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Stevie Ray Vaughan – RIP

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To this day I still remember the moment when I happened to stumble upon the guitar icon just my mistake playing live in 1982.

It was during the summer at the annual music event called Chicago Fest at Soldiers Field. I was there with my brother in law.

The event was both inside and outside of the stadium. Inside I saw “Chicago” and the “Beach Boys” while outside there were beer pavilions that highlighted different styles of music.

My brother in law went to the bathroom and I was told to sit down at the edge of the Budweiser Pavilion. There was the song below playing and I looked up to see this trio playing this song about 150 feet away. They looked like some back woods band playing in the big city for their first time. Their attitude was bluesy and Rock & Roll epitomized to a “T”.

The drummer was on this small set, the bass player looked like the average guy that you might bump into on the street but the guitar player was a hold out from the 60’s. They were very tight and looked quite at home in their element on stage. The guitar player was the one who stood out like nothing that I have ever witnessed live before.

He had this great looking beat up old battered 1959 Fender Strat with a big rimmed hat with these fairly big silver Texas round things on it. His hands were just mesmerizing to look at. The sound was very southern. He even played part of the solo with his teeth. Up to that point in my life, I had never seen anyone play like this except Mr. Hendrix on old video footage.

I just sat there for a short period of time before I went up a little further. I was just in awe of this guy playing guitar. I also couldn’t believe that the crowd was so small for the talent that was in front of us, but what a huge win for the ones who were there.

I later found out who it was and he had just came back from recording the “Let’s Dance” album with David Bowie. He turned down the opportunity to tour with him to pursue his own tour with his band. This must have been a big ballsie move in Bowie’s eye’s to pull something like this off. Imagine the exposure that he would have gotten from touring with Bowie! Anyways, it was a concert that I will forever cherish.

So Mr Stevie Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990), R.I.P.

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Keep on Jammin’ Stevie




Keith Richards being shown how to play guitar

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It is just too funny to watch someone put Keith Richards in his place! He is just too funny, I love how he just pisses Keith off so much that you think it may end up with blows being thrown! Chuck Berry is the only guy in the world that could actually put Keith in his proper pecking order of guitar players. Enjoy, I did.

Keep on Jammin’


The sweetest guitar solo ever

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Does any guitar player out there have a favorite guitar solo? Well I certainly do, it’s the one from the Rolling Stones, “Heart Breaker”, from their 1973, “Goats Head Soup” album.

This master guitar solo is played by a fellow not a full member of the group but player in the band, named Mick Taylor. This kaleidoscope of a mental voyage into another world of colorful and emotional notes, is the only lead that I have refused to figure out because some times things are made not to be reproduced but to be enjoyed and just put you in a certain mind set. I know that this sounds so unlike me but, somehow this solo just gets to me like no other.

When I listen to it, it just stops me in my tracks and I have to give Mick Taylor my complete and undivided attention. I just can’t think of any other way to describe it. I respect it like no other. It honestly freaks me out how the boys just blend off into the background and let him have full and total control of a song at that point. I still to this day don’t know how he pulled this one off being in a band with such head strong musicians!

He just squeezes and milks the hell out of his guitar and flies to such lofty heights then effortlessly soars down to earth and swoops up your emotions and takes them off to another dimension that we are afraid, but yet happy to just be brought there for such a short period of time! Then back to reality with the boys blowing the doors off the joint and do what they do best, straight forward Rock & Roll. No, I haven’t just had a huge flash back to the summer of love right in front of you, honestly!

This is a song that I will not figure out on principle. I had to give it a shot one time when I was with a student, who was my boss one time at Mr. Case in Toronto.

I’m not violent but shouldn’t someone get these idiots

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I am forever asking certain guitar players “why don’t you wind up the excess string on the end of your guitar head? Someone is going to lose an eye!” This style of finishing is like a cowboy lasso. I always ask them if they have ever had the end of their string go into their finger or hand when restringing? Can you imagine what would happen if that nice little lasso thing ever untangled and hit someones eye? Well if that ever happened, you better get a lawyer, and fast!

When I was in high school, I had the honour of being in a band with the best theoretical guitar player/teacher I have ever known. These accomplished musicians, like most I played with in my early years, were much, much older then I was. We were in this band that played Beatles tunes and the like, only to make money and not a career of it. I was the only student that Chris P ever played in a band with to my knowledge. I recall with crystal clarity the day I learned this lesson about the excess string thing.

