Welcome to the Flat Picking Podcast with Hayes Griffin and Eli Gilbert. Find us on all podcast streaming apps or flatpickingpodcast.com and check out the video edition of the podcast on YouTube. Yeah, man. I'm learning some uh some D tunes in D, not in C too.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's I I remember that being like almost like a like a defining period in my flat picking career when it was like, I'm gonna, alright, we're gonna master this open D thing. We're gonna figure out how to play a five chord like this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is so, man, to to to have played guitar for over 20 years and return to the guitar and start playing bluegrass, and then to look at myself in the mirror and say, I don't actually know how to play an A chord. What should I do? You know, do I do I do the classic shape? Do I do the bar? You know, it's like you know, it's like there was something about this is like for some reason, now when I want this to sound like bluegrass, this chord uh feels weird to play the classic like Mel Bay, first chord you ever learn, whatever. And there's plenty of good options, you know. There's the standard, there's the sus 2, which is like coming almost all the time.
SPEAKER_01I'm almost always an A7 kind of guy if I'm in the P D, you know?
SPEAKER_00It's pretty handy, yeah. Yep. Gives you an open string. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Give you just just to be able to grab that with no crowding, whatever it is. And you know, and I don't mind the the I guess that's the kind of the Lester, right? Yeah. That's cool too, but that's a certain sound, you know.
SPEAKER_01Ooh. And like your the the economy of like pressing to get the pinky kind of like the yeah, you know, the f like if you think about like the center of gravity of that like fulcrum that you're making, like you're putting a lot of like torque on the pinky, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Almost have to like move it forward.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, well we were at we were at uh look, here's one thing. I'm calling it right now. Are you recording? Yeah, I'm recording. I'm recording. So we just started like 15 seconds ago, is what I'm deciding. Um we were at you, Hayes Griffin, and I, Eli Gilbert, were at the Swannano gathering a couple weeks ago where the idea for this podcast came from. And uh I was teaching banjo. Hayes is teaching mandolin and guitar, and we were having a great time talking about guitar, playing some tunes, got into some jamming, and I've been working on this bluegrass guitar stuff, and we played a couple tunes in D. And uh, I think we played St. Anne's Real, and I was another jam that's a bunch of tunes in D. And I saw Hayes was playing St. Ann's Real in open D, no capo on the second fret, like I was playing capo on the second fret, C position. Great. Hayes playing out of D position. Oh, that's interesting. I know people do that, but uh I kind of like what I'm doing, that's fine. Get into another jam, a bunch of D tunes come up, and somebody actually says, So you always do that, huh? You always do capo two, C position. Interesting. I said, Yeah, I guess I guess I do. Maybe I should uh do something else. I just always seems more comfortable. I learned a couple tunes that way, and now that's just kind of how I do it. And they said, Yeah, I remember when I used to do that. Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Throw in shade, like the gloves are off at that point, you know.
SPEAKER_00So what do I do when I come home? I come home and I say, okay, what are all these tunes I could play just to just to stretch a little bit, try to play them in D, which is which again, you know, play guitar for such a long time, such such a small amount of it, it's bluegrass guitar. So you'd think, like, I know where the notes are, I know how to play in the key of D. What about that? Sounds like I don't know how to play in D. But it's that it's that open B string, fretted B string, open E string, fretted E string, you know. How do you know? And so uh yeah, just humbling myself at the the tiny details that would trip me up on that sort of thing. Um that's that's where I'm at with that. All of that to say welcome to the first episode of the flat picking podcast with myself, Eli Gilbert, and Hayes Griffin.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, here we are, man. I uh I love that that's how we started it because if you've followed that conversation up to this point, you know exactly what this podcast is about.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. You know as well as we do, which is to say, uh not very much. But uh but at this uh great camp we were teaching at this Wananoa gathering, we had this idea that uh after long, many many conversations lasting many hours, uh, talking about all things music and and flat picking, and uh wanted to continue that and thought this might be a nice avenue to do so and uh and maybe fill in uh fill in some of my own gaps in my flat picking knowledge. So, so uh, you know, selfishly, this is my opportunity to take a lesson with Hayes Griffin every week for free.
SPEAKER_01Uh it's uh I I the way I see it, man, we're walking the path together, you know? I'm so glad you feel that way. That's great, dude. Yeah, it's it's kind of amazing to think too. You you kind of brought it up that um this kind of came out of some personal maybe goals or needs for you, you know what I mean? Like you were in your journey to find information about the flat-picked acoustic guitar, you were like, oh, podcast. There's got to be a podcast out there that I can like listen to. And then quickly became apparent that, like, oh my gosh, why is nobody why has nobody done this? Right? You know?
SPEAKER_00Why aren't there two guys just yapping about flat picking every week for me to listen to while I'm driving or doing the dishes? Why, you know, do I have to do this myself? Absolutely. Yeah. I want to think about triads while I'm stuck in rush hour traffic, you know what I mean? Exactly. And I don't want to feel alone. I want to feel like my flat picking friends are there with me. Uh, but really I thought I thought about you know the idea. It's like, what a great way to learn about something. It's is sharing your your journey, learning about stuff. And that's what I've been doing on my YouTube channel, uh, where I've been showing practice logs, just like here's what I'm practicing playing bluegrass guitar. Um and I found that that's a really great way to kind of keep yourself accountable and and just kind of measure progress or just kind of share your experience. And though people seem to like that. And I had this idea by the podcast, but I honestly almost was not even going to go through with it because, you know, it's not something I could actually do on my own without a huge amount of uh, you know, either research or whatever it was. It wasn't it wasn't going to make sense if it was just me talking about these things that I don't necessarily understand. And uh yeah, it wasn't until we got together and hung out at Swan Ono and I said, ah, this is the answer. It was not that I was going around saying, Who am I going to choose? Do this, it was like, I don't know if I can do this, and then oh no, Hayes is the reason this can happen, actually.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's almost like the formats of our conversations took what we would can want the format of the podcast to be, or something like that, right? Like we just got down so many rabbit holes with um practice habits or repertoire or whatever, you know, whatever it happens to be with this lovely thing that is the flat-picked acoustic guitar.
SPEAKER_00And and and what is the flat-picked acoustic guitar? Because you brought this up right before we started, and it reminded me bluegrass is such a funny uh artistic culture in that in bluegrass banjo, mandolin, guitar, every instrument that you would kind of talk about, bluegrass, or you know, we could say old time even, but but bluegrass especially seems to have some really kind of interesting nomenclature associated with each instrument that's everyone understands what it is, but if you kind of dig a little deeper, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense as to why that is the specific name. A great example you're playing banjo is melodic style banjo, which is a reference to a very specific style of playing in which you play a melody in a certain way. As if you don't play the melody every other time you play the banjo, it's it's a very confusing term, right? Uh you could think single string. Well, you're not playing on one string, you're playing on multiple strings. There's so many of these that I find don't really explain what you're doing that clearly. And so when we think about flat picking guitar, we think about, oh, that's bluegrass guitar. Or maybe that's old-time guitar, right? Um, the distinction being that you're using a flat pick as opposed to a thumb pick, finger picks, whatever.
SPEAKER_01Classical style, yeah, no picks at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But other styles of music, like every other style of guitar where you use a pick, is not flat picking. Jazz guitar is not flat picking.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, Eddie Van Haler is my favorite flat picker a lot. It's your favorite flat picker. There you go.
SPEAKER_00So that's that's where it starts. You know, it's like you know, uh culturally, we would not say he's a flat picker, but that's he's using a flat pick. So so what in your estimation, what are we really what are we really talking about when we say flatpicking?
