Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'

Subject: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 12:37 PM

Somebody took this video last week and Mitch (the guy in the black hat) put it on Facebook. I'm playing the Dylan song. I figured some of you who've been talking to me for years here but never met me might enjoy seeing it. Click the link.

Little Hawk plays Dylan

Others were playing along some too, as you can see. You can hear Bryan Sutton's concertina in the mix here and there. I'm playing my favorite Martin D-28. It has a big voice, that guitar.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 12:48 PM

Better than Dylan...I can understand the words!:-) Great job and, yes! It is wonderful to *see* and *hear* you live on camera, too! Thanks for letting us know.

kat

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Nick
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:27 PM

Haven't got a facebook account - ah well

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Beer
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:35 PM

I dropped mine as well. But good for you L.H.
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:39 PM

Well, maybe I can talk to Mitch and see if we can put it on Youtube.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Genie
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:48 PM

That'd be cool, Hawk.
I loved the FaceBook video -- Kat got it right! -- but maybe on YT the pic would be a bit bigger. And you could share it with the world!

Genie

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:49 PM

Thanks. I'll be seeing Mitch on Friday and I'll see what we can do to put it on Youtube.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:53 PM

Yes please, put on Youtube. Proper sized screen and should be better sound too.

I echo Kat. I can understand what you are singing. I have guitar envy.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: My guru always said
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 04:17 PM

Would love to see it on YouTube!!!

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 04:26 PM

Looks and sounds as if you're having fun!

So Dylan sold all those arrangements from you?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 04:26 PM

"stole" not "sold"

Charley

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 04:36 PM

Well... ;-) I think of Bob as my older brother. I doubt that he thinks of me at all. However, he is welcome to steal any of my arrangements if he wants to, but he can't have Winona!

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 07:22 PM

Looks like I'll have to get a facebook account when time and patience allow...

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: JennieG
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 07:55 PM

Terrific! as has already been said, I can understand the lyrics......makes a change with a Dylan song.......

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Janie
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 07:59 PM

Very nice, LH!

Janie

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 08:38 PM

It's been far too long since I heard you play, LH. I am looking forward to seeing it on Youtube.

Edmund

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: GUEST,olddude
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 08:56 PM

It is perfect in everyway, better than Dylan IMO
great job

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 10:25 PM

I really, really liked that. You have a nice voice and you really made that song your own! I love your harmonic playing too! Nice job!!!

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 10:37 PM

Thanks very much. I love playing those Dylan songs. They "bring it all back home" for me.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 10:41 PM

Little Hawk, I don't have a facebook account either (nor do I plan to get one), but I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing you on YouTube.

Maybe the reason I've never been as thrilled with Dylan as many other people seem to be is that, half the time, I can't make out a lot of the words he's singing (very "folky!"). Now, if I can understand the words. . . .

Anyway, I'll have my hands hovering over my keyboard and my ears flappin'.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 11:11 PM

I think when Dylan was doing the early stuff, folk-style, every word he sang was crystal clear. Videos of his acoustic performances at Newport and elsewhere in '63, '64, and '65 will back me up on that. When he started doing the electric music with a backup band then, yes, the words got a lot harder to hear amidst all the instrumental noise, and that was part of what his folk audience was objecting to. In my case I like Dylan's lyrics so much that I pretty well always know them in advance anyway from listening to the records, so no matter how loud the band gets in a live performance, I can still follow Dylan's words, but it may have been quite frustrating for an audience that didn't know the lyrics that well.

His diction got less clear in the 80's and from that point on I'd say, right up to the present, but that also depends on the night. In some concerts he is much clearer and easier to make out than in others.

Be that as it may, I saw some marvelous Dylan shows in the 80's. By the early 90's his voice was clearly deteriorating. The last show I saw, about 3 years ago, the music was great but his voice was a shadow of what it once had been.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 11:16 PM

Good points Little Hawk. His voice really never bothered me since the words were so good. I think what he has done in recent years is very exciting, his band is very tight and works to his strengths. He puts on a damn fine show.

People used to say the same thing about Lead Belly. His diction wasn't clear and many of the recordings that we hear were poorly recorded. Yet the man was clearly a genius and a huge influence. Somebody got it!

