So Lonesome I Could Cry Guitar Lesson - Hank Williams

interpreted by Seasick Steve     so lonesome i could cry lesson


Download So Lonesome I Could Cry tab file here.

Playing The Blues Guitar - Seasick Steve Style


I believe that something like blues guitar music or art or whatever it is, if it's your buddy, it's going to offer you a great deal of enjoyment throughout the years anyhow. Like playing the guitar, to me, was always my buddy so even if I never ever got no place, which I never ever did, I would have never ever have actually altered anything. I constantly had a big desire to play so, 2 things, one is to enjoy exactly what you do and like exactly what you play, or art, or pastime that you like, do not stress about getting effective at it. However if you wish to get effective, it's a smart idea not to give up. It took me an extremely long period of time to get decent results, so I might have given up guitar picking 50 years back, truly more like 30 or 35 years earlier would have been a practical time for me to stop.

I'm a fortunate son of a bitch as far as travel goes. It's remarkable that I get to go round to do this. Perhaps I can see how I might do it in England, however I play all over and wherever I go people want to hear me - it is a bit beyond my understanding. I might most likely philosophize about it, but I'm simply fortunate. It is cool that you can go and play music. I mean, I constantly heard from other musicians that you might go and play blues music for money, and I always did on the the street or something like that. It was a kind of thing you might just do and play for the hell of it. If folk like just what you are doing you do not need to talk, you simply play.

If you're just playing on the street you do not get no loan for gear or guitar amplifiers. It's a respectable thing to do in my eyes. If you take a seat and take a look at your shoes, you ain't going to get no cash, most likely you'll fail unless yu engage your audience in the music. I learnt how to be, whatever performer I am, I discovered that out on the street, which was simply aiming to get attention so they toss money at you.

Individuals do not have to speak the exact same language to like you. We play in Spain or other countries and they do not speak English, however they are all rockin' and whatever. It's fantastic that music moves all kinds of peoples and you do not need to understand absolutely nothing. That's all it's ever been for me too. I sort of like music to fall all over and around you. It's a groove thing, that you move your feet to, some sort of lovely thing that washes over you, you understand.

You constantly hope in the back of your mind however that something might happen. My most significant wish in the last 35 years was that possibly I'd compose a tune that somebody might want to tape, you understand? However, mostly I played stuff because I liked it a lot. I didn't know what else to do. I would just relax and fingerpick my guitar. A great deal of people possibly do DIY something or build something - I like relaxing playing the guitar, so it's like a good ole friend of mine.

seasick steve - blues guitar lesson videoYou got to be teetotal, which's alright too, many musicians why they end up being like that is they went so overboard that they cannot touch a drink ever again. I don't give a shit if people around me drink, they most likely have to. This binge drinking that individuals do and stuff like that, well if they want to damage themselves, go ahead, either that or they'll soon be be dead. If you damaged your body, you trash it pretty quickly.

The guitar is a buddy that has seen you through a great deal of trials and adversities and offered a lot back, without anybody listening, you understand? Without anybody being around. I listen to a lot of guitar players and blues musicians, and I'm still discussing music all the time since I do not know a lot about anything else. Maybe they'd get a band, something would come unstuck and they'd go, 'Oh, goddamn.' However there wasn't a lot preparation - it was just for fun. The minute you've gotten your guitar you have actually practicing while you're performing! You begin to find out after a while how not to burn your fingers, if you live long enough.

I believe playing on the street is just the strangest thing to do and you'll discover a lot from it. You are simply out there and nobody asked you to be there, so individuals stop and listen. Me and the person who plays drums with me played the streets in San Francisco. That was a really enjoyable since we were simply being there, in the street, playing. Individuals would come over; now and again individuals who knew me would visit and state, 'What are you doing on the street?' Another individual would come over and say, 'Aren't you expected to be playing a big festival this Saturday?' Like I'd truly fallen on tough financial times. You simply do it,just to do it. You just don't want to stop because they all like it, not due to the fact that they pay or 'cos they found out about something, you understand.

