[Harp-L] REVIEW: Hohner Traveling Harmonica Roadshow

[William Lifford <william.lifford@xxxxxxxxx>]

The other night, I attended the Hohner Traveling Harmonica Roadshow in
Huntington Station, New York, at the Sam Ash music store.  I thought I'd
give my thoughts on it in case any of you were considering going to one of
the Roadshow events as they make their way around the US.

This is a long post, so I will get right to the point... It's a fun event
and you should definitely go check it out.  The roadshow has an old-timey
carnival motif and they had little giveaways for everyone.  I scored a
T-shirt but I got jealous of my friend who got a Hohner baseball hat.
 Other folks got cool vintage metal signs that would be perfect if you had
a basement music room.

Adam "the bearded technician" was a really nice guy and he did free repairs
for a number of players that came to the roadshow. He repaired two of my
harps that had slightly flat reeds; he did it in what seemed like only a
few seconds without taking the covers off. It's clear that he's tuned
probably 20 or 30,000 harps and it he really made it seem easy. Almost easy
enough for me to try it myself.  I was tempted to go to the Carle Place
Roadshow just so I could bring a few more beat-up harps, but I thought that
might be taking advantage.

When they say "bearded technician", they are not kidding.  Adam has a beard
that most Amish people and ZZ Top are jealous of.  From the quick playing
of harps while he was tuning them, he also a pretty badass player.  He also
played guitar while Ronnie demo-ed multiple harmonica models.

There was a mix of players attending the roadshow, from 30-and 40-year
players to at least one or two people that were brand-new and had never
really played harmonica before the curious about it. To be honest, I don't
get out very much, so was it was nice for me to be able to sit and hang out
with some harmonica playing pals.

Ronnie Shellist, the "lead" presenter, played really excellent acoustic
harmonica. His tone and phrasing are excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed
listening to his playing.  Ronnie sings pretty well and his vocal style
suited the guitar-and-harp duo well.  He's a good presenter and he was
really enthusiastic whiteout being syrupy or cheesy about it.  I have an
album of his and I liked it a lot, so seeing Ronnie play was what got me
interested in the Roadshow in the first place.

Ronnie showed some of the small differences between many of the higher-end
Hohner models by playing them one after another over some guitar grooves
laid down by Adam.  To be honest, all of them sounded great (I guess there
is a lot to the "the tone comes from the player, not the gear" moralizing
we all hear on MBH forum and Harp-L after all), but the character of each
harp started to become clearer to me.  I liked the MB Deluxe a lot along
with the Crossover, but the regular MB sounded great too.  Ronnie also
played the Rocket and the Thunderbird models as well.

As good as Ronnie's second position playing was -- and it was really really
good -- I was most impressed by his first position blues.  When most guys
play straight harp blues, they all seem to pick from a very limited
vocabulary.  Ronnie can definitely do a lot more than the same twelve or so
1st position licks we hear from everybody.  He's got a lot of fluidity and
uses the middle of the harp well in 1st, not just the top and bottom of the
harp.

One of the highlights for me was when Adam played a low-low F Thunderbird
harmonica. He played a groove on the first couple of holes while Ronnie
soloed with a regular low F Thunderbird.  The low-low F must be in the
range of a bass harmonica.  What a cool thumpy sound it makes!

As far as equipment goes, I had hoped that Ronnie would have the Memphis
Mini amplifier, but instead he played through a little Vox amp that they
sell in the store.  He brought along a gorgeous custom wood microphone from
MBH's own Greg Heumann. I forgot to ask him which kind of wood it was made
from, but it has a nice grain and the finish was smooth and shiny.  The mic
had the volume control on the tail.  I got to handle it a little bit and
the volume control was very smooth -- the microphone was really beautiful
and lightweight.  I thought I overheard him say the mic had a black CR
element in it.  When he demo-ed the Discovery chromatic, he played some
outstanding slow third-position George Smith-style octaves and the tone was
fantastic.

Ronnie led the class in learning basic a blues progression. This was old
hat for many of the really experienced players, but there were also a fair
number of traditional chromatic harmonica players that haven't really
played diatonic before.  Some of them were from the Long Island harmonica
club, which means two Wednesdays of each month in Massapequa (I can get
contact information for anyone that's interested).

Recently there was an MBH forum post (or was it a Harp-L post?) lamenting
the fact that you had to buy a harp to try it out; that there are no demo
harps to try before spending your hard-earned money.  This has always been
a barrier to trying the more expensive models for me, because like many of
you, I have kids and a mortgage and my wallet is frequently empty after the
bills are paid at the end of the month, leaving few spare bucks to try new
harps.  This is where the Roadshow shines...  One of my favorite parts of
the evening was trying some of the orchestral and vintage harps along with
the "petting zoo" of the newer models.  They were wiping the harps down
liberally with alcohol so people could try them.  Maybe germophobes might
have been creeped out, but I was really excited to have the ability to try
some high-end harps without having to lay out sixty-plus dollars.  I tried
the Thunderbird, which I loved, the MB deluxe, which seems like a really
excellent blues-focused harp, and the Rocket.  The Rocket, while not my
favorite harp of the bunch (still the Crossover for me), plays lightning
fast and gets a lot of sound for relatively little effort.  I thought I was
going to hate the narrow dividers between the holes but it turned out to be
no big deal.  If I was a pro player, and I had to play some rock stuff, the
Rocket would be my choice.  Fast runs can take on a Popper- or Ricci-sequel
blistering pace with this harp.

I was blown away by the overall quality of the $60-and-up harps in general.
 For years I played Big River Harps because that's what I could afford, so
these were a real treat.

Overall, the Hohner Roadshow was a lot of fun and it was FREE, which makes
it even better.  My main recommendation for change would be simply to have
Ronnie and Adam play more songs.  They were awesome together and it made
for great listening.

I would have been interested in -- since Ronnie and Adam were already there
and all -- paying a fee for a more advanced session after the completion of
the regular Roadshow.  I definitely would have paid thirty bucks or more
for some higher-level stuff.  I can see how it wouldn't have fit into what
they were trying to do with the Roadshow currently; the idea was to
introduce the different models of harps to a wide variety of people.  But
maybe a one-hour session on harp repair for $20 and an hour on advanced
acoustic blues techniques for another $20?

The only other constructive criticism I will make is that while Ronnie and
Adam had brought some harps for the store to sell to attendees, Sam Ash and
most other music stores typically do not carry enough of the newer models
and even when they do, they don't have all the keys, and they are seven or
so dollars more expensive per harp than online stores.  This is why so many
of us use online vendors like Ron, etc.  I'd like to see the music store
get something back so that they will want to host next year's edition of
the Roadshow.


-- 
William Lifford, CP
Progressive O&P, Inc.
1111 Willis Avenue
Albertson, NY 11784
516-338-8585