Acoustic Guitar
Acoustic Guitar
Meet the Acoustic Guitar Teaching Artists
Five awesome Teaching Artists—Isa Burke, Lisa Liu, Mamie Minch, Sean McGowan, and Thu Tran—want to help you grow as a guitarist!
They're sharing engaging insights and invaluable guitar wisdom each and every week in the Acoustic Guitar Patreon community. To celebrate the launch of this new series, we hosted a live hangout with the TAs. It was a whole lot of fun and featured songs, stories, and a window into the musical lives of these great guitarists. We hope you enjoy this replay of the event!
Join the Acoustic Guitar Patreon Community at the Supporter tier (or higher) to get the Teaching Artist benefits. That’s one new video lesson each week, plus virtual concerts and regular roundtable discussions with the TAs. You’ll also get instant access to the TAB and notation in our Song of the Month club, invitations to participate in live monthly workshops, and more.
Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Podcast. For this episode, we're sharing our recent Meet the Acoustic Guitar Teaching Artists Hangout. Our five teaching artists are Isa Burke, lisa Liu, mamie Minch, sean McGowan and Thu Tran, and they all want to help you grow as a guitarist. You can access exclusive lessons and be invited to future Hangouts when you become a supporter-level member of our Patreon community. You'll find more information about all the benefits of membership and more about each of the TAs in the show notes for this episode. Now let's tune in to hear some great music and stories.
Joey:So if you are just tuning in, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Joey Lusterman. I'm the creative director for Acoustic Guitar. I'm joined here by Thu Tran, Isa Burke, sean McGowan, lisa Liu and Mamie Minch, who are our five acoustic guitar teaching artists, and they are here today to talk to you a little bit about what is up with the Acoustic Guitar Teaching Artist Program. What's up with them? They're going to play some music and maybe give us a little bit of. They're definitely going to give us a little bit of their musical history, a little bit, maybe a couple tips on playing guitar, based on what's going on today and I am blabbering again and I am so sorry, but that's just how it's going to be. So thank you all for coming and we're going to start by introducing everybody. So you've heard me introduce myself a few times now.
Joey:I'm the creative director for Acoustic Guitar. What does that mean? It means that I take a lot of photos and videos of guitars and guitarists and lessons and performances. If you've ever watched an Acoustic Guitar session, you haven't seen me, but I've been behind the camera for over a hundred of those. I also did all the layouts for the books and some of the magazines and all sorts of fun acoustic guitar stuff. And you'll probably recognize some of these other names here of our acoustic guitar teaching artists. And let's start with introductions. Sean, I'm going to start with you, if you can unmute yourself and say hello to everybody.
Sean:Hey everybody, so nice to be here and with these incredible colleagues, and thanks for tuning in or watching this later. If you're going to tune in on YouTube, I'm guessing my name is Sean and I literally listen to and love all different styles of music. I know that's kind of a cliche answer or response, but it's true and I have a 16-year-old son currently, so we're listening to a lot of punk old school punk at the moment and going to punk shows in Denver, where I live. I've been teaching guitar for quite a long time various styles finger style, jazz, composition theory. I've been a professor of music at the University of Colorado, denver for 18 years now and I've been writing articles for acoustic guitar for 21 years now. So it's been really fun working with AG over the years.
Sean:And yeah, I think we all love to do summer camps as well, and over the years I've taught at a bunch of summer camps, which are always fun. I've taught at Alex Degrassi's Mendocino Guitar Workshop. I taught at the Swannanoa Gathering for 13 years and Frank Vignola's Big Jersey Camp and it's really fun kind of toggling back and forth. I like to live simultaneously in jazz circles as well as acoustic circles and it's a lot of fun. So, yeah, thanks for joining us today.
Joey:All right, thanks, sean Isa. Want to do a little introduction on yourself, please.
Isa:Yes, hello everyone. My name is Isa Burke and I am coming to you from my very recent home of Durham, north Carolina. But I'm originally from Maine and, yeah, I also, like Sean, play and listen to a big variety of different styles of music. I grew up in the kind of traditional folk music world. I grew up going to fiddle camps and my dad used to play for Contra Dances. My dad also. His name was David Surratt and he wrote for acoustic guitar a bit. So I'm an acoustic guitar nevo baby, that's what I'm saying, but I'm very pleased to be here and, yeah, so I grew up in kind of folk world.
Isa:Both my parents were guitar teachers, so that kind of came naturally to me as well, and I also play fiddle and so I've been playing and teaching guitar and fiddle for a bunch of years. I used to have a band called Lula Wiles and for the last few years I've been mostly playing as a hired side musician with a lot of different bands and artists. I've spent a couple years touring with Aoife O'Donovan and right now I have been playing with Lindsay Lou and the Mountain Goats, carsey, blanton, darlingside. Those are kind of the main ones recently and I also play electric guitar and I kind of can't I can't commit to any one instrument or style of music, and a lot of. I think what is most exciting to me is music that blends a lot of different styles and influences and yeah, so that's kind of that's kind of the deal with me and I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Joey:Great. Thank you so much. Okay, moving right along to, can you do a little introduction please?
Thu:Yeah, I'm so pleased to be among this super diverse and talented group of musicians. My name's Tu Tran group of musicians. My name's Tu Tran. I play in a band, a duo called the Singer and the Songwriter. I've been not to call you out, sean this is meant to be a compliment, but I've been playing guitar for about as long as Sean's been writing for Acoustic Guitar Magazine. It turns out acoustic guitar magazine. It turns out. And yeah, I actually am a self-taught player.
