It is with pride and sadness that we announce the graduation of Elwood The Apprentice, our own ’Special Star’, from the ranks of the Harp Surgery crew. Having contributed a vibrant and ground-breaking series of posts to our site, Elwood will be returning to his African homeland where he will focus on issues of economics, conservation and development. As we bid Elwood a fond farewell, we would like to share with you a joyful piece of music he once introduced to the Surgery. While it doesn’t feature the harmonica, it does spotlight our woodwind cousin, the Penny Whistle.

Regular visitors will already know of our penchant for good-time sounds. Harp Surgery pages have featured Rory McLeod’s Farewell Welfare, Paolo Nutini’s Pencil Full Of Lead, and of course Elwood’s own post about Hey Negrita. As Thomas Carlyle put it, if you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music. Now roll back the rug and prepare to dance yourself silly to the lekker sound of South African Kwela. 

I will be forever yours, you will be forever mine

One dull Spring afternoon at the Surgery, Elwood played an album by Mango Groove that instantly fired our collective passion for South African Kwela music. One track in particular, Special Star, had the The Good Doctor honking his Vuvuzela like a rutting impala, while Otis, Our Monica and The Riverboat Captain danced a ferocious Indlamu routine around the fishtank. The Harp Surgery reception was like a frenzied Friday night in Mandela Square.

Kwela is honest, joyful, and infectious music. Check it out. Special Star was written as a tribute to Johannes ‘Spokes’ Mashiyane, the king of Whistle music. We challenge you to reproduce the whistle melody on the humble diatonic harmonica (it’s in the key of Bb major)!

Thank you Elwood

Farewell to Elwood, the Harp Surgery’s very first Apprentice. Thanks for the energy, fun and insight you brought to our pages. May the road rise with you. Rest assured our door will remain forever open to you. If you’re ever in the neighbourhood drop in.

Writing about Jason Ricci has been on my agenda more or less since I started blogging on the Harp Surgery. It’s odd, really, that he doesn’t get much airtime here, considering he’s one of the most phenomenal players alive AND his unsolicited praise adorns our sidebar. In fact, the first gig review Wilf ever did for this website was Jason Ricci but that was years ago. It’s high-time we checked in on him again.

So today I’m finally going to review Jason’s album, Done with the Devil. What finally got me off the couch (figuratively anyway) was the news that he’s had a bad run of luck recently. We saw reports in June, and a great deal of speculation, that there had been some reshuffles in, or departures from, his (very very good) band, New Blood – and that all engagements were on hold ‘til August. On top of that his website is down, he’s in hospital with a punctured lung and no health insurance, and a series of financial calamities seem to have come calling at just the wrong time.

And because Jason Ricci is to 21st century harmonica what sliced bread was to sandwiches, I’ll make a suggestion of what you can do to help.

It’s pronounced Jay-son Rih-chee
First, let’s introduce the man, just in case you haven’t had the absolutely terrifying experience of Jason Ricci’s sonic samurai style. He combines the old-school Chicago sound of your Little Walters with rapid-fire Pat Ramsey licks, then shoots them to pieces with rapid-fire machine gun overblows and then drags ‘em to Jazztown. If that sounds like a confused description, it’s because listening to Jason Ricci can provoke very confused emotions.

Simply put, give him a harmonica and Ricci is a dangerous man. Check this out:

When he saw him in 2007, our own Wilf wrote:

He has planted his flag on the ramparts of Fort Radical. His appearance and his persona is that of an edgy Punk. His energy is arresting. His playing is simply astonishing. If I had to credit specific harmonica players and bands for redefining the blues’ boundaries, Blues Traveler, Alabama 3, Little Axe, Lee Sankey, Lee Oskar and Sugar Blue readily come to mind. Jason Ricci vaults them all.

That about sums it up.

Done with the Devil
Many moons later, after reading much effusive praise for Ricci and watching many of his killer videos, I finally got ‘round to purchasing his latest album, Done with the Devil.

What can I say? I’ve heard a lot of hardcore blues fans dismiss Ricci by saying “It ain’t blues” or that it’s “just notes”. Certainly, not all of it is blues, and there are a lot of notes. There are times when his fast runs sound a bit like Eddie van Halen, but (perhaps unlike van Halen) Ricci still knows where to leave space. Just because his harp is fast-talking doesn’t mean it’s verbose.

The title track, ‘Done with the Devil’ is a hectic rock-edged number that offers a little insight into Ricci’s own demons and his emergence from an apparently troubled past: “done with the devil, but the devil ain’t done with you,” goes the chorus. Predictably it features some high octane solos that will burn your eyebrows off if you stand too close to the speakers, so don’t.

