Slide guitar is as rootsy as it gets, but Carl Weingarten has taking the technique into realms that would astonish Elmore James and perhaps even give Ry Cooder pause. Tapping the strings both in front of and behind the slide, scraping it against the strings Weingarten creates washes of delayed and looped tones for a cinematic journey in sound. Honing his art over three decades has produced a singular voice that honors the slide’s history while pushing it into the future.
The fine folks at Premier Guitar got in early at City Winery in Nashville to interview sonic wizard Daniel Lanois and get the producer of Emmy Lou Harris, U2, Peter Gabriel, among others to reveals some of his tone secrets. Fortunately, this master class in doing the most with the least was caught on video. Lanois begins with his unique approach to pedal steel and guitar and later discusses his new live performance mixing setup. I was lucky enough to witness this epic show, and later interview him for a piece to come in Guitar Player. I can testify that the producing legend is first and foremost a player—as geeky about gear as the rest of us. His genius is in managing to modernize the sound of guitar, while retaining its historical connection to family front porch picking parties.
You may know Ted Drozdowski’s name if you were a fan of the late, lamented Musician magazine, or read his articles in Premier Guitar magazine and his posts on the Gibson website. A respected music journalist, Drozdowski has also studied Mississipi Hill Country Blues with masters like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. With his band, The Scissormen, he keeps the flame of this elemental blues style alive, while adding a modern psychedelic aspect that only adds to the music’s mystery.
I am not sure how I discovered these guys, but somehow I found You Tube videos of Jeroen Kimman and Mark Morse mangling Ira and Charlie Louvin songs in the most creative, anarchic, and yet respectful way. Performing as Sleep Gunner http://sleepgunner.blogspot.com/, this Amsterdam-based duo has finally officially released a recording: Plays The Louvin Brothers Songbook Vol. 1 on 300 vinyl copies or download . While touring in Italy, one of their shows happened to be in a professional recording studio. They liked the live recording of it so much they put it up as a downloadable album.
Sleep Gunner proves you can respect roots music without doing slavish retro versions of it, and have humor in your music without descending into protective irony.
The Greatest Show on Mars, the latest outing from Clothesline Revival, fully embodies the Roots Moderne aesthetic; Conrad Praetzel’s finger-picked and slide guitar, along with occasional banjo, join beats and synths in a tightly woven tapestry, often accompanying samples of Lomax recorded accapella singing in a way that seems utterly natural. For his first three Revival projects, Praetzel was joined by fellow Bay Area resident Robert Powell on pedal steel, lap steel and various other stringed instruments, as well as a rotating cast of actual vocalists recreating the spirit of American roots. This time Praetzel is alone—just a man and his studio.