| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 18/08/2013 : 20:27:25
MICHAEL HEDGES
But you can be a dreamer
You can be your dreams come true
Let imagine lead, reality will follow through
It will follow you if you follow through
(Follow Through by Michael Hedges--live version a few posts down)
> "One of the most brilliant musicians in America." – David Crosby
> "I considered him to be a genius and when he died I lost a great friend." – Graham Nash
Some very nice covers...especially John Martyn's tune
May You Never (Martyn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35gseUUyc5g
Guinevere (Crosby)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXHgtg3vACU[size=24][/size]
Wondering Where The Lions Are (Cockburn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW3F9jRTigE
Michael Alden Hedges (December 31, 1953 – December 2, 1997) was an American composer, Acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter.
Hedges attended Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, studying classical guitar. It was here that he studied under his compositional mentor, E. J. Ulrich. Subsequently Hedges was a composition major at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland who applied his classically-trained musical background in combination with various unusual techniques to the steel-string acoustic guitar. He covered a wide range of musical styles and was considered an extremely dynamic performer in concert. Hedges made ends meet playing and singing in pubs and restaurants in the Baltimore Metro area during his tenure at Peabody. In 1980, he made plans to move to California to study music at Stanford University. Hedges' performances were first recorded by The New Varsity Theater manager, videographer and friend Randy Lutge, who made and has archived many video recordings of his earliest performances at The New Varsity. In these videos he is seen busking, in the ticket line, upstairs, and on the main stage at The New Varsity Theater. For years Hedges played The New Varsity Theater regularly where he met and played with many great musicians, sharing the stage with Tuck & Patti Andress, John Fahey, Preston Reed, and many more, further honing his live performance. Hedges was contracted in February 1981 by William Ackerman who heard Hedges performing at The Varsity Theater in Palo Alto and immediately (using a napkin from The New Varsity) signed Hedges to a recording contract on the Windham Hill label.
He was married to flautist Mindy Rosenfeld but the couple divorced in the late 1980s.
Recordings
Hedges' first two recordings for Windham Hill—Breakfast in the Field and Aerial Boundaries—were milestones for the acoustic guitar.
He wrote nearly exclusively in alternate tunings. His early recordings and most of the 'Breakfast in the Field' album were recorded on the Ken DuBourg guitar and his Martin D-28 "Barbara". Some of the techniques he used include slap harmonics (created by slapping the strings over a harmonic node), use of right hand hammer-ons (particularly on bass notes), use of the left hand for melodic or rhythmic hammer-ons and pull offs, percussive slapping on the guitar body, as well as unusual strummings. He also made extensive use of string damping as employed in classical guitar, and was known to insist strongly on the precise duration of sounds and silences in his pieces. He also played guitar-variants like the harp guitar (an instrument with additional bass strings), and the TransTrem Guitar. He was a multi-instrumentalist, playing piano, percussion, tin whistle, harmonica, and flute, among others on his albums. Bassist Michael Manring contributed to nearly all of Hedges' records.
Frustrated that his published work reflected only the instrumental side of his creative output, Hedges convinced Windham Hill to release Watching My Life Go By, a 1985 studio recording of Hedges' vocal originals written over a span of 5 years – songs often performed at his concerts leading up to the album's release.
His fourth album, a live recording called, Live on the Double Planet, was assembled from 40 of his live concerts captured from 1986–1987 recordings. Subsequently, Hedges earned the freedom to release his albums with vocal and instrumental songs alike, something his first album would have contained were it not for the direction of record label initiatives.
Hedges had a very broad range of influences and his output spans many genres. His musical education was largely in modern 20th century composition. He listened to Martin Carthy, John Martyn, and the Beatles, but his approach to composition owed much to Igor Stravinsky, Edgard Varèse, Anton Webern, and Steve Reich, in addition to experimental composers such as Morton Feldman. He saw himself as a composer who played guitar, rather than a guitarist who composed music. He was often categorized as a New Age musician due to his association with the Windham Hill record label. Somewhat in reaction to this, he would describe his music as "Heavy Mental", "New Edge", ""Acoustic Thrash", "Deep Tissue Gladiator Guitar" or "Savage Myth Guitar," amongst other terms.
