Riverman
Artist / Performer
Posts: 7,348
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Post by Riverman on May 24, 2017 22:48:39 GMT
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Post by robmc on May 30, 2017 18:31:16 GMT
Liked the Lightfoot tune very much...
The greatest and most lasting inspirations for me are Pearl Jam / Eddie Vedder and Neil Young. I first saw Neil Young at the Reading Festival in 1995.... I was 17, his band was Pearl Jam minus Eddie Vedder and it was the Mirror Ball tour. I seem to recall guitars being set on fire and lots of mud. I had a geography teacher, Mr O'Flynn who used to listen to his students CDs and review them, he played a twelve string acoustic very well. I remember him saying to me about Pearl Jam, 'ahhh you'll have moved on from them by the time you're 18', for better or worse, I didn't and so they have proved to be a mainstay in my musical enjoyment, seen them countless times including in Hawaii in 2006 when I decided it would be a wise move to spend all my redundancy money on one big blow-out!
Honourable mention to Springsteen, The Beatles and Brit-pop too.
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mandovark
C.O.G.
Posts: 2,993
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Post by mandovark on May 31, 2017 21:24:15 GMT
There have been two main influences for me. The first was Eva Cassidy. I remember when her version of Over the Rainbow (the live performance, not the better-known studio track) was played on Top of the Pops 2 for the first time. For 5 minutes, I couldn't take my eyes of the TV. I loved the simplicity of it: nothing flashy, no gimmicks, just beautiful, heartfelt singing. But also struck me was the guitar accompaniment. Again, nothing flashy, but a lovely compliment to the song. I spent the next few months learning how to play as many of her songs as I could. I'd been playing guitar for a couple of years by then, but this was a big step forward for me. I can still hear a lot of her influence in my playing, especially on song accompaniments. In fact, for a while I developed a bit of a sideline as a kind of Eva Cassidy guitar-tribute act. To date, as far as I can remember, I've accompanied 4 singers (including one who went on to a professional career) on charity performances of Over the Rainbow. My second big influence - which will come as no surprise to people who've heard me in the Circle of Death - is Show of Hands. I was taken along to a gig at Lancaster University in about 2003. It wasn't just a great gig - musically, it was more like a conversion experience. For the whole night, I was sitting there thinking "that's it - that's the sound I want to make". My playing had kind of plateaued for a while, but after that gig I started practicing again. I started teaching myself some slide guitar (in standard tuning, like Mr Beer). I also started lusting after mandolin-family instruments. What I really wanted was an Oddy cello-mandolin like Steve Knightley's, but I couldn't afford one of those. I tried a TAMCO octave mandolin, which was a fun instrument, then Trevor TAMCO fixed me up with a really nice Moon 10-string bouzouki. But eventually I bit the bullet and emailed David Oddy who, it turned out, was about to retire, but was just finishing off a stock cello-mandolin that didn't have a buyer. Needless to say, it didn't stay buyerless for very long. There are other people who have influenced my playing, particularly Martin Simpson when it comes to dropped tunings and more recently Martyn Joseph for song accompaniment, but Show of Hands is the one that really stuck. I think on some level I've been trying to play like both Steve Knightley and Phil Beer ever since that first gig.
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Post by flashart on Aug 17, 2017 18:14:59 GMT
I'm rediscovering Mike Peters of The Alarm. There's a new film "The Man in the Camo Jacket" coming out. Or check out "Jules'Story" on the iPlayer.
Very emotional, and truly inspiring in the best sense, of the joy of living.
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Welshruss
C.O.G.
Posts: 477
My main instrument is: Turnstone, Wandering Boy & Santa Cruz
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Post by Welshruss on Aug 18, 2017 8:26:32 GMT
My two biggest influences are Bert Jansch and Kelly Joe Phelps. Though Julian Lage, Jack Rose, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, William Tyler, RL Burnside, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Parr and Nic Jones are also favourites.
On the electric side I love Marillion, Radiohead, the Manic Street Preachers, Portishead and Wilco. Singer songwriters Ryan Adams , Bonnie Prince Billy and Show of Hands. I like Bjork too!
On the guitar side I was lucky enough to do a number of guitar workshops with the late great Eric Roche before I moved down under in Bath and two with Stefan Grossman in Sydney.
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Post by ianlp59 on Aug 18, 2017 8:48:41 GMT
Historically : Ralph McTell, John Martyn, Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna), Stefan Grossman, John Renbourn, John James...The list is pretty endless.
More recently, Martin Simpson who is now a great pal of mine. Incidentally, he has a new album out in September - "Trails & Tribulations". I have got a copy of it already, donated to me recently by the man himself. It's beautiful, possibly the best he's ever done and it features a quite a few of his own songs, one of which I like very much, "Thomas Drew". It's a clever take on the American folk classic "John Hardy" who shot Thomas Drew(s) to death in a drunken brawl during a crap game for which Hardy was hung on January 19th 1894. The song is written from the perspective of the murder victim and features the line "I got lucky, and he shot me to death" - priceless... The album also features Martin's arrangement of Emily Portman's "Bones and Feathers" on which his daughter Molly sings beautifully.
Cheers,
Ian
p.s. loving my new Tom Sands OM...
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