William Clarke

["Steven D. Levine" <drsoul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I saw William Clarke last night. It was the second time I've seen him and 
it was a great show (at least for the set I was there for - it was kind of 
late and I'm far from being able to quit the day job :)

Clarke's great to hear recorded, but live he's just spectacular. He's 
very spontaneous - often stopping a song, pausing, stomping a beat out 
with is foot and starting a new one. He played a lot of chromatic, which 
he is very proficient on. He's one of the few blues players I've seen 
play chromatic fully (that is, sing the slide).

I talked to him a little after the first set. He's playing through a '59 
Bassman with a delay pedal for reverb. His mic looked like an old 
Astatic. He told me that he didn't play chromatic until he met George 
Smith. He plays Hohner 270 chromatics I told him that a lot of his diatonic 
playing sounded like  chromatic and I wondered if he played in third 
position a lot. He told me that it's because he plays a lot of octaves. 
(somethign that Piazza does too)

Clarke has a new album coming out on Alligator in a couple of weeks. He 
sad that he worked prety hard on it and it looks like it might be a good one.