Author Archives: Work & Worry

Unknown's avatar

About Work & Worry

Acoustic guitarist / enthusiast from Pittsburgh, PA.

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. Continue reading

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.

Review : Ava Mendoza “Shadow Stories” CD (Resipiscent Records, 2010)

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. Continue reading

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

Review : M.Mucci “Time Lost” LP (The Tall House Recording Company, 2010)

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! Continue reading