#jim oblon

[favemusiclessons]

In this lesson, I’d like to discuss playing over what’s known as a I - VI - II - V (“one-six-two-five”) chord progression, which is common in a variety of musical styles, from country to rock to folk to jazz and blues. You’ll find it in many old blues tunes, such as some by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, through the later recordings of Eric Clapton and many others. The examples I offer here are played in the key of F and with a swing-eighths feel. And all of the chords have a dominant 7 quality or implied tonality. So the basic underlying progression is F7 - D7 - G7 - C7.

[mitjalovse]

Once musicians reach their late styles, they start to feel freer. They no longer worry about other people's view of them, but that doesn't mean they just give up. No, they still care about their work in spite of being treated as old hats, though that also signifies they are much more willing to take wild chances. To give you an example, Paul Simon's Stranger To Stranger is one of the most off-kilter albums of his. Sure, he doesn't go full Scott Walker, yet you must be aware this is not easy listening. While Simon's tunes on Stranger To Stranger thematically resemble some of his older compositions, he and his collaborators keep us on the edge by continuing to subvert our expectations of what a Paul Simon LP should sound like. I don't think he could have that on his debut.

[jakedrumphoto]

8x14 dirty brass ten lug for Mr. Jim Oblon!! Catch him on the final Paul Simon gigs starting soon. 🙏🏽🙏🏽 #nickel #candcdrums

[deeslounge615]

Surf music at its best tonight and filling in for Jim Oblon this coming Tuesday, with @luchadoreangel aka Eddie Angel from Los Straight Jackets on guitar! 8-9:45p #hangten #nocover #freeparking #livemusic #madisontn #madtown #nashville (at Dee's Country Cocktail Lounge)

[musikazde-blog]

Neuerscheinungen in Singer-Songwriter Pop #10: Sunset ~ Jim Oblon, Other... https://t.co/29gA81cWg5 #Pop https://t.co/Uioe3V2MA1

Neuerscheinungen in Singer-Songwriter Pop #10: Sunset ~ Jim Oblon, Other... https://t.co/29gA81cWg5 #Pop pic.twitter.com/Uioe3V2MA1

— MusikAzDE.bot (@MusikAzDE) July 4, 2017

via Twitter https://twitter.com/MusikAzDE July 05, 2017 at 12:20AM

[al-pen-glow]

Jim Oblon - Where Did You Sleep Last Night

(originally by Lead Belly)

My girl, my girl, don't lie to me Tell me where did you sleep last night In the pines, in the pines Where the sun don't ever shine I would shiver the whole night through

[musiccityroots]

Picker Shock: MCR 11.6.13

It felt a little strange listening to Jim Oblon’s biting, rolling, polyrhythmic country blues at the start of our 7 pm show. He’s for sure an after ten pm kind of musician, and his playing really blossoms in the presence of dim neon lighting and night people. That said, by the time he flowed into the unison vocal and guitar lines of second tune, Muddy Waters’ “Can’t Be Satisfied,” the Oblon vibe was established, and that’s something very special – down home but a little psychedelic, precise but emotional. Against a Mississippi gut bucket backbeat, he skated up the neck and rendered stinging, mournful and colorful phrases. His instrumental ballad “Nancy” (an allusion to the Telecaster played by a conspicuous Oblon influence, the late great Roy Buchanan) was juicy and lush, with lines that harmonically conjoined Jim’s guitar with pedal steel by the great Bucky Baxter. “Streets of Gold” was a new vocal song that had a fresh form and a seductive swampy quality that reminded me a little of Sonny Landreth. He closed out with a percussive boogie blues that featured Oblon’s gift with multi-string tone clusters and country slurs. I’ll be heading back to one of his Tuesday night FooBar shows in East Nashville soon to catch Jim’s brilliance in its natural habitat, unconstrained by time limits.