This is an eclectic album, but there are a few tracks to satisfy the blues lovers. ‘Keep the Wolf From My Door’ and ‘How It Came To Be’ offer two great expos on electric and acoustic approaches to roots music, demonstrating how comfortable Jason Ricci is in the blues tradition while reworking it artfully.

Besides blues
‘Sweet Loving’ is a surprisingly catchy tune, considering it’s an upbeat, syrupy love song that should stick out on this album like a teenage Paul Butterfield in the south side of Chicago. I think its appeal may lie in being the first harmonica ballad to homosexual love (Ricci has been openly gay for a while now) that simultaneously shreds 3rd-position harp playing a new a****** on the lower octave.

You’ll find more emotional depth in the song “Broken Toy”, a tortured rumination on sexual identity – “not a girl nor a boy/ I feel just like a broken toy”. Our man takes a turn on the chromatic, alternating with a scorching diatonic solo that will leave any remaining harp-blowing homophobes with something to think about.

Here are some quick critical comments

1. Ricci’s vocals are serviceable, but they pale in comparison to his harp skills.

2. Not everyone’s going to swallow the punk-edged ‘I Turned Into a Martian’.

3. Even less so the just plain crazy ‘Afro Blue’. I’m guessing it’s just too avant-garde for your average blues, brews and BBQs harp player. It does, however, show why Jason Ricci is an easy contender for being the most important harmonica player of his generation.

3. The album ends on a very bizarre note: the final track ‘Enlightenment’ is a carnival-themed piece that reminds me the1920s German expressionist film Das Kabinett Des Doktor Caligari.

Help a brother out
But listen, the album’s cooking. If nothing else, every harmonica player should own it just so they know how violently a man can drag Hohner’s tiny toy into the 21st century. Overblows, overdraws, bends to the yayas: there is no territory beyond Ricci’s reach. If you’ve ever, ever considered supporting a master of our art, make it Jason Ricci. The timing couldn’t be better. Jason himself has said:

When asked, “How did a white boy from Maine get the blues?” I often answer, “If you don’t have the blues when you start playing them, you will after ten years of trying to make a living at it.”

So let me put this in even clearer terms. If you want to help Jason and yourself, buy his new album. Now.

Buy Jason Ricci & New Blood, Done with the Devil.

Some time back I got my hands on this acoustic single, “Burn The Whole Place Down” by the British country blues band Hey Negrita, which features my friend Will “Captain Bliss” Greener on harmonica. I’ve mentioned Captain Bliss once or twice here, as his approach to harmonica has taught me a great deal – without really showing me too many riffs and licks, if you catch my meaning.

Perhaps you already see why I thought it was worth consideration. First of all, it’s just a damned catchy song. But I believe there also are (at least) two lessons to be learned in their approach to this performance, and in Will’s contribution to it.

Lesson 1: Simplicity is beautiful

Will told me they recorded this album in a few hours, much in the manner you see in the video: six guys sitting in a room together, looking longingly into one another’s eyes, trading musical gestures. There’s a reason why six guys can record an album in an afternoon. (Instead of, say, a decade – I’m looking at you, Axl Rose.) Aside from learning the songs beforehand (something many bandmates forget to do), they kept the process simple and hassle free. No faffing about in laying down track after track in bits and pieces: everyone records together, and the musical relationships that exist within the band become the single most important technical tool available to them.

Granted, this is pretty common in recording studios, but it’s very helpful to keep in mind when planning gigs and performances: the Negrita philosophy (at least, the Will “Captain Bliss” Greener philosophy) is to keep things as simple as possible and not get enslaved to technology. If you have a PA mic, a good soundman and musicians you can trust, amps and mics and tubes and all that stuff is sometimes less important than you’d think.

Lesson 2: You only need to play as much as you need to play

I couldn’t believe it when I first visited Captain Bliss’s Myspace page. There was no harmonica on it! “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I thought: “H-h-he’s a harmonica player, for God’s sake!”

Well, yes. But as you’ll see from this song, he only adds as much harmonica as the song really needs. He could have easily chugged along through the whole track, adding little fills and frills between the vocals. I mean, Lord knows I certainly would’ve. Instead, he just keeps his harp by his side for almost the entire song, playing three short solos that account for about 12 bars of the song, as far as I can tell. As he himself pointed out to me, “the busy-ness of Matt’s guitar tends to remain constant; much of the time, the “fill” space tends to belong to him.”

Instead of just taking up all the available space in the song, he gives it air to breathe and the solos he does take are all the more attention-grabbing for it. (Also notice that he switches between a low harp and a high harp to keep things intereresting.) Knowing when not to play: that’s something I have yet to learn, unfortunately.

So what does a harmonica player do when he’s not playing harmonica? Well apparently he just acts like a musician: joining in on the chorus, dancing like a bit of a ninny, and just enjoying the damned song. I’ve seen more than a few harp players who, when they’re waiting for their solo, look more like they’re waiting for a bus that’s five minutes late.

