yeah.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah, so for like 10 years, pretty much, I just tried to play the blues.
Musical Techniques in Blues
00:34:36
Speaker
And I'm still trying to play the blues.
00:34:44
Speaker
One thing i wanna to share I want to share that I think is essential to the sound of the blues is the idea of the blue note. Okay. So if you're listening to you know a regular A minor pentatonic scale, I'll just play it as...
00:35:09
Speaker
The blue note would be like...
00:35:15
Speaker
In between there.
00:35:29
Speaker
That's the blue note. Is it always like a half step up or down from the other note? Yeah, I think... I couldn't... I don't know enough music theory to tell you precisely, but in general, that's that's where it is. It's like... It sounds wrong, but it also sounds so right at the same time. It's the one that makes your eyes do the thing. Yeah, it's, you know, that sound... That crinkle face. The guitar face, you know, when you hear something like... It just makes you make... The hurt's
00:36:06
Speaker
so good. You know... YouTube guitarists, they'll just be like...
00:36:13
Speaker
I wish you could see Andre's eyebrows right now. Maybe you could hear his eyebrows. Some of the most expressive Hunter you'll get is while playing guitar.
00:36:27
Speaker
But one thing I discovered is that Beethoven knew about the blue note. So if you've heard Fur Elise...
00:36:47
Speaker
This is the blue note. Yeah.
00:36:55
Speaker
And that's why feel like the Moonlight Sonata, for at least it's, you know, those compositions by Beethoven are... blues, you know.
00:37:07
Speaker
I think even Ray Charles had a quote about it, about listening to Moonlight Sonata and just being able to feel the pain
00:37:22
Speaker
coming out of it, you know, you hear...
00:37:35
Speaker
Like that dissonance. It makes you want the resolution so badly. Yes,
00:37:48
Speaker
it does. Yep. Sounds like the beginning of House the Rising Sun. Right. It's the exact same chord.
00:37:59
Speaker
i guess you could do like...
00:38:18
Speaker
I
00:38:24
Speaker
i like it. That's a fun combo. Beethoven's House the Rising. Yeah. So... Yeah. Um... so yeah
00:38:40
Speaker
So I guess in my personal journey, starting with Tommy Shaw, the sound of hard rock, fast guitar, and then going to Paul Kossoff as a sort of electric interpretation of the blues.
00:38:55
Speaker
I'll set it up as my mountain. My guitar, because playing guitar, learning guitar, any instrument, doing anything that's hard you know in art, is like climbing a mountain.
00:39:09
Speaker
You know, you start out with all this passion and this desire, and then you get on a mountain that gets steep, and it's just... All that passion doesn't really help you.
00:39:22
Speaker
What helps you is just putting one foot in front of the other and picking up every day and trying to practice.
00:39:32
Speaker
Right now, I'm trying to get a little faster. I'm trying to build some speed, so I'll try to like... And I switch to finger style... I haven't been playing with a pick for like a year. Okay.
00:39:43
Speaker
Just because I find that it gives me, which is partly inspired by Jeff Beck, which we'll get to, but ah feel like it gives me a lot more, a lot more sound to play with, lot more dynamics to play with.
00:39:56
Speaker
Because you can be very gentle, but you can also be very hard with it. It gives you a lot of variation in dynamics which you don't quite have with a pick.
00:40:12
Speaker
You can do another way, you know, get those dynamics and emotion in other ways with a pick. But it's an individual journey. But I'm trying to get faster because I want to... I'm not quite as fast with a pick. It's just, you know, doing the alternate pick.
00:40:28
Speaker
You can get pretty fast. fairly easily with of course with a lot of practice but with fingers you really i've found this like random classical metal guitarist guy he was talking about going really fast using four fingers but
00:40:49
Speaker
and the way he does it it's just like yeah um but he's like yeah you know if you practice for two or three years you'll get there Yeah, so I've seen bass players that are doing that. I ever only ever got to two.
00:41:03
Speaker
Sometimes I could get a third in there, but adding a third finger usually got me off beat yeah pretty significantly. I can do a sort of like tremolo thing with one finger.
