Fingerstyle Guitar | By John Schroeter
I’ll never forget a guitar player’s showcase event I attended a few years ago in Nashville. The stage played host to one guitarist after another who subjected the beleaguered audience to more chops than a lumberjack convention. Impressive and entertaining-for-a-while-but exhausting. Then, in a much-appreciated moment, one brave soul ventured a ballad. The audience was enraptured. It was their first taste, it seemed, of music that night. The artist, upon completing the performance, wondered aloud what he might play next The audience, in vociferous unity shouted, “Just play that again!” I couldn’t have agreed more.
By now you know I’m speaking of Ed Gerhard. And as it turns out, that night’s audience and I are in good company. Says Seymour Duncan “Ed Gerhard is one of my favorite guitarists. He plays with extreme emotion and phrasing. It’s hard to put into words the passion he puts into his music and the feeling I get inside when he performs. I am glad to be living in the time of such a great guitarist, when a single note can say so much.”
Ed has always been in search of the one big note-an essence of music that’s as much about silence as it is about sound. But there has certainly been no silencing of Gerhard’s effort in bringing his chosen genre to wider audiences, swimming often against the tide. “When my first album came out in 1987” he remembers, “there was a real lull in the solo guitar scene. Windham Hill was moving towards singer-songwriter , and there weren’t any magazine writing about this stuff. The only way to get anything happening for yourself was to just go out and play everywhere you could, so that’s what I did. I had done a lot of performing before I had a record, so it wasn’t something that was new to me, but having an album out that was getting a little airplay helped give me some confidence. Having a piece on the Windham Hill Guitar Sampler was a help, too.”
Gerhard traveled heavily, at times spending as much as eight months a year on the road. “I loved being on the road,” he adds, “and I still do.”
A culmination of sorts of those year is its very documentation: 1999’s CD release, The Live Album. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,’ he says.” I really, really love playing to an audience. I feel totally comfortable on stage, and I like trying new things. For awhile, I was really sick of solo guitar music-my own stuff included. Touring as much a I did in the ’90s, I had no choice but to deal with that on a nightly basis. Playing for people really helped me get through that funk; it kept the music alive and new for me. Playing music to an audience is one of the most meaningful experiences a musician can have. It inspires me so much.”
Gerhard also notes other aspects of the experience. “Making the live record,” he explains “has really opened up a new door for me in how I approach studio recording.” When I was listening to those performances I was struck by the sense of, I don’t know, intimacy, I guess. You can hear the audience, the PA, and the room, but you also hear things you’d hear in a studio recording: breathing, chairs squeaking, etc. It’s like you’re hearing it from a combined perspective-the audience’s and mine at the same time. It’s made me more aware than ever of the performance aspect of music, whether it’s live or recorded. Music is one of the greatest gifts we have in this life. I feel that art and music can bring out the very best in people. I feel like it has in me, and any time you can share the best part of yourself with the best part of others, well, what could be better than that?”
I wondered though how Gerhard, who is notoriously meticulous in the studio, managed recording in what are many times, less than optimal settings. “Sure,” he answers “things like breathing noise can be annoying on a record, so in concert I never breathe except between tunes [laughs]. Seriously, I wasn’t too concerned about the audio quality on the live album. I wanted to make my own bootleg. Performance was first, audio was second in my consideration. In the studio, I give a lot more attention to the audio, but that’s so the performances come through better. Plus I really love records. I remember as a kid being totally enamored with them – the packaging, the audio, the sequencing of the tunes. I completely loved it all. I remember listening to Ry Cooder’s stuff and being blown away by Jim Keltner’s drumming, for example. Back then in the late ’60s and early ’70s we were at the end of the whole psychedelic thing, but the concept of using sound to me with your mind was fully evident in records. Very subtle sometimes, but even as a 14-year old kid I noticed it.”
Something Gerhard’s concert-goers notice, aside from the music, is his guitar: Breedlove’s Ed Gerhard Signature Model. “I’d been playing a Breedlove since ’94 ” he says “and was impressed with how it sounded in concert . The guys from Breedlove asked me in ’95 if I’d be interested in co-designing a signature model. I had never considered anything like that before but it seemed like an interesting idea, so I agreed. We spent a year and a half refining the concept and design, and it debuted at Winter NAMM in ’97. It’ a great road guitar, very easy to play and rich sounding onstage.” Others apparently agree, as it is Breedlove’s most popular model.
Other instruments found their way onto the live album a well. “I also used a Hammertone Octave Twelve, which is a solid bodied electric 12-string tuned up an entire octave. It’s insane, and a beautifully made guitar. There’s also a Weissenborn-style Hawaiian on a couple of tune . This particular guitar is hideously made, but it sounds amazing with a Fishman Rare Earth pickup. People always comment about that one. I don’t want to take my real Weissenborns on the road, so I bring this one. I may replace it with one that’s made better; the one I have now has been falling apart since the day 1 got it. Mermer Guitars and Bear Creek Guitar are making great Hawaiian guitars these days. There’s also my Breedlove striped ebony jumbo 12-string on two tunes. I wanted a nice variety of sounds on the record, and I’m not an effects guy-save for some nice reverbs-so my favorite way to get them is to use different guitars. Lapstyle playing is fairly new to me, but I really love it. I’ve got a bunch of old electric lap steels, and they are just the coolest.”
Gerhard’s most recent passion has been the building of his new studio. “I’m absolutely thrilled! I’m getting better sound in here than I’ve ever recorded before. It’ a comfortable, inspiring place for me to be. I’ve got several records in mind. The next one will be a mixture of some folk and blues things, and some of my own stuff. It’ll be a multi-guitar record for the most part, and I hope to have a few friends in the studio as well. The whole album will be recorded using cheap old pawn shop guitars. There’s so much activity in the high-end guitar market I thought it might be fun to slam on the brakes a little bit. Some of these old guitars are great sounding instruments, although they are impossible to play. I guess I ll be doing a lot of slide [laughs]! Then I’ll get back to recording my own stuff again. I’ve had a great time arranging and playing other people’s stuff, like Beatles tune, The Water is Wide, etc., but I’m in a writing phase again and I’m anxious to finish up some tunes. I was a little frustrated for awhile, not writing much, but I realized that there was as much of myself coming through the arrangements and that was satisfying.”
Coming full circle to Gerhard’s musical passions, he offers another insight. “In our society today, we’ve really devalued not only art and music, but the experiencing of art and music. It’s the first thing to get cut in school budgets and it’s one of the very few things in life that’s really worth a damn. I remember reading about Churchill during WWII. England was being destroyed by the war, and they needed money to fund their defense effort. When it was suggested to Churchill that they pull money from cultural programs, he basically said ‘Hell no, what do you think we’re fighting for?’ We need more guys like Churchill, more than ever.”
Ed’s Top Ten Wish List for 2000
With three zeroes in the year I figure we’ve got a clean slate, so let’s keep it clean! Please, please, no more:
- Linus and Lucy
- “Here’s a song I wrote about my cat…”
- “Actually, I’m a composer who just happens to play guitar.”
- “Here’s a song I wrote for my other cat…”
- Song or album titles that end in the suffix “scapes”
- “Oh yeah, I was doing that stuff WAY before Hedges…”
- “Which one of your CDs is best for massage?”
- “Hey, how can I get that PHAT sound?”
- “When it gets to the chorus you have to imagine a cello…”
- “Here’s a song I wrote for my cats, Linus and Lucy…”
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