more from
Room40
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

New Guitar Old Hat Knew Blues

by mike cooper

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9 USD  or more

     

1.
Knew Strings 03:32
2.
3.
Voodoo Phone 00:35
4.
Dream Bodies 07:16
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

about

The origins of my music lay in finger picking North American folk music and Afro American blues which I began playing in the late 1950's. I pursued this and then songwriting into the early 70's when I then discovered Hawaiian music and the world of American free jazz and European free improvised music which altered my perception of the guitar totally, especially as a solo instrument. Apart from the first few formative years of learning guitar standard European tuning never became a part of my technique. I immersed myself in 'open tunings' once I realised their global significance. A new tuning inevitably produces new music.

From the mid 70's I almost exclusively played lap steel guitar - fretting the instrument with a steel bar and as fingers on frets became redundant another world of instruments that involved sliding something ( almost anything) up and down strings to produce glorious glissando appeared. Hawaiian, African, Greek, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese and many other of the worlds music has instruments that involves this technique and all of them have to some extent influenced the music you hear here.

For almost all my musical life I have played a 1930's metal bodied National Tri-Plate resonator guitar, an instrument designed by Slovakian American John Dopyera, initially for Hawaiian musicians as a lap steel instrument. Recently I wanted to have an instrument to travel with on holidays and longer trips that was small, light and 'cabin-able' on aircraft (although I always carry my instruments on board whenever possible) and I purchased a wooden bodied Yamaha short scale travel guitar, the first wooden bodied guitar I have owned since the very first instrument I ever had. The experience of a new instrument (like a new tuning) always seems to uncover new music, waiting to be discovered, hidden within. This small travel instrument also seemed to invite a return to playing with fingers on frets as well a steel or bottleneck, although I wasn't about to revisit nostalgic musical territory with it. I am an improvisor and although there are 'songs' here they are all musically improvised with only the text having some pre-formed essence, and they are produced using a William Burroughs/Brion Gyson cut-up technique on a couple of Thomas Pynchon novels, which has produced a body of work of about 35 'songs' that I call Spirit Songs. Every performance of Spirit Songs is different.

In the winter of 2016 I took the new instrument and some songs out for a short european tour and in Switzerland, at Cave12 in Geneva, I was fortunate enough to have Eleonora Puzzle as my sound person who recorded my set. I thank her and Sixto and all who attended that night and made the recording and music possible. What you hear is what they heard that night in its entirety apart from the first five minutes or so while I was warming up which I have saved for another occasion.

mike cooper / rome august 2016

credits

released September 21, 2016

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

mike cooper Roma, Italy

Mike Cooper has traced a path completely his own for the past 60 years as an international musical explorer, lap steel guitarist, singer, improviser and composer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. stretching the possibilities of the guitar with an eclectic mix of the many styles he has practiced over the years. ... more

contact / help

Contact mike cooper

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like mike cooper, you may also like: