Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post, from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. This series was conceived as a haven where folks can drop in to share conversation, ideas, weather reports, and music. Feel free to leave a note, comment, picture, or tune. As always the diarist gets to sleep in, and may show up long after the post is published. Or not. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
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Pull up a chair, get your cup of tea, coffee, or other favorite morning beverage and join us for a neighborly start to the day ahead.
We have been doing the blues on a more or less regular basis for Wednesday MOT. However, there have been distractions aplenty. It’s time to bring back the blues.
Starting off, here is Justin Johnson at the Shack Up Inn, located in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the Devil in order to play better guitar. Whether his talent came from the Lower Regions is debatable. However, no one doubted his talent.
How about R. L. Burnside, who hailed from Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Back to Justin Johnson, on the fretless guitar. Swamp Blues. Justin writes the description for this:
“The cool thing about a fretless guitar, is that each of your fingertips turns into a guitar slide. You no longer have to feel the confines of the frets, and you can explore all of the musical space between each note. The challenge is that you have to be much more accurate with all of your finger positions, because if your fingertips are slightly off position, you will be out of tune, even if the guitar is in perfect tuning. This Newcaster guitar has a stainless steel fretboard, so the tone of the strings vibrating off of the fretboard sounds very close to the tone you get from a a metal fret. If it had been a hardwood fretboard, the tone would be noticeably more mellow. To accentuate the heavy swamp vibe, I ran through the DOUBLE CREAM pedal from Blackstar Amplification. I also used a very heavy dose of vibrato from the Fender Twin Reverb amp... but without any reverb, so the tone wouldn't get too soupy. All cables were Mogami, which I absolutely love! Cables are frequently overlooked as far as guitar gear, but you can tell the quality of a Mogami cable just my picking one up. They are built like samurai swords.”
- Justin Johnson
This is an open thread. Get your favorite cup of brew and pull up a chair. Who (or what) is on your mind this morning?