Hennepin County Library - Cypress Grove Blues

I started playing rock guitar in 1978. OK, I banged on it a few times in 1976 but that doesn't count. I started playing in a cover band in Little Rock while still in high school. You know the story; Zep, Who, Stones, Skynyrd, etc.

I did that for a few years then started to teach guitar while in college. I opened up my own recording studio in 1984 (still in business) and recorded about 40 90 minute cassettes of my own music over the next 20+ years. This was more experimental/rock/imporovisation music in the vein of old Pink Floyd or Captain Beeheart.

I got into blues after discovering Robert Johnson and RL Burnside in 1998. I had heard lots of blues over the years but the only artist I really liked was Stevie Ray Vaughan. My music sounds nothing like him however. I had put down my guitar for a few years after getting hooked on computers. I only played sporadically but I noticed that I was abscent mindedly playing old blues riffs.

I remembered that I had the Robert Johnson box set from the 30's and I started listening to it, not really intending to learn that style. A co-worker at the time was listening to internet radio and one fo the stations played lots of old blues artists like Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell and of coure Robert Johnson. I was immediately hooked on the raw, funky style and investigated further.

Learning these songs by ear was difficult as many are tuned differently from traditional guitar tunings and many artists of that era used capos to change keys which made it almost impossible to figure out what the tunings were. Eventually I stumbled across a video of Bukka White playing what looked like open E tuning. I tried it and voila! I was playing Robert Johnson licks in no time.

I recorded my first 4 cd's in a little less than 12 months, 3 more followed in quick succsession.

After years of playing complicated and almost orchestrated music that took days or weeks to record one song, it was refreshing to be able to knock out several songs in a day with just a guitar and a microphone. The fingerstyle picking allows the guitarist to use the thumb for the bass notes the the first and second fingers for the melody and chords. A full band can be imitated with just one guitar in this manner. This is one of the defining techniques of country blues (also know as delta blues). I've also taken up the blues harp which is featured in many of my songs as a solo or melodic intrument.

I'm also recording what I call 'full band' blues at home on my trusty 7500 Macintosh which includes electric guitar, bass, drums, and even some electronica influences. Many of these songs reference the minimal sounds of the Chess Records recordings of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter. So far I have recorded two CD's of 'electric blues'. I hope you enjoy my music - many people believe the blues is a dyiing art from ut nothing coudl be further from the truth, if anything it's growing and web sites like Magnatune can do nothing but help further 'the cause'.