dirty shuffle blues in Em

Rancid Rumpboogie

Blues Mangler
Thanks again RR,
Looks like Windows Media Player.
I don't know why, but when I play something from DropBox it defaults to QuickTime Player...no time there.
I'm thinking maybe an update from ITunes slammed me into that [smiley=angry.gif] not sure
.
Well, just go into your control panel, select "Progams and features", find QuickTime and uninstall the dirty little bugger.  I had Picasa get onto my machine somehow like that and it hijacked things so my digital camera became a royal pain in the asterisk to upload pictures from, so I just uninstalled Picasa and bingo, my digital camera software worked fine again.
 

KevinS

Blues Newbie
Hey Tom, this is in response to your inquiry about background, influences , gear etc. .
Be glad to share a little.  I enjoy hearing a little about how other people got here.

I come from an almost completely acoustic guitar background. I would say 99% and that might be on the low side.  When I started playing it was all folk rock stuff for me.  James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce
C,S,N(&Y) etc..  Was introduced to classical guitar senior year of Highschool.  Liked it so much I went on
get my Bachelor's in Classical Guitar. Shortly thereafter due to circumstances beyond my control I ended up giving up playing classical guitar.  Dabbled in other stuff for awhile, but basically have played very little guitar over the last twenty some odd years.

Until last year.  Long  story short, saw Griff's ad for the four note solo, checked it out but ended up buying the regular BGU course instead.  My knowledge of Blues music was basically non-existent.
Didn't play it, didn't listen to it.  Now it's mostly what I've listened to over the last year.  Like everything,
but am particularly fond of Robben Ford and lately been listening to lot of Matt Schofield.

I know next to nothing about gear. Until about 6 months ago I had never owned a solid body electric guitar. Have had the same semi-hollow Guild Starfire for about 30 years.  Now I'm playing a Godin XTSA
That is Roland Synth ready.  So I got the GR-55 synth to go with it, mainly for the amp and guitar modeling and effects that are on it. 

So, as far as blues music and electric guitar playing goes, I'm pretty much a novice. Lots to learn from
all of you.   That's my story and I'm stuck with it.
 

OG_Blues

Guitar Geezer
Kevin, Thanks for sharing - I also enjoy hearing people's stories, and over time, a lot of them get told in various threads on the forum.
A lot of us here are "mature" people that have rekindled an interest in guitar that went unsatisfied earlier in life or have just finally found the time to pursue guitar. As with any cross section of society, backgrounds are as varied as they can be.
This is my "3rd pass" at learning guitar, and my first experience with the blues. As a teenager, I played 3 chord songs and even played in small bands in the rural area I lived in - things were really simple way back then ('60's). During mid life, I took some lessons, but like so many here have found, he wanted to make me into a version of him, and, well, that just wasn't going to happen! but I did learn quite a bit. At that time, my business, combined with family life's demands were too much to successfully also work in practicing guitar, so I dropped it. I also did something really stupid and seriously injured my right hand, which will never fully recover, and that put me out of the game for a long time. Now retired, I'm taking another shot at it. I had never played blues before, but saw it as a somewhat more accessible form of music than some other options - not that that makes it easy - it is not, at least for me.
But I am having a ball trying! And the group here is great.
Tom
 