Without further ado, please enjoy Hey Negrita’s “Burn the Whole Place Down”. You can buy it for a pittance at Amazon.

Elwood’s choice:

I’ll never forget the day I decided to take up blues harmonica. I was 18 years old, doing a crappy internship in a run-down part of the most boring town in England, and I decided to go shopping for music in my lunch hour. I can’t remember where I found the CD, but I do remember it just jumped right out of the shelf at me: Blue Skies, by some soulful-looking fellow named Muddy Waters.

The first track was ‘Mannish Boy’. I don’t recall the first listening per se, and yet I know exactly how it must have felt, because this bellowing, ball-tightening number still sends giant surges of electricity down the ole tendons. With Muddy on vocals, Willie Big Eyes Smith on drums, Bob Margolin on guitar and Johnny Winter on slide, the track’s signature riff has James Cotton on harp. I’d never heard of James Cotton, but that electric riff came shredding through my earphones like demonic buzz-saws being shot outta Satan’s crossbow.

I was hooked.

As I later learned, this was a compilation comprising tracks from the three smoking studio albums Muddy Waters cut with Blues Sky records: Hard Again (with James Cotton), I’m Ready (with Big Walter Horton and Jerry Portnoy) and King Bee (with Portnoy). It also featured two live tracks from Muddy “Mississippi” Waters - Live. So basically, the first straight blues album I bought featured three of the best blues harpers you could expect to find in a studio in the mid-70s. I didn’t know it, but I’d just purchased a blues harmonica master class.

Rarely does a single compilation cover so vast an array of skills and techniques in blues harmonica. It’s a complete starter pack to playing harp: aside from hosting treasurable performances from three top harmonica instrumentalists, from the point-of-view of a beginner blues harp we’ve got the ‘Mannish Boy’ and ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ riffs on display, we’ve got the fierce James Cotton wail, the sleek, deft sidemanship of a young Jerry Portnoy, and eloquent, horn-like performances from Big Walter that showed there was life in the old ram yet.

It also gave me a taste for a variety of playing styles. There are a handful of stellar 1st position tracks, including James Cotton on ‘I Want To Be Loved’, Big Walter Horton on ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ (trading licks with Jerry Portnoy’s amplified 2nd position harp), and a fantastic showcase solo from Portnoy on the upper octave on ‘Too Young To Know’.

Third position also gets a cameo, with Portnoy giving a blistering 3rd position performance on amplified chromatic on ‘I’m Ready’ (backed up here by Big Walter playing acoustic 2nd position).

I still find myself listening to tracks like ‘Deep Down in Florida’ and ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ (Portnoy ripping a new hole into that song) and wondering how the hell they got so good. Maybe it’s God, protecting me from hubris.

Even beyond the harp, the albums that supplied these tracks are superb, especially Hard Again and I’m Ready. Fun, feisty and powerfully produced by Johnny Winter, they see Muddy return to his absolute best, bouncing out of the bargain bins and back into the spotlight – and washing away some of the taste left by that psychedelic flop, Electric Mud. These days, you can buy them in a box set, with a few bonus tracks and great liner notes from Bob Margolin on the stories behind the albums.

Best part: Swaggering through the streets of Welwyn Garden City wearing my headphones, smiling at all the middle-aged dads and soccer moms while James Cotton was tearing a new mindhole between my ears.

Only regret: Listening to the album while shopping for groceries. Never try to accomplish anything to the rhythm of a slow blues like Deep Down in Florida. It’ll take you forever.

Advice for first-timers: This is a compilation not an album, and it features THREE harmonica players – not just one dude with a schizoid sound. It took me years to figure that out.

What album got you hooked? Let us know in the comments. And stay tuned for upcoming album posts from the rest of the Harp Surgery team.

Find Muddy Waters albums at Amazon UK and Amazon US

…So I asked some of our readers if they had any questions for you. Here’s one from Adam Gussow.
SoD: He has a question for me?

Why, he has three questions.
SoD: Get the fuck out of here! Well, hi Adam.

Here’s his first question: do you tongue-block or lip-purse, and does that sort of technical question interest you or bore you?
SoD: Tongue block, now stop boring me.

No, I’m being flippant. I think it’s cool that Adam Gussow guy is asking me a question, cos he’s a super-great player. I found myself kind of high once and watching his little instructional videos and realising just how little I know. You know, the last thing I learned on harmonica was when I was 18 years old from a book. We didn’t have YouTube back then. I’ve never tried to comp my licks off records, it’s only just been playing with bands live or just soaking it up and it finds its way out again. A year ago, a million little warbley things and note scaley noodley stuff, and positions – tons of that stuff that I don’t know. I’m not really a very clever harp player, I do what I do. I mostly play power chords and the occasional little run, but soloing to me is a chore.