I'd love to hear more of your music, keep it up! While it is clear that Dylan has infuenced you, I detect your own personality coming through and your arrangements, while close, are clearly your own.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 11:44 PM

Yeah, I don't try to directly imitate Bob or copy his style in an exact way, I just do the songs my own way...but I'm often inspired by the way he does it. He flatpicks a lot, and I'm useless with a flatpick, so I use my thumbnail for the alternating base and my fingernails for picking or strumming. I sort of combine Carter picking, Travis picking, and various other fingerpicking patterns, depending on the song.

It would be nice to get comfortable with the flatpick too, but I don't think I'll manage that in this lifetime. ;-)

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:01 AM

George (George?!) you sound great, like Steve Goodman and Bob Dylan mixed together, in a good way. Come to The Getaway next year and show us the rest of your repertoire.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Genie
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 08:26 AM

Amen to that idea, Ernie!

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: bfdk
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 09:10 AM

Sounds great, but where's the dachshund choir? ;-)

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: alanabit
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 12:08 PM

It's come out well. A good clear voice and some nice harmonica playing.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:32 PM

I really should have brought the Dachshund choir. A serious oversight! Nothing adds spice to a song like a nice tight group of Dachshunds howling mournfully along on the choruses and scatting on the instrumental breaks. By "tight", I mean you give them each a little shot glass of schnapps just before the performance begins. That really brings out the Caruso in them. ;-) More than anything else, they LOVE harmonica music and will howl along with gusto.

Here's a nice video of a Dachshund singing along with harmonica. As you can see, he really likes it. Note the wagging tail.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:33 PM

Oops. Sorry. I forgot to make the link:

Dachshund sings with harmonica

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 02:08 PM

excellent performance, LH.

I am intrigued by the reference to Bryan Sutton on concertina. His face is obscured by the black hat, but that can't be the Bryan Sutton, surely ?

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 03:50 PM

Ummm...I don't know. Who is the Bryan Sutton? This Bryan Sutton is an old friend of mine who lives in the Orillia, Ontario, Canada area. He's a longtime folkie from Scotland, must be around age 70 or thereabouts, plays concertina and sings a capella also, mostly old trad songs from the British Isles. He's a tall, thin man with a beard that is trimmed fairly short. Bryan's a good source of info on trad songs and he certainly has a great appreciation for that whole field of musical history.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: black walnut
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 04:00 PM

Wonderful. And you're Canadian too, eh? Me too, and I had a Dachshund named Herman...there's nothing sweeter than a Dachshund howling (and nothing rottener than a Dachshund rolling in poison ivy, but that's another story).

~b.w.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 04:07 PM

Well, a Dachshund that has rolled in fresh manure and week-old roadkill can be pretty awful too...(yet another story). They are ever on the lookout for new and more intense sensory experiences of that sort. ;-)

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: black walnut
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 04:45 PM

Ah, yes. You are bringing back lovely memories. We lived next to a cow field...I totally understand what you are saying. We also lived where they would oil the gravel roads on occasion - and guess who would walk into the house with oil on his paws? Oh, and the fact that his tail would "wear out" from wagging it and he would get blood streaks at about 6 " off the ground on all walls of the house. And then there was the chewing of my mother's nightgowns hanging on the line... But I loved him with all my heart.

~b.w.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 05:20 PM

They are all difficult in some respect, but still lovable.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: black walnut
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 05:22 PM

Yes...(and I won't brag about how mine won the dog food eating contest for all dog size categories - including the labs and dobermans - at the local fair!).

Now, back to your thread. I would love to hear you live someday, L.H. Do you ever come to the Goderich Celtic College or Festival?

~b.w.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: GUEST,olddude
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 05:30 PM

It is wonderful George, now how about sharing an original for us ... you are very talented, love the voice and the guitar work .. more please

Dan

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 05:34 PM

Nice job, Little Hawk.

