$8.99
Sold by music on Tradebit
The world's largest download marketplace
3,251,083 satisfied buyers
The world's largest download marketplace
3,251,083 satisfied buyers
MP3 Gambetta & Crary - Syn�rgia
22 MP3 Songs
WORLD: World Fusion, FOLK: Alternative Folk
Details:
Synérgia Liner Notes
Synérgia Gambetta & Crary TM 037 C P 2001
“Musick, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heav’n we have below.” Joseph Addison
The Greeks knew that when the gods spoke, they spoke in surprises and enigmas. In antiquity, when you went down to the cave of the oracle, paid over your drachma and asked your questions, the answers she gave were never just thus-and-so. Instead, you got ambiguities and questions, portents and warnings, dark clouds and cold winds, flashes of things beautiful, longings, dreads, and intimations of mortality. In short, you weren’t sure what it all meant, but by god you got your money’s worth and you never forgot it.
Hearing music can be like that; sometimes the music you hear is like God whispered something beautiful and disturbing in your ear, and nothing, not philosophy, not education, not music seminars or workshops, and least of all you yourself could ever put the experience into words or say what it means, but it doesn’t matter, because you heard and you know, and you remember it, maybe forever.
My experience is that musicians on the road will eventually get around to telling you their own powerful music experiences, and like everybody else, words fail, but you get the idea, and you know the musician a whole lot better. Since 1991, Beppe Gambetta and I have racked up a half-million or so K on tours around Europe and North America, and the conversation on these trips has often turned to our own music experiences. Gambetta is eloquent on the effects of the first time he heard a record of Doc Watson. I myself can give you a moment-by-moment description of a concert I heard in 1972 where Sabicas was nearly injured in an on-stage accident, but came roaring back to play the greatest concert I ever heard, ever.
“Music…something transfiguring, mad, and divine.” Nietsche
“Gaily…the troubador touches his guitar.” Thomas Haynes Bayly
“In sweet music is such art…care and grief of heart fall asleep…” Shakespeare
So we’re two guitar collaborators who think we’ve heard the voice or the force or whatever it is. For us it spoke in guitar music, and we have both followed it (or chased it) most of our lives. And this CD is the first full-CD collaboration of Beppe Gambetta, steel-string guitar hero from Genova, Italy and me, Dan Crary, been-around-forever-with-a-guitar-in-his-hands American, from Fullerton, California and Depoe Bay, Oregon. Synérgia is our effort to get you in on what it’s like being on the road with steel-string guitars. The idea for it came from something that happened 35 years before.
Some of our favorite recordings of guitar music were made in the ‘sixties by Doc Watson and Merle Watson, live, on stage, during tours. The sound of these records is immortal: great energy, great immediacy, and a whole lot like sitting next to these masters of the steel-string guitar while lightning dances off their hands and sizzles between the strings. By the way, if you’re one of those folks that came over in covered wagons; if you’re up-to-here with guitar recordings that are from outer space, wetted up with studio effects, and ever-so-smooth, safe, gutless performances; if you like your music live, straight, and powerful, then, my friends, you should have the Doc & Merle recordings from the ‘sixties.
We won’t presume to claim that with Synérgia we achieved that same pinnacle, but I don’t mind telling you that we tried to. And to whatever extent this live guitar recording sounds “live, straight, and powerful,” we admit to being inspired by the great Doc & Merle recordings. We intended to put in your ears a guitar-centered experience that recreates some of that energy and immediacy of the real deal, the moments when the performances occurred. We did it in twenty concerts in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Italy in January, 2000. And we hope that the voice is here, that you can hear it, maybe in the music, maybe in the fired-up, loyal audiences recorded here from Haiming-Piesing, Wien, Haag, Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Nova Gorica, München, Gams, Basel, Biberach, Weingarten, Illertissen, Ingelheim, Aarbergen, Alessandria, Torino, Colugna, and Genova.
“Nothing… could ever put the experience into words or say what it means, but it doesn’t matter, because you heard, and you know, and you remember it, maybe forever.”
