Walter Trout Talks Ellington, Bluesbreakers, Beatles and the Blues
To many, Walter Trout is a contemporary guitar legend and his guitar prowess, prolific recordings and non-stop tour schedule provide more than ample evidence to support the claim.
To many, Walter Trout is a contemporary guitar legend and his guitar prowess, prolific recordings and non-stop tour schedule provide more than ample evidence to support the claim.
Someone has to represent the new guard of young blues guitarists, and since 1995, Kenny Wayne Shepherd has been carrying the flag with a reckless abandon. All five of his studio albums have topped the Billboard Blues chart, the most recent being 2011′s How I Go, which was the first to feature Kenny himself on vocals along with his usual vocalist Noah Hunt.
Some musicians develop a plan while on the road to success, one that involves taking chances and making changes. Amid this strategy there’s a burning desire to perform and the ambition to hone a craft to its perfection with respect to both tone and technique. Instrumental musicians especially, know that they have to possess something diverse, a sound that differentiates them from the rest, one that sustains interest and curiosity. Without a vocalist, the lead instrument must have a voice of its own, one that speaks to the listener with a personality, resplendent with passion and emotion.
How did you become involved with Eastern music and how have you drawn from it to incorporate it into your traditional Western influences, especially the blues?
Derek Trucks: I think I was drawn into it just by being turned on to the music of other musicians. I think the more you listen to other things, the more you see what it’s all about musically. It all comes down to the same thing, which is intention and emotions, and trying to create that through music. The more broadly you can see it, at least for me, it’s easier to really pinpoint what you’re trying to get across musically. Hopefully it takes down all the walls between different types of music. Too much music is divided up into….
After over a decade of paying his dues, a fountain of good fortune is flowing endlessly for slide guitar virtuoso extraordinaire Derek Trucks. During these years of nonstop, grueling touring, he has built a name for himself as the bottleneck boogie guitar player to be reckoned with. Trucks has coordinated countless tours and recordings, playing with his own group, The Derek Trucks Band, played alongside mentors and kin The Allman Brothers Band and has appeared on numerous side projects and guest work from the Frogwings to Phil Lesh.
Hailing from Boston, Gerry Beaudoin first took up the guitar at the age of 10 and has since evolved into one of the finest jazz guitarists and music arrangers in the country. He is the recipient of the 1992 National Association of Independent Record Producers award for best jazz recording, 1994 Cadence Magazine Editor’s Choice Award for his CD Sentimental Christmas, as well as a submission for a 1998 Grammy nomination.
Most widely known for his roles on screen, Jeff Daniels has garnered critical acclaim in many films including The Purple Rose of Cairo and The Squid and the Whale. On stage, he was most recently nominated for a Tony Award in the Broadway play God of Carnage. Now, Jeff Daniels is gaining notoriety as a musician for his unique and spontaneous one-man show.
Stepping into Paul Reed Smith’s office, my eyes immediately were drawn to the framed photos on the wall nearest the door. There were shots of Smith with Carlos Santana and the legendary Ted McCarty, past president of Gibson Guitars. To the right stood a small troop of electric guitars without pups and a PRS acoustic nearby. It wasn’t the pristine office one might expect to find in the corporate headquarters of an internationally known senior executive, but one of a working man. The pickup-less electric guitars appeared to be projects in mid-shift, waiting for Paul and his PRS team to rummage through their collective mind and come up with new ideas or solutions to creative challenges. Smith appears to be a restless man, who’s never quite satisfied and always has something cookin’.
In July 2001, I was deeply honored to interview roots music legend, the late, great Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown before he passed away just a few years later. At some 77 years young, the virtuoso guitarist, fiddle player, and multi-instrumentalist had been blessed with a luminous, storied career and had shared the live performance stage and recording studio with the likes of Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Leon Russell, Roy Clark, and a glittering who’s who of music icons who have all tipped their hats to Gate’s musical gifts and immeasurable influence on them.
Legend, music pioneer, and amazing blue-eyed soul stylist Gregg Allman can proudly lay claim to being one of the all time great, influential, landmark artists in rock history. Some thirty years ago, at a lull in America’s artistic pride when The British Invasion swept her by, Gregg, along with his brother, legendary slide guitar virtuoso Duane Allman, came out of the pastoral southern foothills and co-founded the now mythic, Allman Brothers Band. Their brilliant, astonishing hodge podge gumbo of boogie woogie blues rock, took the world by storm and gave the country back a sense of musical pride, while taking their permanent place in the firmament of music theology.
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Do you love the guitar and all things guitar related? 