The bass player in the band was the best in our area. He was a big body builder as well. He was more like a fridge with legs, in all honestly. I was one of those idiots in my early years, who thought it was cool to have my strings tied up at the end of the guitar that looked like a lasso looking thing. The first practice we had, he stood up beside me and looked me in the eye, having to bend down really low to do so and said “I had a string like that almost pick my eye out by a guitar player once”. After having let the water that poured down my leg dry, I ran to find some pliers to cut off the excess. He was really a nice guy but …

Unless your perfect, and we all know someone like this, getting the end of a string in the finger is such a painful experience. I have had this experience a couple of times and believe me, you will pay much more attention when you restring your guitar in the future, if this ever happens to you. I actually nicked or pierced my finger while cleaning the head of my guitar once as well. There you go kids, cleaning is bad for your health, you heard it here first!

Always practice safe guitar maintenance.

Keep on Jammin’

Two words – Marty Delaney

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Have you ever been to a bar and heard the most interesting guitar player staring right in front of you playing like a possessed man on stage? Well that happened to me last year.

My wife, sister, brother in law, Stevie cakes (long story), and myself went to a bar that is in our neighborhood which I have always wanted to visit. It’s called The “Eton House“. It’s commonly known as the “Greek/Newfie” bar in this area.

A newfie is of course a person from the Canadian province of Newfoundland. It’s just a nickname that the rest of Canada and possibly the world has for the people that come from that province. Newfie’s are the nicest people in the world that you will ever meet. We have many Newfie friends. If the world had more of them, there’d be no wars, honestly!

So, there we were. We had a lot of light refreshing beverages in us at the time and the music coming from the outside speakers of the music playing in the bar sounded fast and furious. It sounded like a band but to our surprise,it was a single guy alone, playing acoustic guitar with some machine in the back ground playing drums and keyboards.

His chord progressions are similar to the ones that I play, but when he adds some little riffs to the songs, it’s just like he’s some kind of mad genius, hell bent on blowing you not only out of your seat, but the building as well! He blows you away with his ability to play.

If you are ever in Toronto on a Saturday night, it would be a crime not to see this guy. He is a musician that you can’t help but love. His voice is great and his selection of tunes would make a dead person tap their foot as his energy is intoxicating!

A couple of weekends ago at the Eton House, Marty and the kids were having a fund raiser for his niece and her mother. His niece has a disease that has to be treated at a hospital, in the capitol of his province which is far from the little village they live in, in Newfoundland. The money raised that night was for some pocket change for her mother to use while she is receiving treatments. God speed on her recovery!

A co-worker from the hospital had told me of their plight, and the event gave me an excuse to go and see this great guitar player again. She had also informed me that she knew Marty personally. I was introduced to him and talked for a while during one of his breaks. He said that he remembered seeing me there watching him perform. It was probably the envy energy that I was directing towards him that probably caught his attention those nights.

While chatting, he asked me if I might be interested in playing with him in a band with another guitar player and a stand up bass player. We would be playing more progressive acoustic folk music and performing at venues where the audience was there for the music and not just the beer.

I told him I would think about it. Wow, what a lucky break for me! I still have to get back to him but the answer is a definite YES!

Stay tuned for further updates.

Keep on Jammin’

A Realization that I can play guitar

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I was just surfing while listening to one of my favorite Canadian musicians of all time, Bruce Cockburn (B.C.). I came to the realization that I am finally playing like a great guitar player of the 80’s, Mark Knopfler.

In grade 8, a song came onto the music scene that was really new and refreshing. It was a band called “Dire Straights”. The song that caught my ear was “Sultan of Swing”.

The guitar player was just a jammin’ on this tune. His name is Mark Knopfler. This popular song at the time was a song that I just had to play. I was taking lessons from the best guitar teacher of all time, in my mind, C. Peterson. I had requested that he show me how to play this tune and he said that he had already figured it out.

Mr. P. was just unreal at figuring out anything in on guitar. So off he went and started to show me the song. It was fun and challenging to play, just the way I liked it. After a couple of lessons, I could play the song pretty much inside out, which is the way he taught me.

While playing the song for many years, I decided to re-visit this song to see if there was any other way(s) to improve playing it. Mr. Peterson introduced me to the technique that Mark Knopfler used on the song but I thought that this guy was one of those off beat musicians that would fade after a short success, boy was I wrong.

I had listened to this song repeatedly over the years,and I noticed subtle tones that I had missed while playing. When I played it, it had a crisper sounding to it then what he had. His version almost had a muddled sound. In my younger years listening to the song, I had noticed that, and I thought it was just the recording technique at the time and that was it. So I then tried playing it with just my fingers and wow, it was really hard to play.