And over the years we’ve seen the amazing connectedness of diverse people who gather around a music event, watched a great audience of urbane Italians roar out the lyrics of an old country song (“…lay ‘round the shack, ‘til the mail train comes back…”), sipped pre-concert tea with ex-freedom fighters who six months before had rescued their country from tyranny, worn out tires and a trans-axel on the way to Prague, driven all night after a gig at the Rattlesnake Saloon in Münich to get down to Switzerland to do a lecture on old time music to a graduate seminar in American literature and culture at the University of Basel, talked post-gig music trash with innumerable friends who are “badboy” musicians and storytellers and colleagues from twenty countries, received hospitality and respect from classical and country and jazz and blues musicians and fans, and we got a great laugh and a flash of something important when Mama Gambetta, a dignified, old-school Austrian, five-language-fluent lady of culture told us that of all the multiple world music themes we had just played, her favorite was Freeborn Man!
So, many thanks to the people, the audiences, the places… Beppe and I heard the voice when we were with you. It’s not easy to articulate, but it was there, and if I live to be a thousand, I’ll never forget the nights of music in your towns.
— Dan Crary
1. International Concert Introductions (1:18)
2. Huckleberry Hornpipe (2:42) Byron Berline (ASCAP)
3. Stories We Can Tell (3:07) John Sebastian (ASCAP)
4. Intro (:48)
5. Mozart In Hell (4:34) Arr., Gambetta & Crary (ASCAP)
6. Intro (1:00)
7. Nashville Blues (3:47) Alton Delmore (ASCAP)
8. L’Iride (Mazurka) (3:07) D. Ciolfi
9. Rollin’ In My Sweet Baby’s Arms (4:24) Charlie Monroe (ASCAP)
10. Thunderation (3:26) D. Crary (ASCAP)
11. Intro (:16)
12. Jimmie Brown The Newsboy (2:54) A.P. Carter (BMI)
13. Creuza De Mä (5:42) Fabrizio DeAndré e Mauro Pagani
14. Intro (1:11)
15. Black Mountain Rag (2:49) Trad. Arr. Gambetta & Crary (ASCAP)
16. Ain’t No California (4:44) Sterling Whipple (BMI)
17. Intro (:21)
18. John Hardy (3:11) Trad., Arr. Gambetta & Crary (ASCAP)
19. Banderilla (4:26) D. Crary (ASCAP)
20. Incredible (2:00) John Jorgenson
21. Life’s Railway To Heaven/Soldier’s Joy (6:00) Charlie Tilman/Trad., Arr. Gambetta & Crary (ASCAP)
22. Freeborn Man (4:19) Allison & Lindsay (ASCAP)
Beppe Gambetta: Guitar, Vocals
Dan Crary: Guitar, Vocals
Carlo Aonzo: Mandolin (on “L’Iride”)
Production: Gambetta & Crary
Concert Recording: Federica Calvino Prina,
Vincenzo Penna, Rob Griffin
Editing: Roberto Vigo, Fenixlab Studios, Genova
Post Production: Rob Griffin, Acoustech Studios,Columbus, Ohio
Mastering: John Eberle, Americana Mastering, Nashville, Tennessee
Special thanks to: Liz Meier, Hans Bernd Sick, Federica Calvino Prina, Carlo Aonzo, Martino Coppo, Vincenzo Penna, all our friends who contributed snapshots
Art Direction: Vickie Raines Spurgin
Design: Donna B. Kinder
Design Assistant: Chris Schuler
Photography: Irene Young, cover photos and page 4; Stefano Goldberg, additional photos
About Beppe Gambetta Beppe Gambetta is the leading flatpicking guitarist of Europe. He was the first to introduce Europeans to the music of Doc Watson and the whole flatpicking school of steel-string guitar music in the late 80’s and early ‘90’s. In addition, he is a major influence in spreading Italian traditional music world wide as he tours North America, Europe, and Australia.
Mr. Gambetta is well-known both as a virtuoso guitar soloist and vocalist, and also as a collaborator with musicians such as Dan Crary, Carlo Aonzo and David Grisman.
About Dan Crary Dan Crary is recognized as one of the founders of the flatpicking school of the steel-string guitar. As a veteran of forty years of touring, Mr. Crary has appeared in 30 countries of the world, recorded more than a dozen acclaimed and award-winning recordings, and collaborated with many of the most celebrated American musicians. Today he continues to explore both traditional paths to guitar music and new territories for the steel-string guitar.
About Thunderation Music Thunderation Music was founded as a forum for alternative traditional guitar recordings and related artists’ music. Synergia is the label’s first release, to be followed with Dan Crary’s “Renaissance of the Steel-String Guitar”.
File Data