[Harp-L] Harmonica Blowoff

["Marc Spilka" <marc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was at the Harmonical Blowoff in Santa Cruz last night.  My observation: 
I'm a big Andy Just fan but don't know if it was his best performance.  Last 
year with the Ford Blues Band he blew me away but was nothing out of the 
ordinary last night.  I had never seen Mark Hummel or heard a lot of his 
playing but he was impeccable.  He played a couple songs straight into the 
vocal mic and sounded great.  He closed with an electric version of a James 
Cotton instrumental (Creeper?) that tore the house down.  Billy Branch is 
the real deal when it comes to Chicago blues--very tasty playing.  Sugar 
Blue--I guess a lot of people love him or hate him.  It's obvious where John 
Popper and Jason Ricci got some inspiration.  For me, it gets to be a sonic 
bombardment---incredibly fast runs and licks, but he does it on every single 
solo.  When he would play a chorus and slow down, he has a killer tone, 
vibrato, and timing, but I wish he would do a lot more of that kind of 
playing.  On the other hand a goal of a musician is to develop your own 
voice and style and he sure has that.  Unfortunately had to leave after one 
Rod Piazza song so can't comment on his set.  One thing I did notice--every 
one of these guys can not only play the hell out of the harp, but are all 
very good singers. Just my two cents of what went down.

Marc Spilka
Los Gatos, CA

Message: 8
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 06:10:09 -0800 (PST)
From: martin oldsberg <martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] re: Harmonica Blowout Vids
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <965271.77803.qm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Roughly one minute in, in the video below Carlos del Junco changes 
harmonicas -- but he remains in E -- and does some fast riffing (which 
includes a Bach quote).
Is this in 1 pos, E on an E harp? Or some special tuning?

Cheers,
Martin