Thu:My parents are Vietnamese immigrants and so I didn't grow up with any really guitar-based music around the house. And in high school I decided my friend had a Yamaha guitar that had no strings on it and he was looking to get rid of it and so I took it to. I got it. It had a big crack in the neck and I took it to a guitar center and they strung it for me and I taught myself how to play.
Thu:And I think my guitar and music journey is such that, like I only picked up the guitar to learn how to play a few, my goal, my like ultimate goal was to play a few chords and strum along while I sang some songs and through just curiosity and how much like, how much I love the sound of the instrument, I just kept going down the rabbit hole of like eventually learning uh, you know theory and um, I just never imagined that I'd be playing, I'd be improvising or playing solo lines or doing finger style or anything that I love doing, which is like all now, all styles of guitar, and just because it's, it's just continually kind of roped me back in, no loyalty to any lineage or of guitar style or guitar learning. So I'm kind of exploratory in my style and I've also been teaching for a few years. I teach private lessons and I've taught at Miles of Music Camp over you know you've done there too, so that's me.
Joey:So pleased to be here. Great, thank you so much, and we're going to go over to Mamie now. If you could please introduce yourself.
Mamie:Sure Joy. Hey everyone, my name is Mamie Minch. I'm coming to you from New York City, lower East Side. This is such an inspiring and awesome group of artists musicians to be part of, so thanks for having me.
Mamie:Yeah, my background is that I grew up as a weird teenager listening to a lot of really old music on cassettes in my bedroom, picking out guitar parts. I really felt like acoustic blues was something that I'd I like, sort of cracked open a box and I didn't know anybody else who liked it and I thought it was like my thing. And I was 11 and 12 and it really was kind of my thing, and so I started picking this stuff out. My parents were, you know, supportive. I ended up teaching myself a lot of stuff and then getting homespun tapes with happy traum, which was like one of my adult um, deep pleasures was co-teaching with happy trauma at different guitar camps, and every time I saw him I would tell him the story over and over. Um, so yeah, anyway, um, fast forward. I went to art school, all the things. Now I'm, uh, working luthier, uh, repair and restoration luthier.
Mamie:In new york city. I have a shop I've written for Acoustic Guitar Magazine. I had basically like a write-in advice column called Ask the Expert, which was a flattering title and mostly told people to humidify their guitars as much as possible. That was mostly my message. Yeah, and my shop is women-owned and run At this point. I teach private lessons, I teach a lot of guitar camps, I organize and run the Ashokan Acoustic Guitar Week and it's a lot of work but it's really fun.
Mamie:What else I mostly play? I'm interested in music that sounds a little bit out of place and time, so that's what really kind of lights me up. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music. I love that Tu was saying that he's non-denominational and I feel a bit like that. Like this week I've seen like an Iranian trance show, a punk show and like a French chanson show. So that's the other great part about living in New York city it's all available to us. Anyway, blah, blah, blah. I'll be doing videos that have to do with musical stuff and guitar care and maintenance and knowledge. So hopefully that would empower people who are interested in guitar and enjoy guitar in a new way for owning this like special object that you'd like to maintain and really take care of so that's me.
Lisa:Thank you so much. That's great, lisa. Please if you could introduce yourself, sure, hey everybody, I'm lisa lu and like else here, I've had a really diverse background. I grew up in LA, I spent 24 years in New York and now recently have moved back to California and now I'm based in San Francisco. And my musical journey started when I was six, you know, child of Chinese immigrants.
Lisa:So my mom started me in classical piano lessons and then, at the age of 13, I really wanted to play guitar and at the time my dad was working at Yamaha and so I begged and I begged and I begged him to get me a guitar and he gave me like the basic entry model and from there I, you know, learned three chords and was playing folk tunes and um, and then, when I moved to New York, uh, at 21, that's when, uh, my musical journey really, really opened up and and I went on a lot of different uh styles. I first was playing in a lot of post-punk bands and then, um, probably about 10 years ago, I I wanted to come back and to my, my first love of jazz, and so, uh, put my 10,000 hours in and I've been playing Manoosh, gypsy jazz guitar. So that's what I've, uh, for the last 10 years I've been doing. And then recently, uh, when I was at the Rocky Mountain Arch Top Guitar Festival, I met Roger Sadowski about two or three years ago and he put one of his guitars into my hands it was the Jim Hall Arch Top Guitar model and that really opened me up into straight ahead into bebop. So you know, the evolution of the musical journey continues and as such, I was asked by the Santa Rosa Junior College Jazz Big Band to arrange a couple of tunes for them and I performed them last week and that was a really amazing milestone, as you know, to be able to work with a big band and arrange for the first time.
Lisa:It was a dream come true and I literally just watched some YouTube videos and kind of winged it. And luckily I had a really great friend here. His name is Will Byrne, he's a saxophone player and just showed me the ropes of transposition and all the different instruments. So you know, it just kind of continuously evolves and it feels really great to be back here in California and refinding the West Coast California self. And you know I'm a swimmer and I get to swim in the ocean every day, and that's very much a part of my practice as well. I feel like swimming and music are very much related with the flow. So that's what's going on. I've also taught at a bunch of acoustic and guitar camps, such as Django in June, the Rocky Mountain Artshub Guitar Festival, and this summer I'll be teaching at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, week three in August. So that's what's going on.
