Telluride Acoustic Blues Camp (long)

["Michelle LeFree" <mlefree@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, here's my report on the Acoustic Blues Camp that was associated with the
Telluride Brews and Blues Festival last weekend (as reported in a previous
post).

This was my first music camp, so I'm undoubtedly gushing with the expected
amount of enthusiasm from one finding a new, terrific way to become a better
musician.  Immersing yourself in a closed environment with another 44
budding blues musicians and half dozen ultimately qualified blues masters
makes quite a formula for success.  Since this is a harp list, I'll confine
my dissussion to the aspects of the Camp that pertain to blues harp.  I'll
just take a moment to describe the Camp.  It was ably hosted by a
fingerstyle blues guitarist by the name of Mark Galbo, an expert picker and
author in his own right.  It featured a number of highly qualified
instructors, mostly not huge names, but all extraordinary musicians and
teachers.  The biggest names by far were John Cephas and Phil Wiggins.  The
Camp was broken into several tracks, including a variety of acoustic blues
guitar styles and harmonica.  I'm a budding guitar player, so it was
supremely trying to stick to the harp track, but with Phil Wiggins teaching
it, it wasn't all that difficult to decide to remain true to my first
instrument and musical love.

Format-wise, the "classes" were 1 1/2 to 2 hours in length, both morning and
afternoon for four days.  The groups consisted of from 4 to 8 students of
widely varying abilities.  Several students went across town to buy a
harmonica at the beginning of the first class!  They were all pretty much
blown away (no pun intended) by Phils' first lesson, a 1/4/5 blues
progression that required a few simple bends, and didn't return.  The rest
of the students were of intermediate to advanced caliber and Phil was quite
able to attend to the remaining individuals, and provided plenty of material
aimed at all individual levels.

Before I proceed, I gotta tell ya that Phil Wiggins is one genuinely nice
fellow.  He's a big man and commands quite a presence in a room, but as soon
as you get to know him a bit, you find out he's quite laid back and a real
sweetheart.  Though very patient and thorough as a teacher and extremely
personable, the most amazing thing to any of us would clearly be his
extraordinary command of our favorite instrument.  It's nothing short of
astounding.

The first thing you notice is his tone.  Or more properly, the range and
command he exerts over his tone.  He's got the most amazing cupped tone
since Walter Thorton, IMO.  Shortly after I started drooling over his tone,
I was drawn to his unusual (to me at least) hand grip.  I'll have to write
in detail about it in another post, but I'll describe it briefly here.  He
holds the harp clamped between the first joints of the index finger of his
left hand and middle finger of his right hand (at the point where the finger
meets the palm).  Then, with his thumbs held nearly vertically and tightly
against his fingers, he wraps the fingers of his left hand over the top
cover at a slight angle toward the back of the harp.  The index finger of
his right hand fits in front of the index finger of his left hand, with the
other fingers overlapping the fingers of the left hand.  Then he brings the
heels of his hands together to form the bottom of the cup.  It's all very
much like a grip you might use to cup a bullet mic', only he doesn't use a
hand-held mic'.  An important and unique feature of his grip that he pointed
out to me when I asked is that the curved shape he gets with his index
fingers conforms very closely to the curvature of his mouth and upper lip,
forming a very tight seal against his face and giving him a spatial
reference for the location of the lower toned holes of the diatonic harp.
He holds the heels of his hands against his chin to complete the cup.  With
this grip, Phil gets a far tighter cup than I can with my "standard" blues
harp grip in which the harp is held between the index finger and thumb of
the left hand and the fingers and thumb of the right hand form a cup around
the harp and left hand.  I'm still studying Phil's grip and trying to figure
out how to make mine more airtight, given that his grip is just too
uncomfortable to me to be useful.

The next thing you notice is the precision of his playing, both with hitting
single notes very rapidly and with his intermediate bends.  It's almost like
a keyboard-driven synthesizer, he's so quick and precise.  He started the
class with a demonstration of several songs, from slow, very bendy blues
ballads to rapid-fire Piedmont-style tunes woven together with great writing
and playing.  Then he got down to business with a simple 1/4/5 blues
progression that turns out to be the basis for several of his tunes (and, of
course many other blues tunes, too).  After establishing the basic
progression with individual instruction as needed, he went on to show us how
to apply some nice ornaments and licks to turn it into a hot little
Wiggins-style blues harp solo.  The remainder of the Camp consisted of Phil
playing songs from the classics and his own recordings and then showing the
students how to play them, verse by verse.  Amongst others, one of the more
memorable was when he introduced us to a perfectly excuted "Bye Bye
Blackbird" that consists almost entirely of intermediate bends, and
demonstrated how little we all knew about doing that.  And I was pretty
proud of my bending.  Phil can do it time after time perfectly, but it's
back to the woodshed for ol'e Michelle with that tune!  I suggest that this
song is a great one for learning to bend accurately in a melodic setting.
It's a whole different ball game than doing bending exercises, how ever
invaluable they may be.  Try it! And get ready for the woodshed...  I'll be
there waiting for ya!  It'll take me weeks just to sort out my tapes...

I mentioned one of the highlights of the Camp in my previous post about the
Telluride Brews and Blues Festival.  It was the private Camp party that
featured an instructor jam.  Sheesh!  What a show.  Without getting
redundant, Cephas and Wiggins can both really cook in a jam setting.  I had
no idea they were that energy-charged and enthusiastic, as they seem almost
staid, though elegant, in their recordings.  But, they brought the house
down, and Phil really cut loose jamming in several musician configurations,
contributing mightily to all of them.  Everyone walked away with even more
respect for the duo, if that is possible.

What a pleasure it was getting to meet and know Phil Wiggins a bit, and
having him grace us with his playing and teaching abilities.  I know this
will not be my last music camp!  In fact, I'll probably be at the next
Telluride Brews and Blues Acoustic Blues Camp again next September.  See you
there!

http://www.tellurideblues.com/default2.htm

Michelle