well hello friends and welcome to another Ask Zac today we are going to talk about the great Roy Buchanan
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so this is the third in our Bakersfield trilogy started with buck Owens and don
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rich went on to Roy Nichols and now we're gonna end this Bakersfield trilogy with uh with Roy
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Buchanan and uh you might not think of him as a Bakersfield guy but he was and
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I'll tell you the connection so today you know of course going to talk a little about a little bit about the history of Roy
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and talk about some of his recordings and his gear and of course I'll have a Spotify playlist and
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yeah just do that so while you're thinking about it if you haven't subscribed already please
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Buchanan so i guess I'll start with how i was exposed to Roy
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and that was about the summer before my senior year of high
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school i really started getting into country music and uh about a year later i started playing
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with a country band that was all guys that were older than my father and they were
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all you know solid players and they were all really kind and they were all really
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good to me even though i was you know really you know though i had showed some talent
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and of course you know kind of focus and desire you know i wasn't there yet and so they really helped me out a lot all of them
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did the one that helped me out the most was the pedal steel player named bill McCumbers who's uh who lives in allice Texas and
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I'm glad to uh to know him and still know him and he was kind enough to loan me a big
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old stack of vinyl records and in it was like jimmy Bryant and speedy west
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merle haggard stuff buck Owens uh earnest hub even like Jesse McReynolds
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playing electric mandolin through an echoplex on this one album that was really cool but one of
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them that was in there this was my sorry I've got a little grounding issue
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was this uh Roy Buchanan album so the first one and uh this one was the most kind of
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aggressive of all the albums on there obviously you had you know jimmy Bryant playing fast and things like that but this
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this was a little more you know it was a little more edgy than the other albums and so that was my
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you know exposure to him and of course i enjoyed it and so then i started digging and of
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course i found old you know guitar magazines and uh you know i started buying other
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albums of his and uh you know started really getting under the uh the Roy Buchanan influence and i think
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it's kind of hard to be a a tele tele player and not either be influenced directly by roy or
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be influenced by kind of his disciples which there are many there are many that are influenced by Roy so let's talk about
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Roy Roy was born September 23 1939 in Ozark Arkansas but he
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soon his family soon moved to pixel California which was right
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outside of Bakersfield so this is where you get the buck and Roy Nichols
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uh you know connection so Buchanan uh decided he wanted to learn how to
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play guitar and he first played lap steel guitar and was learning how to play
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the tunes of the day which would have been like hank Williams you know hey good looking and things like that some tunes that kind of
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popped up later on in in some of his live stuff when you know playing guitar on
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uh and he you know talked about you know some of his early influences in
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in interviews and he said there was this great guitar player that played with tommy Collins
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and uh you know he influenced me a lot and later on he became a singer his name is buck Owens i thought that
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was really cool so buck was buck's guitar playing was an influence
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on Roy Buchanan and uh you know and kind of getting going and so he he made the switch from lap steel to
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regular you know Spanish guitar and he was also influenced by Roy Nichols so Roy Nichols was another you
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know Bakersfield you know guitar player so he might have seen him you know doing shows with the Maddox brothers or lefty frizelle but
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who knows but he also you know listed Roy Nichols as an influence and uh you know of course Roy
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was uh you know had this jazzy side but also had this really cool bending side
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that uh I'm sure you know was an influence on uh Buchanan
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so Roy uh you know he you know he got his big break playing on
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dale Hawkins my babe now at this point he's playing a Gibson arch top he's not you know playing the
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telecaster yet and it's unclear when he really started playing the telly but we you know we know that you know playing
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you know with dale Hawkins and stuff he was he was playing a Gibson arch top and so you can
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hear that sound on and that's on the Spotify playlist you know the dale Hawkins my babe
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then he started playing with because that gig ended up kind of being a dead end
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and he he started playing with bob lumen and uh you know it was actually
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joe Osborne who later is known for his base playing and being part of the wrecking crew
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he was joe Osborne was still a guitar player at this point so the two of them started playing with bob lumen and it's
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at this point that uh Roy officially starts playing
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a telecaster and that's because they actually had one guitar you know between joe and
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Roy that they kind of traded back and forth and they also had a k bass and depending on if the tune you
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know who played the tune better they would kind of switch back and forth because there was bob bloom but also he had a
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female vocalist in the band and so you know they would just kind of switch back and forth playing you know guitar
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and bass until finally um Osborne decided he was going to
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go you know full on and be a bass player and James burton actually came down and hired joe Osborne away from bob lumens
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band so then you get into Roy's kind of early recordings with the
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telecaster so he did some some recordings with bobby Greg uh you know there's the jam
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and uh there's also potato peeler and potato peelers first one we hear him
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doing the pinch harmonics uh you know then also you have his first
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recording of after hours which is in like 63 i think now let's see
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yeah maybe 62. yeah no 1960. so 1960 he recorded
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after hours and then of course he had those other tunes the jam and potato peeler that came in 62.