Joey:Great.
Joey:Thank you all so much for that, and I feel like I may have neglected to tell everybody in the audience what these people are doing. So the Teaching Artists Program is going to be taking place on the Acoustic Guitar Patreon page, and what it is is a new lesson every week from one of these five great artists video lessons, some with tab and notation. We're going to be covering lots of different things. As you can tell by their backgrounds, they each have a unique approach to guitar and areas of interest, obviously. So you can expect to get some lessons on fingerstyle blues, rhythm playing, of course, some music theory, some jazz, travis picking, and that's just in the first month. So lots more after that. So that's again. That's what we're all doing here, and just everybody who's watching. Thank you for watching. And I also forgot to say if you have any questions, please type them in the chat and we'll get to them towards the end of this during our question and answer period. So thank you for tuning in Now where we have reached Ooh, I forgot to do my snazzy presentation here.
Joey:Hang on a sec. Ooh, look at that. So that's what we're doing the acoustic guitar teaching artists Yay, so welcome. We said that. What is this? We just said that great lightning round. Okay so, this is how we're going to get to know everybody. I'm going to ask a bunch of quick, one or two sentence questions, brief questions and answers for all of our teaching artists. Now, let's get this out of here, okay so, and then we're just gonna go around the horn. Everybody can unmute themselves and chime in um.
Thu:First question, I'm gonna direct it to two, and then we'll go from there to what is an album you've been listening to on repeat recently. You know, um, I have the last album that I had on repeat. It was maybe, it's like, released like last year's adrian lanker's um bright future album, um, and since then I've been jumping around because I've been, uh, learning, I've been trying to teach myself different things and right now I'm working on ted green's solo guitar album, trying to slowly learn um ted green stuff. So it's been that, but before then it was all adrian lanker great, maybe album you've been listening to on repeat um, hurry for the riffraff.
Mamie:The past is still alive. It's so good, yeah. I'm writing is so great, yeah great album.
Joey:Uh, alinda was on the cover of acoustic guitar a few issues ago. Talking about that record I got to go to their two of their shows and take the photos for that story. So really cool. They are an awesome person and great musician.
Lisa:So, yes, lisa album you've been listening to on repeat barelli legrand's storyteller, and he's an amazing minutiae guitar player, but this album is really, uh, he's playing acoustic guitar and playing jazz and it's fusion and it's swing and it's bebop and it's absolutely killer.
Sean:So uh, I love his first track off the album so sweet.
Sean:I was just gonna say if you haven't checked out his duo recordings with savan lu, two of the all-time greats, those are just so good. But I've been on kind of a classical guitar binge recently. I saw David Russell in concert a couple of weeks ago in Denver. It was just unbelievably phenomenal. He's just such an incredible musician and the repertoire was all Spanish and it was a multimedia show. So since then I've been listening to a lot of him doing a deep dive with. There's this incredible Chinese classical guitarist that I've fallen in love with, named, if I'm pronouncing it correct, shufei Yang. And boy she's incredible. She does Brazilian repertoire, spanish repertoire, the standard classical repertoire, but she also has a record of, like it's called, sketches of China, where she can make her guitar sound like any instrument. It's really incredible. And another one I've been really loving is Evangelina Moscardi, and in my opinion she's like the world's foremost interpreter of Bach and Weiss, and she actually plays the lute as well as guitar. So yeah, I've been going down the rabbit hole of classical.
Joey:Great Issa album you've been listening to on repeat.
Isa:Yeah, I think the album I've been most listening to on repeat lately is Sam Amidon's new album, salt River. He is one of my just all time favorite musicians, bar none. He does a lot of like traditional folk music, but interpreted in like a really kind of unique and experimental way, and I just I will listen to anything he does forever.
Joey:I was listening to that this morning. Nice, okay, switching it up. Mamie, what is the guitar you dream about owning or what guitar in your arsenal is your favorite?
Mamie:Whoa, that's a big one for a gal like me. Um, I'd love to have an original gibson advanced jumbo from the 30s. It's a big, fat rosewood dreadnought. They're really rare and they smell incredible. Have you guys ever gotten up close with one of those? You must smell old guitars if you are to really experience them, so you get a whiff of it and it's like rosewood perfume. They have this beautiful little stiletto heel and they just sound like, um, there's just like a lot happening. They move air. You know there's yeah, so probably that one. But this is my 30s um national. That's, uh, I really love again, it's like a big growly sound. It's more of a warm sounding national and less of a metallic sounding national, even though it is metal. Yeah, I like that. I love a lot of guitars, I'm easy.
Joey:Sean same question.
Sean:Yeah, me too. I would have to say like an old Gibson L5, you know like would be wonderful. Of course those are like well priced, beyond my limit. But I do have a friend, a collector, here in Denver who has a 1927 L5, same year as Eddie Lang's, and a few years ago I did a concert tribute to Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti and he loaned me that guitar for a few months. So that was really cool, so that would be pretty nice. But I'm really lucky. I have a lot of really nice arch top guitars.
Sean:This one that I'm playing right now I thought it would be fun to share. It's not mine, it's owned by the Arch Top Foundation, but it's on loan for a little while. And this is by this incredible luthier in California named Tyler Wells of LHT Guitars, and I don't know how well you can see it, but this is his latest contribution to the Blue Guitars Project, which was something that was from the 90s that put a lot of contemporary luthiers on the map. People like you know, I mean Bill Cummins and Linda Manzer and Brad Nickerson and all you know. Benedetto was part of that, and so in the past few years, via the Rocky Mountain Arch Top Festival, the Arch Top Foundation has commissioned new luthiers, so this was part of the batch, along with Megan Wells' new blue guitar and Mario Beauregard's, and so Wyatt Wilkie is contributing to that and what's really cool, instead of these just hidden away in a private collection or a museum or something somewhere.
