Woody Mann is renowned both as a performer and as a teacher. He has released nine albums and has produced instructional books, videos and dvds exploring the styles of the the Reverend Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Lonnie Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy among others. His playing is informed and articulate. With an easy grace and natural feel he can take a piece of music into the far reaches of jazz and back again without ever losing the heartbeat of the blues.
Woody began his guitar studies as a teenager in the living room of the legendary Reverend Gary Davis. A towering figure in acoustic roots music, Davis' impact on the young man was profound and his patient lessons laid down the groundwork for Woody's rich and varied style. An adept fingerstylist, Woody absorbed Davis' country blues and made it his own.
He played often with Davis, recorded with Son House and met many now legendary performers. Says Woody, "One of the things I learned from all those old timers was they didn't want to be like everybody else. 'Play your own music, whatever that is - add your own twist to it.' "
Seeking out the challenges of the Julliard School, Woody applied himself to classical forms and structures - blending the blues with a new set of compositional skills. His further forays into Jazz improvisation with instructor Lenny Tristano rounded out a complex style filled with subtleties and plenty of twists.
As the founder of the International Guitar Seminar series with long time friend and colleague Bob Brozman, and through his Acoustic Sessions series of guitar workshops, Woody commits a substantial amount of time to teaching. His constant touring around the world brings him in contact with students from all cultures, many of whom travel thousands of miles for the chance to study with him. He'll join Bob Brozman for some collaboration on the mainstage and both will teach Master Classes Saturday.
Woody Mann - Main Stage Concert - Saturday - 8:45pm Cedar Cultural Center
Master Class - Saturday - 12:30-2:00pm Cedar People's Center
Excerpts from - A CONVERSATION WITH WOODY MANN - Steve Kaul 2004
You will be performing at this year's Minnesota Resophonic Guitar Festival in Minneapolis, May 14 & 15th with Bob Brozman, Pat Donohue, Mike Dowling and Alvin Youngblood Hart.
I'm looking forward to it.
You and Bob Brozman have a recording out on Acoustic Music Records called "Get Together"
Yeah, I met Bob, we knew of each other for years and we had An idea to start one of these seminars, and Bob was excited about it
so we formed a partnership and started IGS (International Guitar Seminars) and then as we became friends we did a couple of tours together - a tour of Israel and a tour of England and some other places. And we decided that we really liked playing with each other so we just said "let's do a record" Peter Finger was interested so we went for it.
It was a really fun project, and it was a real gentlemanly thing, Bob slowed down a little bit and I sped up a little bit and we found our common ground.
There was no competition, nothing like that. I enjoyed making the record a lot.
You'll both be playing Saturday night at the festival, any chance at some collaboration there?
Oh Sure, The one thing that Bob and I both really like to do is improvise. He's one of the few musicians that I can get onstage with and just improvise, and there's a real give and take, and a real gentlemanly approach to the music and we get into some really exciting things. that's unusual, and it's really great.
And it's fun because It's really spontaneous. Sometimes you work with somebody, and work out the material, and you have your arrangements and it's good... but with Bob we can really stretch out and each time we play a tune it's completely different.
And you'll be bringing a resophonic guitar with you.
Yeah, this is a totally new world for me. Up until three or four years ago I didn't play any resophonic guitar, and then I met Franta (maker of Amistar Guitars) in Germany and played his guitar and really liked it.
I just loved the guitar. I had been looking for something, because onstage a lot of times wood guitars were problematic, for me. Because I like a big sound and with the piezos it sounds really thin. And when I used Franta's
guitar it had a real full rich bottom and a nice top it had an electric sound but a very warm sound. It has a magnetic pickpup, which on a wood guitar can sound thinner, but on his guitar it just worked. I can just plug it in and go and it was very satisfying to play.
I still work with a wood guitar sometimes, but more and more I'm doing concerts on the steel guitar. For me it's like a whole change.
I like to use it onstage because it just has the power. I can play lighter and get more dynamics and play louder without feedback - it just has much more of a presence, and I can get the subtleties. When I play at home I can play a wood guitar and get all those subtleties, but sometimes onstage it's really hard.
For awhile it was something to get over you know, "oh it's a steel guitar - it's not what I do.." and it always has this funky kind of sound, but when I
plug it in I can get a warm L-5 jazz guitar sound, I can get a honk-ey sound, and so it just works. For years I played archtops, electric with jazz bands so i'm used to electric guitars and with roundhole guitars there's always been a problem amplifying them.
So it's great, it plays easy.
I'm really looking forward to the festival.
You played another resophonic festival in Slovakia, Dobrofest, and had a unique concert there at one of the venues...
It was an old synagogue. I guess during the communist era it wasn't used as a synagogue, and since the wall fell they have been trying to make it something of a museum. It's just this really ancient place - with a lot of history. And you know my backgound is Jewish and it really kind of hit me with that. And we just played acoustically. I played solo and I played with a German guitar player, we just improvised and something about that day - it was so special. The acoustics of the place were just extraordinary - it was a really spiritual concert. It really moved me. It was one of the highlights of my career. It was kind of like a burned out building that they were renovating so you felt like you were in the shell of a building with all this ancient history.