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so uh yeah he was already kind of and if you I'll put a link to those recordings
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because some of those aren't on Spotify but I'll put a link in the description when you hear those you can hear that his playing style is kind of getting
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you know it's it's he really sounds like Roy you know when you listen to my babe you know with with dale Hawkins it's
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kind of like yeah i can hear something but he doesn't sound that different from somebody you know kind of aping scotty
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Moore and other you know 50s guitar players so it's really with after hours and potato peeler and
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and the jam that you really start hearing uh you know the the royal Buchanan style
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come forth uh then you know of course you have a period where he played with the British walkers which was an American band
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trying to be you know British because the British invasion and then you know Roy kind of uh takes a you know
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he he moves to the dc area and he starts you know playing in in bands you know around there and he
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has flirtations with uh you know playing in bands and he thinks about quitting playing he he
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starts learning to be a barber yeah you have all these different things
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that happen and then you know when you get up to around 70 71 that's when you know there were
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some riders from in the local papers that start you know you know making these you know kind of
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uh quite big statements about Roy saying he's like the best you know rock guitar player in the world and he's playing at
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a club you know here in dc and people start you know going down to the club called the crossroads and
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they start going to see Roy play and uh much to the chagrin of
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you know the uh Danny Denver the uh the headliner front man that you know
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people are there to see the guitar player and finally uh you know there was a a
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show that some guys from PBS station you know came to and they really thought he had a compelling story and
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was a great player and so they filmed the uh you know the the documentary
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called introducing Roy Buchanan and that's available you know you can find that on YouTube and it's
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really interesting and I'll just take a brief aside here and just say that Roy uh Roy at times liked to embellish
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the truth and you know he liked to say things like he was a werewolf and like his dad was a Pentecostal preacher and
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that the stones asked him to play and there's all these things that are not true but what's sad about that is that you
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know just the truth was good enough with Roy Buchanan there was enough you know with his playing and such that
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he didn't really need to embellish it but he he did and you know there's so many you
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know crazy things that he would he would say to get attention and things like that so but we're just going to focus on you
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know on the playing so after the the PBS you know special then you get the the
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record deal with with Polydor and uh again grounding issue and uh
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you get you know the first album which this is by far my favorite um you know i like the fact it's it's
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more country influenced of course which i am and you know so you have sweet dreams you have
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lonesome fugitive you have Cajun you have john's blues haunted house the messiah will come again hey good
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looking Pete's blues you know and this was just his band
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uh you know went up to new York and they just cut these tunes and you know these tunes weren't like
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heavily worked up or anything they're just like hey let's cut this and let's cut this and uh yeah it has a you know a very
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spontaneous feel and of course some of the critics you know of Roy would say
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that liked him would say here's this amazing guitar player and he would play these mediocre tunes just so he could get to the solo
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and do something that would blow your head off and there is that element at times on his albums where he would take
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some tired old tune and play it just so that he could do some
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killer guitar solo that'd rip your head off you know after just kind of playing simple rhythm and stuff like that so anyway I'm I'm not going to be that
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harsh on Roy by any means but uh yeah and you know and when you get to
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second album you know it's it's kind of a big departure i love this album
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too but you know by this time they're really trying to push him more to a rock audience and so the tunes
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are more rock oriented and they're more you know blues oriented and there's kind of the the country influence and country tunes
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are gone they're just completely gone i think part of it was because he was playing with Danny Denver you know
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before that and you know and they were doing a lot of country songs so this maybe this starts to become
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more of the true Roy Buchanan I'm not sure but uh you know he kind of didn't really do
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any country tunes after that but uh i like second album and part of the
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the glory of of second album is this you know back cover shot of him you know with his 53 telly
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Nancy and uh yeah it's just seeing how yellowed it is and how worn it is and
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again this is 72 73 and uh yeah it was it was a guitar that
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he he played all the time and you know probably had a little bit of wear on it when he
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got it all right let's talk about his mini playing techniques
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um first you had just you know that how he would just take some tune like on the first album he
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takes you know lonesome fugitive and you have you know you have the way you know burton
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you know played it on the original Haggard tune you know this
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sorry for that attendees [Music]
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so you have that kind of thing and then basically he turns it up a little louder and he kind of rakes the strings
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and he uh he just adds a lot more energy so you get this kind of thing
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[Music]
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um [Music]
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so just a lot more energy than the haggard version but you know to go along with the critic you
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know what the critics have said is that yes the the rest of the tune wasn't as good as Haggard's version but
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then you have this highly energized you know solo where he puts all this uh yeah a lot more energy in it than
