[Harp-L] RE: Howdy

[Scott Hicks <dscotthicks@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Welcome, Jim.  I'm mostly a lurker here on the board, took up harp about a year and a half ago, and my occasional questions here are equipment related (now the quality of my equipment exceeds the quality of my playing!).  Anyway, I live right here in Richmond, VA, and there's plenty of room for another good harp player.  I'm mostly plugged into the blues scene here and there are several guys who can really lay it down: John with Blues Flash, Tom with Barrelhouse, and of course, the inimitable and apparently indestructible Li'l Ronnie.  If you find your way back down south (even if it takes 99 pair of shoes), we'll be glad to have you.

Scott
> 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
> 
 
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4