I wasn't familiar with Harpface, a German rock-blues player, until he recently contacted me to say Hi. I went searching on YouTube and the first video I found has an excellent representation of his work. It's very much in a rock-blues vein: lots of fast, speed-metalish riffs, using heavy sustain. I don't always like such stuff. But in his case, there's a real musical intelligence behind everything.
I'm sure that some people won't like this. It ain't Peg Leg Sam! It's arguably one step beyond Sugar Blue in the rock direction. For my money, though, I'd rather listen to this than to Pat Ramsey. Ouch, I said it.
Here you go:
PS: I had no hesitation, after listening to this video all the way through, about putting Sochting in the honorable mention list on this website. (And no, he did NOT ask me to do that.) If I were a young player and I was aiming for the fast rockish end of the blues spectrum, ground that Sugar Blue, Ramsey, Mark Ford, Hakan Ehn, and Ricci have mined pretty thoroughly, I would want to know about Rainer Sochting.
Last Edited by on Sep 06, 2012 6:53 AM
PS: According to a Google-powered forum search, Sochting's name (including his stage name) has never been mentioned on this forum. I suspect he's a familiar name to some folks here, but I'd never heard of him. We Americans can be pretty parochial sometimes.
This forum has an international membership. I don't think it's us Americans being parochial as much as it is that there are just a bunch of good artists around the world.
This is mainly a blues forum and as you state this guy is more of a rocker. It makes sense that it took a little while for him to pop up on the radar screen.
I've found a lot of great harp players on you tube that I don't mention on this forum because they don't really fall into the blues category.
I got to see Pat R. in a little tavern once and the TONE he let loose upon the crowd was WICKED to say the least - I will never forget that night...
Last Edited by on Sep 06, 2012 9:00 AM
@smwoerner: As should be clear from Brendan Power's frequent and dynamic contributions to this forum, we're an open-minded place when it comes to where we draw the line around the word "blues" in "blues harmonica." That's partly because the website in which this forum finds itself is called Modern Blues Harmonica, and because I've made clear that my own default option, as majordomo (so to speak), is to be open and inquisitive about what some might call extensions of the blues. So Hakan Ehn is welcome here with his fuzzed-out covers of "Smoke on the Water." We talk about Mark Ford. Brandon's hip-hop flavored harp boxing is discussed. Even the occasional gypsy jazz video gets talked about. Obviously a whole category of conversation revolves around the gearhead end: how to get sustain, how to avoid feedback, whether and how to use looping technology.
And of course we love to argue about overblows, speed, and whether the new Suzuki harps that Brendan helped design and is presently flacking are a great thing or The End of the Old Down-Home Blues Thing. They just might be both. That's fine with me. The downhome thing can take care of itself, yo. And it will ALWAYS have a place here, in this forum.
Harpface falls squarely into all that. He's certainly on the forward edge, you might say, but there's no significant difference between him and Hakan in that respect. Harpface's band, or one of them, is called "New Blue." That's about right. What he does with his blues harmonica techniques is clearly one of the places that the blues goes to in the last 25 years. To that extent, it's an important constituent of modern blues harmonica technique and style, albeit not the sort of stuff that necessarily moves me. But it does intrigue me. And I acknowledge its existence and importance. It's part of the conversation.
But other dirty-south musics (funk, jazz, bluegrass, country, gospel) are part of the conversation, too, in part because they offer modern players a storehouse of sounds and techniques that might be sampled into a blues core to create something new. Todd Parrott's playing strikes me as a perfect illustration of this. Todd is a rabid overblower and overdrawer, a custom-harp guy, and a speed demon. But his sound is completely downhome, too. He's fused the tradition with innovation is a way that speaks very, very powerfully for the whole modernizing process and how important it is not to jettison tradition wholesale as one moves ahead into whatever the next new thing is.
So if you've been holding back from posting a video or two of a bluegrass player or a funk player or even a jazz chromatic player like Toots or William Galison, no need to hold back.
I draw the line at Bob Dylan, however. Please preface any Dylan threads with OT. :)
Last Edited by on Sep 06, 2012 10:07 AM
@Adam – I know we’re open to most all types here. I just try not to clog up the forum much with chromatic stuff. I love the fact that this forum is so open to styles and that it also has a broad international following. That’s why the “American’s can be pretty parochial sometimes” caught my eye. I know it was just a friendly jab but, having traveled so much I’ve realized we’re not much different than any other country. This forum has introduced me to a lot of great players around the world I might not have found otherwise and for that I’m grateful. Thanks for pushing the boundaries…
This guy is a great player, very tasteful and his playing and choice of positions fits very well in the style of music he's playing. Very nice in my opinion. Thanks for sharing!
Jimmy Zavala was a guy I copied a LOT back in the whatever -he was/is a master at this type of harp and also a killer sax player. He had an album 20 years ago that I have on vinyl-maybe called Anytime/Anyplace??? that was the template for hard rockin harp of this type.