Sean:A museum would be fine, but somebody's closet would be terrible way in a private collection or a museum or something somewhere. A museum would be fine, but somebody's closet would be terrible. The Arch Top Foundation is generously loaning out these instruments to a lot of players in New York and elsewhere, so I'm really stoked to be able to play this. This is a really cool ergonomic arch top that's multi-scaled, and I've never played a multi-scale instrument before. But a lot of times people will ask is it hard? And my answer answer is as long as you don't look down, it's okay, but it's actually a lot easier than it looks when you're looking at it, you know so, yeah, so this is tyler wells's blue feud guitar great, and two dream guitar or one you cherish the most um yeah, dream sean, exactly sean's uh dream guitar.
Thu:Gibson l5 from late 20s Eddie Lang style is like. There's some very similar at Schoenberg guitars over here in the Bay. You can go and admire it from in person. Also, joey, I don't know if lightning round having guitarists talk about guitar is lightning round at all could ever be. My, my like cherished guitar is behind me. Here is. It's a 1949 Sherwood Deluxe which was like K guitars. They made them to sell in like Montgomery Awards catalogs and it's been Frankensteined by I bought it Frankensteined by Ruben Cox down in old style at old style guitars down in LA, and so it's got 60s gold foil pickups on it and a bunch of weird things about it that sound really cool.
Joey:Great. And if you want to learn more about Ruben Cox, head on over to acousticguitarcom. We have a nice little profile on him. Lisa, if you could tell me your dream guitar or the one in your possession you cherish the most?
Lisa:Wow, Well, I've been super lucky where you know, as I think.
Lisa:I think instruments are. They're mystical, they find you, you know, and I've been really fortunate to play and be in positions in some really amazing guitars and you know, I always feel that I'm the student, like the guitar is teaching me all the time. So you know, the first guitar that really taught me and I had to rework my technique into minutiae is made by a French luthier named Jean-Noel Le Breton and it's very classic. It's very classic Selmer style. But he was also really innovative and made a classical bracing on the sound hole to the end of the guitar. So I tend to love guitars that have a little bit of like old school and then new school technology or design, and so, for instance, this one this is made by a Montreal luthier, it's a Selmer style guitar. It's made by Larkspur Luthier, by this guy named Josh Greenberg. But I was really, really I was doing a lot of travel and flying on planes and so I wanted a neck that could detach and so he made this with a stopper style neck and there's a bolt here and then if you take the bolt out, the neck comes off and and I'm able to to get it on the plane.
Lisa:Um, another cherished guitar of mine is Roger Sadowski's Jim Hall model, which you know. Playing any of Roger's instruments I feel like defies genre. You have anybody from like Jim Hall to Radiohead playing his music and I think I think that really is a testament to just Roger who is so broad, broad as far as wants. I have this amazing Santa Cruz guitar OM model, and I'm very lucky to be an artist ambassador for them, but I'd love to get one with a cutaway. Sean mentioned Megan Wells. She's an amazing arch top builder here in Sonoma and she's just magical arch top builder here in Sonoma and she's just magical. She's. Every guitar of hers there's. You know, you play, you play her her guitars and, uh, there's a. I don't know what she does, but the feeling that you get out of it is, it's very um, it transports you. So you know there's a long wait list for Megangan, but you know, if things align, I'd love to get one of her guitars too.
Joey:So those, those are my two wants another luthier who you can read more about on in a profile on acoustic guitarcom. Uh, isa, if you want to tell us about your dream guitar or most cherished guitar in your inventory yes, um, I'm gonna.
Isa:I'm gonna make this actual lightning round. My dream guitar is. I'm not a huge nerd about years, but like I played a couple old Gibson J45s that set my heart aflutter. And right now I'm playing an old Gibson, but a small old Gibson. This is a LG3 from 1957 and it is my BFF.
Joey:All right, okay, next one Lightning round Two what's your favorite tuning? Have to go standard. All right, sean favorite tuning.
Sean:Standard. But a close runner up would be the low tuning that was just in last month's issue, which is low to high, c, g and then standard the rest of the way D, g, b, e and that gives you, like a cello-like tuning, fifths in the bottom and it's a common Hawaiian slack key tuning. That one's a good one.
Joey:Yeah, there's a great lesson from Sean on that acousticguitarcom right now Brand new, very popular good tuning. Okay, mamie favorite tuning.
Mamie:I love Standard but probably Open D.
Joey:Lisa favorite tuning.
Isa:Standard.
Joey:Isa.
Isa:Drop D.
Joey:All right, okay, lightning round, sean. What's your favorite meal to cook? Oh, toast, lisa, favorite thing to cook.
Lisa:I'm a real big fan of the slow cooker. I like things really, really cooked, so usually I just do like a Provencal chicken in the slow cooker for eight hours.
Joey:Nice Isa favorite thing to cook.
Isa:Right now it's a smoothie, because my mom got me a really good blender for Christmas and so I've been using that pretty much every day.
Mamie:I just got back from a trip to southern India and I took a cooking class while I was there and I'm crazy for coconut rice and a lot of these like dry curries that they make there. So right now it's um, it's like a vegetable curry all right.
