![]() Trying to move creatively forward, understanding where to go and why based on past fulfillment and future hunger, good songs and good singing and good playing, hopefully. What dead artist (music, or other arts) would you like to have collaborated with? Magnetic Skyline by Corinne West & Kelly Joe Phelpsġ2. Which living artist (music, or other arts) would you like to collaborate with? What ends up under my fingers gets there through my head and it’s the same ol’ bastard whether it’s my guitar or yours.ġ1. Do you sound like yourself on other people's guitars? Playing electric is like wearing a wig.ġ0. Do you sound more like yourself on acoustic or electric?Īcoustic, surely. On an acoustic guitar the sustain is far, far less - which demands more continual physical motion.ĩ. An electric guitar allows me to hold notes far longer than I could otherwise, which greatly affects the way I will phrase something. The primary difference between acoustic and electric, I find, is in the sustain level. ![]() A good guitar is modest and timid, sings beautifully, carries the grocery bags.Ĩ. What's the difference between a good guitar and a bad guitar?Ī bad guitar is proud of it’s badness and forces this attitude on anyone who tries to tame it. A good gig is a birthday a bad gig is the waiting room at Oil Can Henry’s.ħ. ![]() A good gig is shoes that fit a bad gig is needing a walking cane. What's the difference between a good gig and a bad gig?Ī good gig makes me look forward to the next one a bad gig makes me want to drive home, even if it’s three thousand miles away. Making records is akin to building houses, while playing gigs is more like living in them.Ħ. Playing in a studio is very, very demanding and can seem non-musical, clinical, forced. Playing live has a particular advantage, in my thinking, in that it presents an audience - which applies pressure to stretch and reach which has the potential to push the music higher than it could ever be without this odd kind of teamwork. What's the difference between playing live and playing in a studio? ![]() I still think it blows chunks, but it does have a nice voice.ĥ. My record Shine Eyed Mister Zen holds a special place for me, in that it represents pretty clearly where I had been as well as where I was going and maintains good balance between guitar work, vocal work, and writing. Which recording of your own (or as a sideman) are you most proud of, and why? I can’t remember much about that anymore, either.Ĥ. I remember learning the guitar riffs in BTO’s “Taking Care of Business” and I remember working desperately hard on the solos in “Stairway To Heaven” Not the guitar part - although I did learn that as well - but the cool, lyrical stuff Page played in between Robert Plant’s wail, and gone. I think it must have been something from the James Gang, although at this point I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was. What was the first solo you learned from a record - and can you still play it? The Musicians of the Nile – Charcoal Gypsies.ģ. Which was the last record you bought with your own money? Which was the first record you bought with your own money?Ģ. Phelps also brings out his banjo for a couple songs, most notably “Handful Of Arrows”, a fiery, Native American-driven tribute to the late Chris Whitley that’s a high point of the set.1. “Big Shaky” toggles wonderfully between country blues and improvisatory jazz, while “MacDougal” (one of three instrumentals on the album) is a sprightly ragtime homage to the late Dave Van Ronk. Occasionally Phelps reaches back to the adventurous spirit that shaped his early career. Similar moments include “Spanish Hands”, which (despite its title) bears heavy Celtic traces “Plumb Line”, which straddles the border between Kottke and jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and “Red Light Nickel”, a straight-up folk song in the Gordon Lightfoot vein. “Crow’s Nest”, the opening track, sets the tone centered on Phelps’ rapid-fire but unobtrusive fingerpicking, splashes of fiddle, and craggily intimate vocals, it brings to mind the recent work of Richard Thompson. Tunesmith Retrofit is leaner and more spartan than 2003’s Slingshot Professionals, putting the light squarely on his songwriting. An exemplary fingerpicker in the Leo Kottke mold, Phelps also tempers his guitar prowess to serve the song. Eschewing the cloying introspection that tends to prevail among the coffeehouse crowd, Phelps writes snapshot vignettes borne from short-story traditions and delivers them in sturdy acoustic settings drawn from folk, free jazz, and country blues. Few songwriters wear the mantle of troubadour as unassumingly as Kelly Joe Phelps.
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