Re: [Harp-L] How about just plain old harmonica?



I apologize for my total lack of brevity. Walter's post got me thinking... a lot.

 Until around 2003, I had never actually met another good harmonica player. I had never heard of Harp-L, never really listened to anybody except Charlie McCoy and the old guys like Sonny Boy II, Big Walter, Little Walter, or as the Fox says "Medium Walter." I'd been playing since I was five and for the folks who heard me, I was the best they'd ever heard. There was simply no one else to hear, really. I have always run around in Bluegrass circles, that might be one reason I never saw any harp players. Another reason is where I grew up. West Virginia's Elk River is the most beautiful place in the world, I've seen the Danube, Rhine, Salzach, Elbe, Seine, they've got nothing on the Elk. Yet, the Elk doesn't have a blues scene and doesn't have a medium-sized city anywhere on its nearly 200 mile course until the very end in Charleston. You get the point... I grew up in the middle of nowhere for blues, but the Mississippi Delta of Bluegrass.
I finally came across another good harp player about five years ago, he won the Ohio State Championship a couple years later.  I'm used to playing fast bluegrass breaks and have always been a harp tech at heart. He hits spot on, perfect pitch bends much better than I. We enjoy hearing each other because we do things so differently.
In the last few years, I have found the harp community on the Internet and learned there's another whole world out there. I felt like I had to overblow, it seemed everybody else was doing it, thus it seemed a bar had been raised that I didn't know was there. I thought deep down if I couldn't overblow maybe that meant I was less of a player. 
My biggest shock was my first convention, Buckeye. There I heard some amazing harp players and not just the pros. Hanging out with Jimi Lee was one of the coolest things I've done. Listening to Jimi Lee, and others as good play two feet away was a bit initimadating. Rupert Oysler, Mr. Seydel USA, is as good a player as any. After playing for 25 years, I saw where I fit in on the talent ladder. I was now officially a small fish in a big pond. I seriously considered giving up playing while I was there, I got over that quickly, I could never give it up, but I was still intimidated. 
What changed my mind? I got to hang out with Charlie McCoy last year (if you see me, ask me to show you his belt buckle. I wear it everyday. I did not steal it, he willingly took it off his belt.). 
You'd think for guys like Charlie, stuff is easy. They make it seem SO easy. At that time, Charlie had just released "A Celtic Bridge: From Nashville to Dublin." He makes it sound so easy. Yet, even the great Charlie McCoy has to work at it, in fact, he's as good as he is because he works hard. About the Celtic album, he said, and I quote, "Irish stuff is hard." If some stuff can be hard for even Charlie McCoy, that's comforting. Some stuff is hard for me, too.
 I asked him about the overblow. He said he had talked to Howard Levy about it in detail, Howard told him he needed a Golden Melody, but Charlie is a stock Special 20 man (has been for like 30 years), doesn't like the GM, so that's as far as it went. Charlie said he has never overblowed and he really isn't that interested in learning how to do it. 
I asked Charlie what he would say to young harp players (I actually meant me) who think they have to master the overblow to feel like they are legitimate players. I kept my notes from the McCoy interview, so I can tell you exactly what he said: "I play the harmonica for Herman and Pearl who come down and buy a ticket. I don't play for other musicians. I make records for people who watched 'Hee-Haw.'" 
I thought that was quite profound. Charlie is who he is. He does what he does. I suppose that makes the great McCoy a Popeye kind of player, too.
What I didn't realize at Buckeye was how learning accelerates. I had learned what I learned in 25 years, but I learned nearly as much in the short time following that. 
I have also come to an important conclusion, other players don't care how well you play (provided you aren't gussing). If there is something you can't do, it's not a hinderance, it's a benefit. If you don't know something, that means you have something yet to learn, and, to them, something they can teach you. Harmonica players at different levels have so much more to talk about than two of equal talent.
One thing that I can do well is work on harps and there's still a lot for me to learn there. I wonder sometimes if maybe some beginner is out there watching my videos, or looking at my ehow articles on harp repair, whatever, and thinking he has to be a tech to be legit, in much the same way I had been looking at the overblow as this pie in the sky. I certainly hope not, but to that guy I'd repeat what McCoy told me. 
"I have no interest in fooling around with harps to that extent. I'm thinking about what I can do different on the harp, not what I can do to the harp to make it different. I'm too busy playing." 

A while back, I had the pleasure of shooting the harp-tech bull with Brad Harrison. Brad was talking literally, I mean, literally, about harps at the MICROSCOPIC level. I talked to him for about an hour and honestly, had a severe headache by the end of the call, because I was thinking so hard about the things he was saying. Brad opened a whole new world of stuff, I didn't even know existed. Talking to Brad reinforced my belief that no matter how good you are, there is always somebody who is a hell of a lot better than you. Only by the time I talked to Brad, I saw that as a benefit. If someone knows more than you, that only means there is much that person can offer you.

 I've learned how to learn from people better than I, without feeling myself less accomplished for it. Now, I'm listening to guys and watching and learning from folks, not to copy what they are doing, but to pull elements from what they do and apply it to what I do. I don't want to sound like Little Walter, I want to sound like me, only better. In the past year, I've been studying what Igor Flach has been doing. I am just so spellbound by the numerous sounds he incorporated into his playing. I've not tried to copy anything he plays, but I've been analyzing what he was doing, then later, maybe I take something from that and incorporate it into what makes me sound like me. I was looking so forward to meeting him, but he died. Now, all we can do is wonder how Igor would have sounded in 20 years. He was a master at taking seemingly unrelated sounds and fusing them into something new. If only I could have turned him on to bluegrass, ;)

I eventually learned the overblow and don't really consider myself a better play for having learned it. However, I realize, maybe some day, that won't be the case.  I'm just going to, pun intended, play it by ear and see what I develop.

Considering all this, I've decided I will just be me. I am what I am and that's all that I am. But, a year from now, what I am then will be something even better. 

Dave Payne 
__________________
Elk River Harmonicas
www.elkriverharmonicas.com 




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