Thu:Two favorite thing to cook uh comfort meal is gonna be heinanese chickens, just poached chicken, and chicken with the uh stock chicken stock rice with uh ginger fish. That sounds good.
Mamie:When can we come over?
Joey:Oh, you're muted, but I'm guessing you said anytime, yes, anytime. Feel free to tune the lightning down a little bit and extrapolate on this one, but if we could go around and hear about a favorite memory from a music workshop or a music camp or a music festival that you either attended or taught at, and, issa, if we could start with you?
Isa:Yeah, so Tu mentioned Miles of Music, which is an amazing camp in New Hampshire that takes place on an island in the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee, and I first went there as a camper when I was I think it was like after my first year of college and then since 2018, I think I've been teaching there a number of years, and it's just a number. A number of years, um, and it's it's just a really, really special place. It's kind of based on the model of like traditional folk music camps, but there's a lot of all different kinds of music there. It's kind of like, if you put like traditional fiddle tune camp and like rock camp in a blender, uh, and put it on an Island, it's really, it's really magical. Um, a blender and put it on an island, it's really magical.
Isa:And a number of years ago, one night, there was a bunch of us wanted to play some old time tunes and we kind of wanted to like keep it to a sort of small number of people, so we wanted to find somewhere to play.
Isa:That was like a little bit out of the way, um, and so we went into the boathouse and like climbed into a motorboat and started playing old time tunes and um dinty child who's a member of the band session Americana and he's like one of the main guys who runs miles of music. Um, he came upon us, uh, playing, and he's the off-season manager of the island. He's like the reason that the camp happens on that island. Um, so he came upon us playing tunes and we were like mid-tune and he just like climbed into the boat, started up the boat and drove us out into the middle of the lake and we were just playing tunes under the stars and we went on a little little cruise, um, and we were like going past these people's like vacation homes and they were like sitting out on their docks, like this like boat full of people passes by them playing tunes. Um, so that was really magical and will stay with me forever that sounds great.
Joey:All right sean favorite musical memory from a camp, workshop, workshop or festival.
Sean:There's so many. I think any camp is going to have at least one incredible memories, but I remember one jam session. This made me think of it listening to Issa's story. It's true a lot of times at various camps maybe the teachers will try to get away and have their own little jams and find a private place on campus. So one year when I was at the Swannanoa Gathering, we found this front porch and a bunch of us started jamming.
Sean:And one of the things that's really great about the Swannanoa Gathering Guitar Week is that it's, you know, it's non-denominational in the sense that it's all about guitar, so all genres are welcome. So as a result, you have an amazing cast of faculty people from all different styles, but we seem to have a common bond with, like swing tunes or Django tunes, like everybody can play in that if they like to improvise. So there's a bunch of us just playing on this porch somewhere, and I think it was like me I mentioned names just because they're friends of a lot of people here tuning in and also the TAs here, but it was like me and Grant Gordy and Greg Ruby, clive Carroll was there, hiroyo Skimoto and Gonzalo Bergara, who's this really great Roma-style player from South America. So we're in the woods of North Carolina and there's bugs everywhere and there's spiders everywhere and they're like big spiders, like I'm just hanging out on the spider webs at night, kind of thing, you know. And so we're, we're playing and we're just trading solos and and and Grant's take Grant Gordy is taking a solo and he's got his eyes closed.
Sean:He's kind of into it and just at that moment, like out of nowhere, right behind his shoulder, this just enormous spider shows up and then starts like kind of making its way. And so forgive the accent, but Gonzalo Bergara, this is in his South American accent. I just mentioned this because this is a funny part of the story. He goes Grant, grant, big, big spider, grant, big spider, grant back back, big spider back, and grant kind of opens his eyes. He's like no, I don't know any big spider back tunes. It was a pretty funny moment oh, that's hilarious.
Joey:Okay, thank you. The spider went away, just for the end.
Sean:He wasn't. It didn't land on him, he went the other direction.
Joey:Grant is still alive and playing music. Lisa, if you could share a favorite memory from a camp or a work.
Lisa:Oh, wow. Well, this was just recently. I was at the Rocky Mountain Arts Shop Festival in September September, and it just happened to be over my I love tacos and so, uh, everyone, the everyone just chipped in and and uh, broke out into happy birthday for me, and then we had a taco party, a taco party and a birthday cake and we all just like, played and ate tacos and and that was definitely, um, uh, a real, a real highlight, as I was doing a lot of traveling and getting able to, to spend, spend my birthday with with really great players. And uh, another one was actually with with greg ruby it was a couple years ago and and, uh, he asked me to play with in his band in Django Fest Northwest and that happens in Whidbey Island in Washington, and it was my first time it was a few years ago going up there and it's absolutely stunning, it's beautiful and and then you know there are all these you know separate private jams that were happening and I was able to to find, like the women in non-binary jam and then get to meet all the players there, and that was that was super cool and just it was really inspiring to to see, to see everyone you know, kicking ass and playing really really well and and then, um, so yeah, those, those are my.
Lisa:Those are my two really great memories.
Joey:Great. Thank you, Mamie, if you could share your favorite memory from a workshop or festival or camp.