00:41:14
Speaker
Works better on chords, but you know...
00:41:23
Speaker
better on but yeah you know But in order to build that speed and that kind of thing, learning your first chord, building your calluses, hurts. Yeah.
00:41:34
Speaker
But the only way to do it is just to pick it up every day. Yeah. And try to play. and that's, you know, it's climbing a mountain. So my mountain started really with Paul Kossoff, I think, is what I zeroed in on as my first.
00:41:47
Speaker
Where you wanted to be. Where I wanted to be.
00:41:52
Speaker
And then for like... you know probably like 10 years. That's kind of where I stayed. I didn't really try much more than that, try to learn much more than that.
00:42:05
Speaker
didn't even learn the major scale until like couple months ago.
00:42:13
Speaker
yeah i just sort of sort of discovered like the relative minor major on my own so that I could play use the same pattern in like worship music and stuff because I play in church and that was that was part of one of the main things that kept me in contact with the guitar was just playing on Sundays and having to practice for that and occasionally i would do songwriting and something like that and the blues would come out there but when I was in church I would just playing the blues and
00:42:48
Speaker
you know just sort of transposing it onto the music um just using the same same patterns and stuff yeah so you talk about this mountaintop that you hit and then you kind of plateaued for a while and and quite enjoyed that i can relate to that in my own experience with music and with other things um
00:43:17
Speaker
And now you're you're pushing through. um I'm interested to know if there's any other... I'm interested to know if there's any musicians, guitarists that have inverted that mountain in your mind or have found a way to to kind of break this structure that have changed you and and have changed music. Mm-hmm.
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah, so...
Evolution of Guitar Music
00:43:51
Speaker
And it's funny, the the background that I come from in loving classic rock and things, I think in that era, 60s, 70s, 80s, the guitar was idolized, in a way.
00:44:08
Speaker
The electric guitar and the sounds that can make, because no one had heard the sound of a guitar string vibrating over a magnetic pickup before.
00:44:19
Speaker
It was just new, it was a new sound. You know, before, you know, you heard, you would hear an acoustic guitar or like the first amplified guitars would would be, you know, kind of like...
00:44:43
Speaker
You know, just nice sound. um But then, you know, you had artists pushing amps, and the the sound of rock and roll, which is really overdrive, you know.
00:44:59
Speaker
That distortion. You know, when I hit it lightly, you can hear it's not this. It's distorting. It sounds like a normal note. But when you hit it hard, you can hear the...
00:45:13
Speaker
growliness that is literally that sound came from they were just pushing the amp louder than it was supposed to go and it would distort and they used to use vacuum tubes to amplify sound and and it would the sound would distort in the vacuum tube yeah it's all math right yeah you know and and it was just like you know and engineers would be like why do you want to do that and guitarists just like it sounds good i like it um um and so you know
00:45:51
Speaker
In my personal mountain, I guess, I think of it as... there There are guitarists now that are some of the best guitarists that have ever lived. Just in terms of the sounds that they can make with the consistency that they can make the sounds, the variety of things they can play, their technical ability and their musical knowledge.
00:46:16
Speaker
But I don't think we will ever... hear a name like Jimi Hendrix ever again. And we won't be able to, you know, we're just not in the era of legend making anymore because we we've heard what the electric guitar guitar can do.
00:46:37
Speaker
And now a lot of it is, you know, the unique sounds that you hear on guitar are based around cool pedals that you can buy, which are mostly digital.
00:46:49
Speaker
ye Um, and you know, like I have a, I have a cool reverb pedal that I can make like cool sounds with. Um,
00:47:33
Speaker
It all goes away.
00:47:36
Speaker
And, you know, to me, that stuff is cool, but in ah in a way, i feel like
00:47:45
Speaker
You're almost playing the wrong instrument like you're using guitar almost like an organ or something or like a synth, you know to create these Sounds capes and stuff, which is perfectly fine the guitar has can be whatever you want it to be and that's kind of the beauty of the guitar to me is that like you know if you compare it to a piano, pianos are heavy.