Hedges toured briefly as a co-bill with Leo Kottke. These shows included solo performances by Kottke and Hedges and, as a finale, a number of duets including performances of Kottke's "Doodles" with Hedges playing a high-strung parlor guitar.
Guitars
Hedges regularly used the following instruments:
* 1971 Martin D-28 guitar (nicknamed "Barbara") with a combination of a Sunrise S-1 magnetic pickup and FRAP contact pickup under the treble strings
* A 1978 Ken DuBourg custom made steel string guitar (stolen and returned many years later)
* A custom 1980s Takamine guitar with his name on the headstock
* Lowden L-250 guitars
* Martin J-65M guitars
* 1920s Dyer harp guitar configured with a FRAP/autoharp pickup combo / reconfigured with Sunrise S-1 and two Barcus Berry magnetic pickups for the sub-basses (glued straight to the body)
* Steve Klein electric harp guitar with a Steinberger TransTrem bridge
* circa 1913 black Knutsen harp guitar (often incorrectly referred to as a Dyer) with a FRAP/autoharp pickup combo—and rattlesnake tail wedged under the sub-basses at headstock
Hedges was left-handed but played right-handed guitars. Hedges would experiment with different pick-ups, effects and gain structures to achieve a different and unique sound for every song. Making full use of his equipment, Hedges was also able to precisely equalize the live sound from his instruments within the concert hall in which he was performing. He used state-of-the-art equipment such as Sunrise magnetic soundhole pickups, the piezo-crystal F.R.A.P. (Flat Response Audio Pickup) and later, Trance Audio soundboard transducers.
Death
In late 1997, Hedges died at the age of 43 in a car accident along State Route 128 in Mendocino County, near Boonville (about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of San Francisco). According to his manager Hilleary Burgess, he was driving home from San Francisco International Airport after a Thanksgiving visit to a girlfriend in Long Island, New York. His car apparently skidded off a rain-slicked S-curve and down a 120-foot (37 m) cliff. Hedges was thrown from his car and appeared to have died nearly instantly. His body was found a few days afterward. After his death, his record Oracle won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.
Hedges' unfinished last recordings were brought to completion in the album Torched, with the help of his former manager Hilleary Burgess and friends David Crosby and Graham Nash.
Recognition
* "I feel I can always hear his heart when he plays. He respected my playing too, and that simply thrills me." – Pete Townshend
* "Michael was unique. His music transcends genre and trend. It's truly musical, fun and enlightening.” – Steve Vai
* "His playing has a feel and timbre all its own – technically brilliant, but always organic and true." – Joe Satriani
* "One of the most brilliant musicians in America." – David Crosby
* "I considered him to be a genius and when he died I lost a great friend." – Graham Nash
* "There was simply no one like him." – Bonnie Raitt
* "He was a real musician who remained humble even through stardom. A rare breed indeed." – Alvin Lee
Discography
Studio albums
* Breakfast in the Field (1981)
* Aerial Boundaries (1984)
* Watching My Life Go By (1985)
* Taproot (1990)
* The Road to Return (1994)
* Oracle (1996)
* Torched (1999–posthumous)
Live albums
* Live on the Double Planet (1987)
Compilations
* Strings of Steel (1993)
* Sounds of Wood and Steel (1998)
* Best of Michael Hedges (2000–posthumous)
* Beyond Boundaries: Guitar Solos (2001–posthumous)
* Platinum & Gold Collection: Michael Hedges (2003–posthumous)
* Pure (2006–posthumous)
Compilations (various artists)[edit source | edit]
* An Evening with Windham Hill Live (1982)
* A Winter’s Solstice II (1988)
* A Winter’s Solstice III (1990)
* Windham Hill: The First Ten Years (1990)
* Windham Hill Guitar Sampler II (1992)
* Carols of Christmas (1996)
* Summer Solstice (1997)
* A Winter's Solstice VI (1997)
* The Renaissance Album (1998)
* Touch: Windham Hill 25 Years of Guitar (2001)
Aerial Boundaries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLXBABH2JuY
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| 5 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 19/08/2013 : 17:14:47
Aerial Boundaries..live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P9mmZyGb4s
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 19/08/2013 : 16:47:21
LAYOVER...brilliant ,live, sounds like 2 or three guitarists at once
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_anqYDyxP8
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 19/08/2013 : 16:45:29
Biography
by Matt Guthrie
© 1996 Naked Eye Press. Written in 1996 for the release of Oracle.
