Origin Story
Published: Tue, 01/09/24
Having learned some basic pattern picking almost as soon as I learned my first chords, and having zero inclination to sing, I also started trying to pick out melodies over an alternating bass somewhere in there as well, but didn't get completely obsessed with fingerpicking until I heard "Alice's Restaurant" when I was maybe a junior in high school. That flawless eighteen-minute marriage of wit and groove, along with Live At The Regal, Live at Fillmore East and Live Book...Don't Start Me Talking, still informs my notion of what a performer can hope to accomplish onstage, and though I learned the guitar part wrong at first (in D, yes, but without a capo) I found it every bit as captivating as instrumental favorites like Renbourn's "The Black Balloon" and Guy Van Duser's arrangement of Duke Ellington's "Black Beauty."
And so, curiously, my instrumental vocabulary, sensibilities and standards were formed not by a posse of prewar blues icons (Robert Johnson, Gary Davis, all points in between) nor by the country thumbpicking mob (Merle, Chet & Jerry), but by a handful of '60s and '70s composing guitarists and a stray folk icon. Which, I suppose, is why I gravitate towards writing my own instrumentals, when not putting the majority of what I've learned about groove, arranging and improvisation to work on the songs I write and eventually perform.
Of course, sometimes, a gig is a gig. When I was creating courses for Truefire, I would have to come up with tunes to illustrate certain techniques and ideas, and one of those was something in drop D I called "Parisian Blues." I only needed a twelve-bar piece to wrap up Essentials: Fingerstyle Blues, but I always thought it would be cool to turn it into a complete tune, so when I was recording a new instrumental record last winter, I finally came up with a B section and an outro to round things out. I taught the new, improved version of "Parisian Blues" in the Fingerstyle Five membership this past December, and have been playing it live at shows lately as well.
Today's Youtube video isn't actually a lesson – it's just video of a recent performance of "Parisian Blues" at my local monthly gig here in Austin. From time to time, someone asks why I don't post any longer examples of my playing on the channel, so here it is, at the link below:
Parisian Blues
The complete tab to "Parisian Blues," with in-depth video lessons breaking down each section of the tune, is available inside the Fingerstyle Five, along with tab and lessons for a dozen more of my original blues instrumentals. To sign up, go to www.fretboardconfidential.com.
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