By: Debra Devi
This was the year Montana’s nonprofit Crown Guitar Festival & Workshop truly delivered on the promise it has had since it was a gleam in founder David Feffer’s eyes, as cross-genre collaborations between the world’s greatest guitar players materialized in dramatic fashion.
Impromptu musical moments that could happen “only at the Crown” became the theme of the week Aug 30-Sep 6 at bucolic Flathead Lake Lodge in Bigfork, Montana.
This year’s Artists in Residence (AIRs) included Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and Dweezil Zappa—who each taught daily four-hour workshops all week long. The other AIRs were jazz legend Lee Ritenour, Texas blues king David Grissom, Steely Dan guitarist Jon Herington, popular singer/songwriter Brett Dennen, jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux, Brazilian guitar maestro Romero Lubambo; and Hendrix expert and renowned sideman Andy Aledort, who has toured not only with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, but also with Buddy Guy, Dickey Betts, and The Allman Brothers Band.
Add to this mix extraordinary scholarship students from all over the world, and you had music-making of the highest caliber breaking out everywhere.
LA Guitar Quarter Plays Dweezil Zappa
The first magical moment occurred during the opening concert by Los Angeles Guitar Quartet at which the Grammy-winning classical guitar group premiered “Marmux Buhdardux,” a composition written for them by Dweezil Zappa.
The show was opened by Crown favorite “King” Solomon Hicks, a young blues prodigy from NYC, and India Carney, the spectacular R&B singer who was discovered last season on The Voice. Carney also backed Jon Herington during his concert.
Before debuting Zappa’s piece, LAGQ opened with four flawless Spanish songs from its new album New Renaissance.” John Dearman, Matthew Greif, William Kanengiser and Scott Tennant segued into a composition by another former Crown AIR “Feels Like Home” by Pat Metheny before tackling Zappa’s composition—which was named after a character his daughter Zola made up.
After Kanengister admitted to the audience that Zappa’s piece had been challenging for them to learn, LAGQ played the spiky, complex instrumental with its shifting time-signatures not once, but twice–since they weren’t happy with their first rendition!
It was fascinating to hear the piece indeed come together more solidly the second time around, although if LAGQ hadn’t said anything, no one would have known the first rendition wasn’t up to their exacting standards.
With LAGQ having won the hearts of the crowd already, the audience pretty much exploded with excitement when Zappa wandered onstage wailing on his SG with a thick vintage tone while LAGQ was playing a delicate acoustic arrangement of his father’s tune “Son of Mr. Green Genes.” The mix of electric distortion and pristine classical guitar was wild and unexpected, yet somehow deeply touching, and brought the crowd to its feet for the first of many times throughout the week’s evening concerts.
Romero Lubambo and Leandro Pellegrino
Scholarship students at the Crown get extraordinary opportunities to perform with the masters in their genres. During Romero Lubambo’s gorgeous Brazilian jazz concert, he was joined by Wes Montgomery/Lee Ritenour Scholarship winner Leandro Pellegrino, a 31-year-old jazz guitarist from São Paulo, Brazil, and winner of the 2013 Montreux Jazz Festival World Competition.
Pellegrino was visibly thrilled to be sitting next to one of his country’s greatest musical legends, and more than held his own. Their mutual delight in playing together was obvious as they traded increasingly complex phrases.
Pelligrino is astoundingly fluid and gifted, as he also proved in an impromptu jam by the fireplace in the ranch’s Main Lodge with the great American jazz guitarist Howard Paul, who was at Crown representing Benedetto Guitars.
Another evening, the Zappa Meets Zappa band—in Bigfork to perform and also accompany the Play with the Masters workshop taught by Dweezil Zappa and Tim Miller–gathered around the Main Lodge’s upright piano to jam with Jon Herington and excited students as enormous stuffed elk, bison and moose heads loomed from the two-story log cabin’s walls.
The piano took a rockin’ Texas-boogie beating another evening from Kirk Covington, one the most soulful and dynamic drummers, keyboardists and vocalists in the world. Covington–the driving force behind world-renowned jazz fusion group Tribal Tech–was at Crown to back David Grissom.