(Since it has not been revised, some information is out of date.)
Michael Hedges '94
At one of Michael Hedges’ 1993 concerts, a fan jokingly shouted, “Play something unpredictable!”, precipitating a puzzled silence from the crowd and stage. After a reflective moment, Michael responded matter-of-factly, “I’ve been trying to do that my whole life”, precipitating thunderous applause rivaling any given to his music that evening and speaking volumes about his relationship to his audience.
Michael Hedges is perhaps the most innovative and kinetic acoustic guitarist in the history of the instrument, but he is first and foremost a composer who plays guitar, not a guitarist who plays compositions. His innovative techniques are a means to an end resulting from the demands of his compositions rather than conspicuous attempts at virtuosity. Michael’s embodiment of contemporary composer, innovative guitarist, and flamboyant performer all in one has led to an eclectic style which consistently defies categorization. He has used various tongue-in-cheek phrases to describe his music over the years—“violent acoustic”, “heavy mental”, “acoustic thrash”, “wacka-wacka”, “new edge”, “edgy pastoral”, “savage myth”, “deep-tissue gladiator guitar”—but regardless of what he or anyone else calls it, the fact remains that he has defied classification for over fifteen years while still producing profoundly expressive music on his own terms.
Michael’s life in music began in his hometown of Enid, Oklahoma, where he flirted with various instruments before focusing on flute and guitar. He eventually enrolled at Phillips University in Enid to study classical guitar, but more importantly, to study under the tutelage of his compositional mentor, E. J. Ulrich. Michael then went on to earn a degree in composition from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore while concurrently nurturing an interest in electronic music. “I went to the school of modern 20th century composition. I listened to Leo Kottke, Martin Carthy, and John Martyn, but my head was headed more towards Stravinsky, Varese, Webern, and a lot of experimental composers like Morton Feldman.” Michael’s interest in electronic music led him in 1980 to Stanford University’s renowned electronic music department. While playing in nearby Palo Alto, Michael was heard by Windham Hill co-founder and guitarist Will Ackerman, who later recalled, “Michael tore my head off. It was like watching the guitar being reinvented.”
Just prior to meeting Will Ackerman, Michael met his musical compadre, bassist Michael Manring. The two began their recording careers together on Hedges’ first Windham Hill release, 1981’s Breakfast in the Field, an album which immediately established him as the label’s rebel and the pioneer of an entirely new acoustic guitar genre as profound as that created by his self-described “big brother” Leo Kottke before him. While the album lacked Michael’s unmistakable “Earth tone” which would emerge on later albums, the incredible compositions and performances led fellow musicians from David Crosby to Larry Coryell to note that a new kind of synthesis had been caught on tape.
During the next two years, Michael’s compositional and performance skills exploded in sophistication, resulting in his dynamic “man-band” performances. Combining these developments with revolutionary acoustic guitar amplification techniques, he created a milestone recording unlike anything anyone had ever heard—1984’s Grammy-nominated Aerial Boundaries. The tone, mind-boggling technique, compositional sophistication, and dynamic range of expression on this recording were truly revolutionary. In a sense, Michael had left his previous album in the dust, or as Joe Gore said in his 1990 cover story in Guitar Player, “…the tones and techniques unveiled on his first album had fully matured, and Hedges blew the genre apart.”