SPEAKER_01I think when we say flat pick style, to me, it like most things in bluegrass music, it goes back to a lineage. Bluegrass is obsessed, in my opinion, with like tracing like lines of influence. I don't know if you've found this, you know, but even the style like melodic banjo, that's a milestone in the history of the three-finger banjo in bluegrass, right? So to me, I think the flat pick style, um a lot of people see like this kind of 60s, like second generation of bluegrass start to incorporate it. Like we're talking like Clarence White, you know, with the Kentucky Colonels. And Doc Watson is becoming more popular at this time, but notably not bluegrass, right? Like, this is one of those distinctions that you have to make, is that like there's this like parallel thing that's happening, and like bluegrass isn't even really quite its own style yet, it's becoming one. So, like that makes the the um the web of influence, I think, more nebulous and more like uh what we would see as like cross genre or something like that today. But I think like you start to see those influences be put in the front of bluegrass bands at that period in time. George Shuffler obviously played cross-pick style with the Stanley Brothers in the 50s and was a Don Reno did some flat picking, you know, on those early records. Um but I think to me, like I said, it's it's like a lineage kind of thing. I think most people go back to Clarence and Doc because those were like Tony Rice's influence, who became like the number one kind of you know, practitioner of flat pick acoustic guitar, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating because I always I always forget sometimes when we talk about the the lineage of what we would call bluegrass, is we can kind of get this tunnel vision of like that's the history of those things in bluegrass, but also it can feel like you're talking about that's the history of those things in music, generally speaking. And sometimes it is. There are certain things that are specific to bluegrass that that's where that appeared in, you know, Earl Scruggs playing. I'm a banjo player, so I'm gonna keep referring to the banjo, but Earl Scruggs playing the way he did three-finger banjo with the picks in the specific way he did it. I'm not the first three-finger banjo player, but but the progenitor of that style. No matter where that goes from bluegrass, that started in bluegrass. The history of of that part of bluegrass is the history of music. But then you yeah, you think about uh what people were doing, how people were playing the acoustic guitar in these string bands, and then it kind of went from uh these like rhythm styles to maybe finger picking or using the thumb pick, you know, eventually starting to use a flat pick. Those weren't innovations that were unique to bluegrass. And in fact, some of those things that people were doing were kind of special in terms of acoustic string band music and the type of amplification, but in the wider world of playing guitar in the 50s, not unusual, not special uh technique-wise.
SPEAKER_01You know, if you think about players like Charlie Christian or uh you know, I was gonna say Django Reinhardt was playing a flat-top acoustic guitar in a lead style 30 years before like a lot of the people we're talking about, you know?
SPEAKER_00And and with more facility and faster than anyone in bluegrass would ever would get to. I mean, kind of ever, but but for decades, you know, for decades, no one would ever have that kind of facility with it in that style. Which is not to equate that with musicality, certainly. You know, Doc Watson doesn't have a responsibility to play a spot.
SPEAKER_01But it has implications, like you're saying, though, right? Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it's it's fascinating. It's um in a way, it's it's almost cooler to to refer to it as the well, that's flatpicking because it it doesn't say like this is the history of people playing guitar. It's more like this is this is where what we're doing comes from within our culture musically, but also then you can say like geographically, um, you know, like culture in a bigger sense that it's not just music that people are saying, uh, well, this is when this started happening for us. Like we're that's what a that's what culture is, that's what a community is, is like, you know, by us playing this, whatever, you know, we are part of the community that eventually started incorporating a flat pick. And uh, you know, you gotta be a little bit careful with that when you say, you know, us. What is what does us mean? But it's like that can be pretty that can be a big tent of anyone who's kind of interested in this stuff can say, those are the people that came before us that kind of developed this way of of using these tools. Um, you know, I think I think that can be a a pretty special thing also.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh yeah. I I think that's kind of where my mind settles when I think about what is flat picking. And and you notice we haven't talked about like minor pentatonic scales with a flat five, or you know what I mean? Like we haven't talked about like the mechanics or the like the the theory of it, but but I think it's important to tie it to those people and those generations where it it came up, you know, like the 70s, in my opinion, were a very, very important time for flat picking. You know, that was when the torch was passed off to Tony and he kind of started doing his thing, you know. I I w would you agree that like Tony Rice is maybe like the the one binding element for all of us? Because like what bluegrass guitar player doesn't appreciate, you know, in the way that like people talk about like the Beatles with pop and rock music, you know what I mean? Like Tony Rice, if we are to center on anything, maybe as a flat pick community, there's that one common influence, I would argue.
SPEAKER_00Um I think that's I think that's true, yeah. Yeah, and maybe another way of putting it is like there's no way to escape the the knowledge and influence, right? Like you know, it's like your favorite player could be could be, you know, Clarence White or Dog Wasn't. You know, plenty of people that is their true like one main influence, whatever it is. But if you're if if you you know if you were alive before Tony was doing his thing, then there's a before Tony and there's an after Tony. And once after Tony, you're never getting out of that, right? You're never going to escape hearing people play that stuff or hearing him, or or being influenced in that, like, it's one thing to say, uh, oh, Tony was the best. But if you just, you know, you can subjectively say that certainly, but you can also kind of objectively say, like, wow, you can really hear the things that he found from Clarence White and Doc Watson and um his jazz influence, these things, you can just see that he, you know, synthesized those in a way that no one had at a really high technical level, right? Exactly. Going back to the banjo when you think about Earl Scruggs, like not the first three-finger banjo player, but there's a reason he's the one we talk about. Whether you like it or not, it's like the the level of skill that he synthesized, these things that no one had ever been no one had been able to do before. Tony did the same thing. So, you know, I I happen to really love listening to Tony. But even if you don't, it's like you can't escape the the kind of achievement there of what that did and how that then affected everything, you know.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And and and I'm thinking, I'm thinking in my mind of the person listening to this right now who isn't a Tony fan. You know, maybe somehow they they they like don't like it. But like most of those people, and I grew up with a lot of those people who lived in the before Tony time and didn't appreciate things about the after Tony time, you know? Totally. Yeah, totally, totally. Where's the melody? You know, I always hear that like when I'm a kid or something. Um but they always like you're saying even if you're not the biggest fan of his style and that's not what you're seeking personally, you you're still comparing it to what he did. Yes. You know? Yeah. There's there's like this inherent need to kind of like set it against what Tony did. You know what I mean? So like you said, it's inescapable. You can't get away from the fact that there was a Tony Rice in this um style of guitar playing. Totally.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's so it's so funny. I mean, it's like in my own mind, I don't spend a whole lot of time kind of like thinking about, you know, who's the best, who, you know, who's better, is someone better than some, you know, that doesn't really exist in my own like personal musical narrative. But obviously you talk with your friends about like I like this record and that one and whatever. And it gets so close to this like sports analogy where, you know, I here coming from someone who actually doesn't watch basketball, but you know, you say Michael Jordan was the best, no, LeBron's the best. And it's like you can't talk, you can't talk about LeBron being the best without saying he's better than Michael Jordan, or or reverse, it's like it becomes the conversation of like, you know, and and so then it becomes an interesting conversation because the in both worlds they lived in different worlds, the games were different, the blah blah blah, whatever it is. But like you think about uh it becomes the standard by which things are are kind of judged. And and people make the mistake of of kind of evaluating what Tony did as like um uh did he did he always play like is every solo the best? Is every choice that he made the best? Did he, you know, they or they kind of look at like the no choices like, oh, he plays that lick too much, or too many people now play that lick because of him, or whatever, whatever the thing is, right? And what they kind of miss is like think about what earlier flat pickers did. That again, this is not a qualitative thing. It's not saying they couldn't do as Tony did, or that they would have been better if they could do what Tony did. But all these previous flat pickers kind of had the ability that they had, and they had kind of their lane in a way. Like a lot of people just had kind of the lane that they were in. And so, like when these special people come along, they kind of have their their lane, but they're they're able to impact a wide range of of uh of areas in music, right? And so the stuff that Tony would talk about, you know, like when he would when people would ask him about music, the stuff he talked about, he wasn't talking about himself, he was just talking about what he appreciated about music, but that was actually all the things he talked about were the things that were amazing about him, right? Because those are the things he cared about. When he talks about timing or uh tuning is a huge one that people forget about that like Tony was obsessed with tuning. And think about like with a tuning fork, and like if you go listen, I was listening to Church Street Blues this morning, and you go listen to anything on Church Street Blues, if you go listen to go listen to that that uh classic recording of Shenandoah, it's like people forget how hard it is to get an acoustic guitar to sound like it's in tune. You can't tune it in tune and make it sound in tune. You have to, it's really complicated. And uh and almost no one can do what Tony did in terms of tuning. And it's like on top of all that, there's the stuff you've played, there's the choices he made, the way he played it, but but that attention was something that that was new, you know. Uh it's kind of it's kind of amazing. And and uh so it's like you know, being a dead horse, but but regardless of of kind of people's like experience listening, it's like you kind of have to thank Tony for inspiring the people you do like now who who kind of have that to look to, you know, like anyone you anyone you listen to now probably has some big thing they got from Tony that otherwise maybe uh you know would not have been so you know right in front of their face as they listen to Manzanita a thousand times or whatever it is. It's it's kind of staggering the influence. I would agree, man. And I'll say, uh, as someone who I don't spend a whole lot of time trying to play anything Tony played currently, like as I'm working on this stuff, I've learned a couple Tony things here and there. I've worked on some some rhythm stuff, uh the Blue Ridge Cabin Home solo, and the 100 Years from Now solo. And in those are some of the most classic things he ever played. And I find myself going to those licks all the time, like many people do, and I kind of say to myself, I don't really want to do that. I don't really want to play, you know, like it's great, but I don't really want to do I kind of don't want to do that that often because it's so, you know, whatever. Um, I like I like this thing he did, you know. Uh uh it's great, it's the best thing, but it's like you it's a long enough nook that as soon as you start that lick, people are like, ah, the Tony lick before it's even over. You know, so I say all this to mean that like my appreciation and the stuff that I've learned from listening to Tony is so much bigger than the note choices, which I'm kind of avoiding for the moment just just because I'm checking out other stuff. Um, so it's uh, you know, I think you can you can have that appreciation while it's still separate from like an obsession with the licks or an obsession with the, you know, the the content. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I think it his approach, because he almost argued for that in in a lot of the interviews that you hear with him, right? That like his approach is the the kind of important part, not what's generated from it. Like in another way to say it is like when Chris Eldridge is the one who tells this story, I think, where he was doing that kind of lesson uh deal that he had through uh Oberlin when he was going to school there with with Tony and would like sit with him for long periods of time and they would just talk about style and influence and not really like it wasn't Tony teaching the licks. He was like, You need to sound like you. Like stop playing that that thing. And not like in a in a like mean way, but he's just like, what's your way of doing that? You know? Um and maybe that's the the thing that actually makes him that important mile marker in you know this this style of guitar playing, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01He did something totally different that no one had done before. Now the guitar player gets nods for a solo in the bluegrass band. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And and you know, it's like an interesting as a as a depending on who you're playing with, it's kind of an it kind of creates an interesting push and pull of like, well, we're playing Blue Gorge Cab at home. Should I should I nod to the to the solo? Like depending on who I'm playing with. When I play banjo on this stuff, there's plenty of JD Crow stuff that I'm like, yeah, I'll just I'll do the JD Crow solo on this for fun, and people kind of think it's neat. Yeah you know, like there's there's a fun to that. Um but Tony didn't do that with uh not that I can remember him, and I I listened to a lot of older recordings, and he he would, you know, learned a lot from Clarence White. He's not playing the Clarence White break to anything ever, you know.