Well, you’ve got no one to back you up, right?
SoD: But even if I play with a band it’s a chore. They’ll give me over once maybe twice in a 12-bar progression, and then just please leave me alone, y’know. Don’t look at me anymore because I don’t have very many licks. I really don’t. So a guy like that who can play like hell, I really admire it.

Another reader asks: Did you come to a point in your career as a harp player where you consciously decided to break away from what other players were doing, with your own distinct sound?
SoD: No. I actually didn’t. That’s just how I’ve always played.

I’m interested that you’re not that big on innovation…
SoD: [When it comes to innovation] you just have to judge it musically and sonically and emotionally. Is it doing something new that’s good? The reason that nobody really likes any innovators is that mostly innovators, uh, suck. It creates a bizarre or modern emotion that isn’t timeless. All I’m doing is kind of making it simpler and making it grunt, so I’m not really adding anything modern to it..

Were there any players who inspired your approach? Do you have influences?
SoD: …

Aside from Adam Gussow obviously.
SoD: Hey, I said I was ‘inspired’ one night. I get ‘inspired’ a lot. I’m going to get ‘inspired’ tonight after I do this concert. I don’t know if I had harmonica-playing heroes. When I was young I liked James Cotton, I heard him play at a festival in Winnipeg, Canada. But I don’t think there’s anyone else I found myself copying or sounding like. But you know, lots of heroes I guess.

Do you have to keep the sunglasses on? Is it a chore to have to wear sunglasses at night?
[I have to say, in Son of Dave’s defence, he did offer to take the shades off when I sat down with him. I waived the right. “Just trying to be friendly,” he said.]

SoD: It is a chore! It’s very difficult to wear sunglasses at night. I’m at work so I put on my sunglasses. But if I go out with my granny for tea, I won’t wear those sunglasses indoors at night. But frankly, if you wear sunglasses… I have to sit here and eat, and there are people who came here to see me, and they’ll feel less likely to come up and say things or ask questions. So the sunglasses are definitely self-defence, and it keeps everybody happy.

Some of our readers wanted to know if you were planning a US tour at any time?
SoD: I always plan it and then it doesn’t happen for some reason. I’m busy over here! I don’t tour for months in a row, and to do the states properly you have to go and do at least a month, and then come back and then go back in four or five months and then do another. Every time we think we’re going to do that, something comes in and interrupts that process.

And it’s also just a fucking, it’s just ridiculous there. Isn’t it?

Well, it depends what you mean…
SoD: It’s a ridiculous, ridiculous place. They don’t make things, they buy them. Everything’s made in other parts of the world and shipped there. It’s the first time in humanity that’s happened.[...]Well, they make cars – what else do they make? They don’t make furniture or clothes or tools…

Some of them make harmonicas –
SoD: Some of them do make harmonicas. Well, they design the harmonicas and then they’re made in China [Not exclusively - Ed]. So America’s a very, very weird place. It’s depressing to me in a way, to see so many happy upbeat positive people having to live through these really obvious problems. And it’s not like drought or war, it’s just problems that could be fixed. They don’t make Levi’s jeans in America anymore. It’s just fucking crazy. A country that size, with that huge a population and that much wealth penny-pinching and basically developing the rest of the world. Then watch them grow more and more depressed and religiously fanatic and soulless and bizarre.

And yet aesthetically the music you’re playing is derived from American music. You say you have no influences, which I respect totally, but this is American music you’re playing.
SoD: Well, it was a very different place in the 50s, most of these rhythms and notes and scales and ideas and slang and all of that… and then they started rehashing things in the 60s, 70s, 80s, they started going over the same old ground. Some new movements. Same with the architecture. It’s the decline of an empire. It’s why I moved to England. It gave me a sense of timelessness, or permanence. I’m not going to be something that’s a dying fad. Celebrate something that’s permanent.

So that’s a ‘no’ on the US tour?
SoD: Ha! No, I hope to be going to the United State, entertaining a lot of very nice people in some beautiful places next Autumn. But still not confirmed.

How do you create your song ideas?
SoD: It’s always a rhythm and a hook first. Am I in a jolly mood? Am I in a frisky mood? It’s just like a DJ or if you got a big record collection: if you put on one song, what’s it going to be? Am I in the mood for something that goes boom sikka boomboom sikka? Then I’ll start with that in mind, just start grunting something out. And then lo and behold a hook arrives. Then some power chord riff, and that seems to tell me what kind of thing to shout over top of it. It’s either going to be angry, or sexy, or it’s going to be sad or will it be about drinking? Will it be about taking your kid swimming or something?

