Polish club Barnsley gets cbg'd

Chickenbone John hosted a CBG event at Barnsley at the Polish Club this weekend. Open mic on the Friday night and a players workshop on the Saturday afternoon. And it was free. How good is that, it doesn't get much better? Not a massive turnout but that made it all the better for those of us that went. It was a small friendly crowd, about half locals and half CBGers. John took the stage for the first half playing some cracking blues on his guitars. The second half saw a few of our very own CBG artists, Yellowbelly Flatt, Ant on his cigar box banjo, Soulcatcher and Kev to name the ones I remember. A cool mix of styles. John ended the session with a few more numbers.

Saturday afternoon and John led us through a players workshop. There was a mix of abilities, some beginners and some more advanced but eager to learn players. John gave us a good few hours of his expert time and I'm sure we all took something away to benefit our playing. I particulary liked the G minor tuning he showed us. G,A#,D -try it. It has an almost out of tune ring about it (may just be the restrictions of a cigar box guitar) but a melancholic sound that when I noodled some chords and licks, it reminded me very much of a a Reverand Gary Davis number called Death Hath no Mercy. I saw him playing it on a Stefan Grosman video with a small audience in a sort of studio shack-style setting in the 1960s. It's one of the saddest performance I ever saw. Anyway I came away inspired by the workshop with some new ideas to play with and even sketched out a song this morning based on my chord progressions. I called it Death is a Stealer. Now where did I get that idea from?

Check out Catfish Keith on Youtube, John talked about him. I wasn't aware of him until the workshop but he plays some pretty neat slide guitar. I'm sure you'll like it.