Flatpicking Spotlight: Grant Gordy

 

Grant Gordy

By Rebecca Frazier

Guitarist Grant Gordy’s improvisational style comes across as wild and free, as untamed and ruggedly elemental as his native Oregon’s coastal bluffs, with rhythmic Pacific tides and waves beating passionately on the shore. In conversation, Gordy’s manner is centered and comfortable, revealing a soft-spoken artist who is deeply contemplative and surprisingly analytical about his own playing. Gordy’s musical evolution—which has spanned almost two decades of recording, touring, and even working as a full-time member of the legendary David Grisman Quintet—embodies a unique brand of artistry within the American soundscape. In the past year alone, he’s released two albums in distinctly American improvisational genres, jazz and bluegrass. 

Developing guitar skills in two different, yet related, musical genres is akin to learning to speak two Romance languages fluently—say, French and Italian—and it’s become a part of Gordy’s creative working flow to establish footholds comfortably in both bluegrass and jazz worlds as a native speaker. A Brooklyn resident since 2013, Gordy’s become a regular in the storied New York jazz scene; he relates that “the best compliment I get at a jazz club is when people ask about my background; when I tell them that I play a lot of bluegrass, and they say ‘Oh, I never would have known,’ I’m like YES! I want to be able to speak this language.” And speak it, he definitely does, as evidenced by his 2020 jazz trio album, “Interpreter,” on which he plays electric guitar. 

Yet Gordy freely confides that in the bluegrass world, he’s more “comfortable.” The traditional bluegrass standard “Blackberry Blossom” was his first guitar tune, as taught to him by his father, who gifted him a guitar for his thirteenth birthday. Describing his atypical adolescence, he relates that he spent a lot of time alone with his guitar. “At that age I was really into Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, like many American guitarists,” he says. “For some of us, guitar is something we do alongside debate team and field hockey. For me, guitar was the only thing. I was a non-athletic kid, not particularly social. I was a hippie. I went to three different high schools and then dropped out altogether, and then we moved to the desert in New Mexico.” Gordy’s sense of social isolation was assuaged by playing guitar. “I spent a lot of time experimenting with making sounds in my bedroom,” he says.

Eventually he moved with his father to Colorado’s Front Range, where he discovered a healthy music community and was exposed to different genres, like jazz, classic country, and even traditional Bulgarian styles. With his new wider palette of tastes and skills, he was invited to work with jazz and honky tonk professionals in Colorado. As his network grew, he eventually connected with David Grisman and joined Grisman’s quintet (DGQ) in 2008, an international touring unit with whom he worked for over six years.

While working in the DGQ, Gordy released his debut guitar album, “Grant Gordy,” which put him on the map as a unique composer and creative interpreter of classic bluegrass, gypsy jazz, and American traditional music. Shortly thereafter, Gordy relocated to Brooklyn and cultivated relationships in the jazz world there, all the while touring in the bluegrass world. He explains, “I was becoming more interested in bebop and more modern jazz, and I was finding a little less overlap with string music, though borders are becoming more porous now.”

Gordy’s affinity for risk and the experimental nature of his improvisation delight his listeners, who often find humor in his approach. “I have a really high tolerance for atonality and chromaticism and stuff, and sometimes it is funny,” he says. He focuses on listening, and he advises others to do the same. “I’d say working on ears is always the number one thing.” He encourages others to train themselves to identify chord tones by ear. “You can never do too much drilling. I think that will set you up so well to translate what you’re hearing to what you can play,” he explains. 

Gordy has remained busy teaching and practicing throughout the quarantine, and this spring he released a traditional folk album aptly titled “Bluegrass and the Abstract Truth” alongside string music stalwarts Alex Hargreaves, Joe Walsh, and Greg Garrison. During the “intense” lockdown situation in New York, he’s found he’s had to focus on separating his analytical nature from his joy of playing in live situations. “If this is a playing situation, then it’s not about me; it’s about what are we creating together. How much is analyzing going to shut me down from hearing what we’re all creating—and even just hearing what the other people are doing—if I’m so worried and so in my head?” He explains that his goal is not to impress others, but to impart “something deeper:” “Music is endlessly fascinating and beautiful, and it can express so much. It can express things that language can’t even express. It feels like that’s the ultimate goal, even if it’s instrumental music.” 

And while Gordy has spent years cultivating an international presence on his own terms, he never seems to lose his sense of purpose. “The reason I do music is because it’s fun. It’s engaging. It’s this beautiful fascinating thing—the deeper you go, the deeper it gets, especially playing improvised music. You’re literally conjuring art out of nothing. It’s always new, it’s always fresh. How could I not feel delight at that all the time? I’ve never lost that spark, and I don’t think I ever will.”

Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine

Flatpicking Spotlight: Avril Smith

 

Avril Smith

by Rebecca Frazier

It’s rare for a guitarist to communicate with a distinctly identifiable voice within the abundant sea of bluegrass and traditional flatpickers. Unique in her delivery, Avril Smith stands out. Her articulate guitar work is rich with a creative blend of quirky flourishes, poignant timing, double stops, and signature voicings that bend the ear just a little bit further than expectation would allow.

Growing up outside New York City in a town by the Hudson River, Avril Smith was too small to play the acoustic guitar when she was drawn to the instrument at age six. By age eight, she was taking lessons on a full-size guitar. “I had an attraction to the guitar,” she explains. “As a young kid, I was interested in classic rock, pop, and jazz.” A decade later, bluegrass “clicked” for her when a college friend’s soulful performance of the music inspired Avril. She dove into the bluegrass canon, listening and learning with a passion for the social connection and common language inherent in the genre. 

Now residing just outside Washington DC, Avril is perhaps best known for her work with the all-female power group, Della Mae, of which Avril is a founding member. Avril departed from the band about a decade ago when the band’s touring schedule was no longer compatible with her responsibilities as a new mother; she says she rejoined the group when her daughter turned seven, and she felt more comfortable balancing the group’s touring and recording commitments with her family life. 

Della Mae’s new release ‘Family Reunion’ is an appetizing starting point for listeners unfamiliar with Avril’s guitar work. Her standout acoustic and electric guitar performances give nods to familiar traditional sounds, yet there’s a fresh perspective that balances her informed ear. She conveys her breadth of influences with a casual, easy grace. She comments, “I incorporate elements of things that are easier to play or more commonly played on electric guitar into my acoustic guitar playing and certainly those early influences of mine show up in my playing in some form—maybe not necessarily in a specific lick, but in spirit and aesthetic. I didn’t start out with Norman Blake and Doc Watson; I hadn’t heard them as a kid, but I got really deep into their playing as an adult.” Avril’s unique interpretation of her musical background brings a creative force to her work on Della Mae’s album.

Avril may communicate with an array of influences, but her sound has an artistic continuity whether she is playing on a fast bluegrass song, a pretty ballad or a more blues-influenced track. When asked about her stylistic use of double stops, she explains, “We’re all defined by our abilities and limitations. Bluegrass music is really fast, and it’s really hard. I think it’s fair to say that it’s the hardest to play fast on the guitar, because it’s the least efficient of the instruments. Bluegrass guitar is very demanding on your right hand, so sometimes I use double-stops as a way to give my right hand a break,” she explains. “Also, I think when there’s space in music, it’s an art. A lot of times the magic is in the white space, and the space around the notes; your brain can’t process a flurry of notes at 170 beats per minute. You’re not really hearing melodies, you’re just hearing that someone can accomplish something really hard. A lot of times that’s what people are reacting to more than the ideas, because it’s hard to capture them. You can hear drive, and you can hear power, and there’s a lot you can do, but I don’t think one of the things you can do as effectively is establish a melody and a melodic idea at those tempos. But if you use space, sometimes you can say more with less. Part of it is a statement of my limitations. I can’t play at 170 beats per minute, nonstop. I just can’t do it. I can do a couple of bars, but then I just need a rest on my right hand. So I think some of it is that, and then it becomes part of your style.”

Avril encourages other players to listen to music in order to grow and progress. “It’s really hard to develop musicality if you’re not listening and really thinking critically. Who are the players, or what’s the music that really speaks to you? And what is it about those players that draws you in?” She advises others not to focus on playing at fast tempos. “Slow things down. Think about tone, think about getting notes to ring as long as you can to create fluidity. If you focus first on the musicality, everything else is going to come over time. But playing good music—that’s what it’s all about. Your music is going to speak to people when you play with musicality and with intentionality.” 

Having spent decades honing her craft, Avril says that while there are no short cuts to becoming proficient, there are ways to practice more efficiently. “I haven’t been as disciplined, and it’s cliché, but the people who are the best at music are the people who are the best at practicing. They’re the best at figuring out how to listen really hard to what they’re doing and figuring out what they need to change to achieve what they’re trying to achieve. It’s all about time spent, right? There’s no magic sauce. For most people, it’s just hard work.” And while it may be a result of years of hard work, Avril has achieved an element of the legendary ‘magic sauce,’ as she makes guitar sound so completely effortless.

