Harmonica in Copenhagen

Yesterday I was at the blue jam at Mojo. It was organized by Rosewood Blues Band

I asked to play and was let to the stage in about 10-15 minutes. I immediately noticed something strange. There was already a Shure sm57 plugged into the Fender (sorry, I am bad at the Fender models). C'mon, tell me -- who would sing into Shure sm57? I played two numbers and was asked to come on stage a little later on. After I played second time, I came to the organizer guy and asked about Shure sm57:
-- Hey, what's up with the mic? Why you are using Shure sm57?
-- Well, I play harmonica as well. And you sound like.. Jason Ricci!
I was amused. This is the first guy I meet, who knows Jason Ricci and can recognize him! It is not like I am trying to be second Jason, but I really like his style and playing.

The name of the guy was Danny Wickmann Wouters. You have to check his youtube channel!

Here is an awesome post by Jim making Low Low D harmonica.

Tim Lothar and Peter Nande -- so far this is the best acoustic duo from Denmark I have ever seen. Highly recommended!

Tim Lothar Petersen plays the Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Filisko was in Copenhagen on 25th of October.

I managed to talk to him for a while. Actually, my initial idea was to ask him for a lesson of harmonica customization, but unfortunately he turned it down. Apparently Joe likes playing Christmas songs on harmonica! After talking for sometime he gave me a present -- a cd with him playing some Christmas songs!

Here are some photos (inside the post). Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Gussow was playing together with other danish guy Lars Ringaard, who is probably the first danish guy I have seen live playing non-second position and using overblows.
Adam is a great guy. He was pretty tired, when I came by to have few words. But nevertheless we had a small chat together. Funny think is that he could remember two harpers from Russia -- Aleksand Paklin and Boris Plotnikov =)

Anyway, some photos here:

Hey, good news.
Adam Gussow will perform in Copenhagen on December 18th, Saturday at Mojo. I will definitely recommend to find out, is it possible to buy a ticket in advance!

Unfortunately, Adam had some problems with documents and therefore is not able to get to Copenhagen..

Adam's explanation

Text from Mojo club translated (it's available online, but I have noticed that sooner or later text disappears from there):

Adam Gussow could not get on plain and therefore was forced to cancel his tour in Denmark. We are sorry and hope he will come again in March

Gary Primich is a wonderful harp player. Even though he seems to play simple stuff, he plays it really cool. I very much like the style he is playing. Here are several of my favourite songs: "Dry County Blues", "Brown Derby Liquor", "Dollar, Dollar", "Hardwood Floor". It it's a pity he left us so early.

I decided to try his style of playing on a song "Brown Derby Liquor" from album Dog House Music. As far as I understand, the song is in F minor key and he plays it on Eb harmonica.

Here are the tabs for it. [-2-5] denote octave playing:

Intro:

[-2-5] [36]     [36] [-2-5] [36] [-3-6]
[-4-8] [47] [-3-6] [36] [-3-6] [-2-5] [-1-4]   -4'  -4<>-5

Solo:

-4 -5  -6' -6     -6' -5 -'6 -5 -4    -4<>-5    [-4-8][-3-7][-2-5]..
-4 -5  -6' -6     -6-6' -6-6' -6-6'-6-6'-6 -6'-5 -6'-6

[-4-8] [47]    [-3-6] [-2-5]  [36] [36]
    [-2-5] [-1-4] [-2-5]     [36] [-3-6] [-2-5] [-1-4]
[-1-4] [-2-4] [-1-4]   [36] [-3-6] [-2-5] [-1-4] [-2-5] [-3-6] [-3-7] [-4-8]
[-3-6] [-4-8] [47] [-3-6] [-2-5] [36]
[-2-5] [-4-8] [47] [-3-6] [-2-5] [36]   [-2-5] [-1-4]  -4<>-5 -4'<>-5' -4<>-5  -5-4-3-2..

So this time Joe Powers from Portland, Oregon visited Copenhagen during Copenhagen Jazz Festival. He made a small Tango concert in local Tango House.

I don't like chromatica very much, but he played some nice Tango stuff. Did not have a camera again with, so no photos made!

Joe is interesting and very polity guy. Just the day before the concert he stepped into the sand on the beach, from which grill was taken off.. Yeah, he is alright now =) Had some light skin burn on the leg, so it was kind of difficult for him to perform in shoes.

Ok, something about equipment. Nothing much to say here. He used a "finger" mic Suzuki MS-100 Universal Mic and sang through it too. Well, that was the tricky one =) He used Suzuki Sirius chromatica, which is probably is not widely available in Europe yet. But if people are interested in it or any other Suzuki harmonicas (fx Pure Harp), they can order them through Joe at discounted rates.

We played a little bit together. He had some diatonics with him. I am not 100% sure, but I think it was Pure Harp from Suzuki. He played on C harp. And was able to take overblows on first hole. And told me, that just done some gapping in order to do it.

And here is the only blurred photo I have from that evening. Guess who's who!

So guess who is coming to Copenhagen? Yes, Adam Gussow. Really looking forward to this event!