Gary Smith!!!
We've had two wonderful days of Gary Smith this week - first the Chicago Blues Harp Bash #4 on Sunday followed by Gary visiting B1 during class on Monday.
The Bash was a huge success and Joe couldn't be happier with everything. Performances by Jimmie Meade, Katsu Kosaku, Morry Sochat, Ron Sorin and Grant Kessler were fantastic and all huge hits with the audience. All that lead up to a stellar show by our headliner, Gary Smith, Mr. Massive Tone!
SPACE was a near full house, so thanks to all who came out. An event this large comes off thanks to lots of people backing up Joe:
Jaime Viehweg - Bash website
Marianna Delinck Manley - poster design
Jeff "Bone" Reynolds - ticket sales
Highway RickEy - photography and Sonny Jr. amp
Kirk Manley - gopher, YMM and poster signing
Al Taylor - YMM
Shoji Naito - soundchecking the band, amp, guitar extraordinaire
Dave Barrett - connecting us with Gary
Michelle Filisko - merchandise table manager
Grant Kessler - gopher, YMM
Billy Flynn, Mike Flynn, Steve Bass - the band
Jake, Dave Specter and the rest of the staff at SPACE
Harlan Terson - sitting in on bass
Andy Willis - breathtaking caricature sketches
Jim Reeves & Erin - sound engineers, SPACE
Ray Sarna - coming from Costa Rica
Andy Garrigue - coming from Virginia
Elizabeth Hess - coming from Florida
Tom Gilmore - coming from South Haven, Michigan
And all of you - for buying tickets and CDs, bringing friends out, and promoting the show on Facebook
courtesy of Andy Willis
Gary's B1 visit was a treat! He had a lot of great wisdom on topics ranging from tone to singing to learning to play.
Regarding tone, he broke it down into four categories to work on and improve:
- Tongue block. No excuses. Do it, that's where big tone comes from.
- Hands. He demonstrated various hand/mic positions.
- Mic. Find a hot mic - this is definitely one of the tone components.
- Amp. The second gear component is your amp and he described various amp sizes and characteristics.
Sharing a couple quotes from Gary:
"You're learning a language; instead of Spanish you're learning "Bluesish".
Asked how he feels about singing, he says he enjoys it and doesn't think of himself as a singer but rather:
"...an interpreter of blues lyrics."
Gary talked about the elements he thinks about in an extended instrumental improv piece and he stressed that improvisation is certainly "the goal". He followed that up with a great swinging example.
Hanging in the corner and lobbing wonderful questions to Gary was "Grandpa" Jim Liban! It is always a special treat to have him join us from Milwaukee, and he and Gary really seemed to enjoy the back and forth. It often felt like the rest of us were just fortunate to be a fly on the wall while the legends held court.
Jim was even coaxed into singing and playing a tune with Gary - certainly a high point for us all. Huge thanks to Gary for making the trip from San Jose to entertain us two nights in a row!
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