Rancid Rumpboogie

Blues Mangler
OG, my background is kinda/sorta similar to Kevin’s, meaning heavy involvement years ago, 30 years of virtually no guitar playing, then rekinled interest.  Started out playing a cheap Silvertone acoustic in a sheep wagon, then got a Silvertone electric and amp out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog, learned country music from the radio.  Then a couple of funky high school bands in 1960 – 1964.  In 1965 a bunch of us started a rock band and hit the road, never playing more than two nights anywhere, took cash only, no checks, used no credit cards … to avoid the draft … they couldn’t draft us if they couldn’t find us.  In 1968 we were banging around San Francisco, the heyday of Fillmore West, lived a block from Haight & Ashbury, competing for gigs with the likes of Janis Joplin, The Electric Flag and such who were also relatively unknown at that time ... actually met Janis Joplin once when she and our band were both playing for free in Golden Gate park.  Needless to say we scored few gigs and went back on the road.  That went on until 1970 and that band broke up.  In 1973 another bunch of us started another band to finance our way through college.  Got my degree, life and music went opposite directions, didn’t play for around 30 years.  Obviously the music we were playing through those periods was everything from surf music to acid rock … and a good dose of outlaw country.  But the blues was laced through all of that … have always been drawn to blues.  That’s my story in a nut shell.  An aside to that is that my left hand and wrist looks like look like they've been through a hatchet fight without a hatchet.  Crushed wrist, severed tendons, several accidents, scars all over the place, metal plates in my wrist.  By some miracle of fate and many thanks to a super-excellent orthopedic surgeon I still have full use of everything though.
 

vashondan

Blues Doobie
Hmmm, well, grew up in the sixties in LA graduating HS in 64 and was blown away by the music that evolved over the coming years.  Loved the Stones and Beatles first and then Led Zeppelin, the Who etc. etc.  Played a mean air guitar and sang out of key to most songs. Saw a lot of bands in that era at the Whiskey and other venues in the city. Always want to sing or play an instrument but....

A couple of times I bought cheap guitars and tried to teach myself but that ended quickly each time.  In the last 15 years I went through collecting CDs of Jazz Guitarists and Blues.  A few years ago I bought another guitar (acoustic) learned some finger style and enjoyed that but soon after and for the first time I got interested in electric guitars and found BGU.  Bought BGU which was over my head but slowly went through lessons and followed the threads on Unleashed.  Over the last 1-2 years I finally decided to actually learn how to play and went through parts of a lot of Griffs courses but never really played to backing tracks for some reason so I was learning songs but not music and certainly not getting the most out of learning.  Then, in the last year I found the VJR and after some procrastinating started posting.  Thats the time I believe my real guitar learning started.

Love many many performers and of course it was the British invasion that gave my my first real foray into blues (the stones for example). Now I like the Allman Bros, Gary Hoey, BB, Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton etc. etc. 

Looking forward to more and continuous learning interspersesd with period of frustration.  The long and winding road. 
 

KevinS

Blues Newbie
Great stories guys.  Awesome, I love it!
And definitely some similarities in how we ended up in this here BGU/VJR.  Who woulda thunk it.
OG and RR, I can relate to having something physically wrong that just prevents you from playing.
That's tough going when you love guitar as much as we all do.
RR, my first guitar was also something my parents bought me from the Sear' & Roebuck catalog.
Not even sure it was real wood.  But I learned a handful of chords on that thing.
The early '70's is really what would be considered my"era", but I have an older sister and Vdan, she was
listening to all the stuff you were.  I would sneak into her room when she wasn't around and play all her
LP's and 45's.  I think I actually relate more to '60's music truth be told.
And RR and Vdan, you know where I spent the entire decade of the '60's........ I lived in Seattle!
My sister took me to a concert at what was then called the Seattle Center Arena and we saw The Who open for The Monkees. And Pete Townshend did smash his guitar. What a waste.
 

KevinS

Blues Newbie
Man oh man .  Vdan was  clubbing it around the Sunset Strip in the late '60's, the mecca of the singer-songwriter, folk rock scene and RR was doing it up there in Haight Ashbury with the psychedelic rockers.
How cool is that!
 

OG_Blues

Guitar Geezer
Meanwhile, I was spending endless hours driving the tractor on the family farm in Southern MN.
How cool is THAT? LOL
Tom
 

Rancid Rumpboogie

Blues Mangler
Hey, OG, all through Jr. High and High School my entire summers were spent driving tractor ... either summer fallowing dryland wheat or mowing / raking / bailing hay.  No cab on the tractors, no air conditioning, no stereo, no radio.  Speaking of radio, our little town in Montana only got one station ... country.  And occasionally Wolf Man Jack on skip.  No TV.
 
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