Background!
Music of all kinds has been a big part of my life. We listen
to and attend live performances and recordings from all genres. The exceptions
are "crash and burn" rock, rap or opera. Maryann and I
both play guitar and sing. She is classically trained on piano, but guitar is
self-taught and she plays by ear. She is quite good at it. Both of us have
played many performances on stage by ourselves, together, or accompanying others
there. We don’t do this anymore, but enjoyed it when we did. We best love a
sensitive jam session with capable, inventive and accomplished musicians.
What we do..
I have had some music theory via piano, but guitar is all I’ve
ever wanted to play. It has been said that guitar is the easiest instrument to
learn to play…badly. I can vouch for that except it was not easy to master
fingerpicking, and rapid-fire bluegrass flat-picking. I am still working one
these styles. My focus has always been guitar, particularly acoustic ones.
I
enjoy playing the Bass, stand-up and electric. This is a natural extension of my
earliest singing attempts (Church Choir, where I sang bass). Another instrument
I struggle with is the resophonic guitar, played on the lap with a slide and
steel finger picks (Dobro is a brand name). I very much like it’s sound.
How we do it
The styles are largely Folk and ballads, with a healthy dose
of country/bluegrass/Irish/classical influences. Chet Atkins, Peter, Paul, and
Mary, Gordon Lightfoot, Peter Rowan, Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Nanci Griffith,
Bach, Mozart, and many, many others have all made deep impressions. Pretty
eclectic, huh?
What we do it with
Our instruments are up to the task, all being professional
grade brand names. We are particularly fond of Martin Guitars. Some are getting
quite old, like us! Each one is special to us and serves different purposes
because of their particular sound. Each instrument seems to have a talent and
personality of it’s own and sometimes a particular song will just "fall
out of" it. Certain songs just need a certain sound, ‘ya know?
(Reference
recording: Chet Atkins: "My Favorite Guitars" RCA from the ‘60’s)
Doing it for posterity
Another aspect of all this music making is recording. Not as
easy as it might seem to capture the immediacy and emotion of the moment. The
translation from live to any media is an art unto itself, as is digitally
generated music. We certainly aren’t the masters of it, but have our own
little recording studio where we have learned the foregoing from experience.
We
have produced quite a number of demo tapes and several CD’s for other folks
over the years, and done some for ourselves. The quality has been variable from
terrible to really pretty good. The music has been the same, but we were in
there swinging! There have been several changes of equipment to suit whatever
need at the time, but presently we are mostly still live-to-tape, generating to
digital if needed. The studio languishes, as we are losing our hearing, and don’t
play much anymore either. It has been an experience to work with so many really
good people. Stay tuned, there’s more to come…