WORKSHOP DETAILS: Intro to Mississippi Blues and Slide Guitar: Classics and Deep Cuts
Betonia blues workshop at 3 PM
$20 suggested donation goes to the artist.
Email joel@rootcellarsound.com to reserve your spot.
"Intro to Mississippi Blues and Slide Guitar: Classics and Deep Cuts" - Explore the sound of Mississippi and the roots of American music with a selection of classic riffs and deep cuts from songs by Howlin' Wolf, Robert Wilkins, Jessie Mae Hemphill and Skip James. We'll examine signature melodies from each artist across multiple tunings. Open to all levels of playing ability. Tablature included for practice. Run time: 90-120 minutes."
ABOUT RYAN LEE CROSBY:
Ryan Lee Crosby is currently based in Rhode Island, but his musical heart is in Mississippi. He has released numerous albums, toured internationally and is a leading practitioner of the Bentonia School of rural Delta blues, as well as a world music explorer. Smithsonian Magazine praised his ability to "bring influences from Africa and India to the Bentonia sound.”
Crosby's new album "At the Blue Front" (featuring Grammy nominated bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes) offers a haunting, hypnotic meld of Bentonia and Hill Country blues. Recorded on reel to reel tape over two afternoons at Holmes’ iconic Mississippi juke joint, the album was produced, recorded and mixed by Crosby, with a selection of original compositions, traditional repertoire and fully improvised songs.
Crosby’s music has already positioned him as a major new guitarist in the blues and American Primitive styles, earning spotlights from Guitar Player, Aquarium Drunkard, WBUR (Boston NPR station), Smithsonian Mag, Premier Guitar, American Blues Scene, Vintage Guitar Mag, Acoustic Guitar Mag, and the Nashville Scene. He has opened concerts for Pokey LaFarge, The Hold Steady, Chris Smither, and Charlie Parr, is a regular at Clarksdale, MS’ Juke Joint Fest, and worked with producer Bruce Watson, from which his song “Down So Long” was added to Spotify’s official Blues on the Rocks playlist.
Under the tutelage of the last of the Bentonia, MS bluesmen, 77-year-old Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who runs the Blue Front as his mother did before him, Crosby patiently learned the Bentonia style. The Bentonia blues, which Holmes learned from the form’s originator Henry Stuckey as well as Jack Owens, depends upon a minor key open guitar tuning called crossnote and is often accompanied by falsetto singing. Its most famous exponent, Skip James, had stopped Crosby in his tracks when Ryan first heard the sound, and now Crosby has recorded in a room where James often performed. Even as he is respectful of the tradition, Crosby develops the style in his own way, using a 12-string electric guitar.
“Playing with Jimmy and learning from him,” Crosby says, “it’s the joy, it’s the process, it’s the connection and transcendence and what feels to me like a fulfillment of life’s purpose.”