[Harp-L] Re: Howdy

[<havaball@xxxxxxx>]

Hello, Jim, and welcome aboard!
-Tom

> 
> Hello Harpists!
> 
> I'm new to the list and thought I should introduce myself.  My name is 
> Jim Crutchfield.  I was born and raised in Virginia, the Cradle of 
> Civilization, but have lived in New York City for the past eleven years 
> or so.  Probably going back home soon--who knew all those songs about 
> homesick Southerners were for real?  (Blind Boy Fuller's "I'm a Stranger 
> Here" came up in the iTunes shuffle just last night and brought a tear 
> to my eye.)
> 
> I've been playing the harp since I was a kid (in the early 1970s), but 
> never really worked seriously on technique until about twenty years ago, 
> when I finally got up the courage to play in a band.  A pal and I 
> started up "Things in Action" in 1991, which we billed as a "loud 
> acoustic" duo--him on guitar and vocals and me on vocals, harmonica, 
> tambourine, and whatever other easy instruments I could fit in.  We 
> played mostly what gets called "indy rock" (i.e., won't fit in pigeon 
> holes), most of which was highly inappropriate for a guitar, two voices, 
> and a harmonica; but we had a surprisingly big sound (mostly thanks to 
> Alex's gigantic Guild guitar and his superb ability to adapt full-band 
> arrangements to a single guitar), and we collected a loyal little 
> following in Norfolk.  I went back and forth between straight harp and 
> cross harp, depending on the song, and played through a Shure "Green 
> Bullet" and a solid-state Peavey 60-watt guitar amp with a "dirty" 
> channel that approximated an overdriven tube amp tolerably well (not 
> well enough for a purist, I'm sure, but it was what I could afford, and 
> it was loud, which was what mattered in the dives we tended to play 
> in).  The nicest compliment I ever got for my harp playing was from a 
> tough-looking, bearded biker who came to Cogan's one night with his Old 
> Lady--how they landed there I can't imagine, since it wasn't anywhere 
> near the biker scene.  He came up to me at a break and said, "It's good 
> to hear a *real* harmonica player."  I've never been sure what he meant 
> by that, but I takes 'em as they comes.  Things in Action broke up after 
> about six years, but Alex moved to NYC shortly after I did, and we still 
> play an occasional benefit or private party.
> 
> In 1992, I joined a well-established folk band called Dramtreeo, who had 
> lost a member and wanted me to take his vocal part.  They (wisely) 
> wouldn't let me play banjo or guitar on stage, but they were happy to 
> have the harmonica.  That's almost entirely straight harp, except when 
> we do an occasional blues or rock number for fun.  (Our bass player, 
> Carlton Lillard, also plays with the H. M. Johnson blues band out of 
> Norfolk, and he'll occasionally cut loose on a blues with Dramtreeo, 
> just to shake up the folkies.)  And it's all through the vocal mike, a 
> beat-up old Shure SM-57.  Dramtreeo is still going, though we only play 
> a few times a year now, and never practice anymore except on stage.  
> Through most of the '90s we were playing two weekends a month locally, 
> and making fairly frequent trips to festivals and concerts around the 
> Chesapeake Bay region.  We played Lincoln Center's Roots of American 
> Music Festival twice, the only times I've ever gotten applause for a 
> harp solo.  (Our web site is at http://www.southernbranch.com/dramtreeo, 
> though it hasn't been updated in about ten years and is full of dead links.)
> 
> I moved to New York in 1999, thinking I'd get into some kind of 
> performing here, but that hasn't worked out very well, partly because my 
> day jobs have been irregular and time-consuming (that is, when I haven't 
> been working my sizable butt off, I've been worrying about not having 
> work, and scrambling to find some), but mainly just because I haven't 
> had the nerve to put myself out there enough.  Other than some 
> open-mikes and an occasional reunion with Alex, I haven't done much 
> (though I do go home to play with Dramtreeo whenever we have a 
> gig--about four or five times a year these days).  I'm sick of not 
> performing regularly, though, and I'm trying to get serious again about 
> it again.
> 
> That means rebuilding my chops on the harp, among other things.  I was 
> never really hot stuff--I could never play "Whammer-Jammer", and some of 
> Little Walter's licks just plain mystify me--but I'm at least 
> /accurate/, and I can sound pretty good when I'm in practice.
> 
> If I move back to Va. as planned (it all depends on the work situation, 
> here and there), I'll probably settle in Richmond, which has a great 
> music scene, and try to put a band together.
> 
> Like most of us, I imagine, I started out on Hohner Marine Bands and 
> Blues Harps, but when I started playing for money I switched to Lee 
> Oskars (except when I need the low, whangy sound of the Marine Band 
> 14-holers).  I've never had a chromatic--don't want to waste money on a 
> cheapo, and the price tag for good ones has always held me off--but I'm 
> thinking more and more about getting one of the Hohner Toots Thielemans 
> models and seeing what I can do with it.  (I was at an open mike at a 
> Manhattan jazz club a week or so ago, and a fellow did a couple of 
> numbers on a fancy chromo that really slew me.)  Surfing the web for 
> advice on getting started with a chromatic was what led me to discover 
> this list.
> 
> Well, that's my story.  I'm already getting a lot out of the list, and I 
> want to thank you all for putting your knowledge out here for the rest 
> of us!  I'll be posting some questions soon.
> 
> Aeiou,
> 
> Jim Crutchfield
> Long Island City, NY
>