Being a classical guitar player, I was use to using my fingers but had to use my nails to attack the strings but, this guy used his thumbs and at a lightning like speed during his solo’s to boot! I tried and tried and tried but I could not get the calluses on the sides of my fingers that I really needed to pull of the song so I went back to the original way of playing the song.

Now fast forward to 2 years ago when I fell in love with the B.C.’s style of finger picking. The attack technique used here was different from my classical training but I loved the sound he got out of his axe. It was just plain fun to listen to.

So today while I was surfing and listening to B.C. at the same time, I was listening to this song called “It’s Going Down Slow” and “Mamma just wants to barrelhouse all night long”, from Waiting for a Miracle (1987). Today I can play these ones not bad and I just enjoy listening to them. It was at that moment that I noticed the similarities between both techniques and it had just dawned on me that, I can play guitar.

Keep on jammin’

My 1959 Fender Duo Sonic

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This is a picture of a Fender Guitar, not my 1959 Fender Duo Sonic (pre-CBS) but one that I found on-line. Unfortunately, I have lost the tail piece cover and the volume and tone knobs on my Fender. The 1964 Duo Sonic Manual is a blast to look at, check out those beatnik guys dancing around on the front page!

This guitar is like a “Student” model but it plays great if you are a speed freak! The guitar player in Steely Dan, (Walter Becker) and Scott Merrit from my home town of Brantford, Ont., use one!

The guitar is a Student model which is great if your a speed freak. The pick ups are single coiled that has a rich warm sound. The neck on it is fast and smooth flowing and very small. It’s well worn to the point where it practically plays itself.

I remember the day I first saw it. I was in my parents living room doing something when my mom walked into the house with this dusty old guitar case. I asked her what it was and she said that this was an old guitar that sat up in a friends of hers attic for many years. Her son was said to have had it forever and that he had just died and she wanted to get rid of it. Here we go, my mother was always looking for great deals in anything. She had brought some guitars home that would be great to break on stage but that was it.

So she plopped it down on the couch and she let me open it. My jaw just dropped and I proceeded to play this blast from the past and then asked her how much. She replied ” $130.00 (Can.)”, I said “YES!!!!”. I said yes just because it just felt so right! I didn’t even plug the thing into my “Hiwatt, 50 watt bulldog, 1/2 stack”( I will talk about that later).

I also remember vividly the day that i went to look at guitars from Steve’s Music in Toronto and took this with us to see what the price of it might be for curiosity sake. When we opened it up, some older guy came up to us and offered $2000.00 (Can.) right on the spot. We looked at each other and said ” No thank-you sir ” and acted like good country bumpkins that we were, that had just fell off the turnip truck.

In todays market it’s not worth that much but it sure as hell made my mom feel like one of those people on the Antiques Road that used a violin called something like “Stradivarius” to hold open the barn door only to find out that it’s worth just a few more bucks! I just loved that look on my mothers face that day!

Keep on Jammin’

My 1980 Fender Lead II

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This is the guitar that I have is to play more Rock and Roll tunes on. It’s a lot lighter then the RD Artist but heavier then the Fender Duo Sonic. The width of the neck is right in between both of the other ones. The intonation is perfect for the Ozzie stuff but it’s not as wide for the Jazz approach. I find is fabulous for playing the electric version of Neon that allows me to use my thumb on the upper E string.

The 1980 Lead II and the 1982 Lead II are both fine guitars. The Lead II Manual, which I wish I had the original, went missing somewhere in my parents house in the 80’s.

Not many scratches (I think that they’re character markings like the colour of the neck being worn down) on the body. The pick guard on the other hand has lotz of character, because of my aggressive NOT THRASHING style of attack in my playing. I use the D’Aaddario True Blue medium strings on this puppy.

My Serial # is E0009736 which makes it made in 1980. The guitar came with a brown shoulder strap bag and that was it, bare bones. I purchased in Hong Kong by a foreign exchange student but, his name eludes me right now. He live at Mr. Zryrini’s house down the street from my parents home in Brantford. I remember him being a great guy who could play the guitar not that bad but, he sure looked like he was having a hell of a lot of fun playing it!

He was a bit strapped for money at the time so I bought it off him. He was always at our house that summer and i showed him tons of stuff. I really felt bad for the guy because he no did not have an axe to jam with at home so I lent him the one he sold, weird eh? I had to because there is nothing worse then stunting the growth of a guitar player!

Upkeep of your finger nails

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I am the type of guitar player who uses a combination of playing with a pick, pick with finger nails and nails exclusively.

