S.A.D. Blues
The backing track is by Keitonie which he put out as an open collaboration.
I’ve always said that my main impetus is the Blues, and that many of my experimental pieces begin as blues sketches, and I often call them 'strange' blues.
However, here I try to keep my blues 'straight'.
No attempt is made to play around with the backing track [well, not much], and the guitars are just jammed straight on in time honoured blues fashion. There is some experimentation in the guitar sounds, though, but all within the framework of electric blues.
Main guitar was the Hendrix Psychedelic V in the track pic. The counter guitar was a blue Epiphone Les Paul Standard.
Keitonie at 5:44:
I am proud that you played this, great playing thanks again.
Thanks for creating the collaboration, very generous of you
Guitar is cry weeping
- we always want to get that sound in Blues, I know you do too.
Love the walk down.......Hendrix used walk up walk downs to perfection I say bring em back lol....., Al
Thanks Al - I probably got it from Jimi - also from playing bass - actually, I think Jimi got it from bass too, as he did a lot of bass on some of the recordings.
So cool love walking lines they sure do pack a punch an grab ya attention!!, Al
Super Blues Super tones guys ya got mi smiling this Blues Thursday......great work an interpretation way cool, Al
Thanks for that Blues seal of approval, Al!- really man, I mean it.
Every section is revealing its power on its own terms. Love it.
Superb and powerful
Thanks - there is a real power in the blues
This chorus is great!
- try to save the best 'til last!
So good to hear you lay this bare, Bill.
: Yeah, I wanted to keep simple, swinging and musical - hitting a few of those good blues notes. And blues is really where you bare your soul. So it was good to do this and put the track out at the same time as one of my epics. But I think you can hear the connection between them.
yeah
: I love to hear two loaded blues guitars cross over like that - Clapton did that first in Politician: killer playing on that Cream track.
Yeah. And that main riff itself is killer, too. So lumberingly threatening, and yet so welcoming, for me, anyway.
: Yeah that minor - or rather Aeolian - mode does have that underlying menace. There's an old track by Free called Moonshine, on their first album. That kept going around in my head - I had to put a version down of that first to get it out. Also I tuned slightly sharp to get the sweet and sour thing on there.
Tell it bro.
: Yeah, a blues solo should tell some kind of story, or you should try to hear it that way - what is s/he saying?
: Much agreed. Minus that, it's all licks. Too many lick meisters these days, not enough stories.
: I had to listen to a lot of Paul Kossoff, particularly live, and also to the out-takes of his first solo album, to really absorb that. Otherwise its all licks, tricks and runs - now that's great for rock, but for blues you have to get modest, man!
Oh, I am so loving hearing your singing here.
: Two singers on here - a blue 17 year old Epiphone Les Paul which has the Bluesbreaker Beano Paul action, sound and everything. It's quite amazing. Gets that sound even more than my Gibson Les Paul. On this track, that guitar has the sweeter sound, and often puts that refrain in, although I do move to the bridge pick up at one point for more stentorian shenanigans. The main guitar, which starts and finishes the piece and kind of blisters through is a Hendrix pyschedelic V copy. It's a custom made job, and again has Epiphone pick ups - they seem to be better for blues. I understand too why Jimi preferred these types of guitar for blues - the vibrato arms give the guitar a more open sound. I notice that he didn't use the vibrato arms on his Gibson Vs or SGs, but they needed to be there for the 'air'.
: I haven't owned too many guitars with vibrato arm, it just never became my thing. But I do know from my Gretsch, which has a Bigsby tailpiece, what you mean by "air" in this context, and it really does make quite a difference. Great track.
: Yeah - it was one of those Jimi mysteries. How is it that, the master of the whammy bar on the Strat, while he preferred to have Gibsons with vibrato arms, rarely used the arm on those guitars. Let's not forget that before he was famous he had an Epiphone Wilshire with a vibrato arm. That white SG and all of his three Vs had arms too. What clinches is is that his last V, the custom left handed one, was made to his spec, with a vibrato arm. And what the arm [or rather tailpiece] does is give an extra lightness to the sound and touch that you don't get with the usual stop tailpiece on a Gibson type guitar. I only really discovered that on this track when this psychedelic V did the business in no uncertain terms
: You know how used to the Tele I am, which has got to have the most brutal string anchoring of all. Always the hard way with me. I'm going to drop that Gretsch and replace it with either some kind go full hollow body, or a Gibson type solid body, and I certainly will consider a vibrato arm, for exactly this reason, tuning issues aside (that Tele *really* does stay in tune).
: Funny, I was thinking about that over the weekend. I had a hard tail Strat and a Tele, and even the Tokai Tele I have now has through body stringing. But someone was telling me that top loaded Teles are better, evidencing Jimmy Page's dragon Tele - used all over Led Zep I. When you think about it, it is very brutal to have a string go through the body and do a very nasty right angle. Can't be good. So I tried top loading my Tele, i.e., just threading the strings through the holes in the back of the ashtray. It was good on the low strings, but the plain strings, no. There wasn't enough break angle and the strings moved sideways on the saddles!
alright
- things just got near perfect there - near!
credits
from Searching the Blues,
released January 24, 2018
Bill Boethius, guitars
Keitonie, backing track.
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