Mamie:Yeah, sure thing I love these stories. By the way, this has been a lot of fun to listen to. I have a short one, and you know, one of the things that I love about playing music and playing this kind of music and in this sort of like non-hierarchical way where we all hang around with each other is that I get to share space and time with like great old guys. So one of my favorite great old guy players was Guy Davis. You guys know him. I think he would be okay with me saying that he's probably 70 something now, and so I hired him for this guitar camp that I organized. The Ashokan camp was a couple of years ago and he lives in the Bronx.
Mamie:So I'm driving up and I think, okay, I haven't really hung out with this guy before he seems I don't know how he's going to be, what's it going to be like? What am I going to, what kind of music am I going to play in the car Driving Guy Davis three hours upstate? So go get him, him at the Bronx, and I come up with this cool idea I'm in an all-woman Tom Waits cover band that travels in Europe. It's one of the more random things that I do? We don't impersonate Tom Waits, we just like redecorate the songs because the songwriting is so good.
Mamie:So I have this cool album of John Hammond, the blues guy, covering Tom Waits tunes, and it came out in 2000 or something, I you know it's. It turned me on to a lot of songs I had didn't know before. So I'm playing this and I pick up Guy Davis and he gets in the car and he's a little bit gruff and I don't know if he's like that or if he's in a mood or what. So I turn on the music and we're sort of trekking along for a minute or two, not long and he goes is that John Hammond? And I said yeah, and he goes. Huh, he turns it down and he picks up his phone. John, how's it going, you know?
Sean:oh, I was just thinking about you.
Mamie:Yeah, no, how's your wife? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he hangs up and turns it back up and we're driving on the highway. I'm like, did you just call John Hammond from my car, you know? And he says yeah, he's a really good friend of mine. And so then it broke the ice and we were hanging out and so I feel like I made the right choice.
Joey:That's great. Thank you for sharing All right two.
Thu:Favorite moment from a music festival, camp or workshop I'm going to. It's so funny because everybody's such great stories about like all these moments outside of the camp curriculum and my one of my favorite memories is just actually the curriculum itself. It was at miles of music camp and they there was. I think in 2020.
Thu:We started this thing called a challenge accepted, which was like they would post a little song writing prompt every morning on the bulletin board and by late, you know, five o'clock later that day, you just come and you share what you wrote.
Thu:And so one year after that, when I was, I got to teach and facilitate that, that sort of daily workshop and the prompt that I had come up with was write a bad song, write an intentionally bad song, and just what everybody shared was so hilarious and also very interesting and good. You know what I mean. It's like to try and once you try to write any song, right, if you have something in your mind, even if you're like I'm gonna pick all the worst tropes, but the intentionality of trying to compose stuff that you hate, but you've just intentionally done it, it just comes together and it's like it was kind of interesting actually and uh, it was really, really fun and um, we ended up um, the a group of folks ended up, uh, continuing on this tradition off season. So there's an online version called the Imperfectionist Songwriting Society. It's all like prompt based composition and songwriting. That's been a really, really wonderful community to be part of.
Joey:Great. Thank you all so much. Okay, we're going to do one more question in the lightning round and then we're going to switch over to playing, hearing and playing some music. So last question and, mamie, we're going to start with you what's a music or method or song book that you have returned to the most?
Mamie:Oh, what a great question. You know I've recently come back around to this great book by gosh it's not right here, but it's called it's Country Blues Guitar and it's basically like a repertoire book. It's 200 songs or something Country Blues Guitar. I got it when I was a teenager. I loved it, kind of wore it out. All the pages were falling out and I stuck it in a box and it came back out. I am really interested in rethinking old songs and taking things that are familiar or almost in our sort of cultural DNA and thinking about them again from a modern, feminist, you know, perspective. So I yeah. That may not be exactly what your question was, but that's one that I found myself literally picking back up after 25 years of, you know, getting it for the first time.
Joey:That's what my question was. Thank you, I'll have to hear, maybe cover, one of those songs in a lesson in the future. All right, sean. What's your most read or recently revisited method book, song, book, music book?
Sean:My favorite is just the guitar book by Pierre Bensoussan and I have both the English version and the French version and I just love it because it's so artistic and written in such a unique way, especially at the time because I think it was published in maybe 1980 or early 80s at the time, because I think it was published in maybe 1980 or early 80s. So I've had that book and it's just, it's really delightful because it's got poetry and art and recipes in there as well as his composition. So yeah, it's fun for me to just to drop into Dadgad and try playing some of his music and just kind of living with that book. I love it.
Joey:Great Lisa favorite song book music book, method book.
Lisa:Wow. Well, you know I just did. I think my kickoff video, my teaching artist video, was the Segovia Scales. So that's what I warm up with every time I play and I feel like I'm hearing harmony and just getting the physicality of playing the guitar happening and hearing the major scale and then the melodic minor scale and the natural minor scale, and I just feel like it's just more. It preps my brain and warms my body up to get into music mode. So that's part of my daily practice and I would say that's something I return to all the time.
Joey:Great Issa.
Isa:I've been thinking this whole time about what I will say in response to this question, because I don't really use books to learn music very often, Um, I really just learn by listening to music, um, and I really it's. It's when I talk to other guitar teachers I'm like, oh right I. I like I'm sort of shocked by the own degree to which I don't use like anything that's written down ever. Um, but if we're thinking about like the proverbial songbook in the sense of like a certain artist's repertoire, um, there's a songwriter named Connie Converse, um, who, yay, got some Connie Converse heads in the group. We love to see it.
