{"id":980,"date":"2015-01-15T19:03:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T18:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/?p=980"},"modified":"2015-01-15T19:48:13","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T18:48:13","slug":"once-was-lost-now-is-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/?p=980","title":{"rendered":"Once was lost, now is found"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a teenager, the folk revival was in full swing and I heard several exiting artists, some on records, some on TV, including singer\/guitarist Mississippi John Hurt (1892 – 1966). His style of picking the guitar with his fingers captivated me and convinced me that I had to go toward acoustic music and learn how to fingerpick like him. I bought my first acoustic guitar, a used Gibson J-45. It is with this guitar that I later started to write my own acoustic guitar compositions which eventually led to my first recording, Premi<\/em>\u00e8re chute<\/em>, in 1975,<\/span> recorded entirely with my Gibson J-45<\/span>. <\/span>I had also <\/span>bought a few instructional books by Stefan Grossman, a New York guitarist who has devoted his entire life to teaching people how to play the music he loves \u2013 blues, ragtime and celtic pieces. I started to teach myself how to fingerpick.<\/p>\n

In 1976, I met luthier\/guitarist Marc Beneteau, a big part of my second and third albums, and wanted him to build me a guitar. To pay for this new guitar, I sold my Gibson J-45 to Roch Tass\u00e9, a good friend from Rockland who played various percussion instruments on the same recordings as Marc. Afterwards, I lost track of Roch for more than 30 years \u2013 life; it interferes with everything. But once was lost, now is found – Roch and I met before Christmas, thanks to another friend, and he lent me his Gibson J-45.<\/p>\n

\"Roch<\/a>

Roch Tass\u00e9<\/p><\/div>\n

Roch took very good care of the guitar. At the time, I had painted a bluebird on the guitar top because of Stephen Stills’ \u201cBluebird\u201d, one of my all-time favourite songs, which he recorded with Buffalo Springfield. The bluebird is intact and looking at the guitar and playing it brings back memories of those days when I was learning how to fingerpick. Of course, I wanted to record something with my old guitar and chose \u201cKatz Rag\u201d, one of the first pieces I learned how to fingerpick from one of Stefan Grossman’s instructional books. I remember that my arrangement of the piece was closer to the Reverend Gary Davis (1896 – 1972), one of my favourites, who attacked the guitar with a wonderful abandon that I tried to bring into my playing. I remember my arrangement, which I haven’t played in 40 years, but I forget practically everything else from one day to the next! Go figure.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Gibson J-45<\/p><\/div>\n

I always thought that \u201cKatz Rag\u201d was written by Steve Katz, another New York guitarist and friend of Grossman’<\/span>s<\/span> who went on to some fame with the very popular group Blood, Sweat and Tears. I recently communicated with Grossman through his website and learned that the piece started its development with Dave Van Ronk, another of the brotherhood of New York guitarists and a good friend of Bob Dylan. Van Ronk then taught it to Steve Katz, who taught it to Stefan Grossman, who recorded it and included it in his teaching material, what <\/span>Grossman referred<\/span> to<\/span> as the \u201cfolk process\u201d!<\/p>\n

Thanks Roch. Here’s my version of \u201cKatz Rag\u201d played on an old guitar with an old sound.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Katz Rag<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a teenager, the folk revival was in full swing and I heard several exiting artists, some on records, some on TV, including singer\/guitarist Mississippi John Hurt (1892 – 1966). His style of picking the guitar with his fingers captivated me and convinced me that I had to go toward acoustic music and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2288,"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/2288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}