Buddy Tabor of Juneau, Alaska, is also a great fan of Bob Dylan- I really didn't know much Dylan so I wasn't much of a fan until I met Buddy some 20 years ago. Nowadays when Buddy sings a song new to me and it is a memorable one, it's usually safe to guess it's a Dylan song. Or a Townes or a Cohen, but most often it's Dylan. What amazes me about Bob Dylan is his variety of subjects and styles.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 06:33 PM

Leonard Cohen is as good as it gets when it comes to songwriting. He's absolutely classic. So is Gord Lightfoot. So is Dylan. But they all have their own unique ways of doing it.

I've heard about the Goderich Celtic College, but never went to it. Maybe one of these days. Same for the Mudcat Getaway.

I have some Buddy Tabor stuff here that I haven't listened to in a long time. Thanks for the reminder.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: flattop
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 07:05 PM

I wrote several years ago that I think that some of Little Hawk's original songs are better than Dylan's. (And I'm a Dylan fan.) It's a shame that it has taken this long for most mudcaters to hear him sing. It's also too bad that mudcattters can't hear a few of his original songs like Summer's Gone.

I'd like to see this video but don't have a facebook account. I was waiting for someone to come out with arseBook or another social networking site that I could comfortably join.

Little Hawk forgot to mention that Bryan Sutton is also an electronics engineer (if I remember correctly).

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 07:44 PM

just to answer LH's query about whom I was referring to as the Bryan Sutton, well, this is he

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: flattop
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 08:03 PM

You got a different Bryan Sutton than the concertina player in the Orillia Folk Society.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: frogprince
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 08:36 PM

Kudos, L.H.; Kinda wish I could hear it on something better than these rinky computer speakers, but I really did enjoy it.
                        Dean

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 02:22 AM

Hey! Flattop. Man, I've been wondering where you were (in a general sense). "Summer's Gone" remains a favorite of mine for sure. Another one you liked was "Little Crow Woman". I have to dust that one off...haven't played it in at least 5 years, I think. "Arsebook" sounds like an inspired idea to me. You should see if you can get it started. ;-D

I'm pleased to find out about the other Bryan Sutton, the bluegrass flatpicker. Have just been listening to him on the link that Murray MacLeod posted, and he's a superb flatpicker. Wow.

I was hanging out with the local Bryan Sutton (the concertina guy) and some other pickers tonight at the usual Tuesday night thing. I asked Bryan if he was THE Bryan Sutton, and he said, "Of course" with a droll look on his face. ;-) Johnny Ashe knew right away about the Bryan Sutton in the link, because he knows a lot about those bluegrass guys.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 03:20 AM

I am a good friend of Little Hawk's Bryan Sutton, and I do take exception to Murray's somewhat offhand dismissal of him as "some other" BS and not the "real" one. I did in fact transcribe the wonderful guitar playing of Murray's BS (for Homespun, so you can check out its accuracy Murray!), but for me the original and real Bryan Sutton is the English concertina player now from Ontario. Little Hawk, please say hello to him from me - he's even older than I am, and I haven't seen him for a good few years.

And LH, sorry I can't catch your video clip, but I have so far refused to join Facebook and one can't even get in with a direct link (as one sometimes can, it seems, on MySpace).

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Mr Happy
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 05:11 AM

Is it on YTube yet?

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Bobert
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 09:19 AM

Now ya' got the ol' hillbilly all confuzerated.... I thought that I once checked out a pic here in the piccure gallery of LH and he weren't no skinny young guy with a Dylanish fro??? What am I missin' here???

B~

p.s/ BTW, I went ahead and set up a Face(less)book account... Found a few high school chums, too... Added them to friends... Hope they don't be sniffin' 'round the holler lookin' fir me now that I got a Face(less)book account 'er if they do they ain't lookin' fir no place to crash or to borrow my car 'er nuthin'... The P-Vine says that there is some creepy peoples out there...

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 10:40 AM

Hey, Bobert, I am skinny...but I ain't young. (sigh) Kinda wish I was, though. I'm just pretty good at preserving the youthful appearance for some reason. I'm probably about the same age you are, I figure. Anyway, yeah, that's me...the skinny guy with the Dylanish hairdo.

I had really no interest in Facebook. Got into it 2 or 3 years ago because a friend suggested it, and then I hardly ever even looked at it. Now the music thing comes along with Mitch, and I've got a little more happening on Facebook than before.