Isa:She was this incredible singer songwriter kind of before the term singer, songwriter was really part of the common parlance and she wrote these like. She was an incredible guitar player, wrote these like super bizarre songs that are like really kind of sweet and interesting and sound super classic in some ways but also sound like they're from another planet. And I feel like anytime that I am not feeling super inspired. If I find a Connie Converse song and learn to play it, that always kind of like gets me back into the zone of my guitar and music in general.
Joey:Great, Well, sounds like we have some research to do. Two same question.
Thu:I have considered. The Lilies by Connie Congress is just such an inspiring song. It's a great pick, isa. I have two books. One is called Practicing A Musician's Return to Music by Glenn Kurtz. It's actually more of a memoir, but it's such a beautiful and inspiring book about how to practice, what the purpose of practicing is and how really all music making is. About learning how to learning your own relationship with the art of practicing. And I returned to it, I reread it all the time, just because it's really meditative, it's beautifully written. And then the other one is Effortless Mastery by Kenny Warner. Just like really got me out of a. You know, when I started touring I started to feel a lot of anxiety and tension and I just could not play or could not enjoy playing, and that book really gave me some tools on how to, yeah, get right with performing.
Joey:Great. Thank you all very much. Okay, that concludes the lightning round. I think that counts as lightning. There were some quick answers in there, lots of back and forth. That's what we want. So thank you all so much for being part of that, and now we're going to move forward into the making some noise part of this section, which is music. So yay, make some noise.
Sean:Okay.
Joey:Thank you. Does anybody want to go first, or shall I start pointing my finger? Okay, I'm going to start pointing my finger. Sean, you've got your guitar. You're the only one with the guitar on right now, so you're going to go first.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right you hear that, okay, assuming. Yeah, okay, do, do, do, do, do. Thank you. Do, do, do, do, do, all right.
Sean:Let's see Trying to keep it down, let's see Trying to keep it going.
Joey:Not a great, yeah. What was the name of that tune?
Sean:Oh, that was a jazz standard by Harry Warren called there Will Never Be Another you.
Joey:I agree with the sentiment, sean. There will never be another you either, but there will be someone up next. Mamie, do you want to play next?
Mamie:All right, Okay, now for something completely different. Yeah, how's this? Can better Okay cool.
Speaker 3:Alright. Oh, I have lost my one child. I'm afraid it's a long time. You know we'd prefer the silent past to the present. It's far with my mother and his fortified body Once I had my wounds, for my tear drops.
Speaker 3:Once I had a room. That's far from lost, but he did freely spend the night. Tossin' is, oh, the blackest ground I've ever felt. He would surely turn to light, oh, I found the right to get back, but I gave it to him. I forget my feet. My day will turn over. My day will turn to gold, oh. I've had my fill Stand at the end of my feet Next to him, laying by him, so I leave him asleep. All that he needs is love to live, and is love to live, oh.
Joey:Thank you very much. What was the name of that song?
Mamie:Fortified Wine Blues, and I wrote it when I was a security guard at the Met Museum. Oh wow, yeah, I had a lot of time with my thoughts.
Joey:I'll bet what wing were you in?
Mamie:All wings, but mostly European paintings.
Joey:Cool, all right, isa, you're up next. If mostly European paintings Cool, all right, isa, you're up next if you're ready.
Isa:Yeah, I think I'm going to make a last-minute change of plans. I have a little bit of a cold so I wasn't going to sing, but I brought up Connie Converse and people got excited about it, so I feel like I will do up Connie Converse and people got excited about it, so I feel like I will do a Connie Converse song. And, uh, any of you who've never heard me sing before, this is not what it normally sounds like, um, but this is one of my uh favorites of hers. Um, and it's called, uh, talking like parentheses Two Tall Mountains.
Isa:In between two tall mountains there's a place they call lonesome. Don't see why they call it lonesome. I'm never lonesome when I go there. See that bird sitting on my windowsill Well, he's saying whip or will all the night through. See that brook running by my kitchen door Well, it couldn't talk no more if it was you. Up that tree. There's sort of a squirrel thing. Sounds just like we did when we were quarreling. In the yard I keep a pig or two. They drop in for dinner like you used to do. I don't stand any need of company With everything I see talking like you. Up that tree. There's sort of a squirrel thing. Sounds just like we did when we were quarreling. You may think you left me all alone, but I can hear you talk without a telephone. I don't stand any need of company With everything I see Talking like you. See that bird sitting on my windowsill well, he's saying whippoorwill all the night through just whippoorwill, all the night through.
Isa:In between two tall mountains, there's a place they call lonesome. Don't see why they call it lonesome. I'm never lonesome. Now I live there.
Joey:Beautiful. Thank you so much for playing that and singing. It sounded really nice, I wouldn't have known you had a cold if you hadn't prefaced it. Thank you, okay, two, it's your war. Up now, please.
Thu:Awesome, Wow. This one's called Future. This is an original composition of mine in Issa's Favorite Tuning drop D guitar solo do Thank you.
Speaker 3:guitar solo do do Thank you.
Joey:Great. Thank you so much for playing that. All right, Lisa, you're up next, please.
Lisa:All right, Lisa, you're up next, please. All right, here we go. Thank you.
Joey:Thank you All right, excellent, what was the name of that song, lisa?
Lisa:Oh, that was a composition by Django Reinhardt called Duke and Dookie and he named it after two kittens after he went on tour with Duke Ellington as an homage to Duke Ellington Right on Sounded great.
