INFLUENCES.......
i love music.
ALL kinds of music.........i don't have enough time to put 'everything' in here and i'm not so sure you'd want to read it anyways........i grew up around a lot of music, but i am not from a musical family. there were no instruments around. but there were lots of radios. it seems like back then, radio stations played a lot of 'different' kinds of music.....you would hear loretta lynn, and then bob dylan, and then curtis mayfield, and then eddie arnold....and so on. in one way or another, i absorbed a lot of stuff.....
having said all that.....i think the first person i heard that was doing some 'slide' type guitar was john fahey. i had heard slide before on plenty of records, but this was something very different and it had a very very big impact on me. i loved his playing, and there were a few songs that he was playing lap style on........and while i didn't know that at the time, i definitely was drawn to the sound. i got his 'railroad' album, which i think might be out of print now.....and on the cover, he was holding something odd. i didn't know it then, but it was a weissenborn style guitar, and i don't know how but i figured out that there was something different going on with that guitar that didn't involve a regular playing style. i probably have over thirty of john's albums....and i recommend any and all of his work. more info is available at his website.......the "return of the repressed" anthology which was put out by rhino is a great place to start.......john passed away in 2001. a great loss. he was ahead of his time....and then some.
stacy phillips has been my teacher since i started playing the dobro in 1999. i don't get to take as many lessons from him as i would like, but he has probably been my main influence, resophonically speaking. he has several great recordings to his credit, all of which area available from him at his website, http://www.stacyphillips.com. i think the thing i like about stacy's playing most is that he is extremely brave and he plays from his heart.....
which leads me to bob dunn, who played lap style guitar with milton browne and his musical brownies in the 1930's. bob didn't play a dobro, but rather an acoustic guitar with a pickup in it, and the strings raised up hawaiian style. milton browne may or may not have been the 'inventor' of western swing, and played in hard driving style that had lots of room for solos from all of the band members, including dunn. when i first heard them, i couldnt believe the stuff he was doing, but i could really identify with it for some reason, i don't know.....the chances he took and the fact that most of the time he seems to just be GOING FOR IT.......there is a box set of their work available somewhere, which is worth checking out, because bob's playing is so great. from what i have read, it is said that he never really got his 'best' stuff on record, because he wasn't that comfortable with recording, and so the best playing he did is probably only alive in the minds of those who were lucky enough to hear him live. of course, there is something very zen about the fact that his best stuff wasn't 'caputured', and impermanance, and i love that kind of stuff, but i don't want to digress. to sum up, very creative, free, adventerous playing that really moves me.......
hopefully more to come soon.......david lindley, harry manx, speedy west, black ace, kelly joe phelps, mike auldridge, bob brozman, eddie one string jones, orville johnson, and on and on......