About taking your kid swimming? I haven’t heard that one.
SoD: Yeah, there are some rhythms that are, uh, good for that. I just try to avoid the 12-bar blues because, you know, I can’t programme it on my fucking pedal!

And if they create a pedal that’s smart enough to programme multichord songs, will you go back to 12-bar progressions?
SoD: Nah, I’m pretty slow to evolve so I might not even get that pedal even if they invent it. I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing, which is working.

Was that tough to work out at first and coordinate?
SoD: Each new tune is a bit of a tongue twister. But it’s really not complicated, it came very naturally. I’ve never been interested in beat box for its hiphoppedness. Why would you want to imitate a drum machine? It’s a human imitating a machine? That’s fucking weird.

I prefer it to a machine imitating a human...
SoD: I don’t want to sound exactly like a set of drums either. I want to sound like a human.

Reminds me of Tom Waits’ beatboxing.
SoD: Meh. I was first. I respect what he does but I’m not into it personally. I find his voice a bit challenging to listen to. Very heavily stylised.

That’s kind of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?
SoD: What? I sing nice and sweetly don’t I? I do! Sometimes.

So who do you hate most in music? Am I allowed to ask that?
SoD: Oh Jesus. Well, it’s got to be one of the big popstars, doesn’t it?

Well, you can hate on the guy playing around the corner in some tiny little bar for thirty years, but that’d be kicking a guy when he’s down. It’s better to hate someone who’s won a Grammy.
SoD: Yeah, that’s right. Some working man, I might not be able to listen to it because I find it so painfully awful but I’m not going to put him down. The one that makes millions and takes awards for cranking out shit, however…
Ooh, what was her name? The person I really hate is Katy Perry: ‘I Kissed A Girl And I Liked It’. Wow, what a cynical piece of shit! Sooo calculated to make money. You know, really: “What can we put in a song that will sell? A little bit of lesbianism! Yeah, that’ll work!”
You know the other thing that makes people go, “Oooh, that’s a bit naughty! I’ll buy it!” is sexy schoolgirls, right? What else is there? Uh, maybe nun-raping. Give it four or five years, they’ll have the nun-raping song. It’ll be a super hit.

Son of Dave’s new album, Shake a Bone, is out now. This is part of the Harp Surgery’s Apprenticeship Blog with Murray.

Son of Dave found his coolness through the only legitimate means available to us skinny white guys: Wearing your granddad’s clothes and a creepy grin, and making bizarre, gut-busting music that goes oomph-a-doomph in the night. The one-man beat-boxing, harmonica-playing phenomenon has a new album coming out on March 22: Shake a Bone. The Harp Surgery’s Apprentice found him in the Blues Kitchen, North London, lurking behind a pair of sunglasses and a huge plate of Tex-Mex. Here’s what he had to say…

[You can also catch the second half of our interview here]

Tell us about the new album.
SoD: I recorded it in Chicago with [Steve] Albini. He’s an engineer, so he gets good sound and doesn’t make any suggestions. He has no opinion about anything. He refuses to give an opinion about the music at all. I could go in there and pee on myself and he’d make it sound… well, he’d record it well. But it would make a terrible record. He doesn’t care about making good records, just sonically good records, you know what I mean? He’s an engineer.

Have you had that privilege with all your albums, being able to make the decisions?
SoD: Yeah. I’d be happy maybe one day to work with some bossy guy. I’ve worked with bossy people before, it’s okay. You know, if they want to take things and move them around and add instruments and bring in back-up singers and make suggestions for how to fix a chorus, we could try that some day. But not right now. Completely selfish for this record.

So take us through the evolution of the Son of Dave sound. From the beginning when you cut out the backing band.
SoD: Well, it hasn’t really evolved. [Giggles and stuffs some food in his mouth.] Went busking because I was tired of making complicated recordings and taking them to wankers in offices. So I went busking, and I figured out in a day that I needed to do the beats with my mouth, so when I got back home I practiced, went out again… people liked it, but I got tired pretty quickly. i couldn’t do it for six or eight hours, so I remembered at home that I had a little cheap pedal in a box somewhere from my big band days. So I hauled that up. And then I laughed myself sick when I heard it, thinking ‘Oh good. I got something to do until I’m really, really old.’ Just the perfect recipe. Like this dip, it’s pretty good. Here, try it.

Don’t mind if I do. So, does gear talk interest you at all?
SoD: [Sounding very uninterested] Yeah, I don’t mind gear talk.

Are you not a gear guy at all?
SoD: I was never really up on it, but forced myself to catch up in the last couple of years. I take a very tiny amp and a DI so the sound man gets two signals – he gets the amp and he gets the clean signal from the DI… and then he can mix the two. You get more lows especially for the bass and beatbox and kick, and get more lows out of the direct signal than you do out of a little amp. Or even a big amp sometimes.