From rock and roll to an Earl Scruggs roll we went, as David Andersen took the stage solo in a natty suit and a gorgeous arch-top guitar, which he used like a banjo to play a speedy version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” If I tried that I’d break down for sure. Then it was “Mr. Sandman,” a tune I love, popularized on the guitar by David’s Nashville mentor Chet Atkins. Just as that was receiving its ovation, I strolled out on stage and got David to share a little of his story while strumming changes. It’s an impressive skill he’s honed visiting with thousands of folks at his day job playing the atrium at the Country Music Hall of Fame. He rounded out the set with a tricky pick-and-fingers arrangement of “Day Tripper” and a pure jazz rendition of “How High The Moon” with a dazzling moving bass line and great chords. Andersen’s the quintessential cool cat, with a lot of depth behind the suave exterior.

More Beatles, and extremely difficult Beatles at that, marked the opening of Ethan Ballinger’s set. His vintage electric guitar, channeled through cathedral scale reverb, made a grand watery sound, and he patiently sketched “Because” on his own, before drummer Jon Radford and acoustic bass player Rich Brinsfield joined in with smoky jazz texture. That segued into a nice grooving jam that didn’t seem to have or need a name. Ethan stuck with the dirty toned juke joint electric guitar for “Caravan,” one of my favorite all time tunes. He handled the flying carpet chord changes with ease and freedom. It produced a nice drum solo too; the tune is made for one. Then Ethan shifted gears thoroughly by pulling out a tenor guitar, an instrument rarely seen outside of a few old time country groups. Usually a rhythm instrument, Ballinger flatpicked it beautifully through fiddle standard “Kitchen Girl,” a slow and lyrical Django-feeling tune (supported by bonus guitarist Austin Fillingo) and a fast and high boogie woogie in classic Nashville style. It could have been Hank Garland, Buddy Harman and Bob Moore up there.

The six string shootout reached its final act with a set by Guthrie Trapp’s hyper-efficient and brilliantly in-synch trio featuring Nashville bass legend Michael Rhodes and drummer Pete Abbott. They played some of the same tunes they did when they last visited a year and a half ago, and I’m glad they did, because original instrumental music this good merits burrowing into a bit. Hearing smooth-as-silk “Commodity” and Latin-tinged “Patricia” and off-kilter “Monkey Bars” played afresh is for me like having my favorite dish again at a great restaurant. One hears new things in the themes, and they’re all fantastic vehicles for improvisation, at which Guthrie is a Jedi master. He and Rhodes get into a physical and sonic dance that’s so deep and fascinating, responding to each other’s ideas and dynamics.

A swinging, guitar-friendly blues was called for to close out the night with all of the players on stage, and Jim Lauderdale and the gang settled on the mid-tempo shuffler “Bright Lights, Big City” from the Jimmy Reed catalog. We got to hear four different guitarists in conversation with one another, and it was an ideal coda to a night of slick playing. Over the horizon, back in the big city, the lights were indeed bright. But I think our shockingly good pickers proved once again that the really good stuff is often out on the edge of town. 

Finally, thanks once again to guest emcee Kyle Cantrell for your expert work at the podium. Always glad to have you.

  Craig H. 

[pennylaneylane]

Jim Oblon- Where did you sleep last night

it's a version of this song that was used in True Blood. I'm totally in love with it <3

[tunesforyou]

Where Did You Sleep Last Night (Cover) | Jim Oblon

[purerythe-blog]

Jim Oblon -- Where Did You Sleep Last Night

(Nirvana's "My Girl" cover)

[happynightmarebaby-blog]

I'm going where the cold wind blows In the pines in the pines where the sun don't ever shine I would shiver the whole night through

[musiccityroots]

Six Strings & The Truth: MCR 11.6.13

My journey into and through roots music has been influenced by hundreds of people and records and historic facts and happy accidents. But none comes close to my fascination with the guitar. Here I am, more than 30 years since I first noodled around on one borrowed from a friend to see what it could offer me, and I’m more inspired by its possibilities than ever. And no matter how many guitar players I learn about and admire, there’s always room for another one with a fresh sound and approach.

