Sonny Landreth Trio

Saturday June 21

Sonny Landreth Trio

wsg

8pm

$30 adv. $35 door

www.sonnylandreth.com 

Sonny with some guy named Eric Clapton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MENVyieB8rY

"Deep South"

"Sonny plays with all that technique and still with just so much soulful feeling," Ranson opines. "And a lot of technique players, they just lose that. Sonny lacks neither."

Dobro ace and six-time Grammy winner Jerry Douglas concurs. "I think that the reason he sounds so different is ’cause of where he’s from. I can hear fiddles a lot in his playing, just from the way he raises the notes. Slide is just another voice you can have. You can really make a guitar sound like a person, and he knows what that’s about."

Perhaps what’s most amazing is that so much of Landreth’s sound -- which integrates rhythm and lead lines as well as a wide palette of instrumental colors -- comes primarily from the action of his hands on the strings, long before the signal even sees the sweating tubes of an amp’s power section. Through fingerpicking and a combination of palm and thumbpick techniques, Landreth alternately coaxes ghostly overtones and roaring, full-throated harmonies from his instrument.

Coming across these discoveries has further fueled his quest. "That’ s the nature of inspiration. Once you experience that, you want it again, like a lot of things in life. And you should always think in terms of ’Well, if that happened, then what else is there?’ I think it’s when you quit asking questions you’ll quit finding answers. I mean you really have to open yourself up to the possibility of the moment and what that can bring."

Landreth’s attempt to capture his most inspired performances led him to record a good bit of "Levee Town" in his home, in between studio sessions. "You wanna get it right before that part where you know it too much. There’s just something about being on the edge. You’re in this space where it’s a gray area, you’re sort of flying by the seat of your pants for inspiration and you either fly or you fall by what you come up with. But when you really nail it, when you really ride that, when you really feel it, that’s the magic. If you go back and try to recapture that, it’s impossible. I’ve never been able to do that, not completely."

"It’s a lifelong goal to be able to achieve that, to be able to tap into it whenever you want to and to be able to hold on to it. It’s like you’re not trying to analyze it while you’re in the heat of the moment, but you’re focused in a different way, and it’s more instinct, it’s more inspiration."

"I read one time, John McLaughlin said this: ’Your role is to play to inspire yourself and your fellow musicians and others.’ And it’s like a wheel, it’s like one thing does lead to another and one thing inspires the other."

It’s just like the flood headed for Levee Town, and you better watch out for forces of nature. They just might change your life.

-- Todd Mouton