00:48:11
Speaker
Of course, you can get a electric ones now, but um you know if you're you're reducing them to their simplest and historical designs, pianos are heavy. um you know You could really only play one unless you were rich or you knew someone who had one.
00:48:30
Speaker
And you could get access to it. Guitars, I mean, instruments were expensive, but like, guitars were cheaper. You can carry them around. You know, you can pick it up and and play it in, you know, virtually any situation.
00:48:46
Speaker
Wherever you're going, can take it with you.
00:48:51
Speaker
and that's kind of the beauty of the guitar to me. Part of it. So... Very long tangent to say, you know, to me there's sort of like, you have Robert Johnson just creating the mountain to climb, you know, in terms the guitar playing and the scale, blues scale, and making everyone see what you can do.
Impact of Jimi Hendrix
00:49:18
Speaker
And then you have Jimi Hendrix coming in and just totally changing the sound of the guitar. Because, you know, before Jimi Hendrix, you you would have stuff
00:49:37
Speaker
You know, youd you'd have some rock and roll thing.
00:49:44
Speaker
Distortion. And then Jimi Hendrix would come in, you know, with wah and fuzz.
00:49:56
Speaker
And this is going to be sort of two-bit impression, but like...
00:50:47
Speaker
a
00:50:50
Speaker
That was awesome. And, you know, that's my two-bit impression. When you hear Demi Hendrix play, even now, it just totally reconfigures your brain.
00:51:01
Speaker
It's just like... i mean, he was probably doing acid, and a lot of people listening to him are doing acid, but you don't need to do acid for it to change your brain. It's just like, what?
00:51:14
Speaker
No one... No one could... No one realized what could happen. And it's funny, Jeff Beck, there's a story about Jeff Beck, who's one of my favorite guitarists now, and who's sort of like the top of the mountain for me.
00:51:30
Speaker
But there's a story about Jeff Beck, who who's in the Yardbirds. Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck all grew up within like 20 miles of each other, and they were all in the Yardbirds.
00:51:40
Speaker
It's like their first big band that they were in. Yardbirds were pretty huge, too. But... There's a story where Jeff Beck sort of walked in. I think he was in America at this time. He was out of the yard birds at that point. But he walked in and saw Jimi Hendrix playing.
00:51:58
Speaker
And he was like... He was up there playing like an animal. he was doing all of the things that I ever wanted to do on guitar. But doing it better. And louder.
00:52:10
Speaker
And crazier. And wilder. And... You know, it was just like... Apparently they like went on a bender. They played a bunch of clubs together, going from club to club and stuff.
00:52:27
Speaker
But, you know, Jimi Hendrix, he's just... he's he's He's at the top of the list for greatest, like Rolling Stone, greatest guitarist of all time. He's on all those lists at the top because you just... No one made sounds like that.
00:52:43
Speaker
and no one would think of making those sounds. And there's people who, you know, maybe technically you can do it more consistently or better now or whatever, but they wouldn't have been able to do it if Jimi Hendrix hadn't done it first.
00:52:57
Speaker
yeah And the sound of the fuzz is just like...
00:53:04
Speaker
Like, it's just, it's just, uh, I'm, I'm somewhat new to fuzz, so, you know, I'm not, I'm trying, still learning how to use it. It just totally changes the instrument.
00:53:46
Speaker
are
00:53:51
Speaker
a
00:54:26
Speaker
Yeah, it says wow.
00:54:35
Speaker
Still trying to learn how to do it, but... It's a very different sound than the sound you were making beforehand. Yeah. I wish people could be with me right now, like, seeing you play. It's very mesmerizing. keep having to blink my contacts back into the place after you finish.
00:54:50
Speaker
Like, oh, I haven't blinked in, like... however many notes. and Like 15 measures. I don't know what's going on here. And you know, you have the wah as well. Yeah.
00:55:05
Speaker
la
00:55:14
Speaker
oh want So did Jimi Hendrix popularize these effects? did Did these foot pedals exist when he was playing? Did he make them?
