Richard Hunter with One Ton Pig: “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down”
I played last night (August 2 2011) with One Ton Pig, my bluegrass friends (actually, they refer to what they do as “Chicken-Fried-Prison-Music,” but bluegrass is easier to place in context for most people) at the Silver Dollar in Jackson, Wyoming. I recorded the first…
Video of the Day 3 August 2011: Hendrik Meurkens, “Mundell’s Mood”
Straight-ahead jazz by one of my favorite jazz chromatic players, NYC-based Hendrik Meurkins. Beautifully clear tone in the Toots Thielemans style, great lines that go faster and faster until they get all the way to Wow!, and a wonderfully bouyant feeling throughout make this piece…
The Zoom G2NU patch set is almost ready!
I announced a few months ago that I was working on a patch set for the Zoom G2NU, and the first release is almost ready to go. This device has some features that should be very interesting to harmonica players. I’m thinking of it as…
Dark Blue Champ in action
I’ve recently released an amped-amp blues harp patch for the Digitech RP250/255/350/355 called Dark Blue Champ (DKBLCH). My brother Mark, who plays slide guitar, came to visit, and while he was here we did some sloppy recordings of us jamming. A clip from that jamming…
RP Tip #9: It’s a really good audio interface, especially for harp
UPDATE: At this point we don’t just think an RP is a “pretty good audio interface”; it’s the one we use for harmonica whenever we have the chance. See this post for a discussion of how we recorded a session for the big-budget BBC series…
Video of the Day 21 July 2011: Brendan Power, “Sweet Georgia Brown”
This performance is a lot of fun, and it demonstrates so many cool things that you can do with a harp and a couple of pieces of gear (and talent, of course) that I don’t know where to start. Brendan lays down the chord changes…
Video of the Day July 13 2011: Otavio Castro
Otavio Castro is a Brazilian jazz harmonica virtuoso in his early 30s. As this piece shows, he can make the diatonic harmonica do some pretty amazing things. I’m amazed at how strong his tone is at the velocity he’s playing at in this piece, not…
Charlie Musselwhite’s “Rough Dried” is the real thing, live
I’ve been an avid follower of Charlie Musselwhite since his recording of “Cristo Redentor” on his “Tennessee Woman” album on Vanguard changed my life in 1969. Charlie has always had a unique sound and approach to the harmonica; his rhythms and his notes alway seem…
Video of the Day 4 July 2011: Big Shoulders with Ron Sorin, “I Got Love,” 1989
Ron Sorin is the harp player on this cut, a very enjoyable Bo Diddly groove with a lot of free reeds in the mix–the lead singer is playing a squeezebox. The mix of amped-up harp and squeezebox is totally cool, the rhythm section drives like…
Video of the Day 1 July 2011: Philip Achille, “Genevieve Waltz”
Philip Achille is based in the UK, and his Myspace page lists a lot of jazz and R&B influences, though as this clip shows he’s obviously at ease with more classically-oriented genres. Here he’s playing Larry Adler’s best-known composition. Comparisons are inevitable, and Achille compares…