SPEAKER_01Um this is where the Clarence White people would jump in and argue that like Clarence was also guilty of the same set of skills that I just put on Tony too. Like, you know, he did like who's ever done that? You know what I mean? Like the uh on the acoustic guitar, right? Um so like that's that's why these total Doc Watson, you know what I mean? He he was one of the first guys who's like, I'm gonna play Black Mountain Rag on the freaking guitar and we're gonna see how that goes, you know. Um totally. Yeah, so it's it's like this kind of um finding their own personal voice and willing to challenge kind of like the boundaries of what role was pre-determined by the the band at that point in time, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and one thing you gotta think about too is you know, some of these players um it had to do with where bluegrass was at the time that they were doing what they were doing. I mean, um it's gonna be true for anyone, like uh Clarence White was was Bluegrass famous, and Doc Watson was famous, famous, kind of. Yeah. Uh not like Tony eventually was, but definitely, you know, more people know Doc Watson than know Clarence White.
SPEAKER_01He was part of the folk revival circuit, right? Whereas bluegrass was sometimes just even like kind of restricted to its own like bluegrass thing. It wasn't like totally included in the folk revival thing, right?
SPEAKER_00Which you think about it's like at the height of Tony's fame, he probably was more famous than Doc ever was. But I also think that the way that Doc was famous has made him, you know, real world famous longer, you know. Tony's influence in in the in, you know, it's it's there, absolutely. It continue will continue to be there. But Doc kind of like, because of the folk revival stuff, is like the number of statues and like memorials and festivals and like the North Carolina history of it all, and it's like you know, so it's kind of fascinating. Like depending on when you start and what the media consumption is like and how media, you know, like were you able to be on TV, were you able to be on the radio, you know, whatever, that kind of thing was really gonna affect that. And and uh, you know, not not to say that that's the big big picture of whatever, but it's but it's but it's fascinating, you know, like that a lot of a lot of this stuff does have to do with um I don't want to say marketing exactly, but but it but it kind of is. It's like what's the available market that you can kind of be in front of, you know. Uh but that's that's a little aside outside of the flat picking itself, you know?
SPEAKER_01Oh, but that's uh I I think it's important to bring that up though, like you said, because Doc, you know, I think for all the reasons we just talked about, was never really considered bluegrass. Like it's almost kind of a snobbish thing. Like if you have like a true bluegrass fan and someone calls Doc Watson bluegrass, they're gonna be like, well, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it turns into one of those conversations pretty quick. Um so you know, there I like I said, I think it's important to make that distinction because I think there's a reason that that people, you know, think that way with the style. And Tony was ours. He was a little more, you know, like underground or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Um when you think about too, like being being bluegrass famous, it's like bluegrass album band, those records, the blueprint that that gave everyone to say, okay, we're gonna keep playing the flat and scrug stuff, and now everyone has their specific job they can do at the jam, and everyone knows the songs that everyone's gonna know. And it's like that had its impact. Yeah, it's like if you go and you want to do walk-on boy like Doc Watson, there's a much lower chance that everyone at every jam is gonna be like, Oh yeah, great, let's do it, just like on the record, as you would if you said like Big Spike Hammer. Exactly. People know because of Bluegrass Album Band, not because of the Osborne brothers. Maybe they do, but probably because these days, if you're, you know, just getting into it, that's where you're gonna hear it. So, you know, that that kind of has an impact also. And and uh But I but but back to the to to your kind of intro to flatpicking, is like that's also what's cool about flat picking. It's like when you talk to bluegrass guitarists or flatpickers, it's so funny because I say bluegrass guitar, but really I should be saying flatpickers because you get around these people and it's like we have our own set of tunes that we know that other instruments don't think about as much. There are artists we listen to that that other instruments don't necessarily listen to as much, you know. Um, we have that share, it's like that Venn diagram, we share stuff with the bluegrass community, but there really is kind of like a flat picking specific thing, also.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if we're talking about the edges of like uh those like Venn diagram overlaps, like to me, Julian Lodge is one of those guitar players that like flat pickers, like most flat pickers listen to that dude. And like mandolin, banjo, fiddle, maybe, you know what I mean? Like, yep. Um, I guess if they're in the know, if the if the flat picker in the band listens to Julian Lodge, then they probably are right. But yeah, I I think they're right, like he uh is the to me the perfect example of that kind of like he's part of our flat pick world, but maybe not necessarily part of the bluegrass thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because yeah, especially, yeah, you listen to the duo records, Julian and and Chris Eldridge. Yeah. And there's whiskey before breakfast. There's stuff that's kind of in the bluegrass canon, certainly, but it never it never leaves flat picking. Even if it touches on bluegrass, it it never leaves flatpicking. And and even to the extent that Julian is probably, you know, I think he's spent seems like he spent a lot of time kind of digesting classic flatpicking stuff and bluegrass, you know, compared to what he probably grew up doing. But uh, you know, it's not his main world. But he you can tell me he's musically making choices that are um not completely irreverent to to kind of what that that intended sound is, right? You know, it's like they're really loose guidelines, but you can tell when you listen to that record, it's like that they're they're kind of meeting in the middle in a way that uh that they didn't have to, you know. Like you listen to, you know, uh Brian Sutton has that track. I think it's Frizzell's rag, maybe on one of his records. It's him and and uh Bill Frizzell. It's not definitely not bluegrass, and Bill is not attempting to flat pick, I think. It doesn't seem like it's like Bill's just doing his own thing, right? It's great, but it's but it's like you can tell there's a distinction where it's like, okay, is is the goal here to be in that lineage in kind of intentionally, or is the goal here just let's just play something, which is great too. But you can tell you can kind of tell the difference.
