Slide Guitar Blues Workshop by David Jacobs-Strain

Saturday , October 15, 2005
11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Location: Elderly Instruments
workshop ($35.00)

Don't let this slide-guitar teacher's relative youth fool you; at age 22, David Jacobs-Strain has taught slide guitar professionally for years. For several years, David has been on the faculty of the Port Townsend [WA] Country Blues Workshop, the prestigious Augusta Heritage Blues Week in Elkins, WV, National Guitar Workshop's week-long slide sessions in Chicago and New Orleans, and the Centrum Country Blues Workshop (at Fort Worden State Park) where he participated as a 12-year-old student and has taught since age 15.

David suggests that his slide workshop is intended for "advanced beginners and intermediate level" slide players but hastens to add that he will make an effort to accomodate players of all levels. This popular hands-on slide workshop will feature the Mississippi Delta roots-blues style of slide playing. Topics will include basic 12-bar blues, basic slide-guitar technique, making the voice and the slide work together, and an extensive discussion of open tunings.

The primary workshop focus is on technique. However, David emphasizes that blues is about emotional expression; feeling the music in a visceral, spiritual way paves the way to mastering performance techniques, he explains. To help students to internalize the deeper feelings of the music, he sometimes asks them to put down their guitars and vocalize the sounds they want to make.

David has studied with Bob Brozman, Otis Taylor, John Jackson, Orville Johnson, and Martin Simpson. His own teaching career began at age 15 when he was invited to join the acclaimed Port Townsend Country Blues Workshop as its youngest-ever faculty member. He has led master classes at the college level and has presented school programs to children of all ages as well as Blues-in-the-Schools Preograms in the U. S. and Canada.

At festivals, he has conducted blues slide-guitar clinics and taken part in free-form round-robin 'workshops' with other performers. These have included the Newport Folk Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Owen Sound Summerfolk, Stan Rogers Folk Festival, Merlefest, California World Music Festival, and the Vancouver folk Music Festival. David has played The Kennedy Center, the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, Bumbershoot, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Ottawa BluesFest, the B. B. King Blues Club, Club Passim, and in Europe. (David is an anthropology student at Stanford University, where he forgoes summer classes in favor of the festival circuit.)

David counts among his influences the music of early bluesmen Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House, and Lightning Hopkins. The bottleneck-slide style of playing is a hallmark of Mississippi delta blues, of which Charley Patton and Son House were among the first recorded examples. David explains that the "bent notes and slide-sound give the music a haunting power and mystique even to those of us far removed from the hard times and conditions of the South in the early 1900s."

David explained his efforts and interest in the blues in the San Francisco Chronicle, January 6, 2005: "I'm searching out new ways of playing [the sound of the 1930s], new ways of writing. One of the challenges of playing blues, writing blues, singing the blues, is to be honest with yourself and sing what you really feel and at the same time make it part of that tradition." He added, "I've always been really attracted to the darker side of the blues."

Acoustic Guitar's April 2005 article on the young Oregon musician, titled "A Passion for the Blues," quotes David on the topic of DADGAD Blues: "It works really well for blues....I like the mystery of the tuning."

"Never Too Young to Sing the Blues" is the title of an article about David's second year of teaching, at age 18, at the Augusta Heritage Arts Workshop's Blues Week, in the magazine Inter-Mountain Lifestyles. David was drawn to delta blues because of the "vitality and ragged humanity" of the music, he explained; "blues has a raw, emothional quality and power of expression...a certain earthiness....a sense of mystery and magic...." The article concludes with David's assessment of the nature of blues music. "Analytical thinking is valuable, but the blues must be understood and played in a gut-level, spiritual way," he explained, adding, "The blues is about somethingdeeper than any individual story. It's there in the dark texture of the music rhythms and bent notes."

David has developed a national reputation for his sure-handed roots blues slike guitar work and soulful voice. He has received critical acclaim for his ability to take trasured blues classics and make them his own:

"Stuck on the Way Back reveals chilling original tunes that the solo acoustic blues artist takes to the edge with virtousic slide and finger picking....fret-busting chops and barrelhouse vocals....an authenticity that is startling for his age." - Dave Rubin, Guitar One Magazine, cover story, November 2002

"Jacobs-Strain's style has matured well beyond imitation. Showing off his considerable chops on the blistering 'Sidwalk Rag,' he makes an emphatic statement about old forms becoming new again...." - Ian Zack, Acoustic Guitar Magazine, Hit List, December 2002

"He's gruff, snarly, bold, sometimes brash and most always intense. His vocals convey strength and confidence." - Les Reynolds, Indie-Music.com, October 2002

"Carrying on the invigorating tradition of his friend and mentor Otis Taylor,...Jacobs-Strain surfaces with one of the most powerful blues releases of the year." - Gary Von Tersch, Sing Out! Fall 2002

"...has the mature touch and thoughtful songwriting usually associated with a much oder artist...." - Genevieve Williams, Blues Revue, October/November 2002

"For a young artist, being heralded as the 'new Dylan' can be a mixed blessing....One can draw a straight line from Dylan's interpretation, at age 21, of Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean" to Jacobs-Strain's harrowing version of Bill Monroe's "Wild Bill Jones." - Dave Rubin, Guitar One, January 2004

David Jacobs-Strain is performing at the Ten Pound Fiddle at the UUC on the corner of Grove and Library in East Lansing on Friday night, October 14, sharing the bill with bluesman Roy Book Binder [www.tenpoundfiddle.org]. On Thursday, October 13, David is playing The Ark in Ann Arbor [www.theark.org].