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you know maybe what the merle had on his and maybe more than what what they wanted so uh
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yeah techniques uh besides just kind of these highly charged solos
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he had you know of course the volume swells yeah
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then you also had the uh the tone control thing and i'm sure he got this from old you know steel players
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because steel players you know would play and they had you know the tone control and volume controls were right there near their
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their and most time they were playing with a thumb pick and finger picks and they would you know mess that and get this kind of wawa sound
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also fender and others had volume pedals that up and down were volume and they had a side to side
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swivel that would do uh tone change so but he would use it very much in a in a bluesy way
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you know
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[Music] you know more in that sense uh
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you also have his you know pinch harmonics so of course you've got you you've got the harmonics like this
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where you play an octave above this is what you call artificial harmonic [Music]
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you know but then you have this and it works best on the bridge pickup because it pops out more
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is one he would use these little fender jazz picks and then he would get his thumb the
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flesh of his thumb right on the edge there and you'd get this kind of thing
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so you have that kind of thing which uh you know especially with the amp turned up really loud uh you know it
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really squeals and pops out and uh that's a that's a neat you know technique you know you also
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have just you know he would do like these crazy chromatic things you know climbing up the neck
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you know just to add tension uh you also have he had this technique where he could use
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his fingers kind of like a a Spanish you know technique that he would you know hit and
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wow yeah and he could play these really fast runs up and down the neck uh another thing would be uh
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his his neck pickup tone was i think informed by the fact that he would play
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he would have the amp turned up quite loud and then he would uh he would control it with the guitar so
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even though he had the amp on 10 and every everything's on 10 except for the verb the verb would be on
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three or whatever but he would uh he would control it with the pick and i
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have to say using these little fender jazz picks this is a fender heavy
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358 which is like he used and he's the tortoise or white and uh yeah it's it's kind of like using
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a scalpel instead of a butter knife to play with and if you turn you know if you turn up so I'm just turned up to
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four and then have the guitar all the way up and on the neck pickup and if you play really
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lightly you start to get some of that Roy Buchanan thing because you have all this dynamic range
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available to you because you can play really really softly and then you can you know just dig in a little bit or you
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can dig in a lot
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[Music]
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that's a really uh yeah nice thing that you can do when when you
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when you have your amp turned up louder and then you you play softer you know it
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gives you this big dynamic range with i know a lot of a lot of blues guys will uh will do that
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you know turn the amp up to 10 and control it all with the volume control on the guitar and then also with the touch of the you
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know the pick you also have like is things like the uh the guitar part like on
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uh haunted house yeah [Music]
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which is you know just
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[Music]
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and that's just you know
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and you know muting [Music]
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so that kind of thing so yeah so Roy had all of these uh you know great techniques you know that
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he kind of you know brought together and uh yeah and again i i think it's
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hard not to be influenced directly by Roy or by all the people that were
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influenced by him because so many people learned about using the volume and tone controls on a telecaster
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you know in a musical way to do volume swells or to do the wawa effect from him or from Danny Gatton who
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learned from from Roy uh and you know and then you have you know the behind the nut bins
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and all these other things and and yes there were other people doing those but Roy was on a big stage because of the the
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special appearances like on Austin city limits he was in you know guitar magazines and you know
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he was he was being you know featured a lot so yeah talk about his gear you know of
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course uh you know we know for sure he started playing Italian around 1960
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and then of course you know late in the 60s here or 70 or so he got his 53 tele called Nancy
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uh one of the things that uh is you know there's a lot of
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conjecture over the the bridge pickup and all i can say is that uh and the conjecture is that
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the pickup was shorted out and it wouldn't take a reading and some people say well that's
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that's what happened you know after that it got messed up by somebody and that's why you stopped playing the guitar or what have you but
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all i can say is this guitar when i got it it had the pickup was in the same kind of condition it would make
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sound but it would not meter at all and of course since then it's been rewound and fixed
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but um i have to say it sounded more Roy Buchanan and it was the first
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thing i thought when i plugged it in and you of course had to turn up the amp really loud was like this kind of sounds like Roy Buchanan
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and it kind of had less bass and it had a really interesting uh
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snarly sound so anyway yeah then of course again you know he used these little jazz picks
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which uh they're kind of addictive uh they're they're quite quite fun uh you know he
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used you know probably used black diamond strings early on and he was one of the early guys to
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figure out you could take a banjo string and use it for your high e and then you could uh you know