Do I have any tips for young guitar players? Among the important things I can consider is that if you wish to do something, particularly like music, or something that you like, simply keep doing it. Something for sure, if you have something you enjoy and you stop, absolutely nothing is ever going to come of it. So like in my case, where I simply kept keeping on and something finally happened. However, the big thing is to do it because you love, whether it's collecting stamps or playing the blues.

Author: Jim Bruce

Date: 2014-08-03

Category: Music



So Lonesome I Could Cry - Hank Williams Bio

Hank Williams will forever live on in the hearts of millions. His success as a singer/songwriter can be attributed to the simplicity of his lyrics, melody and his sincerity. Hank Williams was truly a one of a kind. He was a man who could barely scribble his own name and could not read a single note of music; however, he changed the face of country music forever.

There is of course no way to evaluate this but Hank Williams probably has as much claim to being the greatest figure in country music history as anyone. He is considered to be the greatest songwriter in its history and when he was probably one of its two or three best performers as well. Hiram Williams was born on September 17, 1923 to Elonzo Huble Williams and Jessie Lillybelle Skipper Williams near the town of Georgianna, Alabama in the Mt. Olive Community. He had a sister named Irene and a brother who died shortly after birth.

Elonzo or "Lon" was in the logging industry. This type of life forced the family to move a lot; however, they never left Alabama. In January 1930 Lon was institutionalized in a Veteran's Hospital for "shell shock" from World War I. He would never return to the family because Lilly would file for divorce during his ten year stay. This would leave Hank without a true father figure forever. Hank's musical experience really started at the age of three while he sat beside his mother on the organ at the Mt. Olive Baptist Church. However, he didn't begin to get serious about his musical skills until the age of eleven when he played the jazz horn. Although many people claim to have gotten Hank his first guitar, the most believeable, in my opinion, is that Lilly ordered him one from Sears and Roebuck for $3.50.

Hank Williams - country guitar player

He never had any formal training on the guitar but he learned from a black street singer named Rufus Payne or "Tee-Tot". Apparently, Tee-Tot was very accomplished as an entertainer, he knew how to capture an audience. During the Depression someone had to be very good for a person to give them their money. Obviously, this is where Hank also picked up his talent of holding an audience in the palm of his hand. The first band in which Hank was involved with was called "The Drifting Cowboys" and this name would never change throughout his career, although the band members were different much of the time. The first group was headed by not only Hank but also Hezzy Adair. Hank was only thirteen and was regularly playing on radio station WSFA-AM in Montgomery.

After his success with the band he played local honky tonks and schoolhouses while being managed by his mother who not only booked the shows but also took the money at the door. At the age of fourteen, Hank won an amateur night contest at the Empire Theater in Montgomery. He sang a self-composed song "WPA Blues" and was awarded fifteen dollars. With this victory he became known around Montgomery as "The Hillbilly Shakespeare".

On the dark side of things he was also known as a problem drinker--even at fourteen. This reputation would follow him the rest of his short life. By his twentieth year he was a grown man of a slight build standing six feet two inches tall and weighing around one hundred forty pounds. Bobby Moore, a Nashville bass player, was later quoted as saying, "Hank Williams is the only guy I ever saw who could sit back in a chair and cross his legs and still put both feet on the floor."

Soon Hank got involved singing in a medicine show where he met a woman named Audrey Mae Sheppard. They hit it off from their first meeting and were marred in Andalusia, Alabama at a filling station in December 1944. Hank may have never achieved his stardom had it not been for Audrey. She knew he had what it took to make it in the business and never let him forget it. On September 14, 1946 she convinced him to travel to Nashville and meet with Fred Rose of Acuff-Rose Publishing.

Fred Rose could smell talent and set up a recording session with Hank and released four songs. After these were out Hank became a star around the southeast area of the United States and thought he was ready for the Opry. However, his reputation had preceded him and they wanted no part of him. His best bet was to go to the "minor leagues" and become a regular on the Louisiana Hayride. He did so in August 1948 and was an instant success. Some believe if Hank had remained on the Hayride the Opry would have lost all of its big performers to the Hayride.

On December 22, 1948 Hank recorded a song written by Irving Mills and Cliff Friend called "Lovesick Blues". This song raced to the top of the charts and stayed there. The Opry could no longer resist Hank and he debuted on June 11, 1949. He sang "Lovesick Blues," which by now had sold three million copies. He recieved a standing ovation - and six encores. This had never happened before and hasn't happened since.

This was an especially happy time for Hank. He was a superstar, a regular on the Opry, and he and Audrey had a new baby, Randall Hank Williams. Hank called him Little Bocephus after a ventriloquists dummy that was on the Opry at that time. When Hank wanted to "preach" in his songs, he used the pseudonym "Luke The Drifter". This was done primarily for marketing purposes because jukebox owners would quickly buy something by Hank but would shy away from the "Drifter" because he moralized a bit much for honky-tonks.

Now Hank's life was turning sour. On May 29, 1952 his divorce from Audrey was final. She got custody of Little Bocephus and half of all he had as well as half he'd ever make, providing she never remarried. He also got fired, or suspended, from the Opry on August 11, 1952. From this point on Hank Williams probably never drew another sober breath. Even though Hank was in a very bad shape he still did exceptionally magnificent recordings on September 23, 1952. This, his last ever recording session, he recorded, "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Kawliga," and "Take These Chains From My Heart." These were some of his greatest songs but he would never see their outcome.

Hank, now twenty-nine, married a nineteen year old beauty named Billie Jean Jones Eshliman on October 18, 1952. The next day he married her again, twice, in front of a paying audience in New Orleans. Hank's recording life was good but seeing him live was another story. He missed shows, fell off stages and sometimes forgot words to songs because he was so drunk. His mother took him home to dry him out and was fairly successful until he received a phone call to appear in Canton, Ohio on New Year's Day.

The weather on the night of December 31 was terrible. It was freezing cold and snow was falling, but Hank decided to go anyway. He hired a college student named Charles Carr to drive him to Canton. Hank never made the Canton show. He died in the back seat of his 1952 Cadillac, in his hands he clutched a piece of paper. On the paper were these words: "We met, we lived and dear we loved, then comes that fatal day, the love that felt so dear fades far away." Autopsy reports show he died of alcoholic cardiomyopathy. But he was probably lucky to have lived as long as he did because of a birth disorder called Spina Bifida Occulta which if not treated in childhood can be fatal. His was never treated.

Hank died at the age of twenty-nine years, three months, and fourteen days. During his lifetime he recorded one hundred twenty-nine songs, but left a legacy of over seven hundred. Hank's funeral was on January 4, 1953 in Montgomery, Alabama. Over twenty-five thousand gathered to see him off on his final ride. After the funeral Horace Logan, an Opry official, flew to Montgomery with Felton Pruett (one of Hank's early steel guitarists), Louisiana Hayride guitarist Dobber Johnson, and a few others. Jim Denny (who was sitting in front of Logan and who had also fired Hank from the Opry) said, "Logan, if Hank could raise up in his coffin, he'd look up toward the stage and say, 'I told you dumb sons-of-bitches I could draw more dead than you could alive.'"

As old Hank would say, "If the good Lord's willin' and the creeks don't rise, I'll see you soon. I'll be home soon, Little Bocephus."

Seasick Steve takes this old country song and does something remarkable with it. OK, the lyrics are possibly the saddest set of words you'll hear in a song without openly laughing at them, but Steve delivers the words superbly, without irony, and expresses the innermost thoughts a someone who reflects deeply on his suffering and torment.

Add the musical interpretation of picking it very simply in open D tuning, and the result is a very melancholy sound that hits right where it hurts. It hammers home the eternal truth that the best songs are very simple and that you don't need to be a Tommy Emmanuel to fingerpick a storm on any old acoustic guitar, in fact Steve makes his own out of almost anything!

The Youtube video featuring this song was recorded backstage, and like many masterpieces, it was just done without any special sound set-up - genius indeed! Play it nice and slow, making sure to concentrate on that feeling, rather than a perfect delivery.



Copyright (c) Youtune Records
Jim Bruce Videos
Privacy Policy