SPEAKER_01Um I think it it speaks to the type of musician like the because I'm thinking about what are the common elements between Bill Frizel and Julian Laj, and they're both very like um their styles are hard to like box in by genre, you know what I mean? They're more like uh reactive players in that kind of way. They're like speaking musical language and they can like maybe appropriate the accent of bluegrass when they're kind of in it, right? Like, but whatever sounds they're interacting with, they're always gonna maybe like respond to and replicate that kind of thing, you know? Um so I guess we're just honing in on pickers that are friendly to the bluegrass style, they don't mind meeting in the in the you know the colloquial space of coming down to our world, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Well, here's a question then for you. What would you say, because I'm now in this in this world kind of, I spent so much time listening to Bluegrass, which means by proxy listening to a ton of flat picking, but in the same way that we're talking about, like I wasn't listening to a whole lot of Doc Watson pre, you know, this kind of experience, right? Or or when I was listening to to records, I wasn't listening as closely to guitar as much as I am now. So I'm kind of like checking out a bunch of new records that I have forgotten about or or re-listening or something. Was there, you know, and maybe this is a bit of your own flat-picking history, but we're like, what was there an early record like uh uh that you just wore out the you totally wore out the record for the guitar? You were just like that guitar playing makes me want to get into this and really do this, or or if maybe after you had already gotten into it, but but really kind of excited you more than than you had been excited before, I guess.
SPEAKER_01For sure. My my uh second guitar teacher made me like a compilation disc of some Doc and some Tony and stuff, and I was like, wow, these things are really compelling to me, but I didn't know what albums they came from. So I started uh searching stuff, and around that point in time I was introduced to the Blake and Rice albums. Cool. And for me, that was when I was like like when the acoustic guitar was just like totally front and center. There was like the bluegrass band wasn't there, and like Norman, like you know, Doc, wasn't exactly like a bluegrass guitar player, whatever you want to, you know, mean by that, right? Like he kind of transcended genre. Um so you could hear like some different old-time ear kind of stuff in his playing, and I think the blend of those two voices and just kind of the pure natural acoustic guitar sound really captivated me when I was in my teens. Um, both of the Blake and Rice albums. I had to have both once I I think I got the first one and I was like, oh dude, there's a second. Like, yeah, we gotta check check that out.
SPEAKER_00Um that's an incredible realization when you find out there's a sequel to something like that. Like, oh my god, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and talk about tunes that we we play to this day, you know what I mean? I think a lot of the standard rep can be for flat pickers specifically, can be linked back to those those couple of records, right?
SPEAKER_00Um Texas Gales, you know, I was just playing with um some of the students at at Swannanoah, some of the younger students, and uh the youngest of whom was like nine. Someone brings up New Chance Blues, just boom, right into it. People, you know, like this is stuff that people are just launching into like a standard. And it's you think about it, it's like these are not like other standards that we play. It's not like a whiskey before breakfast or or even Blackberry Blossom. Like some of these are that's what's cool about some of this stuff, is is it can break through where it was never intended to be. Okay, okay, this is this is traditional classic bluegrass, and so these are the songs we play. But it's like those walls are not as strong as they would have you think because that stuff comes through, and it's like New Chance Blues is a kind of an odd tune.
SPEAKER_01Uh that's three in a flat seven chord, and then it modulates to the key of the flat seven for the B part, right? You know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. Yeah. Let's not stand out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh yeah, totally. And it and it's there's so much of that stuff. Did you feel like uh when you what age was that when you were getting into that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was probably um at that age I was probably like 16. I remember I started getting into those records because I was hanging out with my uh now best friend Jacob Hawkins. Um he was like my uh you know, like my bluegrass buddy when we were teenagers. He played mandolin uh and studied with the teacher that I was taking lessons from, and I played guitar, and we were just like, I think he came over and he was like, You I got some LPs that you want to check out. You know, we were like listening to vinyl, and he brought over Mondo Mando, you know, and I was like, Holy crap, like what is this, you know? Dog funk and all that stuff. Um, but he had some of those Norman Blake and Tony Rice things, and that's where I was like, Yeah, I gotta get a hold of those. So like 16, 17, something. Nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Did you find yourself like digging into the specific stuff people like they were playing on the record? Did you end up transcribing much of it? Or you like me learned that learned some of the tunes, but were you really checking out exactly like what they were playing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. I was uh at that point in time, and this is what's funny, right? Like I was one of the ones who became obsessed with Tony Rice. I was like every note that he played on there, and I was less into Norman's playing, which now I'm almost kind of the opposite, you know. I was like, I missed out on so much, but not just like because there's like I think you could say in a non-offensive way that like there's a simplicity in a Norman's playing as compared to Tony's on those records that's actually very like um true to the American folk vernacular and makes real good use of like chord shapes on the guitar, and and you know, it's just like really honestly complex stuff, but he's just not moving his right hand at 148 beats per minute as in eighth notes, you know. Um so yeah, I I think uh I I remember transcribing a lot of the Tony stuff early on, and then in years after that, being accused of never playing, like they're like, Why are you doing like you should learn the real C part to that tune or whatever, you know, like whatever it was like you should yeah have did you ever play just like the straight melody to Blue Ridge Cabin Home Hayes? You know, did you ever try that? Like totally, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That reminds me, there's uh friend of ours, multiple friend, Tony Watt, amazing uh flat picker, and uh one of my favorite people to talk to about all this kind of stuff as well. We'll we'll have him on this podcast at some point, whether he willingly or not. But um, he he tells the story of he grew up that same way, obsessed with Tony Rice, specifically that classic like album band language, the stuff he would play over that 145 stuff, and and it's what you hear everyone play. But I've never heard Tony play like that, but I think when he was younger, that was the stuff Tony Watt, now I'm talking about, was really into. And uh eventually he made that choice. He said, I'm gonna make a concerted effort not to play any of that stuff. I'm gonna play, I'm gonna come up with other ideas I want to play, study other people, come up with whatever. And I don't know how long it took him, but at a certain point he said, Okay, I'm I I'm not playing any of those licks anymore. I'm I I kind of made it out of the woods, right? And uh he went and he and kind of like as soon as he felt that way, he went and he was playing at a festival, and someone came up to the record table afterwards and said, Hey, you know, you sound great. You sound just like Tony Rice. Which is like, that's kind of no, yeah, in many ways, no escaping uh that sort of thing. Did you do anything in particular? I mean, because cause I'm in this space now where it's like I have a couple of these licks, which are everything about what he did is so great, but also there's so much function in that like you can paint yourself, you can get yourself out of a corner you painted yourself into so easily by playing one out of the five most common licks, right? Not to simp not to um speak down to what he did, but just like my use of it is like it just it just like the first it's it comes to mind immediately and there, boom, I can do it. So I'm cautious about learning some of that at the moment because of for for that reason, right? Um, which means I'm in a kind of a nice place where I don't have to to kind of reconfigure everything I'm doing to to try not to do that. But like to the extent that that was what you were going through, did you how consciously did you really have to like because when I hear you play, I totally hear some stuff come through that's like that could that could be not like that's Tony Rice like number five, but it's like that could be Tony, you know, influenced. Yeah, exactly. It's like stuff stuff does come out, but when I hear you, it's like it is you. So so what was that process like? Was it was it really intentional, or what yeah, what did you do there?
