[Harp-L] Re: Overblowing all done?

["Evan Meagher" <meagher@xxxxxxxxx>]

Congrats on the album, Nick- can't wait to hear it. It's always great to
hear of another kid growing up on the North Shore and playing some blues. I
had to drive all the way to Quincy to jam at the Yard Rock when I was your
age, which was quite a hike from Reading, MA. 

That said, your rhetorical question about overblowing is, well... it's
asinine. It's so transparently absurd that a part of me thinks that it's a
ploy for any publicity - even bad - to support a new album (in which case, I
tip my hat to your sense of marketing theatrics). 

But whatever it is - and I mean this in the nicest possible way - you should
really just stop. Stop this petty war against people using (gasp!) a
technique that hadn't yet been discovered in Little Walter's time. We get
it, Nick: you want to play classic Chicago blues, and you want it to sound
"authentic" and "black," which by your definition  means "relying strictly
on techniques demonstrated on old Jimmy Reed & Little Walter albums."
Overblows - notes that were there all along, just waiting for someone to
discover them, the same way the older black guys we all idolize discovered
the bent draw and bend notes that the German manufacturers never realized
were in there - don't fit that bill, so you don't want to play them. That's
fine. You don't have to use them. You can still make *great* blues music
without them, and I hope you have, because I'm going to check out your
album, and I like great blues music of all stripes, especially those from
North Shore boys.  

However, you don't need to grind the axe by saying that overblowers have
"overstimulated" listeners, by disparaging them by comparing them to other
musicians that I'm guessing you don't like, or by saying that they're just
"mimics... mixed into the blues scale." (FYI, Nick, the notes achieved by
overblows *are already* in the blues scale, nobody "mixed them in.") 

Little Walter was one of the greatest musicians in history, and he played
sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths, and hundred twenty-eighths; we're
not putting "sixteenths" behind us. If he was alive today, he'd be
overblowing better than anybody. This straw man rhetorical question you've
asked of whether overblowers are "dying out" is sort of like asking "fuel
injectors: are they dying out? Sure, they've made cars cleaner, and cleaner,
and cleaner... till they became overclean. Will their superior fuel
efficiency go down as a footnote on automotive history?"

The analogy may be a bit before your time - hell, it's before my time too -
but we aren't going back to carburetors, Nick. The best engineers 50 years
ago did great work, but if you gave them a fuel injection system, you're
damn right they'd have used it. 

Keep expressing your opinion, Nick, and keep making the best music you can,
with or without overblows, as you see fit. Just ditch the vendetta against
guys who are using techniques so sophisticated that Little Walter himself
would have killed to learn how to play them. 

Best of luck on the album; can't wait to hear it. 

Cheers, 

Evan 





From: Nicholas Lovett <lovett.nicholas@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] Overblowing all done?
To: Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <623517.51149.qm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

They've played sweet licks.  And they've played them faster...and faster.
They've played, and played and played, till one became overstimulated.  But
I have to wonder, are they overblown?  Will the style of overblowing become
a footnote on harmonica history, like the double tapping of EVH?  Within six
months, nearly every metal guitar player had successfully mimicked the style
of Eddie Van Halen.  Little Walter just won a posthumous Grammy Award more
than forty years after his death, and his style continues to dominate the
blues harmonica.  Mimics of overblowers, mixed into the blues scale, I think
are dying out.  To stay out of the music industry,(where trends rip apart
young men like a meat grinder) I got the advice to stay ahead of it...or
behind it.  I am happy to say that my mix of my first EP "Nick Lovett's
Shuffle" is finished.  A website, and official albums will be available
ASAP.  For my first record I have assembled a crack team of the top  blues
musicians in New England. (And Worldwide)  On guitar I have Paul Size, of
the Red Devils, Sugar Ray and the Blue Tones, Johhny Moeller/Hoy and Mick
Jagger.  On bass and second guitar, Matthew Stubbs, of his own great band,
Charlie Musselwhite, John Nemeth, Junior Watson and Janiva Magness.
Rounding out, on the kit, is Chris Anzalone, one of the top drummers around.
I'll spare you the laundry list.  I haven't tried to re-invent the wheel,
merely covered classics by Little Walter(Aww Baby) Jimmy Rogers(Act Like You
Love Me) and Sonny Boy Williamson II(Born Blind).  I also have an original
slow blues, and the title track, an Excello style instrumental, modeled
after the Jerry McCain groove (She's Tuff) I will follow with coming
information, and hope that we can all put the sixteenth notes behind us. I
hope that by being 23 and playing this stuff as directed to me by my record
collection, and my teacher Annie Raines, I am able to do something
innovative.  I sincerely hope you all give my music a chance.

Thank You Harp-L in Advance,
Nick Lovett
Tyngsboro, Massachusetts