It had that church like acoustic sound, you could hear a pin drop. Very very special. A lot of it was the place, and it was in old Slovakia, and I was playing with a German, and the confluence of all these aspects.
It was either that or the booze I was drinking.
You always seem to push yourself and challenge yourself. Does travelling to these places make you think differently?
It's also the audiences, and I guess that's why I like traveling. I play differently. There's no sense that I have to prove anything.
With me, you know, with the blues and traditional music I grew up on that like Gary Davis and stuff. But I never wanted to play covers. 'cause I always thought that if I was going to play a Gary Davis tune, why would I play it - I'd rather hear Gary Davis play it. So I try to do something different with it. I don't know what the process is, but I try to write things and change things around and not worry at all about trying to sound like Gary Davis and Robert Johnson. I just play, whatever I play. But the important thing for me is to try to be original. I'm not sure where it all comes from.
One of the things I learned from all those old timers was they didn't want to be like everybody else. Play your own music, whatever that is. Add your own twist to it. So if I'm home or teaching I can play a Blind Blake song
or a Gary Davis song and teach it, but I would never think of performing it straight out like that. I don't think it's a bad thing, it just doesn't seem authentic - to me. And if I'm going to perform and struggle, I guess I look at it as a forum - if I have something new to say. If people like it or don't like it, for better or worse, at least I feel like it's a little bit of me. I think that's my main barometer.
Improvisation seems to be a big part of what you do. Did that come from your Jazz influences?
I think so. You know, blues is always sort of improvisational to some extent, but I remember when I studied with Lennie Tristano, his whole thing was to be spontaneous. We did a lot of free playing and all sorts of stuff.
It's to really be in the moment and to play where you are in that moment.
Sometimes you play a song one day and it's really slow, the next day it might be really in time. It's to try to be in that moment and to not try to impress anybody and to take the chance on playing slowly. A lot of guitar players don't do that. Lennie used to say one of the hardest things to do is to play slow.
He'd say he doesn't know what talent is, its something, but it's 80% just do your work. Nobody got good with out having the guitar in their hands. Show me any good player, they're a good player because they put the work in. It has to do with the unconscious, but what let's it out is the work - it opens up that flow.
After all the training, schooling - what could possibly challenge you now?
It's funny, it's like this record I'm doing now. I have not recorded in a year or so. I wanted to do a record. I had some ideas - 'what is this is this going to be a blues record, a jazz record is it going to be...' and I have to stop myself and not think in those terms. I'm writing tunes and some of them are bluesy and some of them are jazzy, but I'm just taking one at a time, recording them. I'm doing a lot of duets now, and just trying a lot of ideas and just trying to let the process unfold. I have no concept in mind of what the record is yet, and it's stretching me. I try with each song to have a concept of what it is. For instance, I want to do this tribute to Gary Davis, but not play like him. That's my motivation. To come up with a spiritual song, so it's in his style and is also a tribute to him, but not necessarily using the harmonic language that he used. I can use jazz chords, you know, use my own thing. So when you hear it, you can definitely tell it's from Gary Davis. It has his sounds in there, but also some other things. So it's things like this that challenge me. You try to use who you are as a musician and what you play, and stretch it a little bit and make it your own. So there's a connection to the past and also something unique about it. I'm just tying to record and just trust that in the process it will reveal itself.
Will you be playing any of your new stuff at the festival?
Yeah, I don't know how many new things, but there are certainly a couple of new things I'd like to try out, for sure. It sounds like the resonator festival will be interesting. I know a lot of the resonator world expects blues, like slide blues. And while I do play slide I don't perform it all that much. It sounds like a great festival to provide different sounds, you know, like you can play music on the damn thing! For years I played an archtop and people said, 'hey, you need a good fingerstyle guitar' and to me, it was a great fingerstyle guitar. People have this concept that if you played fingerstyle, you had to have an 'OM', if you play bluegrass you have to have a D-28, if you play Jazz you have to play an L-5, and it's ridiculous. This whole concept of having a resonator festival to show that the resophonic guitar is a tool, you can play folk, your can play blues, you can play classical! It's a guitar! It'll be interesting to see what the audience expects.
They've seen (Bob) Brozman play in a variety of styles...
He really exploits the resophonic guitar. He has a dynamic approach to it with the volume and dynamic levels and stuff like that. And he's a great slide player.
It'll be fun to see you guys jam.
It's about making a melodic statement, and as a kid that was always drilled into me. Whenever we listen to a great musician, it's not about how good or bad technically they are, but it's about being real. When we listen to John Hurt, it's very simple music but it's very real, because he's just really in it, he's really playing it. That's the most important thing, it doesn't matter how complicated it is, it's just that element of is it coming from you and is it authentic to what you're playing and with no other agenda than just to play music.
That's what I love about playing with Bob. We're not out to cut each other, or compete, we just play what's needed to be played . He's one of the few musicians in the acoustic world that I can do that with, which is really a blast. We get up on stage and it's like, 'ok man, let's make music' and it's a
real high.
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