So one of my adult students invited me to go see Roger McGuinn last night, Saturday, thanks Dave. I thought it would be interesting and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I used to hate seeing guys at the coffee houses play acoustic covers of full band songs. Still do. But it's different when it's the actual guy that wrote them or made them famous. He does a great version of 8 Miles High.
He takes you through his whole history, starting from his first guitar and lessons at the Old Town School of Folk music. It was fascinating hearing about how he played with Chad Mitchell and then met Crosby. Right up through how the Byrds started and after. Refernces to Dyan , Mitchell and Baez popped up frequently and casually. It was very laid back. Rog (we're old friends now!) still has his chops and his voice.
He really looked like he was having fun and like he was playing to old friends. He was.
The house was filled with mostly 60's plus boomers singing along.
Here's a link to a couple of videos I uploaded that night.You might need to turn up the volume. http://www.youtube.com/user/tlschafer?ob=5
Roger McGuinn
On one of the videos he talks about his 7 string signature Martin, HD-7. The 7th string is in the middle, doubles the G string an octave higher and makes it possible to get some 12 string-like sounds , yet still play 6 string licks and runs. I've always thought that 12 strings were too limited in sound, you always had that "jingle jangle morning" sound even if you didn't want it. This guitar solves that problem. And Roger knows how to get the best from it, one minute playing an incredible 8 Miles High then dropping down to play blazingly fast fiddle tunes. It seems to run about $2400 or so on the street. I got to try one out.
Roger's signature HD-7 Martin
I really liked the sound. Roger miced vocals and guitar with what looked like and sounded like condensers. He sat down for acoustic , had the guitar mic pointed to the lower bout that brought out the best in his Martins. He was surounded by what looked like some mini palms and his instruments. He stood when he played his Rick through a wireless system. He looked and sounded great.
2 comments:
Thanks for the review of the concert. That was pretty interesting about the his Martin 7 string.
Hey, yeah, like you said, Fender has/had a 9 string guitar that doubled the G,B and e strings with octaves. I've played an Alvarez 9 string but not the Fender. They sound way too much like a regular 12 string. McGuinn's HD-7 make more sense.
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