If you know our show at all you know our night’s show closer and co-curator Guthrie Trapp. He’s been featured not only at Guitar Night in the past but he’s played our stage countless times as a sideman to guys like Shawn Camp and in his own Nashville super-group 18 South. Over the years, I’ve sought out chances to see Guthrie more than any other instrumentalist in town. Not just because of his technical facility, but because of the endless ideas that pour forth from his hands. A born musician, this native North Floridian was being noticed on guitar and mandolin when he was barely in double digits of age and has been playing in bands since his teens. He settled in Nashville around 2001, and he took a seat in the Don Kelly Band on Lower Broadway, launch pad for the very best guitar pickers in town. Then I had a jaw-dropping Guthrie moment at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass when he was in his long stretch with the Jerry Douglas Band. At long last, Trapp composed and produced his first solo album. That project, Pick Peace, needs to be part of any collection of great contemporary instrumental music. Like the player, it transcends genre while scratching every itch a fan of country twang and jazz fusion might have, which is to say, me.

Then while we guitar nuts were going nuts over Guthrie, a new name surfaced in the last year or two. And we at Roots are very proud to be opening our show this week with Guitar Town’s most extraordinary newcomer Jim Oblon. When he began playing a Tuesday night residency at East Nashville’s wonderful, divey FooBar, word spread fast about a Telecaster master who could nail all the hard country and rockabilly machine gun twang you could ever ask for, with extra washes and spikes of creative jazz-influenced ideas. Plus he was a great singer who could re-animate vintage rock and roll and blues tunes as if they were new. Folks were trying to figure out this mystery man’s story too; there were rumors about his being Paul Simon’s drummer. Huh?

Well it’s true, and as Jim himself said about a dozen times as he related his story on the phone this week, “it’s kind of crazy.” He grew up in a musically saturated home in Connecticut, where not only was there a menagerie of instruments, but he was encouraged to take wide-ranging lessons, from keyboards to classical guitar to Indian percussion. The teacher of the latter became a pivotal figure. Jamey Haddad is a globe-traveling world-music and jazz drummer who taught at Berklee College of Music and who plays percussion to this day in Paul Simon’s band. Through Haddad’s recommendation, Jim began teaching guitar lessons to Simon’s oldest son, which led to a long-running casual friendship with the family. At last, an opportunity came up, and Jim wound up playing guitar, bass and drums on Simon’s stunning 2011 album So Beautiful Or So What? Soon after that, when the drum chair opened up in the touring band, Oblon took over in probably the most subtly and magnificently rhythmic band in American popular music. Jim’s first and central love is his guitar however, and he’ll lead a band of his own to open the show that’s well-practiced from many nights at FooBar and elsewhere in town.

Guthrie and Jim both play a fiery electric flavor of guitar, so we’ll fill in the middle of the show with mellower contrasts. If you’ve ever set foot in the Country Music Hall of Fame (and I sure hope you have) you’ve encountered David Andersen. He’s the roving guitar player who fills the atrium with warm sparkling country jazz. He’s got an uncanny ability to chat with visitors while he plays Carter Family and Chet Atkins classics, a skill so prolific that he’s become known as the Ambassador of Music City. But when he can focus his mind exclusively on his picking, his decades of experience as an L.A. studio musician, a recording artist and a featured jazz performer at storied Nashville venues really shines through.

Our youngest performer has played our show as a member of Missy Raines & The New Hip, and Ethan Ballinger is hip indeed. He also had roots music flowing through his family and the big shots were calling him one to watch early on – on mandolin. And he plays a lot of everything, including virtually ever part on his most recent solo album – an atmospheric songwriter project – Don’t Lose It. Ethan has also played in support of Megan McCormack, Alison Brown, Jill Andrews and more. We invited him to cook up a set that reflected his guitaristic imagination.

Let me also acknowledge the many superb guitarists who’ve played our show in recent months, including Julian Lage with Chris Eldridge, Rebecca Frazier, Robbie Fulks, Dave Mason, Trace Bundy, Jon Randall, Chris Luquette (of Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen), James Nash (of the Waybacks) and Derek St. Holmes. It’s almost always some kind of guitar night at Roots. But this week, it’s really Guitar Night. Come see how much six little strings can say.

 Craig H. 

Photo: Guthrie Trapp with bass player Michael Rhodes at last year's Guitar Night. Photo by Scarlati. 

[laurenfae]

Jim Oblon, Where Did You Sleep Last Night (Curse of the Telecaster)

[vexedperplex]

This is lovely. 

Jim Oblon- Where Did You Sleep Last Night

[carelessdaydreaming]

Jim Oblon

|Where Did You Sleep Last Night|

Curse of the Telecaster