I used to use the bullets and Astatics, but I destroyed probably eight of them. I’ll go to hell for being an antique killer.

So what are you using now?
SoD: I use a really ugly one: Shure beta 57. It’s a very clean, excellent microphone and when you switch up the impedance it’s very very loud… So for any kind of tone you rely on your playing and the amplifier rather than the dirty mic sound. But I’ve been taking the guts out of 57s and, what are they called, Unidynes? I’ve been taking the guts out and trying to put them into bullet shapes, ‘cos the long shape is a pain for the harp player, and doesn’t have a particular look to it. But it screws with the sound. Just don’t bother. It’s hard to get it all out without wrecking it….

I feel kind of sleazy for asking this question, but what kind of harmonicas are you using?
SoD: Sleazy harmonicas! No, I’m using Seydel harmonicas, ‘cos they called me up and they wanted to give me a discount if they could put my name on their bloody website. At least they’re doing they’re homework and they’ve figured out who’s out playing concerts and impressing people with harmonica, whereas the old bloody… I won’t mention any names… you play all over the world and the fucking David Letterman show four times but Hohner never called me, wouldn’t do any kind of deal.

Check out the Harp Surgery’s interview with Jerry Portnoy.

Do you ever see yourself doing the sideman thing again, more traditional-style accompaniment?
SoD: No. No one can afford me. I’d do it for fun. I go into the studio all the time with people, either for friends, a buddy-deal, or the record companies bring me up and pay me.

Is that a matter of convenience?
SoD: It’s a matter of making a living. I have to do it on my own. It’s how I pay the bills. Not many people can afford to tour with a band. I mean, if you go out and you do 30 shows and you’re filling up rooms, you can make a lot of money. But it takes years to get there and you have to put up with a load of sweaty men in a van. I did my time, you know [drags on cigarette]

With Crash Test Dummies, yeah…
SoD: Exactly. There was a few years when I toured with Martina Topley-Bird as a sideman, that was cool. I was in the mood, then, to do it. But they paid well.

And here you’ve cut your overhead considerably as a one-man-band.
SoD: Yeah! If I can go play a gig a week somewhere and bring home £150, then I’m on my way to survival. I did that, and after a few shows I bumped it up and started getting paid 200, 300 quid, and so on and so on. It’s just little slow steps without risking too much. I’m opening for Iggy and the Stooges in France this summer. [Cackles]

Now I hear a message in a lot of your songs, comments about consumer society. The fact that it’s a jungle and we’re all going to get eaten alive someday or another. How much of that is a put-on and how much of it is genuine politics?
SoD: I like your question I guess, but I don’t know if it is politics to say that I don’t like your skinny Vogue models or your plastic crap that you’re trying to sell me. I don’t think of that as political. Well, in a way it is.

Well, in the sense that everything is political…
SoD: Yeah exactly. Well, if there are songs of mine that sound political, I apologise and will take them off the record… In the way that I don’t use any language of politics. I just talk about regular stuff. Try to keep the lyrics very very simple so that morons can understand them.

Well it seems to have worked. I got most of it.
SoD: Ha! Yeah, it’s good time music, it’s night-time music, it’s not for thinking. Leave that up to someone else.

Yeah, it’s a very primal sound. To what extent was it a conscious effort to make something new and break out of old clichés?
SoD: I’m always happy to destroy clichés in music when I’m aware of them, but at the same time I just limited myself to a harmonica and a shaker and a looping pedal so that’s going to dictate that it’s not going to be very complicated music. It’s going to be hooky and rhythmic and funny and sexy or something. So it just makes itself according to the ingredients and my personality. It’s not such a calculated response to any kind of music scene, this shit that they call blues.

Blues is becoming a very popular word these days. The word is, at least. But the problem is when Joe Regular comes into a posh blues club, he says ‘Ooh I don’t have any blues in my collection, I hear that’s cool now,’ and goes and gets a blues record. But they might only have bought one, because it’ll probably suck. They’ll get a BB King Greatest Hits and they’ll like it for a while but then they’ll get sick of guitar solos. Or they’ll get a Stevie Ray Vaughan album or this that and the other. What if they buy an Eric Clapton album? Then it’s over, they’ll never go near blues music again!

Check out the trailer for Son of Dave’s new album, Shake a Bone:

Don’t miss the next instalment of the Harp Surgery’s conversation with Son of Dave. He’ll be telling us more about beat-boxing, debauchery, and why he wears sunglasses at night.

This is part of the Harp Surgery’s Apprenticeship Blog with Murray.

Elwood the Apprentice in conversation with the undisputed harmonica queen of YouTube.

