Andreas Kapsalis & Goran Ivanovic Guitar Duo, Live In Pittsburgh
Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing an amazing guitar duo for the first time… Andreas Kapsalis and Goran Ivanovic hail from Chicago, and they describe themselves thusly :
“A guitar duo that not only celebrate the tradition of guitar performance of the old and the current rapport, but also as composers they are a part of a movement in the states whose aim is to build the new repertoire for the next generation of guitar players.”
The only thing that I knew about the duo going into the show was that Ivanovic leads the Balkan jazz-fusion group Eastern Blok, and that I could expect “Lotsa notes”. No doubt, there were many, many notes! Read more…
Raymond Morin – Summer 2010 Tour Journal
by Raymond Morin, above photo by Jennifer Baron
As many of our regular readers know, this summer saw the release of Petrifidelity, a new CD and Tablature book of original guitar duets, featuring myself and my fingerpicking cohort David Leicht. It being a limited release, and not (yet) available in any online/digital format, it seemed a good idea to take the record to the people, to go on a little musical jaunt to the east coast and back, raising awareness about our latest work. Longtime readers of this site might remember my similar trip from last year, promoting 2009′s Holykyle LP. The summer 2010 journey ended up being a lot of fun, and different for a few reasons. I had a new touring partner, a beautiful new guitar, and got to catch up with some good folks that I hadn’t seen in quite a long time. Read more…
Interview : Guitar Maker Laurent Brondel
by Buck Curran
Like a lot of relationships these days, Laurent Brondel and I began talking through the internet, and our first conversations were about guitar making. We initially agreed to meet at an open mic that my wife Shanti and I were hosting in Lewiston in 2006, and have been friends ever since. Laurent is an amazing musician, master craftsman, and supremely talented guitar maker. His instruments are gorgeous and inspirational, and his aesthetic and sound are uniquely his own. It was a pleasure to officially interview him for Work & Worry.
W&W : You are originally from France. Where did you grow up and in brief, what is your musical background?
I grew up in Paris and spent a lot of time with my grandparents in rural Picardie, 100 miles east of Paris. Nobody played or listened to music in my family, but when I was around 5 or 6, I insisted to get Beethoven 5th symphony, don’t ask me why. My Godmother bought me the 6th, the Pastorale, maybe the store was out of the 5th, who knows? I had to wait a year to get an old tube record player from the ’60s, the ones with the speaker in the cover. My father’s Godmother gave it to me. So the Godmothers were really active and involved in my family. Read more…
Interview : Catching Up With Denis Turbide
W&W : It’s been about a year since your first interview on Work & Worry. What have you been up to since then? How’s life treating you?
Life’s been really busy, Ray. I wish I could say I’ve been busy making more music, but a full time job and young children aren’t always conducive to a musician’s lifestyle! I just need to find a better balance. That being said, I am trying to move the music thing along.
I reconnected with Alana Mark, an old friend from high school. Facebook is amazing sometimes! We’re writing songs together, which is new to me. I’ve always been a singer, but lyrics have always escaped me. We’ve started recording together, and have a couple of videos on Youtube. We still have a lot of work to do. We’ve both been really busy this summer, so I’m looking forward to getting together with her in the near future.
There is a CD compilation, by the members of the Acoustic Guitar Forum, that came out last fall. There’s another one coming out in August. I wrote a new tune, which I recorded and released just a few weeks ago, called “Squish”. I have a friend using my music in his Youtube videos to promote his T-shirt company. Another music library has offered to add my music to their roster for use in TV and movies. Youtube is still going strong, and a couple of guitarists out there have decided they like my music enough to cover it in their own videos, which is nice and still a bit surprising to me. I guess I have been kind of busy. Read more…
David Leicht & Raymond Morin Announce “Petrifidelity”
The fingerstyle guitar team of David Leicht and Raymond Morin are happy to announce Petrifidelity, a new CD and tablature book of original acoustic guitar duets. It was ably recorded by David Bernabo at Woolslayer Travelling Studios, and mastered by Harris Newman, whose lengthy resume includes Tompkins Square’s essential Imagination Anthem series. This collection is limited to 100 hand-assembled, hand-numbered copies, and is available exclusively from Work & Worry and at performances. To hear a sound sample and find out more about the book and CD, follow this link to the Petrifidelity page.
Leicht and Morin will be touring, both individually and as a duo, throughout the summer and fall to promote the book. Please check the sidebar on this website for upcoming live dates.
by David Leicht
In June, Work & Worry interviewed Oakland-based guitarist Ava Mendoza as part of its week-long series celebrating Tompkins Square Records’ new Beyond Berkeley Guitar compilation. Ava’s contribution, the ebullient “Regional Redwood Park Blues: Between Hay and Grass” is one of the collection’s highlights, sounding rather exotic in context with the other, more contemplative entries. Ava studied classical guitar technique while growing up, then traditional music theory at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and modern classical/electronic theory at Mills College in Oakland. Her formal musical background will come as no surprise to anyone hearing “Regional Redwood” for the first time, given its sophisticated chord movement and voicings. Yet, Ava plays with a sense of wonder, a sort of illusory naiveté, using a gritty-sounding, amplified Gibson ES125, exaggerating bends and ripping through runs with abandon. This dichotomy between sophistication and sense of wonder is in full bloom on her new solo guitar album, Shadow Stories. Read more…
Mike Fekete Summer 2010 Tour Dates
Not my scoop in the least, this was lifted from the wonderful Delta-Slider blog. I’ve added links to the venues, or how to get there.