SPEAKER_01I think it was, and it it was intentional and it happened much later than you know, I like this is how it always goes, right? Hindsight is 2020, much later than it should have. But I was I was out of grad school, so I had gone to New England Conservatory and got my master's degree, mainly to be in Boston and hang out around guys like Tony Watt. Like, no offense to NEC. I love the degree I got there, but I knew that there was a bang in Bluegrass community and wanted to get my butt kicked. And and I think I learned stuff like that, uh, both like explicitly and implicitly from hanging out with guys like Tony, uh Maddie Whitler, Gabe Hirschfeld, John Mylander, all the like class of people that was there while I was there. John McGann was my teacher for a couple years. They adjuncted him into um NEC, and his approach was very like, he was like, Your job should be to play the like step one is learn the most simple version of the melody that you can possibly hack out on any tune. Like learn that simple version and then simplify it. You know, like make like a half note melody or something like that for a tune. And then and then he's like, now our job is to look at those Tony Rice licks or those Norman licks or whatever we liked. Or even better, and this was a McGann suggestion and a bunch of previous teachers. What are the fiddle players, banjo players, and mandolin players doing in the exact same spots in their solos where Tony Rice is putting those plug-and-play stock licks that you're talking about? So, like I I always play like I I love doing that on the guitar because like you know, it's like thanks, JD, right? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think McGann was a big influence that way, um, in terms of just like one way to get much better at your individual style in flat picking was to look at the other instruments and maybe focus on like the common language of bluegrass music thing, as opposed to the licks or or phrases that were developed on your instrument. Um so yeah, that that was like a I had I was exposed to that at NEC, so that was like two years, and then I would say for the for four or five years after I got out of grad school, like my first road gig into my second road gig, this is what I was woodshedding. I was uh ear training, I was listening to melodies, I was mostly transcribing mandolin players and fiddle players at that point in time. Um, I picked up the mandolin seriously during that period in time because I wanted to understand the vocabulary on another instrument. Um and then I I think I tried to look at like what was the Venn diagram overlap between the guitar and the mandolin at that point. What were these common things that I needed to be focusing on? And melodies were the things. Melodies and the harmonic implications of those melodies, like what chords were behind the melodies, and how can you use the chord information to dress up the melody or vary the melody. That was kind of like sure where my mind landed. Um if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. No, no, of course. I mean, it's so fascinating because it's and it and it kind of gives context to like what I sometimes think I'm I'm trying to do and and don't have a a long amount of experience doing it with guitar, but it's like what you're talking about is what I've heard. Well, like for instance, when I was the last time I was seriously playing guitar was when I was in college studying jazz guitar, and um, which is such a fascinating uh like I didn't know it at the time, but I wasn't spending any time thinking about my right hand or left hand. It was all just like note choices, and and then it's funny to come and play acoustic guitar. It's like, oh yeah, the there's this whole technique thing that's gonna make a giant difference if anyone ever hears a note that I play. But but just in terms of that, like improvising, um, is these there's tons of players that people would kind of copy what they did, and but so much of what was taught was um kind of what's underpinning the choices people are making. And you can see, like, well, why did they choose this color here, right? Whatever that was, and um and studying other instruments, right? Like guitar is a fast guitar is fascinating in any genre because there's kind of like stuff that lays really well on guitar, and as soon as you play it, it's like, yep, that's guitar stuff, you know? Yeah, um, you know, and it and and that's great too. I hear plenty of people play stuff like that, and I play stuff like that, and it's awesome. But but guitar players, I feel like more than any other instrument have this desire to like go beyond guitar stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you know, there's something like you're saying about the layout of the instrument that makes it there are certain things that are just very proprietary. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you figure it out as soon as you start to play a mandolin or something tuned in fifths evenly, right?
SPEAKER_00You're like, oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like, wow, this is where the bluegrass language comes from. You know, you've just been using like a weird translator the whole time to figure out bluegrass language.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And it's, you know, it's true in it's true in jazz too. I mean, if you think about like, you know, Bebop is a good example of like where improvisation kind of had a quantum leap in terms of complexity, harmonically, expect especially. And it's like, you know, there was specific stuff that Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie or, you know, um Thelonious Monk or or whoever, you know, um was playing that that was specific to their instrument, but they had a lot more similarities to what they were doing than guitar players of the era, right? Guitar players, it took actually a little longer for guitar players to start using the vocabulary from like 10 years earlier. You know, people talk about Charlie Christian being an early bebop guitarist, but there was a lot of stuff that he did that was really different from what I, you know, that it was he was playing guitar stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yes. There's a lick that I always go to. Uh he played that in almost like every solo in some kind of fashion. And it's just this really cool, like you can look at it in a number of different ways, like half-diminished pattern or something like that. But like you said, the fact that that lick shows up so many times tells you that, like, wow, that must have felt really good under his hands. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. Again, it's like you didn't hear you didn't hear him playing, you know, the the kind of enclosure. Eventually guitar players played stuff like that, you know, like eventually Joe Pass and Pat Martino and Barney Kelly, whatever, like a million people. And now you're talking guitar players of the 60s and 70s, right? Which is kind of the same thing. Yeah, that's that's interesting. I'd never thought about it in those terms. And part of it, you know, I think in bluegrass, it's like, well, if you're in a string band, depending on the amplification, like I mean, that's why they talk about the cross-picking stuff taking off the way that it did, or or kind of the the um you know, for um for the original kind of like bluegrass cross-picking to happen was kind of like an amplification issue, or it was like play something that the people can hear that isn't just you know, like yes, you know, like we gotta play something and it's gotta be clear enough that people can hear it and and whatever, you know. So so part of it is is making a choice like that. But um, now that we're all kind of on even playing field uh in a sense, kind of sometimes depending on the the dynamics of the band that you're playing with, it's like, yeah, yeah, now you now we want to kind of check out what else is possible in the instrument now that it can be heard. So I totally did that with with jazz guitar. I spent so much time listening to horn players. That was the you know, Dexter Gordon was like one of the big ones, or or Coltrane, certainly. And um, and it's funny, I'm spending way more time thinking about guitar players now, obviously, just to kind of get acclimated with this this world that I I love guitar stuff in Bluegrass. Yeah. But uh, but I've learned a couple fiddle solos, there's Daryl Langer solo and uh uh Mike Barnett. Like there's a couple solos on some fiddle tunes where I'm just like the melodicism, the yeah, the phrasing. It's just so beautiful. It's like, okay, well, I gotta get some of this in here too. But uh, but I I am kind of enjoying the the guitar stuff. I mean, to the extent that it's possible, and the rare time that I really hit a G run just one certain way, it's like, all right, that's that's worth as much as the you know, it's like that's that's why I play the JD Crow stuff, is it feels good.
SPEAKER_01It's like, okay, if you can get a good G run, just like that's snap, that's enough, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Why, why, when, when um what's the tune on uh I don't know if he does it on this one, but on a uh Foggy Mountain special. Is it Foggy Mountain Special? What's the what's the classic guitar solo on one of those like blues tunes that's just G-runs? Is that Foggy Mount Special? Yeah. Right, you know, yeah. Totally. It's on I don't know if it is on that one, but it's on one of those those tunes. And it's like I think it is, but you know. Yeah, okay, yeah, this is that one. Yeah. I stopped listening after the banjo solo's over. Yeah, exactly. I mean, honestly, if you can but if you can play a G-Run worth something, uh yeah, I would do that.
SPEAKER_01I would want to listen to that. Like that solo or nailing it in Uncle Penn, you know, if you're playing in a band, like that's threading the needle right there. That's like a high pressure scenario, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, I can't remember what I was doing. I I played my first bluegrass guitar gig about a week ago. Um, and uh it was it was really fun. It was with uh great manual player Ethan Satiwan, yeah, banjo player Gretchen Bowder and uh bass player Chris Dy, that's just this local gig in in Portland that I got put in charge of and I said, Okay, I'm gonna I'll do it on guitar then. And uh and it was fun, it was great. But we were doing uh Head Over Heels, which I when I think Head Over Heels, I think Flattened Scrugs. Yeah. So so that's if you just play it, you just play the song. But if you if Head Over Heels to You is Bluegrass Album Band, which I then rem after the first chorus, I remembered that's the version we're playing right now, uh, which is that there's a spot where you're supposed to play G run. So it wasn't until I didn't play the G Run that I realized, uh, it's that version. And so you know I've got the rest of the band looking at me as I'm just like, that's my that was my G run, right? You know, it's like I I remembered with negative 0.0 seconds to to get there. And then and then every time after that was like, I gotta prove myself and get a good one, you know, which which happened probably one time. But it did make me it did make me think of all the times I was playing a song like that Uncle Pan or something, and then you jam and someone misses, like there's a G-run, man, you can't miss that, you know. Oh, that's what I'm thinking. And now I'm there, now I'm now I'm living that nightmare.
