Robert Randolph & Charlie Hunter
Would be remiss to not mention Robert Randolph in this thread. He took the whole Hendrix/Stevie Ray blues/funk thing to the pedal steel. That said, once you've seen him a few times you realize that he has a finite number of licks and tricks, like Les Claypool, and once you've seen/heard them you will def hear them again in future shows. Nonetheless, he did have the idea to bring that style to his instrument.
Now Charlie Hunter... firstly, does anybody else even do what he did [accompany themself on bass by playing an 8 string and routing two pickups [one for the bottom three strings, one for the higher five] to two amps [one bass, one guitar] and do much of this with a rotosphere pedal and a leslie cabinet and an approach to chord play more like an organist than a guitarist so he sounded like three instruments at once. I once played my dad [a big music fan and harsh critic] charlie's solo version of the beatles'
drive my car. "this is some band." my dad said. "it's only one guy," i told him. when he picked up his jaw, he knew charlie was something special. i would also be remiss not to tell my charlie story. this man is the single most approachable humble musician i have ever met in person, and he happens to be among the top three or four pure musicians i have met. another thanks to my friend curtis, who had followed charlie on tour a few yrs before and had befriended him. he also knew and had a past business assn. with the guuy who owned the club. we decided to just show up at load-in and see if we could get inside. we walk in and the first person we see is charlie sitting at the empty bar just chilling. he recognizes curtis,
introduces himself to us, like we didn't come to see HIM play. Then he says, go on inside, we're gonna soundcheck in a few mins. Other than the sound guys, we got a private mini-set from Charlie, Josh Roseman, and the legendary new orleans drummer johnny vidacovich [linked below to his site]. anyone who is a fan of stanton moore [from galactic], this is who he ripped off [admittedly btw if you ask him]. for guys who should by all rights have enormous egos, these guys were so refreshingly down to earth and friendly. so was jacob fred jazz odyssey [the openers, an AMAZING jazz band that blows MMW right out of the water]. these days, charlie is doing some amazing work with another legendary drummer, bobby previte. he is playing a lot of 6 string electric and bass separately [showing how riddiculously easy it is for him to go from 8 strings down to 6 or 4]. I read that for his solo stuff he has switched to a 7 string. whatever charlie plays, across whatever genre he wants to play with, it sounds awesome and unmistakably his own.
http://www.charliehunter.com/
http://www.johnnyvidacovich.com/
