#mandoln

In 1963 the Wear Family released Blue Grass Gospel.  A buddy of mine requested that I pick this one up - so here it is.  The album wasn’t in that great a shape, plus it sounds like they didn’t use any type of pop shields or wind screens on the mics.  It sounds like true stereo though - 1963?  I didn’t think there was such a thing then. As you can hear it is on the trebley side of tone but, it is straight from the turntable.

In 1980 Joe Carr released Otter Nonsense.  This is some really hot guitar picking.  Don’t melt your speakers!

Joe Carr, guitar, mandolin Roland White, mandolin Alan Munde, banjo, mandolin Mike Anderson, bass Robert Bowin, fiddle Slim Richey, guitar

This is just another memory of John Duffey from the Cellar Door album.  Originally when the digital copy of this record came out it left off this cut.  You never knew when John would say something that by todays standards might be called "Politicly Incorrect".  Remember back in the 60's he did the take off of Big John, but his version was Big Bruce.

Alright, so I've grown comfortable with the basic notes on the E string, so I moved on to learning a bit about the A string. Some of the harder exercises involved playing notes on both the A and E strings, I guess I just have to practice that more...Due to busyness (see below) I was only able to play for about 20 minutes today. Ah well, it's better than nothing :/

 If there's one thing that baffled me about this instrument when I first picked it up, it was that you have to use one finger to play on two frets, that will come with practice, of course, but for now I'm getting used to it. 

IN OTHER NEWS:

Some friends from one of the local colleges and I are starting a band! Based on today's jam session, we'll be playing a lot of alternative blues stuff, and I'll be playing acoustic guitar and singing. I'll probably make another blog for that band once it really starts up (as if managing four blogs wasn't enough :p)