Slide Time

Here is a picture of what the sky looked at around 3:00 in the afternoon yesterday. The tornado warning sirens were going off and I stepped outside the Winnebago to snap this.

After took the pic, I slipped back inside and the hail started coming down. Lasted a few minutes. I haven’t been out yet today to take a look see but, I have heard that some roofs were blown off and other structure damage.

Lately, when I pick up a guitar, I have usually ended up working on songs that I have been playing with the Thirst N’ Howl Band. There are always a few trouble spots, in the back of my mind, and every time I’ve grabbed the guitar I have gravitated towards working on one of them.

So, a couple of days ago, I decided to just play other stuff, purposely went in a different direction. It’s good to do that once in a while. It opens the mind.

So far, I haven’t been playing a lot of slide guitar in this band. The little bit that I have played slide, has been in standard tuning. For example, we play the Badfinger song, “No Matter What You Do”, which has a neat slide guitar solo in it. I just grab the slide for that section and then go back to playing without it after the solo. Theres a bit of a trick involved because, the touch is different when you play slide and you have to accustom yourself to going back and forth.

Actually, I’ve always kind of thought that playing with a slide is really like playing a whole different instrument. The mental approach is different and the physical approach is different. Now, within the galaxy of slide guitar, there are several different tunings that I have used over the last 30 years. Each of these tunings is really a different world as well. There are things unique to every different tuning.

Over the last several years, I have been playing a lot in standard tuning (EADGBE) and in G (DGDGBD). The standard tuning works well for the stage. Rarely do I sit around the Winnebago and play slide in standard tuning. A lot of times when I am playing on stage, in standard tuning, it’s a situation where I am aping or, doing a “version” of a part that was originally done in another tuning. A lot of times it’s a compromise.

The G tuning has just occupied a lot of my slide time in recent years. To me, it is a real natural delta blues type sound. Like I say, it’s a whole world unto itself. I started working out of it and I didn’t want to do anything else. In recent months I have been using the G on stage quite a bit. It works rather well for country music as well as blues. I’m not what you would call a bluegrass player, by any stretch but, I have even been spotted taking a stab at that too.

Anyway, this week I decided to start playing in the E tuning (EBEGsharpBE). The first stuff I ever played slide on was in this tuning. Don’t know why but, I have really avoided it. There are classic blues licks like Elmore James, “Dust My Broom”, that, to me, only sound right in this variation (actually, I think Elmore was probably in D which has the same intervals but, is a whole step lower). The last two days I have spent many hours just flailing away in E. It’s been a gas, gas, gas. I have played songs I haven’t thought of in years.

Here’s what I have been using.

The Jim Dunlop 222 brass slide…

I wear the slide on my third finger and the 222 is a good fit for mine. For years and years, I only used glass slides. I’ve used all kinds of them, Coricidin bottles, old Alka-Seltzer tubes, wine bottle necks, shot glasses, beer bottles etc. Glass has a mellower sound, less bright. What I have found though, is if I’m playing stuff that requires a more full chord approach (a lot of the delta type things I’ve been playing at home) as opposed to single note soloing, I prefer the brass. For awhile I would always carry a glass one with me for playing on stage because, it more often involves single note playing and at high volumes a glass slide easier to control. But, I broke the one I was partial too one night and ever since I’ve used the Dunlop on stage. Sometimes it’s a matter of using the bridge pick-up and backing way off on the tone, same as the Tele jazz trick. Works well.

The Jay Turser Resonator Guitar…

I learned something a long time ago. If you are going to play electric slide guitar, you don’t need a great guitar. It doesn’t have to have a perfect neck. You don’t need the strings close to the neck, matter of fact, higher action makes it easier to play slide on. What you need is, a guitar that sounds good amplified, you can work with that. When I was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I saw guitar after guitar that were used by all these legendary players. Each one had detailed info-make, model, year. All except for Elmore James’ guitar. That’s exactly what the little plaque says; “Elmore James’ guitar”. The guys at the Hall of Fame don’t know what it is (I thought maybe an old Kay or Stella). It sounded good to Elmore though, and I know that there are people in this world who have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to exactly duplicate the “Elmore James sound”.

So, when I bought the above guitar, for a couple of hundred bucks, I realized that it wasn’t going to be a great guitar. There are a lot of flaws actually but, it does have a real nice sounding, little Gibson type pick-up and the more I play it, the more I get used to the quirks.

The Little Lanilei 7/33…

Cute, isn’t it? It is small (the size of a six pack), loud and sounds cool. This thing is designed to get high gain, tube saturation sounds (like a Marshall or Vox AC30) and, be able to do so at low volumes if you need to. It has a six-inch speaker, tube pre-amp, tube power section (1/4 watt), power soak and a solid state power section that will put out 33 watts. I like to get it to where it just has a touch of overdrive, which requires a bit of tweaking to find the sweet spot I’m looking for. I can get the tone I want without disrupting the campground; nice. It can be loud though, and I have a cool extension speaker cabinet to get louder still.

So, Ive been having great fun, the last couple of days playing slide with this combination of gear. So much fun that, if there was a place to do a street musician kind of thing nearby, and it wasn’t cold out, I’d be busking right now instead of writing. This set-up would work great for that. Still need a power outlet but, extremely portable and sounds great.