My style of playing is that of a aggressive one. This is not to be confused with a THRASHING technique. I also playing with a lot of a dynamics’s. I mean having the ability to play any song very quietly/soft (PPP, triple piano) or very LOUD (FFF, triple forte). I find that being able to do this allows me to change the mood of the piece at any given time.

I love the straight forward playing with a pick style but having the tools to be able to incorporate all the fingers is useful as well. But my new re-found love is to get back to my roots and just use my nails. I played classical guitar for a while and did not play ANY ROCK at all.

I wasn’t a BRUCE COCKBURN fan until 1986, this when I was living in a dorm/frat house in Toronto (Bloor and Spadina). Here I would be able to play acoustic guitar for hours straight, but I sure as hell wasn’t! I started to finally listen to HOW he was playing. I had thought that he was using a pick because the only player in the world at that time, so I thought, that used his fingers was Mark Knopfler, boy was I wrong!

So listening to his music I found this thing called ” Open Tuning “. The first open tuning song I did was “Tokyo” by BRUCE COCKBURN. I played this tune for days on end! It was new, refreshing and something that I had never done before. So, one day I got out the phone book and looked up his name, found his number and called him. Sure enough, it was his number and his wife at the time answered and she told him “that he would not be home for some time.” Well at least I tried! True story.

Anyways, when I first started to take my nails seriously (this was in grade 9 remember),I had used MANY products to strengthen my nails. I had gotten use to shaping them to fit my attack. The long nails held out not bad but I was always pissed when they broke!!! This was just something that I had to get use to. After I had had enough of this style after 2 yrs., I went off to different ones. I loved to try different styles that I could bring to my playing.

So fast forward to July 8th 2005, my birthday. My wife was working as a ER nurse in a Toronto Hospital and I had just dropped her off at work, it takes literally 1 minute, we live just down the street, and I had a finally got up the nerve to try this fake nail thing, YES FAKE NAILS! When I was done I just had to go back to work and show her. She just laughed and laughed, not to mention her buddies as well, I work with them all so that was fine.

I just love them! I can play at any time without having to worry about them braking and not having them when I want to play. The only thing that I don’t like is the fact that when they grow out they look weird. They look like I have jaundice of the finger nails, they have a yellow hue to them. Women are lucky because they can just throw some nail polish on them. If I do first would be divorced or placed on the H6 Ward of our hospital.

The cost is around $10.00 and that’s not bad. Does anyone have any other ideas that they use for their nails other then the fakies that I use and please tell me how durable they are and be honest!

Keep on jammin’

My first Rock Bands Concert … a KISS tribute one at that!

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I mercifully skipped grade 7 for you all and went right to the good stuff.

Well I just have to let the cat out of the bag and swallow my pride on this one! Yes I was playing in a KISS tribute band and was Ace Frehley. Well in all honesty, the majority of the tunes were KISS tunes. I was the only one in the band who did not belong to the KISS Army though.

I was into more challenging music but the only guys I knew that could play were these guys! Don’t get me wrong, these guys were my best friends for the longest time! Eddie, was the drummer and had extensive gigging with a “Polka Band” and Brian, the guy in my previous posts was the other guitar player. We didn’t have a bass player at the time due to the fact that no one we knew played the bass.

When I was in grade 7, I remember playing with the Muroz brothers. It was fun because they had taken lessons and could play their instruments well. I think we played some Queen, Led Zeppelin and some pop tunes of the day. I forget why we broke up but I guess that is how it goes. Sorry, I just had to write a bit about the grade 7 thing!

Anyways, we would practice and practice for hours on end. I keep trying to get these guys to slow down and take apart the songs that we were playing and it did sink in to some degree. I’m sure that they would tell ya differently but it’s my blog so there!

As we grew older we found that other schools had band and that they were playing live at their schools so we had no choice, let’s do a live show. Our first and only show was to be played at “St. Bernard’s” school. This was what we thought was our big break!

During this time I had been introduced to another band in the making. They were both in high school and they were just who I was looking to play with. They were Tony, the keyboard player who sounded like a god on that thing, and Harry the guitar player who could play quit well technically but lacked the feel that you need!

Anyways, when we played the show, I had a blast! My soon to be band mates where in attendance and the show went on. Brian, who was like Gene did this wild guitar solo in the audience with the help of MANY GUITAR EXTENSION CHORDS while i was lying on the stage moving these knobs on my old ” BOSS BF-1 FLANGER”. Our band was named “Duce” and when we played it to start off the show, the words go something like this, “Get up and get the hell on out of here!” and there goes Brian singing it directly to a nun, I almost blew a nut laughing so hard on stage!

So, how was that?

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