00:55:29
Speaker
Was he doing it without anything? i will look up some articles and put them in the show notes to be accurate. But Jimi Hendrix is definitely responsible for making them popular.
00:55:44
Speaker
And... I think that he had, like, like a guy, kind of like an engineer, electrical engineer, sound dude, who was making him fuzz puzzles and stuff.
00:55:57
Speaker
And... and The wah pedals. Vox is an amp company they made. He had the Vox wah, I think. And the Arbiter Fuzz Face is pedal that he had.
00:56:12
Speaker
And I have a Fuzz Face style pedal for anyone who cares that I made. There's no face on it, in case anybody's wondering. Yeah. It's funny, if you look at the original pedal, it's a circle, and it looks kind of like a smiley face. Ah, okay. But, yeah, they're like geranium transistors.
00:56:34
Speaker
And they just, basically, they just make the guitar signal explode. Okay. Because when you turn on, it sounds like...
00:56:55
Speaker
are
00:57:02
Speaker
a um Wow. mean, wow. Wow. Yeah.
00:57:13
Speaker
And so I guess if we can try and and bring this around, for my mountain, Pokhalsaf is what got me started on the journey.
00:57:26
Speaker
Jeff Beck is kind of the top of my mountain at this point. Jimi Hendrix chopped the mountain down.
00:57:36
Speaker
Chopped it down? Chopped it down. um and One of his most famous songs is Voodoo Child. He said, I'm standing next to the mountain and I'll chop it down with the edge of my hand.
00:57:47
Speaker
And he did. He did. Yeah. Go listen.
00:57:57
Speaker
But...
Spiritual Connection to Blues
00:57:58
Speaker
The last thing I guess I want to say about the blues the way that I think about playing guitar in this part is to me
00:58:14
Speaker
there's a passage in Romans Paul's letter to the Romans where he talks about how when we don't have the words
00:58:29
Speaker
to pray and to express pain. He talks about creation groaning in this corruption. And if you look at the world, we are... We're living and in ah in a fallen world, corrupted. There's lots of beauty, but lots of corruption too.
00:58:48
Speaker
When we don't have the words... the Holy Spirit can groan with us and pray for us. And the closest audible sound of the Holy Spirit that I've ever come to, the sound that I could make myself, is the sound of of the blues, that groaning.
00:59:17
Speaker
So, you know, when I play solo, not always sometimes we're just noodling or whatever. It's easy to get lost in it. But when I really am intentional about it and when I try to shoot for it, you know, when I think about the way Paul Kossoff played and the way Jeff Beck played and everyone has their own favorite players that move them.
01:01:11
Speaker
But, I don't know, that sound, when you when you can hit the hit the bends and really make it mean something,
01:01:24
Speaker
You know, that's something audible. yeah We can use these you know two pieces of wood bolted together and metal strings, magnets to make something
01:01:42
Speaker
to to cry out. I love that, Hunter. Thank you for sharing that. Would you play us out?
Conclusion and Slide Guitar Techniques
01:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I think i'll I'll try and use my slide if I can because something i didn't forgot to mention about the blues is also just resourcefulness of players and something as particular to Robert Johnson in the Delta Blues is using a slide which is a piece of metal or glass a lot of time you know could have been medicine bottles traditionally but I like brass I just like the sound of it it's just really what I'm used to
01:02:24
Speaker
You can use a piece of metal to slide up and down string.
01:02:51
Speaker
And along with that, you can use different tunings of things to play open. More recently, I've been inspired by the way that Jeff Beck uses standard, just uses a slide in standard tuning.
01:03:02
Speaker
I've trying to learn that. But, you know, in this day and age, we have pedals and digital modeling amps and so many resources and so many ways that the industry works.
01:03:19
Speaker
tries to get you to spend money and you can spend so much money on your tone and whatnot. And it's not that all those things
01:03:31
Speaker
aren't useful or fake, but, you know, the guitarist just... back in throughout history they used what they had.
01:03:43
Speaker
And so for a lot of guitarists they were able to find slide, a piece of metal or medicine bottle or something
01:03:52
Speaker
make a new sound.