By 1985, it had become clear that Michael would not be confined to the limits of instrumental music, or any other category, including “new age”—the genre Windham Hill had essentially created. Consequently, the label created a new subsidiary label, partly to accommodate Michael’s self-described “eclectic record with strange-tuned folk songs”—Watching My Life Go By. “The real crux of the issue is what a composer thinks about when he or she is writing a tune. The term ‘new-age’ doesn’t come into my mind when I’m at my writing table or at my guitar. No categories come to my mind, and I think this is very healthy. If I did have a formula, it would be one more limitation that I would have to deal with, and I’m not in this business to make limitations for myself. I’m in it to get high. That’s what happens to me when I write music.”
87’s Live on the Double Planet, recorded at concerts across the U.S. and Canada, is a summation of Michael’s development to that point and captures the intensity of his live performance. This album features new and rearranged originals, including two compositions for harp-guitar—a rare instrument few have mastered and fewer still with anything approaching Michael’s grace and range of expression—and three covers, including his ferocious version of “All Along the Watchtower”. “When I’m writing a piece, I write it entirely for me. When I play it, I play it entirely for the audience and the audience gives it back to me tenfold. I think you always have to keep that live connection going because that’s what music is all about—it’s communication between human beings. Performing is more of a sensual experience—composing is more of a spiritual one. Music goes from human soul to human soul. My approach to music and my approach to life are the same thing. I’m not quite sure what that is, but I’m always thinking about the way I’m living while I’m playing guitar, and I’m always thinking about the way I’m playing the guitar when I’m living. Why think about guitar while you’re playing guitar? Why not think about life? You don’t want to tell people how you’re playing the guitar. You want to tell people how you live. That’s the purpose of playing guitar, from my perspective.”
1990’s Grammy-nominated Taproot, an “autobiographical myth told in music” features instrumental pieces and one vocal composition set to the lyrics of e. e. cummings and was Michael’s first recording in his Northern California studio, The Speech & Hearing Clinic. The concept for Taproot was influenced by the writings of Joseph Campbell and Robert Bly, both of whom encourage the development of personal myths and non-literal imagery to define and deepen identity. “I have troubles like everybody else does. I needed something to put me in balance, so I wrote a story that had symbols of my life in it—as Joseph Campbell would say, ‘a myth to live by’. I finished the story and solved all the problems. Then I took the names of the characters, who represent real people in my life, and the events, which are fictional but symbolic, and made them into song titles.” Michael’s musical catharsis was his most textural and epic to date, ranging from subdued and contemplative ensemble pieces to the “savage myth guitar” of the signature pieces “Ritual Dance” and “The Rootwitch”.
Michael has appeared on the cover of every major guitar magazine, winning Guitar Player’s readers’ poll award for “best acoustic guitarist” five years running—and was subsequently named by the magazine as one of the “25 Guitarists Who Shook the World”—but as Taproot signaled, he had been moving beyond the limits of solo acoustic guitar. “[Guitar Player] retired me to the ‘Gallery of the Greats’. I took that to mean that I no longer have to prove to anybody that I am a guitarist, thus I am now free to pursue other sounds and interests. I don’t want to be limited by what people call a ‘style’. I want to write music as I feel it, not what people expect of me because of what I’ve done in the past.” The result was Michael’s first release in four years—1994’s The Road to Return—a predominantly vocal album with significantly more elaborate arrangements and textures than previous works. In addition to acoustic guitar, Michael performed on flutes, drums, synthesizer, harmonica and electric guitar. “The Road To Return is an internal voyage. Not like a nostalgia trip. More like a vision quest.”