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take one of the ball ends and use it on the loop end of the banjo string and then move everything up so that would give you an unwanted
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third string and a lighter set because all of a sudden you were using the a string for the low e string and on down then you know by the time
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fender started making their rock and roll set which was that was 10 13 15
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26 32 38 and it was the wound strings were pure nickel you know wound on a round
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core that's kind of what he used quite a bit in the in the later 60s and in the early 70s
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when he made his records and then beyond that you know I'm not sure you know he probably used whatever strings he could
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uh he could get whether it was fender or Ernie ball or d dairy or whoever
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yeah uh you know he played Nancy a lot then he started playing some other guitars he started playing a strat he
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started playing you know a white you know like mid-50s telly with a black guard on it
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um he played a guild guitar for a while he played an early 80s fender you know kind of
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standard telecaster with a rosewood board and a black pickguard with bill Lawrence pickups
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played that for a while then at the end he played a fritz brothers guitar which had three
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emg pickups so it had the normal kind of telly set up and then a strap pick up in the middle and those were sunburst with white
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binding and they had a interesting uh woodwork at the end of the fretboard and those were
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neat guitars and uh of course it was neat that uh George Harrison you know played one of
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those for a bit on the like on the live album that he did in japan with Clapton's band
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so yeah you know and of course yeah he had the uh the vibralux was kind
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of his amp he used a 410 tweed basement for a time but then he kind of got into the vibralux thing
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and he would you know use blackface one silverface one he's yeah he used just
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all sorts of vibraluxes um and he turned it around and i think he turned it around because
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you know probably the guitar would have gone you know would have had a lot of feedback and probably you know was able to
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control the feedback better you know and you get it when he wanted it and also he wouldn't kill the crowd
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as bad you know with the highs and everything off that uh pick off that bridge pickup that was probably
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uh you know partially shorted out and you know later on he used like jazz
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choruses and Marshall you know half stacks and all sorts of things and and started using pedals he started using
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like a boss dd2 and a boss chorus and some other things you know later on
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and of course in 88 he uh he passed away and uh that was really
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uh really sad and unfortunate so yeah but he left a uh quite a legacy
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of uh you know of of great recordings which i would say i mean you you could get by
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with just getting the first two albums i mean livestock and some of those other things are great too but uh
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i really enjoyed just those first first two albums the most uh yeah let's talk a little bit more
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about uh let's let's cover this that lick on on Cajun you know what i was playing at the
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beginning and uh i love this lick
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[Music]
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so what you're doing there is you're going between basically a c chord and a b flat chord and a b flat actually has a
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flat five to it and this is not hard to play especially but it's more about you know pick
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and fingers and so you're playing on the a d and g strings and you need to have
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and this [Music] so and you just kind of keep the whole
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thing going uh with your fingers like this on the you know you have two fingers on the on
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the a string and then you have you know this uh middle finger you know on the on the second fret on the d
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string and uh I'll just play it real slowly because it's kind of you got to kind of hammer on
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and pull off kind of thing
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[Music]
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i was just kind of showing what the what the fingers are doing what the yeah what these fingers are doing just the right
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hand [Music]
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and then I'll i really like this tune uh to be you know it's a great tune to practice uh you know for
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getting your picking clean because it's kind of you know a fiddle tune you know
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[Music]
28:53
um then you have kind of the the b section here the
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[Music] there are variations where he bends up
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[Music] yeah uh then also in the tune i really
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i really like the kind of melodic riffs that he does you know and you know because instead of
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just going off and playing a bunch of notes he'll go
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[Music] or you have this [Music]
29:38
so those are uh really really fun uh licks to learn and play and i
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think Cajun's a good a good you know kind of picking exercise tune so you can kind of start playing it really slow and then
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you know get to playing it faster and such and yeah here let me uh let me
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show some of the uh things that were helpful for me in in getting this
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episode ready uh to kind of uh give credit where credit is due
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one is this great book by uh by Phil Carson uh Roy Buchanan American acts and uh
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yeah this is this this is a great you know history and i think he he does a good job of
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respectfully dispelling some of the the untruths or the embellishments that
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Roy Buchanan did through the years this is an old guitar player magazine from 76
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where Roy actually wrote the article himself and he's talking about different you know techniques and different things
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and even in that he kind of he mentions that his father was a Pentecostal preacher he wasn't
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and uh yeah so but this this was helpful too and uh yeah
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so yeah and that Phil Carson book is a really good uh deep dive if you want to you know go
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deeper and of course you know there's a Spotify playlist all right guys well thank you so much for uh for
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listening and watching today again i want to thank everyone who uh who supported the show
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friends of Ask Zac picking up a piece of merch tip jar all appreciated all right guys see you