By turns bold as hell and surprisingly self-doubting, Christelle Berthon is one of the most closely watched harmonica players on the web (over 2 million pairs of eyeballs, according to her YouTube stats). She’s a different kind of harmonica hero: instead of gin-soaked juke joints where the smoke hangs low off the ceiling, she found fame playing to jam tracks in front of a web cam at home.

She took time out of her gruelling practice regime to tell us about her decision to dedicate herself to harmonica, and share some insights to her style and influences. And as we soon found out, chasing the dream ain’t easy.

It’s not in the Harp Surgery’s nature to be negative. The reason for that is the Good Doctor: he’s a relentlessly positive guy who’s always looking for the best in people. It’s kind of rubbing off on me. We try to dole out the best advice possible to users, but when it comes to reviewing the goods and services in the rest of the harmonica world, we often go by the “Elwood’s Mom” Policy: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. If someone isn’t worth our time, we’re more likely to hold our tongue and look the other way than strip ‘em naked and throw them into the flood lights, if you catch my meaning.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the best teachers who are using the web to broadcast their lessons. To whit: the recent emergence of a web-savvy harp enthusiast whose product invites you to “Learn Harmonica in 30 Days”. (See this MBH Forum discussion.)

It’s a great concept that’s been slickly produced, and he clearly knows how to tailor it for web… but he sounds like he’s only about a week ahead of his lessons, if you know what I’m saying. As an enthusiastic apprentice myself, I’m sympathetic. But when I watch Mr 30 Days’ videos, it’s never quite clear whether he’s sharing his own journey as a beginner player, or trying to push his lessons onto beginners who are still just a bit too wet behind the ears to know any better.

However, this isn’t a post to complain about our friend in the leather jacket. It’s about the general malaise of bad info out there. I subscribe to a Google Alert for harmonica related stuff, so I get sent a lot of links to questions posed on Yahoo! Answers by harmonica beginners. I never fail to be driven to an apoplectic rage by the wealth of ignorance in Yahoo! Answers, and most of the time answers seem to do more harm than good. When someone posts to ask what diatonic harmonica to get for her boyfriend, inevitably the first answer is something outlandish like, “Get a chromatic instead because diatonics break easily and are only meant for practice.”

You pretzel.

So how do you evaluate a harmonica teacher?
Unfortunately, beginners can’t always tell the difference between good harp and bad harp. That’s why so many of us were inspired to take up harmonica by Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey (yeah, I said it). There are tonnes of good teachers out there and you probably know where to find most of them. But in case you’d like to be doubly safe, these are guidelines to test a source’s credibility.

1) Start with the author
What tools do we have to evaluate an author’s credibility? Who is the author and what’s their background? Well, my posts fall under Harp Surgery’s “Apprenticeship Blog”, so that should tell you something about me. The Good Doctor’s biography says that he’s been playing for several decades and was at one point voted UK’s national harmonica champion, so it’d be fair if you valued his words more than mine. David Barrett, Joe Filisko, Adam Gussow and Jon Gindick all carry this kind of credibility proofing. Of course, there are some players who have had a harmonica for 30 years and are still finding their way through playing Jingle Bells, so that’s not the only criteria. Does the teacher have a long history of playing in bands and if so at what level? Did they ever produce an album or win a Grammy? Has the teacher produced a book? (Many, many great teachers have not produced a book, of course.)

2) Look for outside validation
Has any reputable third-party validated the source? For example, David Barrett’s series of harmonica books are endorsed by a wide range of teachers who stand to gain nothing from the endorsement. The Good Doctor (one of the many Barrett endorsees) is a regional representative for the National Harmonica League, so he has that institutional endorsement. When I stumbled on the Harp Surgery as a first-time visitor, I saw the site had earned praise from Jason Ricci and I immediately felt like it was the real deal. But who knows, maybe Jason Ricci is too liberal with his praise? Chris Michalek is one harp fundi who I know is not famous for shovelling praise where it doesn’t belong, so whenever he endorses a harp customiser (for example, Richard Sleigh and Joe Spiers) I don’t take it lightly.

But that isn’t fool proof. One of the best teachers I’ve met is a skinny, weather-worn guy who shows up at London Harmonicas. He plays unamplified, pre-war harmonica on an almost spiritual level, has an outstanding knack for translating his approach into beginner-speak, and it almost unheard of outside the London blues scene. So as a final step…

3) Perform the harmonica competency litmus test
These are two quick tests to see if a bloke is talking out his blowhole:

1) Someone who prefers the 3 blow to the 2 draw. That’s like preferring Clark Kent to Superman!

2) Someone who plays the opening riff to ‘Juke’ without splitting the octave. Correctly played, the last note of the riff is a 3-6 split and sometimes a 6-9 split.

Other than that, just go with your gut. If someone’s working for you, they’re working for you. So how did you choose your teacher?

