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David Grier

Wednesday, May 21, 2014 @1:37:25 AM

Been listening a lot to David Grier at the moment - he'll probably be the saviour of my flat-picking career.

The thing is, over here, many thousands of mile saway from the flat-picking heartlands, there is no flat-picking culture or community to speak of. I have been given the name of a double-bass player who's into bluegrass so that might develop - but the reality is there is nothing. That's problem #1.

Problem #2 is there isn't the tradition in these parts of playing these tunes - the stuff of which most of you grew up with. There's quite an acoustic blues tradition here, and there's a lot of gypsy jazz players, as you'd expect, but 'pure' flatpicking. Nope. No-one to play with, no tradition, nowhere to play, and no-one to listen to it even if there was.

So I'm on my own. On those rare occasions when I do an acoustic gig rather than a band gig it's just me. I need to be the bass and rhythm guitar, and lead player. So I tend to finger-pick as how else could one cover all those bases?

And David Grier is the answer!

Quite possibly Norman Blake and Mother Carter. too. Maybe Roberto Della Vecchia and Robert Bowlin. So a whole pack of players, led by Mr Grier.

It's a style I need to explore further. Could be an interesting journey moving away from pure single note rapidly picked (or in my case casually and slackily picked!) to a more chordal approach, cross-picked, carter picked, chords and arpeggios.

Looking forward to it!

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