The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #50535 Message #3059470
Posted By: Richard Bridge
22-Dec-10 - 02:11 PM
Thread Name: Really Good, Unknown Guitarists
Subject: RE: Really Good, Unknown Guitarists
I think a case can be made for three local Kentish players (actually, one might be a player of Kent, from the other side of the Medway) albeit one is dead.
The late Pete Hicks ("Slats" when he was on here) - a 12-string player from hell and also a tenor banjo player - oh and in his widow's house is still the Sigma (he used to call it a Martin) that he was bought as a bribe to go and do a couple of shows with Diz Disley): never flashy but with the rare ability to make music on a guitar so out of tune that no-one else would play it at all, a state induced by the force of his playing. He used to play his 12 in concert with 13s on. Hands like tyre levers. He once put a set of strings on before a show, went on stage, and in his eagerness broke 6 with a single mighty swipe of a plectrum. And in a moment that will endear him to all guitarists, was once asked by a banjo player to play the 12 more quietly since the banjoist could not hear his own banjo.
Then there's the classic blind guitarist, Dave Reay. If it can be played on a guitar he can play it, but a Django-ist at heart.
And finally one of the greatest driving clawhammer guitarists - when his head lets him play to full ability. His name's Jeff Cole this week and he hasn't picked up his guitar for a year, but when it's all together and he's on the upswing before the crash, enough in him to be free but not so much as to be terminally D-O-S it will fly mightily, whether it be a Martin Carthy-style thud, the sweetest country runs in the middle of Blue Tattoo, an ever-accelerating Irish Washerwoman or the jazz tinged pieces he learned in the soup when he was a younger teenager sitting at the feet of Jansch, Renbourn or Graham. An awesome musician at the right moment.