{"id":11188,"date":"2013-11-20T10:40:07","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T17:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=11188"},"modified":"2013-11-27T11:05:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T18:05:24","slug":"ronnie-wood-mick-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2013\/11\/ronnie-wood-mick-taylor\/","title":{"rendered":"RONNIE WOOD & MICK TAYLOR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ronnie<\/b><\/h1>\n

RONNIE WOOD & MICK TAYLOR<\/b><\/h1>\n

Playing Jimmy Reed Tunes<\/h2>\n

One particularly music-knowledgeable witness of last week\u2019s Ronnie Wood\/Mick Taylor shows at the Cutting Room, which focused entirely on the music of the great Chicago bluesman Jimmy Reed and also featured Al Kooper on Hammond and Bad Company\u2019s Simon Kirke on drums, was none other than the great Troy Sharmel.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right, guitarist\/pianist Troy Sharmel of the legendary Dr. Bop & the Headliners, whose real name is Robert Kenison, but whose friends curiously call him Beefy<\/i>. Dr. Bop & the Headliners, the celebrated Midwest rock \u2019n\u2019 roll show band of the 1970s, which famously featured vocalist Al Craven, the White Raven, and if they didn’t define rock \u2019n\u2019 roll, they most certainly redefined <\/em>it. In fact, they opened for bands like the New York Dolls, while bands like Cheap Trick (they had the same manager) opened for them<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Beefy, of course, was blown away by the Wood ensemble\u2019s musicianship, and marveled especially at its employment of both acoustic and standup basses.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never see acoustic basses, outside of rockabilly or big bands or bluegrass,\u201d said Beefy after the show. \u201cAnd playing one together with an electric bassist, you have to be careful of hitting the notes at the same time, or else it sounds like mud<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RonnieThe challenge for two bassists, Beefy explained, is \u201cstaying out of each other\u2019s way: If you\u2019re playing too low and you\u2019re not on the same note, you can get all kinds of dissonance and low-frequency things that interfere with the sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beefy noted, too, that the string bass gives the music a \u201cwarm sound,\u201d like you hear on country music of the 1950s and \u201960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen to Ray Price or Patsy Cline\u2019s \u2018Walkin\u2019 After Midnight\u2019 and you hear a regular, warm stand-up. Maybe sometimes they\u2019d use an electric bass to double a note and make a more mellow, thick and soft bottom. There even used to be a six-string electric bass guitar that was tuned down a whole lot to get those low notes. But this is the first time I\u2019ve seen a rock band play with two basses, and it sounded great.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two basses gave Reed classics like \u201cGoing To New York,\u201d \u201cBig Boss Man,\u201d \u201cBright Lights, Big City\u201d and \u201cShame, Shame, Shame\u201d \u201ca nice bed for the music,\u201d continued Beefy. As for the two guitar heroes, Wood and Taylor likewise \u201cstayed out of each other\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ronnie\u201cWhen one took a solo, the other played in the background. They weren\u2019t jumping on each other, so it worked out great\u2014and the two basses gave them a good bed. But they were also playing old-style Chicago blues without a lot of distortion and newer effects\u2014or many effects at all, for that matter. It was straight out-of-the-box guitar with amplifiers but no tricks or a lot of electronic effects, which was nice because it was true to that style of music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you heard is what they were doing,\u201d Beefy concluded. \u201cSteady, old-timey blues that you don\u2019t hear much anymore, without a lot of gimmickry. And of course, it didn\u2019t hurt to have a shot of Maker\u2019s Mark before the show, either!\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of Saturday night\u2019s final show, incidentally, Wood stated that the experience of playing Jimmy Reed tunes with Taylor was his best-ever \u201cnon-Stones\u201d gig.<\/p>\n

Jim Bessman<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RONNIE WOOD & MICK TAYLOR Playing Jimmy Reed Tunes One particularly music-knowledgeable witness of last week\u2019s Ronnie Wood\/Mick Taylor shows at the Cutting Room, which focused entirely on the music of the great Chicago bluesman Jimmy Reed and also featured Al Kooper on Hammond and Bad Company\u2019s Simon Kirke on drums, was none other than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4976,1058],"tags":[7271,7270,7269],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11193,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions\/11193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}