SPEAKER_01It's uh there's a legendary story. I think it was at Bean Blossom. One of my instructors in college was telling me that uh James Monroe was playing guitar for the Bluegrass Boys and missed the G run on Uncle Pen on stage with his dad, and it was just like a, you know, I think Bill even said something on Mike, you know, according to the story. I'm just like, that's gotta be the ultimate, like, you know, flat pick shame right there, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a different man, and and God, there's yeah, there's just different pressures, you know, like you know, it's it's funny, playing playing bluegrass guitar in a jam or a gig or something like that. I kind of always thought, like, well, Banjo, you know, you gotta be rolling the whole time, you're doing a lot of playing, whatever it is. But you know, but I kind of forget that like it really doesn't matter how much of the chord you're playing at any one given time, or you know, it's like there's a lot of options and different things you can play and different types of backup. You can play very little of each chord and still be doing your full job depending on the sound you want. Uh but if you're playing Head Over Heels, you're pretty much playing like boom chuck rhythm the whole time. And it really matters if you stop for a second or your pick slips a little bit or you miss a G run. And it's like, wait a minute, how many G runs do I play? Do I do one every time we get to here? Do I do one? I know I gotta do one in the little gap in the chorus, but do I, you know, it's like all these questions that I never thought about while practicing immediately came to the forefront. Like, ah, things I never prepared for uh about like, you know, just like a level of consistency. I mean, so here's a question then, out of all of all that. Yeah, it's like you can practice like here's how I play rhythm, here's how I play a G run, and you get experience from from jamming, obviously. But like, did you like where where do you get your cues from in terms of like did you have a uh time where you were like, okay, I need to figure out like how often am I gonna play a G run? What where what kind of rhythm am I gonna play, generally speaking? Did you like look to anyone specific for that to emulate?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I so it's funny. Um this was not a setup. It was the album band where I figured out the formula. Because I I started asking, I was like, how can Tony get away with playing all those weird because he was very active in his rhythm style at that point in his career. That's one way to put it, right? You know, there's all the uh you know, like all that all that kind of like crazy stuff, you know. Um but but there was kind of a formula to it, and I've kind of codified it like in in like the teaching curricula that I've developed and stuff. There are like these general parameters, like you won't sound exactly like Tony Rice, but generally speaking, on uh beat one of measure one, he'll play a full chord and let it hang for like three beats and then come back in with his boom chuck. So that's almost like a way to like mark the top of the form, right? Yep. And then halfway through the form, I would notice he would often play like like the quick G run, I call it, you know, like a uh uh you know, like that kind of thing. So like a I'm trying to think of uh um of a tune. Um Blue's Cabin Home. Um I guess that one isn't great because the C chord uh happens halfway through the form. Oh, sure, sure. It it he does it on like uh your love is like a flower, it happens on a D chord there, but then at the end, you do a full one. So it's almost like there's like a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence, a comma in the middle to like, you know, like link you up to the next phrase, and then like a big punctuation mark at the end. And realizing that those structures were kind of generally in play at you know, he would do different things at at those points. That like um, but that's not almost not the point, right? The point is that something is happening in those like three key kind of like spaces. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's super interesting. You know, yeah, and it's it's it's it's great to hear this back from from someone after having, for instance, at Swan to Know a Gathering, we were just teaching, teaching, like, well, when do you play this kind of backup? When do you play that kind of backup? It's like, well, go listen, go see what JD Crow does, go see what Earl does. And here I am, you know, at my bluegrass guitar gig, and be like, why don't I know when to play uh G Run or not? You know, it's kind of amazing. It's like there's no um there's no amount of musical experience that can kind of like let you truly be your own uh teacher all the time. It's like, you know, you gotta ask questions. So uh I just got my money's worth on this lesson for sure. But uh but it's uh but it's so interesting because I yeah, I have spent a little time kind of, you know, like I'll hear somebody play a really complicated example of kind of like Tony Rice rhythm stuff, and it's like it's got the like triple or quadruple downstroke stuff, yes, you know, that kind of thing, right? And I've and I'm working on some of that because it is cool and I like, you know, it's great, uh very slow, but but it's cool, and and so I'm on the path with that, right? But I'll watch somebody play some really complicated stuff, and like, wow, that is crazy. I can't believe somebody would do that all the time. But then you go watch a video of almost anyone playing, including Tony, including Wyatt, and they don't do it that often. It's pretty rare that they're actually doing a full A section of crazy stuff like that. You know, it's like maybe once in a while, but it's like almost, almost never. They are mostly strumming. But uh, but it's cool to watch somebody do all that stuff and and see what their tendencies are, so you can kind of lessen your responsibility to be like, am I gonna be able to do this for the next three minutes? It's like no one no one's asking you to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Do I have to cross pick the entire tune? You know, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think the Tony stuff is a good example of that, especially that cross-picking thing, because that happens in that middle phrase a lot, like where the short G run would be. You'll hear him do like some of those cross-pick things in that section instead. So that's a good example, in my opinion, of a thing that's like interchangeable with that, you know, kind of spot. Um, yeah, man, I'm excited to see what you hear. Because like everyone has their own kind of experience listening to Tony's rhythm, because there's just so much information going on. Like I said, if you're listening to those album band um records for sure. But that's a yeah, it's the the the path is in there if you're willing to sort through the data.
SPEAKER_00Totally, totally. Well, and and Manzanita too. I I never realized how much of that is in Manzanita because again, I've listened to Manzanita probably not as much as you know, if I as a banjo player, I think a lot of banjo players are less likely to put that one on as it has no banjo player, uh, unless you're gonna play along with it. It's a great record to play along to for that reason. But you know, it's a great record. I just happen to have not listened to it that much. And then as soon as I was started thinking about a guitar again, as soon as I put it on, I was like, every moment of this has something. And which is not to say he's playing a busy stuff all the time, but just that being front and center, you can hear every choice that he makes. Uh it's it's kind of it's kind of astounding. And it's interesting too because a lot of it a lot of it is really hard to play, you know. Like I won't, I won't sugarcoat that in that it is like really challenging, even the simple stuff that he plays, the way he plays it would be really hard to replicate. But but it's not that it's hard to play and therefore it sticks out. There's a lot of stuff that's like in the background. It replaces the mini G run. Yes. It replaces that, but he's playing something way more complicated that doesn't even stick out. It's kind of like that's how that's how much he had it going on, is that he was like, Well, that's actually here's an alternative you could play. It's probably not worth the effort for almost anyone else, and you will barely notice that it's there, but he does it and it's awesome, and it's like way better. You know, there's a ton of stuff like that, you know, not just the the classic stuff we know that we hear him in a solo or something, but um dude, and uh, and it's it's kind of a it's astounding to to watch some of this, and then and then to try to do it, especially the you know the the triple down, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01Da da da, yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, yeah, that that stuff especially. Uh because even that stuff, you hear it in an example, somebody plays as like a demonstration, and it is very clear, like wow, that's a lot of stuff. It's all over the album and stuff, but it's pretty covered, you know, like you're not that's not the main event, so you know.
SPEAKER_01No, it you really do have to like if if you're wanting to interact with that kind of information, Manzanita or Church Street Blues are like the best. Uh because like Church Street Blues is obviously, you know, just his two guitars often him like tracking over himself, right? But um uh but yeah. Uh y you were talking about some of those things that could go in place again, too, that are just nearly impossible to play. There's this one I've worked on since I was a teenager. They're like you know, that's like almost like his G like a G run for the end of a phrase, but like who's gonna play that, you know, at 140?
SPEAKER_00Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So syncopated and nasty.
SPEAKER_00Which is cool because you can tell, you can see when there are people that are playing stuff they learn from Tony, and they're you can tell they're making sure everyone hears it. Oh because it's like I put I took me years to get this, you're gonna know it, and it's like, okay, but that's behind the chorus while you're doing it. You know, you hear that happen all the time. If I could play it like that, I'm sure I would too. But but that's what's yeah, it's what's fascinating, is like he was he just played it. He just it was just in there, you know. Um, which is kind of cool. I I noticed the same thing listening to Clarence. Um, is is that uh totally a lot of that stuff comes from Clarence. A lot of the the you know, especially the cross-picking stuff. I mean, so much of the cross-picking Clarence did oh yeah, was down down up. Uh so like you know, whether it was the cross-picking stuff or or just like basically Clarence appears from what from the videos I was watching and stuff like that, like it seems like he's just doing as many downstrokes as he possibly can, which which results in a lot of down down up or whatever it is. You know, there's um if you watch that Mule Skinner Live TV show, whatever it is, he plays I need to learn the rest of this, but he plays the beginning of that solo on Dark Hollow, and it's like uh all of which is downstrokes. Every single note was a downstroke, right? Um and it's fast, a lot faster than that. And uh, and so there's a lot of that in there too. And he plays all these G runs that are kind of squirrely in weird ways that you're like, that's not the easiest way to play that, but if you can do it, it sounds awesome.
SPEAKER_01Like oh, and his timing is just so like fluid, right? You know, the way that he plays over top of the the rhythm section is nuts.
SPEAKER_00Totally, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you find like uh kind of on the topic of because I do this all the time, uh you know, playing banjo, is here's stuff I'm working on, and then in a live situation, I'm maybe not gonna reach so far for something that that I'm not completely 100% confident, or doesn't just flow, right? Just because I could take the leap, but uh, you know, whatever. I'm not I'm not maybe as fearless as I might need to be to nail that kind of thing. Like do you find um your are you trying, are you going for it? Are you leaping to to the thing that that you're like, I think I can if you get a certain lake you're you're working on or something or a pattern like that, do you find yourself like really going for it?