Elwood is running the Apprenticeship Blog. Follow him on Twitter, if you like. And if you think he’s too harsh on amateur enthusiasts, see his very fond tribute to London Harmonicas. And if you’d like to see the perfect interaction between apprenticeship and experience, visit the MBH Forum.

As the world stumbles into a new decade, we at the Harp Surgery find ourselves contemplating the future. But we’re not thinking about jetpacks or three-course meals that you can take as a pill. No, we’re thinking about the future of the harmonica. Okay, jetpacks would also be pretty cool, but for his debut podcast, Elwood the Apprentice mumbles his way through five young players who are poised to become rising stars of the harmonica.

Elwood’s first podcast is a little ragged, but then so is he when you meet him. Here’s the tracklist:

1. Jay Gaunt: “Greensleeves” [traditional]
Age: 15
Gear: C harp in third position
Turf: Website
Home: USA

2. Nic Clark (with Boa & the Constrictors): “Early in the Morning” [John Lee Williamson]
Age: 14
Gear: C harp in second position; G harp in first position
Turf: Watch this space
Home: USA

3. Rachelle Plas: “I Feel Good” [James Brown]
Age: 17
Gear: G harp F harp in second position
Turf: MySpace
Home: France

4. Brandon Bailey: “Devil Take My Soul” [Son of Dave]
Age: 17
Gear: G harp in second position; Akai Headrush E2 pedal
Turf: YouTube
Home: USA

5. Will Pound: “Turkish Delight” [Will Pound]
Age: 22
Gear: Chromatic harp in C
Turf: MySpace
Home: UK

Stay tuned for the next Harp Surgery podcast, which will feature better production values and a gorgeous new weather girl. To request a theme or get yourself featured in the Harp Surgery podcast, give us a shout in the comment box below.

Elwood is running the Harp Surgery’s Apprenticeship blog

I’ve attended the London Harmonicas gatherings for the past two months and have really enjoyed it. There’s an excellent mix of players – a few who are navigating their first bends, a few who play real sweet and low, and most of us somewhere in between. There’s no official teacher and no elected leader, but a couple of the advanced players have stepped forward to lead us, Moses-like, to the promised land.

It’s egalitarian, it’s informal, and a fantastic place for any budding player like me to soak up some wisdom from a few seasoned players… and maybe even help a few fellow players out. A few weeks ago, for instance, I taught a guy how to bend his notes. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

So last week was the London Harmonica’s year-end performance. After weeks and months of meeting and jamming in the secretive little cellar beneath the Torriano Pub, we finally stepped into the public eye, above ground in the Old Red Lion pub in Islington. Half the pub was amateur harpers and their spouses and partners, and the other half was disinterested punters who came for a quiet pint and fell victim to our musical ambush.

We did a few ensemble numbers: an arrangement of ‘Soweto’, written by my compatriot Abdul Ibrahim, a botched attempted at ‘Mercy Mercy Mercy’ by Cannonball Adderley, and the Flintstones theme tune. There was something undeniably cartoonish about the whole thing: a dozen harp players of various shapes and sizes squeezed behind not-nearly-enough sound equipment, each playing a slightly different tune to the others. It was the open mic equivalent of a clown car.

After the ensemble pieces, the stage was open for freestyle harmonica performances. On show was a succession of wonderful players such as Joff Watkins and Phil Leiwy, but featuring a few of us bottom-dwellers too. Sure, there were some cringeworthy moments – particularly a few squawking attempts at much-loved Christmas carols. By the time I took to the stage, the non-harmonica part of the pub vacated the premises, many of them probably brandishing fresh new prejudices about harmonica and the dastardly wretches who play it. And I gotta to be honest; I don’t blame ‘em.

… But if I sound disapproving, I ain’t. True to the spirit of the collective, nobody was forced to play if they weren’t feeling up to it, and equally anyone was welcome to join in. Who am I to gripe about the sound equipment? It was a free concert, organised by a bunch of guys who could be off doing better things.

The truth is, it’s a trade-off. Yeah, we sucked pretty badly, but that’s how we learn, dammit. This is how the secrets of the trade get passed on. This is the future of harmonica-playing in England’s capital city. London Harmonicas provides a place where anyone can learn to blow harp, and they get a chance to be heard. They get a chance to squawk, to play a few bum notes, to make the mic shriek its feedback. It’ll piss off the punters, without a doubt, but you gotta do that if you’re training up an army of bitching harp players. In a few years, we novices in London Harmonicas won’t be squawking Christmas carols any more, we’ll be playing sweet and low.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Elwood is running the Harp Surgery’s Apprenticeship blog. Check the London Harmonicas for details of upcoming meetings. And hey, if you feel like playing a Christmas Carol, check Wilf’s recent post.