 

Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine

Flatpicking Spotlight: Trey Hensley

Trey Hensley

By Rebecca Frazier

Trey Hensley has for years won over bluegrass fans with his signature smoking guitar style. Yet outside the niche of bluegrass, music lovers of all kinds are drawn to his playing and his music. Call it bluegrass, blues, rock, jamband music—it doesn’t matter. When asked how he’d define his style of flatpicking, Hensley chuckles and simply responds, “My style is loosely, whatever works.”

Hensley’s humble, relaxed attitude towards his own musicianship spills over to his stage show, where he’s often smiling or laughing as he plays, as though the joke’s on him. Yet his technical prowess defies the laid back image he conveys. If it appears that guitar skill comes with natural ease to him, perhaps that’s because it does.

Hensley began his guitar journey at age 10, after seeing Charlie Waller play lead guitar at a bluegrass festival in his native East Tennessee. “Charlie played the fiddle tune ‘Under the Double Eagle,’ and that changed everything,” he says. “I told my parents, ‘I want to do that.’” His parents gave him a guitar, and a few months later, Marty Stuart invited him to play on the Grand Ole Opry. Hensley was eleven years old.

Hensley has since proven that Marty’s instincts were inspired. Hensley continues to play high profile venues and concert halls, including the Opry, under his own name and notoriety. And while he spent years playing only electric guitar—which heavily influenced his current approach to acoustic guitar—Hensley now tours acoustically in a duo format with resonator guitar heavyweight Rob Ickes. The two men are known for their improvisational energy onstage, with twists and turns through folk, grass, Americana, jazz, rock and blues. And while Hensley stakes his own claim in the bluegrass guitar world—he was nominated for the 2020 Guitar Player of the Year award through the International Bluegrass Music Association—Hensley acknowledges that the dizzying variety of influences in his shows is steadied by a firm hold in his bluegrass foundations. “Rob and I do so many different kinds of music, yet we still consider it bluegrass, because of the instrumentation and because the spirit of it is always there. It’s always bluegrass, no matter what we’re playing, no matter how outside it is—even though there’s definitely a lot of my style that comes from outside the bluegrass world.”

Hensley’s relaxed control when he’s playing appears effortless, yet he explains he developed this technique through conscious efforts. “I was having issues with tensing up on stage, and I was developing arm issues whenever I would play. I made a mental decision to practice relaxed, and I changed the way I practiced. It’s made a huge difference.” 

So what is his daily routine with the guitar? “I will pick up a guitar every day and play for a bit,” he says. “Whenever inspiration hits is when I practice. I try to play thirty minutes to an hour a day.” He explains that while he doesn’t have a practice routine, he keeps his inspiration alive by listening to music. “The broad palette of musical tastes comes into play there. It’s a circle, I’m just chasing the next thing in the circle,” he says, describing how musical styles draw him to practice his guitar, which in turn inspires him to listen. “Right now I’m inspired by a lot of horn players, like Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon. Tomorrow it might be something totally wild and different.”

That craving for something new and different is a driving force behind his creativity when he’s soloing on stage, where his spontaneity takes listeners through unexpected melodic twists. Describing his mental headspace when improvising, Hensley says, “It is a really difficult thing to turn off all the noise in your brain and completely focus on the music. But that’s really what you have to do when improvising. I just basically try to think about the melody and what notes will complement or possibly enhance that melody. I try not to think about ‘licks’ or which run I’m going to put in next. I just try my best to let the music flow as much as possible. Of course, that’s a practice thing too...practicing the guitar until you’re comfortable with the fretboard enough to improvise.”

Hensley continues to inspire guitarists worldwide with his duo’s recent Compass Records release, ‘World of Blues.’ Most importantly, his own joy for playing never ceases—even after a long night of performing. “When we’re on the road, I’ll come back to my hotel room and play for a few more hours after the gig. It’s still fun.” 

Trey Hensley uses nickel bronze medium gauge D’Addario strings, and he’s played with the same Blue Chip TAD-60 since 2008.

Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine

 

Flatpicking Spotlight: Jake Workman

 Jake Workman: Taking Risks and Playing from the Heart

by Rebecca Frazier

Growing up Out West in Utah, Jake Workman never expected, much less aimed to be, an internationally recognized musician. Yet today he’s held the coveted lead guitar position with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder for half a decade and recently snagged the International Bluegrass Music Assocation’s 2020 Guitar Player of the Year award, a rarity for a first-time nominee in this worldwide pool of voters and players. 

