Guest : Steve Hicks

24 March 2006

I have never seen Steve before but if he appears around here in the future I’ll make sure I catch him again. He is a virtuoso guitar player supreme with a precise, intricate light touch on his own instruments in a variety of styles.

There were a number of ragtime pieces such as Temptation Rag (Henry Lodge) , Lion Tamer Rag (Mark Janza) and Black and White Rag (Winifred Atwell) in which he described the influence of the great Stefan Grossman whom we all tried to imitate in the seventies but unlike Steve we never made it !

He included a fair number of blues numbers by Willie Brown (Mississippi Blues), Doc Watson (Deep River Blues), Mississippi John Hurt (Frankie and Albert), Mel Travis (Ninepound hammer) and Chuck Berry (Downtown Stomp) all delivered with equal panache. Then came the Celtic tradition and a change of tuning to DADGAD for Londonderry Air, Sally Gardens and Si Beag Si Mor.

If all this wasn’t enough he used a different guitar (made from Rosewood instead of Mahogany according to the CD notes!) to play a variety of classical pieces including Carolans Concerto (Francesco Gemiani), Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (George Frederick Handel) and Satarello (using DFcgce tuning with two capos !).

One other piece for which I did not catch the title involved playing just harmonics but turning the machine heads in between where that particular note was not available in conventional tuning !

I hope I have conveyed the breadth of Steve’s unique talent but if you visit his website www.stevehicksinstruments.com you can read more about his music and listen to some audio clips from his new album The Rope Dancer.
I hope we will see him again.

Review by Neil & Julie Smith