Updated on 7/10
7/11 – Yakima Folklife Festival – Yakima, WA
7/14 – Mercury Cafe – Denver, CO
7/15 – The Laughing Goat – Boulder, CO
7/16 – Five Leaves – Englewood, CO
7/17 – Coal Creek Coffee – Laramie, WY
7/18 – Off The Leaf – Billings, MT
7/19 – Wild Joe’s – Bozeman, MT
7/20 – The Hummingbird Cafe – Butte, MT
7/21 – One World Cafe – Moscow, ID
7/23 – Calypsos – Coeur d’Alene, ID w/ Jonathan Nicholson
7/24 – Indaba – Spokane, WA w/ Jonathan Nicholson
7/28 – The Camellia Lounge – Portland, OR w/ Aaron Sheppard
8/2 – Barking Spider Tavern – Cleveland, OH
8/12 – Rider’s Inn – Painesville, OH
8/13 – Central Vineyard – Columbus, OH w/ Brian Werstler and John Morgan
8/15 – Rider’s Inn – Painesville, OH
8/27 – Cafe Luna – Vashon Island, WA
8/28 – El Diablo – Seattle, WA
Check out Mike Fekete on Myspace
by Raymond Morin
For avid fans of instrumental acoustic guitar music, there aren’t many real surprises anymore. These days, it’s hard to imagine a new player who could hit the scene and affect a seachange along the lines of, say, Davy Graham’s restless early experiments with Middle Eastern motifs, or John Fahey’s genre-spawning blues distillations. Even two of today’s most head-turning young instrumentalists, James Blackshaw and Kaki King, earned their reputations not by reinventing the wheel, but by designing their breakthrough recordings around the musical templates of Robbie Basho and Michael Hedges, respectively.
…and what’s wrong with that? After all, innovation isn’t everything. Indeed, when it comes to guitarists, it seems that those who decide to eschew tradition entirely tend to lean on gimmicks… more strings, more effects, atonality, more notes and played FASTER! All of those things can be great in small doses, but at the end of the day, when someone sits down behind a six (or twelve) string wooden box, I hope to hear something musical. It doesn’t have to be tricky, it doesn’t have to be fast, and it doesn’t have to be a revelation… give me a little soul, just the right amount of technique and some compositional flare, and you might very well have a fan for life! Read more…
Review : John Renbourn & Stefan Grossman “In Concert” 2xCD/DVD (Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop, 2010)
by Raymond Morin
Many acoustic guitarists probably have some degree of acquaintance with the work of John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman, but for the unfamiliar, allow me to offer up a short history : After cutting his teeth in clubs during the British folk and blues revival of the early 60’s, Renbourn recorded a series of classic solo albums on the Transatlantic label, and also began a fortuitous allience with Bert Jansch, resulting in their classic Bert and John duet album, and the influential folk-jazz group Pentangle. When that group initially dissolved (it would reform in assorted incarnations over the years, centering around singer Jacqui McShee… Renbourn would be an occasional participant), the guitarist delved ever-deeper into folk and blues forms, as well as jazz and ancient Medieval music. On LPs like The Hermit and The Black Balloon, Renbourn developed a sophisticated compositional style that, while complex, also overflowed with beauty and nuance.
Stefan Grossman started as a determined young blues devotee from New York City, studying under the tutelage of Reverend Gary Davis. Grossman himself quickly became something of a guitar guru… having a keen ear, and having learned first-hand from many of the original blues masters, Grossman began authoring instructional books aimed at disseminating classic American acoustic guitar styles, from country blues to ragtime. After a short stint at architecture school, he headed over to Europe, where he lived and worked for twenty years, starting the legendary Kicking Mule record label (alongside Takoma Records cofounder Ed Denson) which was instrumental in launching the careers of world-class guitarists like Duck Baker, Peter Finger, Dave Evans and Ton Van Bergeijk. Read more…
“Beyond Berkeley Guitar” Interview : Sean Smith
By Raymond Morin
Well, here we are at the end of “Beyond Berkeley Guitar” Week. I really hope you’ve enjoyed our interviews with all of the great guitarists involved in the project. Today, we finish up with Sean Smith, producer and curator of both the original Berkeley Guitar collection, as well as Beyond Berkeley Guitar, which is out now on Tompkins Square. Sean has developed quite a reputation as a leading light in the new solo guitar movement, and we tend to agree… his full length album Eternal got a great review on this very website, and from talking to many of his Bay area contemporaries (as well as the man himself) I’ve come away with the image of an ambitious and talented, yet warm and friendly young guitarist, truly an asset to the Berkeley guitar scene, and for that matter, to the world of music in general. Sean’s solo “Ourselves When We Are Real” is the centerpiece of Beyond Berkeley Guitar, and in it’s nearly 12 minutes, covers many moods and techniques. Read more…
