On Practicing Guitar

Jimmy Page’s Favorite Lick – Video and Tab

A pounding hard bop record caught my attention in a café one time. The sax player was wailing away on a repeated figure and I thought, “Ah, there’s someone playing Jimmy Page’s favorite lick again.”

 

If you listen closely to this tune, after around the three minute mark, sax player Joe Henderson will actually use the lick in question. It's dynamite, baby!

Although I had been listening to hard bop for a long time (ie Coltrane Plays the Blues), I never fully understood what the style meant. The name especially had me Confused. More recently, I’ve been digging trumpeter Lee Morgan and some helpful critics hipped me to what was going on. Essentially, hard bop is a move away from both cool jazz and bebop, with a return to the blues roots of jazz. In hard bop, there is a shift from the cerebral elements and less emotional playing of the cool style, and a lot of wailing on the horns and pounding away on the drums. This includes the repetitive statement of a single bluesy lick – aha!

My favorite rendition of this lick as played by Jimmy Page is on the song “Thank You” on the Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions double CD released in 1997. In a majestic ‘slow song’ type solo, Page repeats the lick numerous times while the chords change behind him for the last part of the solo. I always hear this solo as being quite ‘stagey’ – you can almost hear the spotlight swing over to Page just before he starts to play.

The lick itself is a quick run up from the tonic to the dominant note (omitting the second), with chromatic notes in between: A – C – C# – D – D# – E. There is one slur or bend, between the notes C and C#, which can be thought of as a ‘blue note.’ I’ve included examples in video and tab of the way Page plays it and in a jazzier style. You can use the same right hand picking on both versions.

Some Words About the Rhythm

The fact that the lick is a repeated six note figure makes for some interesting rhythmical effects. Observe how the accent shifts within the bar. The lowest note (the tonic) is a pickup note but the slurred or bent note has the most emphasis. In “Thank You,” the melodic repetition on top brings the slower harmonic rhythm out front, which is a trick that can be applied in many situations. Here the chords change once each bar:  D – C9 – G/B – D. The slur or bend allows you to use one repeated down-stroke, which keeps the accent in the right place, which is moving, man. Remember that a bent note is actually two notes – the note that you start out on and the note that you end up with.

Jimmy Page is one of my top three favorite guitar players, ever. Beyond the epic sweep of his music and his sophisticated writing and production skills, the man can really take a solo. Even his solos that don’t get as much attention are wicked and memorable – think “Black Dog.” I clearly remember one of my first guitar teachers showing me a lick and saying, “This is one of Jimmy Page’s favorite licks.” I could play it AND remember it. Maybe that’s one of the elements of his playing that Led to so much imitation. It’s easy to cop a few of his licks and off you go. But to play like Jimmy Page is another story altogether. -Christian Botta

www.chrisbottaguitar.com

 

Talking With Sturgis Nikides of Low Society

Low Society Live at the Blues Hall on Beale Street

During a trip to the Memphis area that included Clarksdale and Avalon, Mississippi and further afield, I saw Sturgis Nikides play with his band Low Society at Blues Hall on Beale Street. I was impressed with his guitar playing and Low Society, which is fronted by Mandy Lemons, Sturgis’ wife and a force of nature on blues queen styled vocals. I got to know Sturgis a little bit through the seriously legit slide guitar group on Facebook and when I decided that I was going to start doing interviews on my blog, he was an obvious first choice.

Sturgis is known for playing slide but ironically, when I saw Low Society, Sturgis was in standard guitar mode for that set, which was mainly a tight, riffing and rhythmical supportive style. I later saw and heard his slide work, which impressed me further. Sturgis hails from Brooklyn, NY and he escaped the notoriously difficult NYC music scene to find something that is perfect for him. As he tells it…

“We left NYC in January of 2012 right after New Year’s. Mandy and I were 100% committed to Low Society and I needed somewhere where we could afford to do that successfully. We figured going south was our best option. She’s originally from Texas. We went to Houston. I was having a problem finding simpatico band members, ie the rhythm section which is what I needed. By happy coincidence we ended up in Memphis in April 2012. We went to play the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, MS. Our manager at the time suggested that we go visit Memphis.

Sturgis' Justin Sain guitar

“He brought us to Memphis and put us up in a bed and breakfast. My idea of site seeing is to go on to CL and find out where the local blues jam is. We went to a blues jam at a place called Kudzus. We got onstage and there were people coming on to the stage to shake our hands and say, ‘Welcome to Memphis.’ It blew my mind. We took an apartment and drove back to Texas that week and got our stuff and came back up and we’ve been in the same spot ever since. It’s been a great experience.”

Sturgis says that he was “attracted to the sound of the slide guitar by around age twelve.” He uses a flat pick to play slide, eschewing the Duane school and approach that includes Derek Trucks and his many followers who play strictly with bare fingers. “I tried going the Johnny Winter route, obviously, thumb pick and I never successfully made the transition. I felt very clumsy doing that. My observation has been that guys who do that Travis picking thing are the most fluent and I’m jealous of that.