Playing "Bouree" with Michael Manring, '94Following The Road to Return, Michael set out on three tours accompanied by Michael Manring. As is typical for a Hedges tour, the performances were not what anyone expected. Michael surprisingly opted to largely ignore material from The Road to Return in favor of introducing many new compositions, a higher percentage of pieces performed on keyboards than ever before, and a foray into yogic performance art. Michael then toured alone for the first time in almost two years, and again surprised many listeners by leaving the keyboards at home and returning his focus to acoustic guitar and harp-guitar. Still more new compositions were featured, including four acoustic guitar instrumentals and his first vocal tune with harp-guitar.
As the abundance of new music indicated, Michael had entered a newly energized and prolific period, which continues to the present. Vocal pieces such as “Torched”, “Rough Wind in Oklahoma”, and “Free Swingin’ Soul”, and the instrumentals “Dirge”, “Jitterboogie”, and “Ignition” all indicated a new diversity, directness, and intensity. To accommodate the plethora of new material, Michael began work on two projects—the first, his latest release, Oracle, and second, the tentatively titled Torched.
Oracle signals Michael’s full-throttle reemergence into the world of instrumental guitar music. With the exception of his vocal cover of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”, Oracle is Michael’s most diverse and dynamic instrumental effort to date. The album ranges from the intricate and passionate solo fingerstyle pieces “The 2nd Law” and “Baal T’shuvah” to the driving acoustic thrash of “Ignition” to the smooth groove of “Jitterboogie” to the heart-wrenching “Dirge” and beyond. In addition, the beautiful multi-instrumental title track (originally titled “Fusion of the Five Elements” and eventually renamed for the Arizona town where it was written) represents the maturing of the more elaborate production techniques he had experimented with on The Road to Return.
Like his incredible live performances, Oracle further highlights Michael’s love of pop and rock’s legacies. His arrangements of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” (performed as a duet with Michael Manring) and his solo guitar interpretation of Frank Zappa’s “Sofa #1” (which Michael created at the invitation of Dweezil Zappa as part of a guitar tribute to his late father) showcase Michael’s ability to distill difficult compositions to his own instrument. (Michael had the unique opportunity to perform “Sofa #1” for Zappa shortly before his death). Also appearing on Oracle is Henry Mancini’s “Theme from HATARI!”, a formative piece of music for Michael during his youth, as well as the lovely ballad “When I Was Four”, which was developed from one of his son’s guitar tunings.
If Michael’s art is driven by openness, the fates were on his side just after he finished The Road To Return. At a concert in Oregon in 1994, Michael was approached by a woman who returned a guitar to him which had been stolen from his van fifteen years earlier while opening for Jerry Garcia. The custom guitar (built by luthier Ken DuBourg and heard on much of Breakfast in the Field) was in dreadful condition, but Michael invested in its restoration and the instrument’s presence wound up becoming the inspiration for several of the tunes heard on Oracle.
As Michael points out, Oracle fits perfectly into the chronology of his own life—“The Road to Return was a search for ‘Who am I?’ Then my old guitar was returned and I thought, ‘Yeah, this is part of who I am.’ Now, I’m open. I have a feeling something new is on the horizon for me, because, after all, how many ways can you slap a guitar? Since I’ve been writing songs, I’m more conscious of the music I’m after. It shouldn’t be seen as a new phase of my playing, but just more of me.”
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 19/08/2013 : 14:48:41
FOLLOW THROUGH
But you can be a dreamer
You can be your dreams come true
Let imagine lead, reality will follow through
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW-tSLJXpFk
Make up a story when you go to sleep tonight
Wake up in the morning and hold it down deep inside
And you can be a dreamer
You can be your dreams come true
Let imagine lead, reality will follow through
Some of us dance to the sound of fortune and fame
Others want to march all around defending their domain
But you can be a dreamer
You can be your dreams come true
Let imagine lead, reality will follow through
If darkness and pressure try to turn your story down
Look back, think hard about how that story really sounds
Then you can be a dreamer
You can be your dreams come true
Let imagine lead, reality will follow through
It will follow you if you follow through
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 19/08/2013 : 13:57:46
Michael Hedges - Cello Suite #1 in G Major (Bach)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnm__lNNUg
Live...
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
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