SPEAKER_01There are honestly fewer scenarios where that happens, you know, uh than than like playing it safe. But like Matt Glazer, I heard him give a good talk on this when I was like, you know, I would like sneak my way into like Berkeley events when I was living up in Boston. And he was talking one time about like instead of like pushing the upper boundary of your technical limits, like raising the floor of like what's what's your worst playing, you know what I mean? Like like what's the you know, and and I when I kind of flipped that mentality, I was like, you know, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of foundational things that I could be doing that would honestly get me through a tough scenario 90% of the time, whereas that like reaching for it will will get me the you know the glory like 10% of the time. So what I started to do after hearing this Matt Glazer thing was almost like I I wanted to play Don Reno style guitar. Cool. That's the way I thought about it. So I was just like, you know what? I'm gonna play as many open strings and double stops on melody notes as I possibly can. Cool. And punctuate it all with a G run. Um and once I was able to just kind of like totally hit that, um, then I felt more comfortable, like I would take more chances each set, you know what I mean? There would be one break where I could like really just kind of if I was feeling it, if the band was pumping, we were warmed up, you know, then I I could, you know, attempt the triple backflip or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting because that that really again comes back to like you have to have the melody so solid understand what it is and have a have a way to play it that's so solid that like when you can tell something's like, Oh, I'm about to fall, let's go back to let's go back to the melody or something, it's like you it's not even that you're saving yourself, it's like you can almost make that choice rather than saying, if I don't land this, like I've got nothing, nowhere else to go. I I think about banjo again is that the one of the benefits of the Scrug style language is if you learn like 10 Earl solos or 10 JD Crow solos, you can pretty much handle any of the songs within the bluegrass world equally well. Like it doesn't matter if you're playing Big Spike Hammer or Head Over Heels or Nightbad Hammer, anything. It's all gonna feel basically the same. The melodies are in a different place, but there's only so many melodies, and you just the language is very sound, right? No problem. Yep. Guitar doesn't have one specific way that they handle first of all, anything, but especially like playing a melody. What is the guitar, bluegrass guitar version of a melody? There is no standard. So, like what what you just described is like you you and you made your own. You're like, this is my foundation, I will always be able to fall on this. You know, it's like it sounds like kind of that's a thing worth worth doing. It's like, okay, what's my what's my basic language?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I never thought about it that way, but you're totally right. And you know, I I think I developed that style if we're going back to what I was talking about earlier when I was listening to to mandolin players and fiddle players. Because a mandolin player, if you listen to Bill Monroe with uh the Monroe brothers, it was all double stops and all melody all the time, you know. They would play it at 200 beats per minute, but it but like I think I was using some of that approach, you know, in my guitar playing. Um yeah, and it even makes me think about uh I'm sure you think about this too, like uh how depending on what note the melody starts on, there's like a standard intro phrase for it, you know. And and I think it was around that time that I started to discover these things too, because if you listen to the banjo's mandolins and fiddles, they're the ones who are always tasked with kicking off a solo or leading into a break, you know? So yeah, it's like guitar players do maybe in a way have to cobble together our own kind of bassline standard for what is just like simple melodic playing going to look like on this instrument, you know. Yeah. And then how can we bridge the gap between that and what Doc or Norman or Tony or any of the guys were doing, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Cause especially, yeah, it's like you think some of these players really played the melody, and some like yeah, you think about Blue Ridge, Captain Home. Tony did not play the melody. Um at all, basically.
SPEAKER_01Avoided it at all costs.
SPEAKER_00But but like you can hear in his playing his understanding of the melody and the phrasing. I mean, he was playing the song, definitely. He wasn't playing the notes of the melody, but he was definitely playing the song, and he was playing the sound of the band playing the song. So it's all, you know, it's it gets pretty deep at that point. But like, yeah, you can easily there's a there's a pitfall that is well, here's an example of the two only two Tony solos that I ever learned. You know, there's Blue Ridge Cabin Home, which starts like this, and the 100 Years from Now solo that starts like this, you know. So it's the timing is slightly different, right? I probably got it wrong in the second one, but it's it's the same thing, neither of which is the melody for either song. Um so you could easily be like, well, then I guess I'll just play that all the time. And people do, but um, but it's hard because the alternative, it's like, okay, if it's Blue Ridge Cabin Home, what am I gonna do? Go, I'm not gonna play that for my solo, as much as that's such an important thing to do. Like, I understand people not wanting to. Where's the middle ground? Where's the middle ground, right? Um, but even still, it's like, okay, pat on my back for not playing the Tony Rice solo, but that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna do this every time. You know, okay, however heals, let's do that one. Your love's like a flower. You know, whatever. It's like, so everyone's, you know, I'm gonna have my overused licks, you've just not heard Tony play them. Uh, but like you know, it's so so so it kind of um it's a bigger responsibility than than for a banjo player who has a clear roadmap for here's how you can handle this idiomatically, whatever it is. Would you would you be able to give kind of an example? We're we're we're probably close to the end of our time here. Would you be able to give an example of like Blue Ridge Cabin Home, kind of how how you would interpret the melody, actually the melody, but also like you you would feel this is a musical, a real musical thing you might want to play?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So, like just a like the quick overview of my process is to find that simple melody like you had, and I'll I'll try to map it out in in a way that like lends itself to guitarisms. So, like, for example, I I'm not the the main melody note in that first phrase is a B note, but I'm gonna play it as a fretted because we you've got the You've got that that lick and all that stuff right there, right? It's pretty useful. It's pretty useful. So my melody would look something like this. So I just map something like that out, obviously, for the second phrase too. And then literally step two for me is like, can I put double stops or open strings on as many of those melody notes and track the chord changes, you know? You know what I mean? Like in it's already kind of like a a break at that point, right? Totally.
SPEAKER_00So then you set three with energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That totally works.
SPEAKER_01And and I think like that's the point where I give it like that that's a process that I run a lot of my private students through like daily, is like, how do we break this down and do this? And then for a guy like you, that's where I'm like, okay, there's the first two steps, and then now you've got all the stuff that you need to kind of do steps three and four or whatever. You know, like you you totally cross pick some of it, add some extra vocabulary that you got from Tony, right? You know what I mean? Like it's put all your, you know, like but then that melody you're like tucking and weaving around it, you know what I mean? And then it's all of a sudden it sounds like that really crafty incorporation of of the melody, you know. Um so yeah, that's that's kind of my at least first couple steps there.
SPEAKER_00That's very cool. Yeah, and I think you know, I I this is how I feel. And so I imagine there's a bunch of people who could relate to this who maybe have experience playing a lot of this stuff and they have good stuff that they already play, which can almost be one of the more challenging times to learn is when like, well, this is working for me. Why would I mess with that, right? Or it it's hard to feel like you're going back. But but I feel like this where no matter how much experience I have, there's probably a bunch of tunes I can't do that with. I could do that with a couple, but there's probably a ton of that I'd be like, wait a minute, where does the melody go? Or what is the, you know, like there's tons of this. Okay, so there's a a gap to fill in. The double stop thing, it's like, oh yeah, I could probably, I could probably get that, but there's a couple weird spaces where you'd have to make a choice, or maybe instead of a third, you would get a sixth. You know, it's like, what's the best option there? Okay, so that's something I probably don't have together. And then the third one is like, can I can I go through those two steps and then build the next thing without skipping the melody, without being like, okay, I know the melody, fine, no problem. Yeah. You know, uh, you know, it's like it's just in my mind, it's like uh you know, except that's like, okay, it's like, well, that I went there, that that could totally work. What if I had to play the melody though? Because that was that was a little bit of a cop-out where I didn't play the melody.
SPEAKER_01That almost sounded like a Norman Blake kind of like riff on it, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, right, right. So it's like things like that where it's like, okay, I can kind of do a lot of that. I can't actually do all of that probably anywhere. It's like kind of okay, so it's like, as with everything, it becomes how honest can I be with myself about like, do I want to be able to do that thing? Can I like humble myself at the reality of like, yeah, I can do a lot of stuff, but I can't do that really simple thing every time. So like that might be a massive, you know, it's like that's that's so cool. I yeah, for anyone, if anyone who's listening to this, some people have a really hard time with that. I love that kind of thing where I'm just like, oh, I forgot something really important at home that's gonna make my day so much better. Some people think of it as like, I have to go backwards. It's like, well, yeah, you can't, you gotta go grab your keys. Like, I'm sorry, you can't get in the car until you go grab your keys.