What's Myspace like? I've noticed that musicians seem to favor that site.

GUEST - Yeah, sure, I'll pass along your greetings to Bryan...but who should I say they're from?

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Nick
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 12:07 PM

Enjoyable listen.

I hope this isn't a terrible thing to say but I think it would have sounded as good without the other players who I don't think added a vast amount.

Subject: RE: Little Hawk on video 'Takes a lot to...'
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 02:28 PM

As I said, I don't have a Facebook account and I don't intend to get one. An out-of-town friend talked my wife into getting one, but she found it a bit of a hassle and there was nothing she wanted to do on Facebook that she couldn't do with e-mail or on the telephone, so she dumped it.

Apparently a lot of musicians use MySpace. I'm going to have to ask my upstairs neighbor, Misty Weaver, about the details of setting up a MySpace site. She's a singer/songwriter and has recently issued a CD of her songs; she thinks of them as "folk songs," but—well—they are interesting, and a bit different. Misty's page. I bought a copy of her CD in the spirit of "support your local musician."

As much as Dylan doesn't ring my chimes, I have to give him credit for being one helluva songwriter, and, indeed, he didn't really turn into a mush-mouth until a bit later in his career (unfortunately, Emmylou Harris seems to be suffering from the same condition; as lovely as her voice is, she swallows her consonants and you can't understand half of the lyrics she sings). I think what turned me off about Dylan was that—

Well, let's put it this way:   When I first began learning and singing folk songs, my mentors and examples (both live and on records) never tried to sound like anything they were not. And a few years after I got started, even the Brothers Four didn't try to sound like anything other than four college boys. Joan Baez has a very nice, clear soprano, and she uses it. Richard Dyer-Bennet was cultured, well-educated, and an offspring of the English peerage and he sounded like it. Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly sounded the most "folky," but they came by it honestly.

Then—along came Bob Dylan (real name, Zimmerman). People who went to high school with him said that before folk, he was singing rock, and he had a nice, clear singing voice that sounded, naturally, a bit like Buddy Holly's. A few years later, when they heard his first folk records, his voice was entirely different, sounding as if he had just been dug out of a potato patch and was about eighty years old. That much of a natural change was simply not possible unless he had taken to gargling with Drano. And in interviews, he came up with a completely bogus history, often contradictory, about how he was a migrant worker following the crops, had spent years hopping freights (remember, he wasn't even twenty yet), and who, in general, seemed to be deluded into thinking that he was Woody Guthrie.

My "Phony Meter" pegged out.

After Dylan came along, suddenly, I kept running into people (lots of college drop-outs) showing up in coffeehouses and folk festivals with expensive guitars, but wearing bib overalls, interweaving straw in their hair, at least one tooth blacked out, and a singing voice carefully cultivated to be raspy, slightly off-key, and with an impenetrable phony Southern or "Okie" accent they apparently got by studying re-runs of "Hee Haw" and "The Beverly Hillbillies." By the way, it's not as if they were trying to play a part (like The New Lost City Ramblers, who did it well and with great humor), they were trying to convince the not-all-that-impressed audiences (and, perhaps, themselves) that that's what they really were, even when they had rarely been outside the city limits.

Also, read what Dave Van Ronk says about Dylan in "The Mayor of McDougal Street." Van Ronk doesn't particularly bad-mouth him, he just tells what happened. Everything Van Ronk says about Dylan I've also heard from other sources. Dylan "borrowed" from everyone, which is perfectly okay. Everybody learns most of the songs they sing from other singers, either in person or on record, and they often copy arrangements, but Dylan started claiming that some of the songs he learned from others (including Van Ronk) he had written and/or arranged himself!

So, on that basis, I don't have a very good impression of Dylan. I am, however, waiting for Suze Rotolo's "A Freewheelin' Time," which I have on hold at the Seattle Public Library. Maybe she tells a different story or takes a different slant on it.

I hope you can get your stuff up on YouTube, Little Hawk. I'm most interested in hearing you at work. Maybe you are what Dylan could have been if he'd been a bit more real.

Don Firth