“One of my favorite roots guitar players if that’s what you want to call these guys is a gentleman from Texas named Mance Lipscomb and he’s famous for a style of guitar playing known as ‘dead thumb.’ Lightning Hopkins – same thing where they’re able to have their thumb play on the four while their index finger and middle finger are playing something entirely opposite and I have had a devil of a time making that happen.

Sturgis hits it with a blue sparkle Strat

“But I’m able to pull off a very convincing rendition of that with the flat pick. I developed a really fast technique so I can play the thumb part and go back and forth to the top strings. The king of that style is Blind Blake. I’ve been trying lately as part of my practice routine to learn Blind Blake numbers.” Asked further about his practice routine he elaborates that he likes “straight up improvising for hours on end, you know, variations on a theme type of thing, I can really get into that.”

Sturgis plays mainly Strats and Teles and a Justin Sain model is his main slide guitar. He favors a glass slide and he wears it on his pinky, using D’addario 11-49 for slide and 10-46 for standard guitar. His main amp the last two years is a 1961 Fender Bandmaster with three ten-inch speakers. Found in North Miami in the early ‘90s, he describes it as a transitional model with a tweed sound in one channel and a magical blackface vibrato sound in the other, a “Jimi Hendrix/Robin Trower Univibe” sound. He adds that he loves the Lewis Electric Danny Gatton amp for its “bell like piano lows and really creamy top,” and calls it a “super clean, beautiful sounding amplifier.”

Gear onstage and ready to go in Little Rock, Arkansas

Although he has recently been including a wah-wah pedal on his board for the many live gigs that he does, he is not a pedal junkie, stating, “I definitely go for a cleaner sound these days than I have in years.” His overdrive pedals of choice include the Clark Gainster, which he describes as “more of a boost,” the Clone Kline, and some original Tube Screamers from the ‘80s that he owns.He emphatically replies to my last equipment inquiry that he “doesn’t use compression,” unlike many slide guitar kings, including Bonnie Raitt, Lowell George and Sonny Landreth. He favors open A and E for his slide excursions.

Low Society recently returned from a tour of the Netherlands and Belgium and I hear that they’ll be heading back into the studio soon. You’ll definitely want to check out the title cut of their latest album, You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down. To hear Sturgis work out in standard guitar mode on a Strat, check out "This Heart of Mine," which features a beautiful vocal performance from Mandy, as well. But if you happen to be in the Memphis area, the best thing you can do is to see a local performance by Low Society or Sturgis in one of his side gigs, which are happening all the time. As he says proudly, “I feel honored to be here. Every time I step on a stage on Beale Street with a guitar in my hands, I feel like I’m participating in a legacy that goes back a hundred years.” 

Recording Session With Indie Rock Band Mancie

Two Thousand Sixteen has been a crazy year. But my version of it took a huge upswing when I got the chance to work with my former guitar student Andrea Fischman on her new recording with her group, Mancie. There were a few songs that needed lead guitar, and Andrea gave me the call. I readily accepted, embracing a chance to rock out and get creative on two of her hard-edged originals that are infused with melody and atmosphere. It was a bonus that Mark Feldman, who played drums with me in the Anodyne Blues Band for over a year, was behind the kit.

I set about working up my parts, charting out the songs “Moon and Stars” and “Love Spares.” I didn’t color code my charts like Robert Trujillo in Some Kind of Monster, but the thought occurred to me. I was enjoying myself. The basic tracks had already been recorded so the overdub session took place in the studio of a very talented engineer named in Jeff Cook, located in the basement of his Bushwick apartment building. The studio itself was fascinating, one of the most meticulously put together small studios that I have ever seen (pictured above - Photo by Andrea Fischman). 

Andrea performing with Mancie

I played my 2014 SG ’61 Standard and used Andrea’s 30 watt Orange tube head into a small Marshall (one twelve) cabinet. That combination provided a raucous and rich tone but I wanted a smoother sound with more gain so I added an overdrive pedal in between the guitar and amp. On “Moon and Stars,” I was going for a slightly more aggressive sound so I used a Fulltone OCD. I used the bridge pickup. I thought to switch to the middle or neck pickup for “Love Spares,” but Jeff wanted to keep me more in a higher frequency spectrum and requested that I not add too much bass. So, to change the sound a bit, I switched out the OCD for my Boss OD-3, which has a warmer, sweeter tone. It worked. For the upfront emotions of “Love Spares,” I got a more melodic sound, which was good because I was playing off of and around Andrea’s vocal. I loved the way Jeff was making the guitar sound in the mix, as there was an immediate textural presence to what I was playing. I had been wondering how to fit in with Andrea’s full and heavy rhythm guitars. The tracks are below, so please give them a listen.

Moon and Stars

 

Love Spares

To top it all off, I got the nod to play lead guitar with Mancie at an upcoming show they will play at Arlene’s Grocery. I used to play there fairly frequently and I love the room and the sound and everything about it. It’s great to be back playing and recording some big rock and hitting it live in a cool room, no less! The show is on Thursday, December 8^th. Thanks Andrea!