shinksma
What? I get a title?
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2014
- Messages
- 5,318
A couple of related stories, or maybe one long story that meanders, as they often do with me:
My wife and I went to the Daytona Country 500 music fest on the weekend - camped out on the infield for three nights, put up with a bit of rain, and saw a good variety of what is called "Country Music" these days. I will be the first to admit I am not a huge country music fan - I like some of it, but I was put off by the pop-country that dominated the airwaves a decade or so ago. But there are parts I like, and my wife is a huge CM fan. This was our third year attending this festival.
A small number of the acts were fairly true to what I think of as the more traditional country music style - Midland and Chris Stapleton, for example. Some were very heavily influenced by rock'n'roll, and some had that pop-country sound (Sugerland an obvious example). 38 Special also played, and they are obviously straight-ahead radio-friendly 80s rock'n'roll.
Unlike previous years, there was a dearth of PRSi. Last year it seemed like over half the bands had at least one PRS being played for a bunch of songs in their sets. This year I saw only one: Toby Keith's guitarist Rich Eckhardt played what looked like a McCarty - it has Kluson-style tuners, 22 frets, vol, tone and 3-way switch, and a nice flamed maple top in what looked like McCarty Sunburst. I couldn't see the thickness too terribly well, but when I got home I looked at my Soapbar Korina McCarty and it looked about the same. (More about my Soapy McCarty later on.) His website mentions a PRS McCarty ("My custom designed PRS Camo/Flag McCarty"), but it's not the one he played on Sunday night.
Maybe there were more PRSi at the other stage (Bluebird Theater) - we hung out at the main stage the whole time.
There were the usual T-style and S-style guitars, and a bunch of LPs and SGs. But most interestingly (for me) was the number of Gretschs and Fender Jaguars. I don't recall seeing that in previous years. Chris Stapleton played a couple of Jaguars with soapbars.
Anyway, I was inspired by the music/musicianship of many of the acts, and was itching to play some guitar when we got back home. Those soapbars on Stapleton's Jaguars combined with Eckhardt's McCarty pretty well forced me to play my Soapbar McCarty, plugged into a little Roland micro-Cube amp set on "Blackface" mode with some spring reverb (nicely portable so I could jam in the lanai area next to the pool). At first I just messed around, feeling very inspired by the sound I was getting out of the amp, getting a just-dirty-enough tone, lots of twangy open-chord stuff.
Then I got out the music for a song I had written recently for banjo
, which had some interesting chords that might be just as interesting on guitar - verse had Gsus2, Asus2, Csus2 and Fsus2, for example. So I figured out how I might play variations of those on the guitar. That grit from the soapbars into the "imitation BF" with that reverb was just the sound the song needed!
The music festival has also inspired me to revisit some of my arrangement for other recently-written songs - I tend to fall into the trap of just strumming along with a somewhat predictable pattern when I first write a song. Now I'm going to revisit some material, and work on rhythm techniques, making them maybe a bit sparser, to allow the vocals to open it up. But that's tonight or tomorrow, perhaps.
Oh, and the large number of Gretschs (Gretsches?) has me really itching for a core Starla now...
TL;DR version: Go to music festivals, especially for music that is not within your wheelhouse but that you think you will still appreciate. You may get inspired!
My wife and I went to the Daytona Country 500 music fest on the weekend - camped out on the infield for three nights, put up with a bit of rain, and saw a good variety of what is called "Country Music" these days. I will be the first to admit I am not a huge country music fan - I like some of it, but I was put off by the pop-country that dominated the airwaves a decade or so ago. But there are parts I like, and my wife is a huge CM fan. This was our third year attending this festival.
A small number of the acts were fairly true to what I think of as the more traditional country music style - Midland and Chris Stapleton, for example. Some were very heavily influenced by rock'n'roll, and some had that pop-country sound (Sugerland an obvious example). 38 Special also played, and they are obviously straight-ahead radio-friendly 80s rock'n'roll.
Unlike previous years, there was a dearth of PRSi. Last year it seemed like over half the bands had at least one PRS being played for a bunch of songs in their sets. This year I saw only one: Toby Keith's guitarist Rich Eckhardt played what looked like a McCarty - it has Kluson-style tuners, 22 frets, vol, tone and 3-way switch, and a nice flamed maple top in what looked like McCarty Sunburst. I couldn't see the thickness too terribly well, but when I got home I looked at my Soapbar Korina McCarty and it looked about the same. (More about my Soapy McCarty later on.) His website mentions a PRS McCarty ("My custom designed PRS Camo/Flag McCarty"), but it's not the one he played on Sunday night.
Maybe there were more PRSi at the other stage (Bluebird Theater) - we hung out at the main stage the whole time.
There were the usual T-style and S-style guitars, and a bunch of LPs and SGs. But most interestingly (for me) was the number of Gretschs and Fender Jaguars. I don't recall seeing that in previous years. Chris Stapleton played a couple of Jaguars with soapbars.
Anyway, I was inspired by the music/musicianship of many of the acts, and was itching to play some guitar when we got back home. Those soapbars on Stapleton's Jaguars combined with Eckhardt's McCarty pretty well forced me to play my Soapbar McCarty, plugged into a little Roland micro-Cube amp set on "Blackface" mode with some spring reverb (nicely portable so I could jam in the lanai area next to the pool). At first I just messed around, feeling very inspired by the sound I was getting out of the amp, getting a just-dirty-enough tone, lots of twangy open-chord stuff.
Then I got out the music for a song I had written recently for banjo
, which had some interesting chords that might be just as interesting on guitar - verse had Gsus2, Asus2, Csus2 and Fsus2, for example. So I figured out how I might play variations of those on the guitar. That grit from the soapbars into the "imitation BF" with that reverb was just the sound the song needed!The music festival has also inspired me to revisit some of my arrangement for other recently-written songs - I tend to fall into the trap of just strumming along with a somewhat predictable pattern when I first write a song. Now I'm going to revisit some material, and work on rhythm techniques, making them maybe a bit sparser, to allow the vocals to open it up. But that's tonight or tomorrow, perhaps.
Oh, and the large number of Gretschs (Gretsches?) has me really itching for a core Starla now...
TL;DR version: Go to music festivals, especially for music that is not within your wheelhouse but that you think you will still appreciate. You may get inspired!
