Debra Devi at the Crown of the Continent Festival Day 3

By: Debra Devi
Photo Credit: Will Feffer

Masters Transcend Technique – Mon Aug 30, 2010

Last week it was 100 degrees in Bigfork, and I packed accordingly. This morning it’s 48 degrees. At breakfast, everyone intelligent is wearing flannel shirts and fleece jackets. I’m wearing a thin–but fashionable!–Topshop sweater and the ’80s Michael Jackson-style leather jacket I bought at thrift store for $16. Fashionable isn’t cutting it. I’m freakin’ freezing.

Then again, all weather is good weather, as my friend Phil Sudo, author of Zen Guitar, said when he was dying of stomach cancer. Phil had a point.

Elk at the COC Guitar Festival

David Feffer comes in with good news—the student he was most worried about falling behind during Doug Smith’s 9 am to noon Beginner course is hanging in there, after all. I’m off the hook, at least so far as teaching my own Beginner class goes.

David asks if, instead, I would teach this student private lessons to help him stay on track with Doug’s class. He gives me a list of songs the student would like to learn. My “I’m not a teacher; don’t ask me about the Circle of Fifths” nerves come back. I remind myself that I am here, like everyone else, to bust out of my comfort zone. I bust out my Strat and settle by the fire with headphones on to learn “Falling Slowly” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”

After lunch, instead of attending Andrew Leonard’s Getting the Most Out of Your Practice Time workshop, which–having observed the uncanny precision of his playing–I’m sure was amazing, I meet my private student, Jeff P. Within minutes, my nerves are gone because 1) he’s about the nicest, most earnest person on the planet and 2) to his delight, I’m able to improve his sound significantly just by taking away the shrimpy jazz pick he was using to strum his big acoustic guitar and giving him one of my Jim Dunlop Nylon Standard 1.0 mm picks.

While teaching Jeff to play his beloved cover songs, I discover something. I dig teaching! It’s very gratifying to help someone get better at playing this instrument I so love.

Like many students here, Jeff is a boomer who set aside his love of music to focus on career and raising a family. Another student, Alan Schulman, was the touring guitarist for jazz/pop singer Anita Baker until he quit fifteen years ago to raise a family and be an ad exec. For his 50th birthday, his wife said, “Honey, you’re going to Montana to spend a week studying with Pat Metheny.” Al was stoked.

Al is an accomplished jazz player, while Jeff is very much a beginner, but since we’re all guitar freaks, the vibe here is warm and inclusive. Jeff, in fact, was chatting with Alex DeGrassi and his wife at breakfast and Alex couldn’t have been nicer and more responsive to Jeff’s questions.

As the faculty jazz teacher, Jody Fisher, says to me, “Usually, the guest artists at most seminars show up, do their thing, and leave. This workshop is unique in that students really have a chance to hang out with, and learn from, most of the artists and teachers.”

This evening, the Lodge has a surprise for us. Three shiny red fire trucks pull up and all guests pile in for a twenty-minute ride to a nearby elk reserve. Luckily, I’m bundled in the ginormous University of Michigan sweatshirt Jeff P. kindly lent me.

During the ride a Ralph Lauren lookalike from Calgary, Canada, chats me up. I can tell he’s here studying classical or acoustic fingerpicking by the long, carefully manicured nails on his right hand. I’m kind of interested until I mention going riding tomorrow and he—having already informed me that he’s a doctor and races sailboats—announces: “There are three things I will only rent, ‘cause they’re too expensive to own. A horse, a sailboat and I’m sure you can guess the third, har har.”

Dude. Really?

Singer Songwriter Rob Quist

He also shares his horse-riding wisdom, to wit, “the key to being a great rider is a saddle that fits yer ass.”

Soon the trucks pull off the highway and ramble down a bumpy dirt road into the elk preserve. And there, seated in all his glory, is a huge bull elk. No doubt shooed this way by the reserve hands for the tourists to see, but still. Wow.

We pull into a clearing where Lodge owner Doug Averill is already tending thick steak chops over an open stone fire pit. A chuckwagon stands nearby, loaded with plates and cutlery, its groaning board piled with bowls of fruit and potato salad and plates of cheese bread. A table bristling with bottles of quality liquor stands nearby. The Lodge takes its bar seriously, even in the middle of the woods.

While we stuff ourselves at the picnic tables, we’re serenaded by Montana singer/songwriter Rob Quist and his beautiful daughter Halladay, through a PA plugged into a generator. As Quist sings about his love for the land and I look around at the tall pines, I understand why David Feffer decided to donate proceeds from his festival to help protect this very special region.

As the sun starts to descend we climb onto the trucks for the ride back to the Lodge and the evening concert at the Carriage House. Tonight it’s Jody Fisher and Scott Tennant, the Grammy-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet member and author of Pumping Nylon.

Jody plays his headless Klein Custom electric guitar, which has a small, almost trapezoid shaped body. A highly accomplished clinician, instructional author and performer, he is one of the most heavenly-sounding, awe-inducing jazz guitarists I’ve ever heard.

The hushed and reverent atmosphere during Jody’s concert only deepens during an exquisite performance by Scott Tennant. Including works by Afro-Cuban composer Leo Brouwer in his set, Tennant plays at a level of technical ability achieved by only a few, yet it’s the extraordinary feeling he brings to every piece that is what everyone is talking about as we file out.

Masters transcend technique.

Debra is the singer/guitarist for the rock band Devi. Download Devi’s debut album, Get Free for free.

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Halladay Quist Live at the COC Guitar Festival