Topic: Introductions: When the Roll is called...

[WillMo]

Hi Everybody!

I learned about the forum through the John Miller and Michael Roach led Country Blues Intensive workshop at Centrum last month.  What an inspiration that was, drinking from the fire hose and watching those guys play up close! 

I've played blues guitar for decades if you count "Wild Thing" played with a pick. I've made a record with my Seattle based blues band "Willie & the Whips" I'm proud of but only started getting my thumb and fingers going a few years ago.  Independence is a slow train coming!  I've long been inspired by RL Burnside and that trance groove thing.  I've been to the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic and the guitar workshop there in Holly Springs three times.

Having missed a flight connection in Houston due to a plugged up toilet in Memphis and suffering from the five hour layover blues I started looking for closer-in places to learn and found the Centrum programs.  Ferries may break down I know but Port Townsend is a bit easier for me!

These last few weeks I've been clinging to the Michael Roach taught basic picking patterns I learned at the workshop.  The last few days of going around on I IV V, I spontaneously started humming Frankie and Albert so... I'm gonna print me out the Joe Callicott version of the lyrics from Weeniepedia right now...

Thanks y'all for the great resource!

Will

[Johnm]

Welcome to Weenie Campbell, Will!  It was good meeting you and working with you at the Intensive.
All best,
Johnm

[That3FingeredGuitarist]

Hello one, Hello All,

I am Deke, Or otherwise known, That3FingeredGuitarist

I'm a UK born, unlucky young chap with congenital heart diesase (tetralogy of fallots) and hypoplasia. I had 2 pinky's amputated because of it and my hands are really bleedin' small... And my thumbs only have one joint!

Phew, now that the boring stuff is out the way, Let's get down to guitar!

I'm a huge fan of Delta blues, classic rock, folk/singer-songwriter songs, even though there are the occasional branches I'll stem out to, such as a few heavy metal songs (only really by slayer or avenged sevenfold, wherestill A7x aren't really HEAVY metal)

I play alot of Delta alongside straight up blues, that really gets me grooving (as best I can) from Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson (my favourite), Mississippi John Hurt, Tampa Red, Son House etc. B.B King is great aswell and many, many more.

I am far from the greatest in the world but I peaked interest from my Grandad of 81 who has been playing for nigh on 60 years, one of the best guitar players I know of. He even gave me my first electric, A gibson epiphone Dot.

He told me about some musicians with less than 5 fingers, I was dumfounded when I heard about other musicians with less than 'normal' amounts of fingers, Tony Iommi, Horace Parlan and of course, Django Reinhardt.

This kicked me into gear and really got me playing.

Glad and friggin' proud, to be apart of a guitar community and call myself a guitarist.

Here's one of my first public videos.

[Prof Scratchy]

Welcome Deke! Thanks for the video too!


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[That3FingeredGuitarist]

Thankyou! Glad to be here!

[Stuart]

Welcome to Weenie Campbell, Deke.

I really enjoyed your video. Your vocals are excellent--really emotionally expressive, as is your playing. Sometimes the roll of the genetic dice doesn't come up in our favor, but you are doing just fine. Keep playing--you have solid musical sense--and I'm sure your talents and musical sense will take you wherever you want to go.

[Slack]

Welcome Deke!  Way to go... to both you and your granddad, to not let congenital problems hold you back! 

[That3FingeredGuitarist]

Welcome Deke!  Way to go... to both you and your granddad, to not let congenital problems hold you back! 

<3 Thankyou! Means alot to me!

Welcome to Weenie Campbell, Deke.

I really enjoyed your video. Your vocals are excellent--really emotionally expressive, as is your playing. Sometimes the roll of the genetic dice doesn't come up in our favor, but you are doing just fine. Keep playing--you have solid musical sense--and I'm sure your talents and musical sense will take you wherever you want to go.

Wow!! Inspirational and complimentary, Thankyou!

[Parlor Picker]

Nice to see somebody of a younger age here on the Weenie. Welcome, Deke.

[That3FingeredGuitarist]

Nice to see somebody of a younger age here on the Weenie. Welcome, Deke.

Thankyou, Thankyou!

[taft]

Except for one post, I've been lurking for about a year. I was introduced to the blues through the folksong revival of the 1960s, which led me to Leadbelly and further to the blues singers that I found on the reissue labels. But my attraction to the blues was academic as well as aesthetic. At college, I was studying Anglo-Saxon poetry, which is one of many literary traditions around the world that uses formulaic language, and realized that the blues was also part of this tradition?for ?I woke up this morning? think Homer's ?rosy-fingered dawn.? To explore this aspect of the blues further, I enrolled in the Folklore Department at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where my teachers were, among others, Herbert Halpert, one of the major field collectors of the blues in the 1930s, and Neil Rosenberg, a leading scholar of bluegrass. My dissertation was on the blues formula, but my interests turned more towards Canadian folklore and archiving. But many years later, I became Head of the archive of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, where I was the ?blues expert? and brought into the archive several blues-related collections (an unknown Leadbelly recording, the Pete Welding collection, the Tom Hoskins-John Hurt collection, Robert Johnson test pressings, etc.). I retired about 6 years ago and moved to Ottawa, Canada. I was approached by a publisher to produce an anthology of blues lyrics, and in doing my research, I came across Weenie Campbell. The book fell through because of copyright and permissions issues, but it was a great pleasure to work, once again, on a blues project?and to discover Weenie Campbell. Michael Taft

[Slack]

Welcome Michael!  Thanks for de-lurking and sharing your fascinating blues history.  Sorry to hear that your blues lyric anthology fell through... it would have given us weenies another source of lyrics to disagree with!  But more seriously, I hope you find another blues project to work on... anything else in the works?

[Prof Scratchy]

Warm Weenie Welcome!


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[taft]

Nothing else in the works. I'm helping out with the Roud Index--the major online index for traditional songs--but there's almost no blues-related material on that site.

[Rivers]

I would like to add my welcome to Michael Taft. I've always been impressed by your very early realization that lyric phrases and words, cross-referenced, could reveal much of what was previously indiscernible.