DYNAMIC COUNTRY BLUES GUITAR

CATFISH KEITH

Guitar Tuition DVD

"One of the finest acoustic bluesmen in America.... This man is flat-out spectacular!"- Big City Blues Singer, songwriter and guitarist Catfish Keith has established himself as one of the most exciting country blues performers on the scene today. His innovative style of foot-stomping, deep Delta blues and American roots music has had audiences spellbound the world over.

On this outstanding lesson, Catfish teaches his trademark arrangements of seven traditional country blues songs.

He starts his lesson with Jessie Mae Hemphill’s "Eagle Bird," a hypnotic one-chord song in the Mississippi hill style, similar to songs by Mississippi Fred McDowell, Junior Kimbrough and other masters from that region. Catfish says "it’s a bone-simple song," but by using his trademark techniques he transforms it into a powerful statement.

As in all of the examples taught on this video, Catfish first plays the tune, then slows it down to highlight how he achieves his dynamic effects.

His powerful fingerpicking style features heavy vibrato, powerful bends, "artificial" or "harp" harmonics, bottleneck slide and plenty of funky attitude. "Why Don’t You Take Mr. Catfish’s Advice?" is another one-chord song, this time in the Key of A. Insistent rhythms influenced by Mance Lipscomb and John Lee Hooker combine a damped, steady one-note bass with a bass riff that’s echoed in harmonics, along with a "skanky pinch harmonic" that adds to your pallet of sounds. The power of this style is in the hard-edged feel that Catfish gets by improvising a variety of sounds around one chord. "You don’t need a pile of chords," he says, "just one or two good ones." Based on a piece by the Rev. Robert Wilkins, "Police and a Sergeant" uses the alternating thumb style with syncopation and improvisations in the key of C. Lil Green’s "Knockin’ Myself Out Gradually by Degrees" features a double-time section, a Lonnie Johnson-style solo in harmonics with bass string snaps and a "sweep harmonic" chord wipe. Moving to the Caribbean style inspired by the great Joseph Spence ("one of my favourite guitarists of all time"),

Catfish teaches his dropped-D arrangement of the calypso "Brown Skin Girl." Here he uses musically simple ideas, but with the use of heavy syncopation, rhythmic variations and improvisation he takes the song into brand new territory. Changing to his steel-body National and using bottleneck and fingerpicks, Catfish teaches "Bye and Bye, I’m Going to See the King" by Blind Willie Johnson. He uses open C tuning (CGCEGC) and talks about tone, vibrato, slide technique and alternating bass picking. The video lesson ends with an amazing performance of Bukka White’s powerful slide piece "Jitterbug Swing," including fancy slapping/strumming moves as well as great show-stopping fingerpicking slide.