phil keaggy

[mr monk <monk@fuse.net>]

well...in addition to being able to do all the stuff that lots of 
guitarists
aspire to... making really cool rhythm loops and playing mindbending
masterpieces over top of them... he will play a longish (20 seconds?)
classical guitar line BACKWARDS so that when he flips it over it has a
mellotron meets hendrix sound and will layer two or three parts on  top of
it... and he's improvising it all! and he'll do it in an unfamiliar open
tuning... i guess it's not his use of the jamman that is so incredible, but
his ability to seemlessly integrate it his deep musicality.


here's an anecdote. i was backstage and he was absent-mindedly playing what
i thought might be a variation on an edvard grieg piece.  he's going to 
town
and folks are filtering in and out of the room and he's continuing to play
the same piece , but expanding on it... every now and then he'll slow down
just slightly and re-tune one of the strings up or down a half or whole
step... kind of like adrian legg.. but he's doing it to be able to keep
playing what is in his head.. after a while i say..."phil.. how do you keep
track of what pitch the strings are tuned to?" he kind of "wakes up" from a
slight daze and says "what?... oh i don't."  keep in mind this isn't some
michael hedges piece with lush chords and lots of rhythm. it full on melody
and counterpoint with a third and sometimes fourth voice. it's kind of a
lesser reflection of what i imagine bach or mozart to have been like.


on a good night it's simply beyond comprehension.. on a bad night he's just
amazing.

my little opinion.



monk





on 12/20/01 6:03 PM, Bret at echoplex@yahoo.com wrote:

> 
> --- mr monk <monk@fuse.net> wrote:
>> hey there,
>> 
>> 
>> i just finished mixing a new phil keaggy record that i produced and
>> recorded here at my studio. he does use the jamman and i even
>> convinced
>> gibson (when they were still responding to phone calls....) to send
>> him an
>> echoplex, but it was too much new technology for him. personally, i
>> think if
>> he had gotten into it it would have been a powerful tool for him, but
>> the
>> way he uses a jamman is like no other
> Can you elaborate on the unique way that he uses a jamman?
> bret
> 
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