“In Utah there aren’t a lot of great bluegrass players, and it’s surprising that a person would learn bluegrass really well coming from this state,” Workman says from his home near Salt Lake City, where he started out playing rock n’ roll as an adolescent. His fire for learning bluegrass was stoked at the weekly Rocky Mountain Pizza jam, where he discovered “little pockets” of grass-oriented musicians. Soon he was navigating the Western festival scene as a hungry young picker. “I would go out to Wintergrass near Seattle and just stay in the hotel all weekend, jamming. I didn’t even know who was playing on stage,” he confesses. 

So how did Skaggs find him? And did he ever dream that he would get a call like that? “I would jam along with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder records. I’d hear Cody Kilby tearing it up and think ‘Am I ever going to play that fast?’ I kept working on it. I never was shooting to be in the band, but I just wanted to be as good as those guys if I could be.” Eventually Workman found that he had developed his own technique for playing at Skaggs’ signature lightning tempos with control and relaxation. “But when the job came around, I had no idea it was coming. On my phone, I saw a Facebook notification from Ricky Skaggs—I couldn’t believe it was real.”

Skaggs hired Workman over the phone without an audition, but with heavyweight recommendations from Kentucky Thunder alums Cody Kilby and Bryan Sutton. Workman says he mused, ‘How am I going to do this from Utah?’ He’d turned down previous offers from other Nashville-based artists, because he didn’t want to uproot from his Utah community. He began his new job in December 2015 by flying to meet the band; he moved to Nashville in 2016. “I didn’t ever think I would live in Nashville,” Workman explains, “but when Ricky called, it’s like ‘How do you say no to that?!’”

Touring with Skaggs has proven to be “a great gig for me—probably more astounding than winning my IBMA award was seeing Ricky’s message pop up on my phone,” Workman remarks. That’s saying a lot, considering Workman was stunned when his name was announced in October. He doesn’t think he was the “most popular guitar player” on the list, judging by social media numbers. However, he intuits that his 2019 guitar-centered album, “Landmark,” put him on the map for voters who were considering his recent contributions to the flatpicking world.

And what inspired this successful recording of original guitar music? “After playing with Ricky for a while I thought, I’d love to be coming out to the CD table after the show with a product that represents exactly what you’re hearing me do onstage, just playing guitar. I’d been writing for several years, and I wanted it to be instrumental—a good picker’s record.” He says he titled his collection ‘Landmark,’ like a “time-stamp: this is me in 2019. I had a vibe, a sound, a feel, a way of writing.” 

Workman was able to work on his tunes in auditoriums, waiting for soundcheck on the road. He also uses this downtime for honing his guitar skills and warming up for shows. But when time is short—how can Workman hop out of the bus and perform at high velocity with accuracy and confidence? “I have a lot of muscle memory built into my hands at this point. We’ll call them ‘cop-out licks’—stuff that I can just sling out there that I’ll nail and play well. If I want to do something bold and daring, likely it’s because I have plenty of warm-up time to get to that point. If it’s one of those days when the bus pulls up 5 minutes before we play, I’m not going to warm up much; but when I do warm up for those types of shows, I don’t sit backstage and shred. I warm up slowly. There’s something to be said about calibration: how tight do I hold my pick, where’s my arm, is my shoulder tense, am I letting it fall on the guitar. I’ll just calibrate.”

Listeners may wonder what’s going through Workman’s mind when he is executing his powerhouse solos. Has he planned them out, in any general sense? Is he freely improvising? “I played these songs so many times. They channel into something after a while; there are no two nights that are identical, but I do have templates, especially on the fast ones. I’ve worked them up, or they’ve worked themselves up just by repetition. If I’m having a rough day, I can fall back on a solo I’ve done before. But if the crowd is awesome, and it’s one of those warmed up days, and I’m feeling bold and confident, I’ll go for the craziness. That’s what’s fun, even if there’s risk involved and I miss a string. Even if I played a show perfectly but all I used the whole show was the same cop-out stuff I’ve used before, the same note-for-note solo, I may have just played great…but I don’t have as much excitement in my heart afterwards. I have a let-down feeling, to be honest. I think, ‘Dang it, I should’ve been bold, I should’ve gone for something, captured the moment; what was in my heart tonight?’ I chickened out of it, and I don’t want to do that, but sometimes it’s hard to have that mental energy to be brave. And I don’t have it every day.”

When asked if he’s reaching for that bravery for the audience or for his bandleader, Workman adamantly chooses the latter. “I’m not scared of any audience. It’s the man standing next to me. I feel like I owe it to Ricky. Ricky likes professionalism. He knows what we’re capable of. But he also loves energy, playing from the heart. If I play something from the heart and it’s really grooving, but I miss a few notes, he would take that over my being a computerized machine that’s just rehashing a planned out solo.”

Workman advises guitarists to overcome their weaknesses. He believes practice time should be divided into three equal categories: warm-up/technical patterns that focus on developing weak points, then new material, and finally review. “Before I pick up my guitar, I think about what I’m going to do,” he explains. “Sometimes I even write it down the night before.”

During this period of tour cancellations, Workman has relocated, at least temporarily, back to his Utah community, where he teaches lessons full time from home and continues his own study of the guitar. “There’s so much to learn, it never ends,” he muses. “Sometimes I’m excited for the challenge, but often I think, ‘Why can’t I just know everything already?’”  And yet—considering his own description of the unpredictable thrill of the boldness that fills his heart on his daring days, perhaps ‘knowing it all’ would leave nothing for that chance. 

Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine

Flatpicking Spotlight: Jon Stickley

 Jon Stickley’s Musical Landscapes: A Soundtrack for Evolving Times

by Rebecca Frazier

Imagine that your life had a personal soundtrack. What would it sound like? Jon Stickley, a native North Carolinian and longtime national touring artist, has been interpreting his surroundings for so long that it’s natural that his music would evolve into a personal soundscape, lush with many miles of experience with his own Jon Stickley Trio.

“I think the music is inspired by the lifestyle,” Stickley says, when asked about the heavily rhythmic guitar music he writes. “I handle most of the driving in the band. I’d get out of the van and play something that has that same energy, like a video game, weaving in and out of traffic.” 

Jon Stickley Trio has attracted fans of all ages into their pocket of the jamgrass landscape through almost a decade of national festival touring and four studio album releases. Repeat listeners don’t seem to mind that the music can’t be easily categorized, and Stickley acknowledges that while bluegrass is his form of choice, the drums-guitar-violin trio members have become successful deviants of that form. “We try to incorporate the bluegrass technical side of things and put that into other genres. We use the same drive and keep the tone, articulation and technique where you’d want it to be in the bluegrass setting, and use it mainly over different chords and rhythms.” 

With mountains for a backdrop—Stickley’s a longtime resident of Asheville—he’s developed an uncanny ability to transmute his environment and daily story into compelling musical ideas, rich with imagery and focused emotion, like a dramatic drive through the Alaskan wilderness.

Stickley’s background in Parks and Recreation at North Carolina State University seems fitting when he presents his vivid musical concepts. In 2003 he worked in Alaska as an intern with Alaska State Parks, and the timing roughly coincided with his transition from a gigging drummer playing hard punk to a dedicated acoustic bluegrass musician: “The energy, the fast tempos, excitement of it, and the fact that you could do it anywhere you wanted drew me to bluegrass,” he says. While he’d played a lot of punk and rock up to that point, he explains that “bluegrass was the backpacking version of that. You could do it camping; it was like music to go.”

Summers after college were spent in the Colorado music scene playing guitar with Durango-based Broke Mountain Bluegrass Band; and Stickley long considered himself to be a “sideman,” evidenced by his subsequent years in that role with Carolina bands Biscuit Burners and Town Mountain. He’d founded Jon Stickley Trio as a side project before he decided to focus on it, despite his assertion that “being a leader of the band is not the most comfortable position” for him. “Learning to be in charge was so rewarding,” he adds. 

So does flatpicking at this level come naturally to Stickley? “I have to ease into it,” he says. “Even if I don’t play for two days, there’s a rebuilding process for me.” He advises other players, “Acoustic guitar is a very physical instrument; it’s going to take a certain amount of pain and suffering before it gets comfortable. You’ve got to do some weight lifting—build your calluses, your muscles have to be strong enough to press down the frets. The strings are stiff. You’ve got to build to a basic level before you can start having fun.” When asked how he mentally prepares to play, Stickley explains that music is his meditation: “Music is my form of relaxation. It grounds me and gets me in a better headspace overall.” Having had injuries in the past, he emphasizes that it’s important not to over play. “Make the most beautiful sounds you can with what you’ve got at the time,” he explains.

And what are those sounds during these months of quarantine and isolation, now that his high-paced driving days have come to a pause? “I barely leave the house, so the things that inspire me are more like looking out at my yard. So I’m not drawn to aggressive music, I’m drawn more to peaceful music,” Stickley says, naturally finding the muse in his situation. “I’ve been doing solo livestreaming for the first time ever—you have to keep the music going. It’s been an amazing step forward for me, and it’s forced me into some new ideas.”

While his self-professed Tony Rice guitar “obsession” is undeniable, Stickley has explored and mined his personal creativity to discover his own musical vista. And while his music is constantly evolving, Stickley confesses that he prefers to “go with the flow” rather than set concrete goals for his next chapter. “A lot of it is energy related,” he states. “The goals get defined as we move forward.” 

Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine