The Murphy Method Blog

Today, I just thought you folks would like to see an old photo of us from 1979. This picture was so colorful and entertaining, with all the instruments in it, that we used it on the front of a 33 1/3 record album (remember those?) which we recorded that year.

The permanent band members at the time were just Murphy and myself and her sister, Nancy Pate. For the photo we surrounded ourselves with all the bluegrass instruments we had– and there were a lot of them. The five banjos include Murphy’s old Gibson Style 4 which she played for 20 years, and also my then-recently-completed Style 11 conversion which belongs to Casey now. (She was almost two when this picture was taken—imagine that!) The guitars include four Martin D-28s of various ages, and the mandolin-family instruments include Randy Wood F-5 #1, an old 1916 Gibson F-4, and my Gibson H-2 mandola. There are plenty of fiddles of various kinds, too.

Sadly, hard times were about to hit the bluegrass world and the rest of the country too. In the recession of 1979-81, we sold many of these instruments and they went to other homes. But in the meantime, we sure did get a good picture!

A thought occurred to me last Saturday, when we were picking at my birthday party in Nashville. All the folks in the jam could play quite well, and it was a big jam. There were 13 or 14 of us in the picking circle, including two or three banjos, two mandolins, half a dozen or so guitars, three or four fiddles, and a bass. Normally in a group that size, the mandolin players and lead guitar players can’t be heard at all, even when they’re playing a lead break. But you know what? In this jam, EVERYBODY could be heard. NOBODY got drowned out—not the mandolin players, not the lead guitar players, NOBODY.

This was because all the pickers in the jam were not only good PLAYERS, but good LISTENERS too. Everybody LISTENED to what was going on—to whoever was playing lead or singing at that moment—and made sure that the lead got heard. This meant, in several cases, that pickers would stop playing entirely during a quietly-sung verse or a softly-played lead break. But it sure was good for the music.

Remember that good musicianship includes not only PLAYING, but LISTENING too. One mark of a really good musician is that he or she is always trying to make the GROUP sound good. That’s a goal everyone can aspire to. Next time you’re in a jam, don’t just PLAY. LISTEN.

Recently I was picking with some folks here in the local Winchester area. We were having a good time, but there was a discordant note. Or, actually, lots of them. And they were all coming from one player.

The trouble was that the banjo player played pretty loud lead all the time. He played during his own breaks, of course, but he also played during the vocals and during everybody else’s breaks on guitar, mandolin, or fiddle. He just played and played, without any regard for what anyone else was playing. And that’s impolite.

The reason it was impolite was that it covered up what everybody else was doing. (Well, OK, he didn’t cover up the mandolin. The mandolin I was playing—Randy Wood #3—can be heard in any situation.) But this banjo player showed that he was NOT listening to the group, and NOT paying attention to anyone but himself. So the music was not as good as it should have been, although I don’t expect that many others there realized the cause of it. After this banjo picker started playing I didn’t stay in that situation very long, but excused myself and went home. And for some reason nobody else wanted to keep playing, either. I didn’t blame them.

So—next time you’re in a jam session, if you play banjo (or anything else, for that matter) don’t YOU play loudly all the time. Realize that your picking affects other people besides yourself, and know when NOT to play!

We recently received a question from a guitar student who wants to learn to flatpick in jam sessions. Here’s part of his note to us:

“I’ve been playing guitar for a bit over 40 years… I can play rhythm without batting an eye and play totally by ear… Bluegrass is my all time favorite and the one thing that I want to do more than anything else is to learn to flatpick. I have your guitar flatpicking CD but still cannot get the hang of filling in between the melody notes. I’ve read where you do not advocate the use of scales. What is the secret then to filling in between the melody notes? …”

—and this was my reply:

Thanks for your note. In answer to your question (and as you’ve found out), flatpicking is a complicated skill. We try to set people on the road to it with our flatpicking DVD, but Murphy can only teach so much material on one DVD.

The way most bluegrass flatpickers learn to play lead is by sitting down and picking out the melodies to a lot of tunes—fiddle tunes may be best, since they have such well-defined melodies. This is because those tunes have a lot of great licks in them that can be played against particular chords. When you have a large enough vocabulary of licks built up to use in different chords, and have gotten the hang of putting them into a break when you need them, then you can assemble a guitar break to any tune you need to play. But the most important first step is LISTENING.

Before you can learn to play lead, you need to do a lot of listening. The best “input” is to listen to great lead guitarists (people who actually do play melodies and good musical licks) such as Doc Watson or Norman Blake, and also guitarists such as George Shuffler and Bill Napier, who played lead guitar with the Stanley Brothers. The more of the sound of good lead guitar you can get into your head, the more of it you can learn to play yourself!

We do not recommend that you listen to many modern bluegrass guitarists to learn this, since many of them concentrate on playing hot “jam” licks instead of the melodies to songs and tunes. However, if you are able to pick up some licks from them, more power to you! This goes for using scales too. Listen and learn any way you can.

We recently sold our old Dodge band-van, one that had carried us to many performances years ago. The van had been with us for 23 years, but it was time for it to find a new home.

Talk about nostalgia! We bought this van new in 1985, when Casey was 7 years old and Christopher was 4. This new van was larger and longer than our old one, and I had a high, white fiberglass top installed on it to make it easier to change clothes in at the shows. We had a full-time 5-piece bluegrass band back then, and we drove the new van all over the country. Along with going to a great many shows in our home area of Florida and Georgia, the van carried our “Red & Murphy” band to perform at festivals and concerts as far away as Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, and even Canada. The van got a lot of miles on it in just a few years.

After we moved here to Virginia and shifted our musical emphasis to running the Murphy Method, we still used the van a lot. We drove it to play many shows back in Florida and Georgia, as well in other states, and Murphy loaded it up with Murphy Method tapes and advertising for the IBMA convention each year. But finally we quit doing much traveling, and the van became my personal car for some time. Then after Christopher reached age 16, he drove the van during high school. After he finished school and moved away I began driving it again, because the van’s endurance, and the durability of its Dodge 318 V-8 engine, were phenomenal. However, as gasoline prices kept rising along with maintenance costs, I couldn’t justify driving it forever, and it finally sat in the driveway most of the time. It had over 260,000 miles on it, but I didn’t want to let it go.

Then, just a few weeks ago, opportunity knocked. A man living near here said he wished he had that van, to fix it up and use it as a camping vehicle for himself and his own kids. So we made the transaction, and now the old van has a new life. But I took a couple of pictures before it left us. Here they are:

I promised that you’d get a follow-up report on the show we played recently with some friends, and here it is. To begin with, Murphy and I walked into the performing venue (the local Moose club) to find that thanks to Charlie and Charlotte, the sound system was already set up and working—a real plus for any job. There were 10 mikes on the stage, all ready for vocals and instruments. They and their band (the Sweetwater String Band—Charlie, Charlotte, Larry, Troy, and me) were to play the first and last sets of the day—at 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. —a pretty long day. So we got on the stage and started the show.

Now, at 10:00 on a Sunday morning you don’t generally expect that the crowd will have shown up yet. We began the set with an audience of 18 people. That didn’t matter, though, because we had a good time playing our set of gospel material. And everybody in the band was aware of the music—WATCHING and LISTENING to what was happening, and responding to each other, which made the music not only better but also more enjoyable. I played mostly mandolin, but picked up the fiddle to play harmony with Larry on a couple of slower numbers.

Then several local bands played their sets, and their sound suffered from a current fad: Instead of using individual vocal mikes, each band wanted to sing around one big condenser microphone. However, in this particular room, that big mike could not be turned up very much without feeding back, so the singing was hard to hear. This went on with one band after another, proving that the bands weren’t WATCHING and LISTENING to the other bands on stage and seeing that the mike setup wasn’t working, but instead kept asking to use that one mike which couldn’t pick up their voices very well.

Also, as I watched the bands, I could see that most of them weren’t listening to each other on stage. They all had a well-practiced set of music to play, but in most cases each band member just played and sang his own part without listening to their whole band and responding to the other band members. This took some of the life out of the show.

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I recently agreed to play a charity fundraiser with some friends, Charlie and Charlotte and their Sweetwater String Band. I’ve have played quite mandolin on a few gigs with Charlie and Charlotte over the years, but for this show, since one or two of their regular pickers weren’t available, they needed to include a couple of folks I hadn’t performed with before, Troy on banjo and Larry on fiddle.

Now, when you have a public performance coming up, what do you do to get ready? Along with your own individual practice, to make sure you’re warmed up on your own instrument, the whole band needs to get together and rehearse to make sure they can play their best together. So we all got together last Sunday to practice at Charlotte’s house, and started running over the material for the two sets which Charlotte planned to play at the show.

These five musicians had never performed together before, but we all knew what to do: WATCH and LISTEN. To know when to play lead or sing harmony, LISTEN to the bandleader’s instructions and preferences, and remember them. To know when to play backup or be quiet, WATCH and LISTEN to what all the other people are doing, and don’t step on them. To know when to split a lead break, WATCH and LISTEN. Be ready for the subtle, sometimes almost-instant “handoff” from the other lead player, so that you can take over the second half of the break without hesitation.

This also brings up some “Don’t’s” which you can figure out well enough: when playing, DON’T pay attention just to yourself as the rest of the band listens to each other and tries to sound their best together. DON’T throw in all your favorite licks at every opportunity, but play (1) what belongs best in the song and (2) what sounds best in that particular group. DON’T make the show all about you, but concentrate on making the bandleader(s) sound as good as you can– they’re the people who hired you. Back them up. That’s what you’re there for.

This isn’t hard, but you do need to have the right attitude. I’m glad to say that everybody knew what to do in the rehearsal, and we sounded fine. I’m looking forward to the show.

Don’t worry, you’ll get a report.

Hello, Folks—Today I just thought you’d like to see a couple of video clips from a 1989 performance by Red and Murphy & Co. We were performing on stage at the Spirit of the Suwanee festival, in north Florida, along with our friends Karen Spence, Tuck Tucker and George Custer:

First, you’ll see us singing that old favorite, “East Virginia Blues”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyniQXqMzDM

(Band personnel: Murphy Henry, banjo; Red Henry, guitar; George Custer, fiddle; Karen Spence, bass; and Tuck Tucker, dobro.)

…and here we are performing Murphy’s original song, “How They Loved to Sing”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPNx3QOXWK4

—Many thanks to Butch Burns, producer of the Bottom Dollar Bluegrass TV shows in Tallahassee, for sending us these clips. Happy listening!

Last Thursday there was another picking party at the house of some friends. Now, I especially enjoy playing music with folks, so I went over to their house all ready to go. In contrast to the regular crowd, the pickers seemed sparse at first. Cousin David the banjo player would have been there, but he was playing a music job that night a couple of hours away. Linda the bass player had to go a few hours south on family business. Wayne the fiddler didn’t make it for some other reason. Various other banjo players and fiddlers and lead guitar players also did not show up. I chatted with the folks while I got my mandolin out and tuned it, but by 7:30, when it was obvious that all the pickers had arrived, it was an interesting assortment: Carol on bass; Wade, Bob, Gerald, Tim, and David, all playing guitar; and me. We had ten or fifteen  listeners too, but I’ll talk mostly about those five guitar players.

Now, some mandolin players might not like playing much if they had no other lead instruments present and FIVE guitar pickers, none of whom played a lot of lead, especially if (as in this case) I had only picked with a couple of them before. But I grew up picking at parties where there might be 5 or 6 guitar players and maybe (or maybe not) some other instruments, and so I had a good time. And the guitar pickers helped.

They said, “Pick one,” so I started out with “Down Yonder”, a tune most folks around here know. Then Gerald sang “I Wonder Where you are Tonight,” and I followed it with “Head Over Heels.” This goes back to something I wrote a few weeks back. If, in this case, you’re a mandolin player with no other lead instruments, then KEEP IT SIMPLE. This is not the time to show off your new Vernon Derrick licks from a Jimmy Martin instrumental, or that dazzling thing you just learned from Chris Thile. [Editor's note: I like how Red is trying to appeal to our younger audience.] [Side note: Do we even have a younger audience?] It’s not the time to play your favorite original tune from your new CD. This is the time to play something EVERYBODY KNOWS, and to make it easy for them to play it along with you.

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Murphy and I just played a gig—a music job—with our Cousin David. Now, gigs with David always involve some degree of unpredictability, or, if you like, Adventure. The folks involved were Murphy and myself, our friend Scott, and good old Cousin David.

In this case, the Adventure didn’t take long to start. It was raining, and it was time to go. We were all loaded up to drive to the gig in Cousin David’s minivan when I asked him (loudly, because his hearing’s pretty spacey), “All ready to go?” and he said, “That just reminded me. I left my hearing aid in the house!” So he went back through the rain and got his hearing aid and put it in. Then, sitting next to him in the front of the car, I asked him “Got your hearing aid?” — but I said it very softly, so he couldn’t hear me. Cousin David looked at me. I said, “Got that hearing aid in your ear?” even softer. David smiled at me. (He’s really good at covering up.)

Cousin David is not spacey. So we drove two hours away (in the rain) and had gotten in the general vicinity of the gig, and David said, “I meant to find out directions or print out a map of where to go, but I just never got around to it.” So after driving in circles (and triangles, and rectangles) for a while, he called the place for directions. Then we got there. But he is not spacey. It was an Adventure.

It turned out that in order to set up David’s sound system for the gig, we had to carry all the equipment into a big building, move it down an elevator, and set it up in a big lobby nearby. It was a long way. So we all got to work, and just did it. We hustled setting up all the microphones and cords and speakers and cables and all that stuff, and had the sound system ready a whole 11 minutes before it was time to start. Not bad; I almost had time to get my mandolin in tune! More adventure.

So far, the gig had consisted of rain, being lost, moving sound equipment, and stringing together various wires. But now came the good part. Murphy kicked things off with “Lonesome Road Blues” and Scott followed that with “Moonlight on My Cabin,” and we were off. Murphy, Scott, and I alternated in playing and singing various bluegrass favorites for the folks. It was an older audience, so we played plenty of songs and tunes they’d recognize. They liked us. I saw people singing along with Murphy’s “I Saw the Light” and my “Mountain Dew” and Scott’s “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Cousin David played bass and contributed a harmony vocal here and there. We played three sets of good music, and it was fun.

Then, it was back to messing with the sound system: coiling up the cords, packing the equipment up, and moving it back upstairs and out of the building and into David’s car. We drove back to his house just in time for Scott to get in his truck and leave to play another show that night with his own band.

So, it was all an Adventure. There was lots of rain. There was some getting lost. There was plenty of hauling sound equipment around. But you know what? We all had a good time, and the people liked us. And Cousin David’s not a bit spacey.