Happy Monday, everybody, & time for the Monday Morning Blues here on Robert Frost’s Banjo. As you can see, yours truly has sprung for a new guitar, a Gold Tone Paul Beard resophonic guitar—basically, a roundneck Dobro, tho strictly speaking these days only Gibson & its Epiphone subsidiary have legal rights to use the "Dobro" name.
As regular readers probably assume, I got this instrument for the blues & specifically for slide playing. For people who are interested in such things, it’s tuned to open D, which fits better with my voice (such as it is) than open G (the latter was a bit more popular overall with the old blues folks)—in other words, the 6 unfretted strings sound a D major chord. I’m using a Dunlop brass slide—I prefer brass over glass slides, but had to use glass when I recorded with the cigar box resonator guitar as a metal slide on that instrument caused the webcam mic to distort. This didn’t seem to be a problem with the Gold Tone.
“Rainy Day Blues” is by Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins, a long-time personal favorite. Tho Lightnin’ Hopkins didn’t play slide himself—he perfected a very recognizable boogie guitar style that he played both on acoustics & electrics—I felt this song would adapt readily for slide style playing.
It actually was a beautiful sunny day yesterday when I recorded this—hope your Monday also is nice & that you enjoy the song. I am recovered from all the driving late last week, & I will be around visiting blogs today—honest!