Joey:Thanks everybody, so much for playing, and we have now reached the point of the event where we're coming up against the clock. But if anybody in the audience has any questions for these fine teaching artists, you can type them in the chat and I can show them to everybody in a way such as this oh everybody. In a way such as this oh beautiful. I agree, those were some beautiful performances. Thanks to you everybody. Chris says hi, lisa, and let's see Two. This was during your performance. What a lovely original composition. I agree with that as well, thank you, thank you. Okay, we've got a question. Okay, we're going to do something a little bit different here. Sean, this is your cue. So today happens to be the birthday of one of our lovely Patreon acoustic guitar people, devin, so Sean's going to play.
Sean:A little happy birthday for you all right happy birthday, thank you okay, so, like I said before, happy birthday Evan.
Joey:Happy birthday. Okay. So, like I said before, when you sign up for the Acoustic Guitar Patreon page, you'll get a new lesson every week from one of our five teaching artists. You'll also get tons of other cool stuff. Song of the Month Club you get a new song transcription every month. We do live workshops every month, interactive workshops, kind of like this, but one teacher, one focus topic and everybody's on their camera and playing along. And we'll do some more fun hangouts with everybody, like this. We'll do some open mic nights where the TAs will play and the audience will play and all sorts of great acoustic guitar lessons, community, everything you could possibly want and more. And, just like Tripp Clark says, this has been great and thank you so much. I'm also inspired by all their playing, so you heard it there first, folks. If anybody has any other questions, you can type them in the chat. But besides that, thank you all so much for being here To the five of you, thank you To everyone who was watching, thank you and thank me for not screwing this up.
Isa:Thank you, Joey.
Joey:Yeah, thanks, joey. Oh no, I didn't really want that.
Isa:Thank you so much. It looks like we do have a couple questions.
Joey:Oh yes, here's a question from Devin, if anybody wants to, and feel free to jump in and answer any of these. When playing a cover of a song, how do you remain faithful to the song while making enough space for your own voice or style? Anybody want to jump in, issa?
Isa:Yeah, this is a really good question. I feel like we're all kind of just thinking about it because it is. I think it's something anyone spends a lot of time thinking about. I mean, I think, to some extent, just by virtue of learning a song and translating it into your own voice on the guitar or singing or whatever it is like there are things that are going to change in that process of translation and um, so I I try not to worry too too much about um, like having to make it super different.
Isa:Um, and I think sometimes, like the way I played that Connie Converse song was like almost like note for note, how she does it, and I think sometimes I want to present a cover as more of a like tribute to the original performance and sometimes I want to change it up a little bit. I think it really just depends on, like, if I learn a song, how it feels in my voice, and I also think that sometimes it's about like paying attention to the original and deciding, like, what feels like a core part of the song and what feels like a stylistic, like something that is stylistically inherent to the original performer, and so the things that feel really core to the song I will keep, and the things that feel like they have to do more with the original performer style, I might try to find some other way of doing it. Yeah, anybody else have any thoughts on that?
Sean:I'll dive in real quick. So this is kind of the world that I live in and I'm not a singer songwriter. I have so much admiration for people who write incredible lyrics, but I'm not a singer-songwriter. I have so much admiration for, you know, people who write incredible lyrics, but you know I'm living mostly in the jazz world, so of course we do this all the time.
Sean:I think you know the melody is sacred. You want to, of course, stay true to that, but as a jazz musician recording standards, for example, songs, have been like all the things you are, stella by Starlight, those are tunes that have been recorded like millions of times. So how do you make it your own? So I think one answer is harmony and reharmonization. So I think you know that can go a long way, but just a different, even a different time signature or a groove, different keys, different vibes, and I think that translates really well in the pop world as well. I mean I always think of like Earth, wind, fire's version of you know Got to Get you Into my Life. You know the story goes that Paul McCartney, after he heard their version, never wanted to play that song again.
Sean:Or I remember a long time ago first hearing Tori Amos play her version of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, and it was so cool, it's just such a beautiful, stark song. And then halfway through it you're like, oh, this is that Nirvana song, but she made it her own and in that case it was just her voice in the instrumentation of solo piano and it's so brooding and I just thought that was a beautiful rendition. So, yeah, I think you maybe decide what to you is sacred obviously the lyrics and maybe the melody, but there's a lot you can do with mood and vibe and texture and instrumentation and arrangement and certainly the harmony.
Joey:I got a question sent to me directly Mamie, what is the name of your Tom Waits band?
Mamie:That band is called the Letters VKB VKB band. It's with Rachelle Garnier and Amanda Homme. We mostly tour in Germany, Austria, Switzerland.
Joey:Alright, so we've got lots of thank yous. Fantastic, this was really cool. I love being a Patreon member. That's what I want to hear. Thank you so much. I think that's about it me. Just check my double check my notes here. Questions yes, we did the questions. I think we can move to slide seven. Aka. Thank you all for coming and farewell. So yeah, I'm just going to say that again a few more times. Thanks everybody so much. This was a lot of fun for me. I think it gave us a good idea of what we're gonna get into for the over the coming months with these five teaching artists. Like I said, lots of lessons, lots of things like this hanging out talking about music, talking about guitar playing, songs, learning playing. What else could you want? Thank you all so much. I'm going to hit end stream here, unless anybody has something they are dying to get off their chest. No, okay.
Isa:Thanks everybody.
Joey:Thank you all Thanks.
Mamie:Thank you.
Isa:Great to spend time with you all. Thank you, yeah.