SPEAKER_01Do we want to fuss over this or do we actually want to get the thing? You know, like yeah, there there might be like a temporary, oh no, I'm not getting a dopamine fix from this right now. So like it must suck, right? But but I'm with you. Like you were you were describing this, and I was kind of chuckling because I taught a camp uh last spring, uh, like a s like a small like private kind of thing. And one of the guys kind of challenged me on I was talking about ear training and learning the melody this way, and just almost kind of hunting and pecking to find it on your guitar. There's something magical that happens to like the mind mapping of your instrument if you can just kind of suffer through that exercise for a little bit, you know. And and I was even phrasing it as such, and and he just raised his hand and and like innocently, and and uh like this is not to like knock on anyone. He was like, Isn't it just easier if I learn it from the tab? You know? And and I said, Well, let's define easier. And and learning. Yeah, exactly. What is it? Well, you're learning how to read pointalistic dots in a in a linear fashion, but do you memorize those things? Like, can you hear the melody to the tune that you just played afterward? All that stuff that we were just talking about, right? Um so like I I like the way that you said it because it is like if you're not excited about it, it's hard to get excited about it because the work seems really daunting. But listen from two chill dudes who are just regular guys, like we did it in it, and it is really fulfilling, right? Like it's it's uh I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00I promise I'm going to do it.
SPEAKER_01Well, you've accomplished it maybe on one instrument and now we're just kind of uh retrofitting for your new project.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I mean, I think uh uh it's hard for me to communicate this sometimes, but when you get people to do it, you don't have to you don't have to convince them, right? You kind of just have to get them to do it, and then they see that that's oh, this is how music actually works. This is what it really is. Yeah, I had the same thing at a camp. Someone asked, you know. Uh yeah, it was kind of just like I I disagree. I think I learned a lot faster with tablature, right? Um it's so it's so fascinating because it's kind of in a way I can't dispute that where I'm just like, you get exactly what you want from tablature. That's probably really true. But that means we're kind of talking about different things, right? We're not the thing I'm trying to get, you're trying it seems like you're trying to get something else. And then I have to communicate, like, would you like to try what I'm trying to do? Because I think that's kind of special. And and I think it's it's um which is not to say, like, you know, uh certainly I'll always caveat that tablature can be a really helpful tool for a lot of reasons. But but the you know, just when like when you think about what the music is, what it means to hear something, like some people have never really heard, have never been able to hear a melody and kind of like make the connection between that and another thing they have heard, or where that might be in the instrument or something. It's like if you haven't had that experience, then then yeah, you would you would probably be skeptical, or why would I do the more difficult option? But it it's um it it's like so many things worth doing. It's that like uh the the practice of doing it is the is the reward of doing it, you know what I mean? It's like the it's you're it's like exercising, it's like um you're taking it into your own hands, right? You're you're kind of like the you're you're controlling your own destiny away. You know, it's it's cool. We were we were talking about this um, you know, different ways to optimize your practicing and be more efficient, yeah, and uh, you know, spend less time, whatever. So there's so many great ways that you can practice better. But then uh as we were talking about this, we kind of realized that like we do a lot of those things now, but we we didn't do those things for most of the stuff we've learned. Most of the stuff we learned is an insatiable, uh just like undeniable urge to just like I have to go listen to this record, I have to see what he's what this person is playing, I have to transcribe this, I have to practice this until I have it. Uh, I have to practice, you know, it's not it's not like okay, I set up here's my five-minute block where I'm gonna do my ear training, and then here's my five-minute block, we're gonna do my metronome, which if that works, it it's great. And there's plenty of ways that I try to do that now that I have less free time, but but I try to impress upon people that um you you're gonna learn a lot if you cannot be stopped, if you cannot be pulled away from your instrument because you're so driven, it's like it doesn't really matter how you do it. You're you're gonna find out the best way to do it because you want it that bad, right? You're not gonna spend a year practicing the wrong way because if it's not working, you say I have to do something different because I need this information. So so there's a self-guided element there, you know, where it's like one, but once you get a taste, you have to get a taste first. You have to get a taste of of hey, that lick that so-and-so played there would work really well in this other song. As soon as you notice that, it's like everything is is open, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, like you said, getting a taste of it, you know, uh experiencing that first G run in time with the the band or whatever, you know, that whatever the thing happens to be. I love that, man. Yeah, cultivating passion and and I think it's a it's a a mindset shift thing too. I learned this one hack, and maybe this is the, you know, for people who are like, okay, how do I get out of my my mindset? How do I cultivate passion, you know? And there's like a simple trick that you can kind of like play on yourself where like if you notice yourself kind of like being making a fear-based decision, like, oh, I'm not doing this thing because like whatever, you know, like it scares me, or or like you know, I don't feel like practicing. Like you can uh psychologist was saying that if you say, I get to do this thing, like if you just make that small like shift in your mind, it's like I get to pick up my guitar and like figure out two notes that Tony Rice played, you know what I mean? Like, like what a cool thing. I I have enough like space and time and money in my life where I can afford one of these things and use one of these things to listen through these things to like hear those, you know what I mean? So it's it's like a small cascade effect, but if you can just kind of like you know what I mean, like like do do like a small mindset shift, like say that you are finding it hard to find the motivation for practice these days, like just try that with something. I get to to watch this Eli Gilbert lesson on YouTube, you know.
SPEAKER_00Don't don't need any motivation for that, folks. I'll tell you. No, but it's you know, and and part of it too, yeah, it's like if if you're struggling to find that motivation, it's um some people think that there's a list of stuff they have to know that's like this is the need to know, you know. Certainly you want to work on your technique and your ability to play rhythm, and you're like, yeah, there's some stuff that's gonna help you no matter what you want to learn, but uh but there's no list of like tunes you have to know, people you have to play like you don't that doesn't exist. There's tunes that a lot of people know, and there's players that a lot of people have studied, but it's up to you. So it's like part of it too is like there's there's some bravery involved being like, yeah, I'm not gonna do all the Tony Rice licks, I'm gonna learn all the Don Reno guitar stuff or whatever, you know. It's like which not as many people do. Uh so it's you kind of have to be like, okay, it's not my responsibility to play everything everyone's ever played. What is the thing that what's the most frictionless choice I can make in terms of something I'm excited about? You know, like that's that's the key, is like it's really up to you to to um to decide that.
SPEAKER_01I I love that, man. I think uh I think that's a great spot to leave our flat pick audience here. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00So that's I was just thinking that uh if we if we don't, this will be like every other conversation we have, which is that it's like three hours.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, yeah, actually the next two episodes are just gonna be our next two hours of talking after we uh pause right now, you know?
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, that's funny, man. Um well, Eli, it's official, man. We've started the flat picking podcast.
SPEAKER_00Hard to believe. This is uh if you're listening to this now, well, first of all, it means you listen to this whole podcast episode, so commend you for that. But uh then that means we actually figured out how to upload a podcast. I guess you already know how to upload podcasts, so we'll be fine. But what I will say, there's a lot of things as of recording of this podcast that we have not figured out, for instance, uh exactly where we're gonna send you to check this out, where you're listening to this currently. We will be including links and uh directions for all future you know, directions we need to give you uh in all the relevant places, descriptions of YouTube videos, you'll find it wherever podcasts are, that sort of thing. As we figure this out, we'll probably tell you more of this stuff at the top of the episode. But I promise we could not be less prepared to record this podcast episode now. So so uh so so bear with us. But uh Hayes, where could the folks find all the fine things that you're doing on the internet and in the real world?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. If you guys are interested in uh checking out any of the educational materials that I offer, I teach uh a lot of flat pit guitar and mandolin. You can find me at youtube.com forward slash haze griffin. That's H-A-Y-E-S-G-R-I-F-F-I-N. And if you want to study with me, you can go to haze griffin.club. That's right. And uh would love to be in touch with you folks there. What about you, Eli?
SPEAKER_00Uh so in the flat picking world, I now am I now have a presence online as a flat, I'm officially a flat picker. Um I have a YouTube channel called Eli Gilbert Guitar, where I'm making uh every couple of days a practice log of stuff that I've been practicing. Um and uh so you can follow along with that if you'd like to. Some people find that kind of interesting to hear me talk about what pick I'm using. Maybe we'll talk about this in the next episode, but I've been playing. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01There's some really cool cameos on that channel as well from some really high-profile flat pickers and mandolin players. No.
SPEAKER_00I'm still I'm still paying them off. I have a couple more installments to pay Hayes and David for jamming with me in a couple of those episodes. Um, I'll never financially recover from that videos. But uh so you can check those out. And then uh if you want to learn to play banjo for some reason, then you can search Eli Gilbert Banjo as well, and that's where I um talk with authority on things that I understand. Absolutely um and uh and other than that, uh, I think for this inaugural episode of the Flat Picking Podcast, that's gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Well, it's been great, buddy. We'll uh catch you guys on the next episode.