Andy Aledort and Jon Herington Drop Sideman Science
In keeping with the down-home friendly vibe at Crown, though, Covington sat in all over, including on drums with Andy Aledort during his clinic. As local bassist Don Caverly held down the low end, Aledort dropped some science on why he’s such an in-demand sideman: “The worst thing you can ever do is make it about yourself. It should be about the creation of music.”
Aledort, who has toured with Dickey Betts for 11 years, had to learn the great Duane Allman’s slide parts, and received one of Duane’s slides from Betts. “This gig was tricky,” Aledort said, “because when we would solo, Dickey would say “’You can’t play any of my licks.’ That’s pretty tough to avoid on an Allman Brothers song!”
Aledort later joined his friend, Jon Herington, for an after-dinner concert that drew a large crowd.
During Herington’s master class, he shared some deep insights into his own sideman gig, which began when Donald Fagen and Walter Becker hired him to add some rhythm guitar to tracks for 2000’s Two Against Nature.
Herington reported with a grin that when he was asked to join the Steely Dan tour on very short notice, “I was so overwhelmed trying to learn all the songs that I asked Donald Fagen if perhaps a sax solo would be better than a guitar solo on ‘Bodhisattva.’ He said no.”
Herington also admitted that while soloing live on Steely Dan hits like “Peg,” “I composed what I wished I could improvise,” and said that he learned through this experience “if you slow down time and do start composing what you wish you could improvise, you will learn far more than you would by just jamming thoughtlessly all the time.”
During his master class, Herington shared the chord inversion exercises he uses to see the guitar neck more clearly and break out of his established improvisational habits.
David Grissom on Improvisation and Ducking Thirds
David Grissom was another AIR with not only a strong solo career, but significant sideman experience to share. Grissom has toured and recorded with John Mellenchamp, Joe Ely, Storyville, The Allman Brothers Band, The Dixie Chicks, Chris Isaak, Robben Ford, Ringo Starr, Buddy Guy, John Mayall and more.
Grissom provided fascinating insights into the art of the sideman in his master class, such as the fact that he tends to play movable chord forms with no thirds because “they have a more pleasing sound, the harmonics line up pleasant,” and doing so gives the soloist “a little more freedom, because you’re not making the tonality strictly major or minor.”
Grissom also pointed out that “pickups are only microphones. They only pick up and amplify what you are doing with your fingers. As much as we all might want a pedal that makes us sound like Eric Johnson, I’ve played through Eric’s rig and I sound like a bull in a china shop. I’ve played through Robben Ford’s rig and it sounded like muck, yet Robben is known for his clarity.”
Grissom laid down the law on one thing: guitarists have got to gut it out and force themselves to learn the notes on the fretboard. “Learn the major scale up and down the fretboard. It’ll change your life. And it will happen quickly if you devote the time,” he said.
Grissom recommended taking a month to spend ten minutes a day naming the fingerboard notes and twenty minutes a day playing all four forms of the major scale.
“You’ll be amazed at how you’ll stop playing ‘licks’ and will start truly improvising,” Grissom declared.
Grissom played a powerful concert featuring great Storyville songs like “What Passes for Love,” his famous rumba-style version of Albert King’s “Crosscut Saw” and “Boots Likes to Boogie,” an instrumental Grissom said he named after his border collie Boots, who “likes a train beat.”
Grissom shared the bill with a barefoot Brett Dennen, who utterly charmed the packed crowd assembled under a big white tent in the horses’ paddock with his offbeat sense of humor and moving songs.
Another Crown Guitar Fest highlight was a surprise appearance by pianist Dave Grusin during Lee Ritenour’s show, which has become an annual Crown favorite, due not only to Ritenour’s warm personality and guitar brilliance, but also to the megawatt energy that pours out of drummer Sonny Emory. It was also a blast to see a super-excited 18-year-old Norwegian prodigy, Haakon Kjeldsberg–who was awarded the first annual Zappa Fellowship this year—rock out with Zappa Plays Zappa onstage.
Only at the Crown!
