Kelly Joe Phelps

[random works]

http://kellyjoephelps.net/news/index.htm

I've been wondering about how this guy has been doing and found this link.
I never heard anyone quite like him and loved his slide playing and voice.

[ecguitar44]

Originally Posted by random works

http://kellyjoephelps.net/news/index.htm

I've been wondering about how this guy has been doing and found this link.
I never heard anyone quite like him and loved his slide playing and voice.

Hadn't heard about this.

He's a very special artist. Excellent, excellent musician!

[woodenstrings]

Glad to hear he's playin again

[Kalani]

Always loved his music! His music inspired me to learn "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" years ago in open D.

[Jim Owen]

Thanks for the link that gives the update. I am glad to hear that he's getting back to playing.

He's a fine performer--I've seen him a couple of times and been blown away.

[MJRB]

He's one of my favourites. I have his finger style and lap style instruction DVDs, they are well worth having.
MJRB

[GHS]

I ordered the fingerpicking DVD of Phelps from Homspun and really like his style. But when I played one of the video for three of my non player frinds who never heard of him, they thought it was the worst act they ever saw. And these folks are artists in their own right with painting a writting and have very open minds to different styles but the feeling was unanamous. Shut it off. It's just us geetar pickers I guess that get it.

[Mtn Man]

I completely fell in love with his slide playing when I first heard him. Then for some reason he seemed to get away from slide and started fingerpicking all the time. I guess I lost interest after that. I always thought he was one of the best slide players ever, so inventive, he took it to a different place.

Here's an example. Technically brilliant, but dripping with soul, and effortless. Truly one of the great all time talents IMO.

[MJRB]

Thanks for posting that Mtn Man. I suspect that he doesn't get a lot of attention because he's a musician rather than a showman. I think he's great.
JMHO
MJRB

I had tickets for KJP's concert in Amsterdam in May, but unfortunately it was cancelled. Other concerts in Europe were cancelled too. Does anyone know why? I'm afraid his hand injury has been playing up again (but I'm not sure).

[drplayer]

Originally Posted by Mtn Man

I completely fell in love with his slide playing when I first heard him. Then for some reason he seemed to get away from slide and started fingerpicking all the time. I guess I lost interest after that. I always thought he was one of the best slide players ever, so inventive, he took it to a different place.

Here's an example. Technically brilliant, but dripping with soul, and effortless. Truly one of the great all time talents IMO.

Kelly Joe Phelps is brilliant, and still very much a slide player...he just traded his lap steel for bottleneck to explore new possibilities. Below is a partial interview taken from his web-site that explains...

DH (Douglas Heselgrave): Before we go any further, I know that a lot of people who read nodepression are musicians and they’re wondering why you’ve switched from the lap-slide to the bottle neck. So, perhaps we should get that out of the way.

KJP (Kelly Joe Phelps): What I always enjoyed most about playing lap-style slide was the sense of physical freedom in motion, and that so little about playing that way resembles a normal "guitaristic" approach. These two elements combined can make playing the guitar feel as though it's a completely different instrument; just enough that's understandable and familiar, yet just enough that is foreign and maybe slightly exotic. But it also brings with it extreme limitations; a lap-style player is playing the guitar with only oneleft-hand finger rather than five, in that the slide bar is the only element outside of the open strings that is causing any music or noise to come out of the guitar. There is no way around this, either - at least not without changing some base structure and consequently relying on that new structure to facilitate something different. Whatever choice one makes is either to decide playing with one finger is enough, or that a trick or gadget is worth the weirdness and price paid for it.

DH: Everything has its limitations, and it sounds like you were trying to find your way around them for a long time.

KJP: Any musical instrument is going to carry its particular limitations within it. However, getting to the point where these finite qualities show up is vastly different one to the next. Any guitar player that has spent countless hours of playing and practicing recognizes that, conceptually, the guitar is indeed a finite journey and study, yet one's life is not long enough to tap every potential, nor would two lifetimes be long enough; the endpoint is far too far away to even imagine a picture of it. And this is still and simply referring to one guitar, one tuning, and ten fingers. Playing bottleneck slide is still a ten finger approach - the slide bar being one of them - which still allows the potential possibilities to seem endless, even if it's understood that they are not. But if a full-lived life is not long enough to find them all, then it might as well be emraced and thought of as endless, because functionally it will be. So...bottleneck playing contains within it the sense of endless possibilities whereas the lap-style approach does not. This is not to say, in no way at all, that playing lap-style can't be completely and thoroughly enjoyable and fun and moving and creative. It can be all these things, for the player and listener both. However; once this conversation makes its way to me personally, I will always say that the lap-style journey started with beautiful seas, favorable winds, a wonderfully seaworthy boat, and a good crew. We sailed those seas for ten solid years; lost but one man, suffered through few devastating hardships. We set out on a journey knowing not what we'd find, and returned home ten years later, older, wearied, happy to have returned alive, enriched and thickened through the experiences and the telling of their stories. Perhaps having returned somewhat wiser as well. Perhaps, not. So now a new journey has started, with a new boat and crew, and I’m sailing from a different port than I've ever sailed. I know nothing about these waters, nor the people that inhabit them, nor the creatures under them. Nor do I know how long it will take; I will only know that once I've returned, it’s the kind of thing that'll light a fire under one's boots, and in one's belly.

[MJRB]

Originally Posted by drplayer

Kelly Joe Phelps is brilliant, and still very much a slide player...he just traded his lap steel for bottleneck to explore new possibilities. Below is a partial interview taken from his web-site that explains...

DH (Douglas Heselgrave): Before we go any further, I know that a lot of people who read nodepression are musicians and they’re wondering why you’ve switched from the lap-slide to the bottle neck. So, perhaps we should get that out of the way.

KJP (Kelly Joe Phelps): What I always enjoyed most about playing lap-style slide was the sense of physical freedom in motion, and that so little about playing that way resembles a normal "guitaristic" approach. These two elements combined can make playing the guitar feel as though it's a completely different instrument; just enough that's understandable and familiar, yet just enough that is foreign and maybe slightly exotic. But it also brings with it extreme limitations; a lap-style player is playing the guitar with only oneleft-hand finger rather than five, in that the slide bar is the only element outside of the open strings that is causing any music or noise to come out of the guitar. There is no way around this, either - at least not without changing some base structure and consequently relying on that new structure to facilitate something different. Whatever choice one makes is either to decide playing with one finger is enough, or that a trick or gadget is worth the weirdness and price paid for it.

DH: Everything has its limitations, and it sounds like you were trying to find your way around them for a long time.

KJP: Any musical instrument is going to carry its particular limitations within it. However, getting to the point where these finite qualities show up is vastly different one to the next. Any guitar player that has spent countless hours of playing and practicing recognizes that, conceptually, the guitar is indeed a finite journey and study, yet one's life is not long enough to tap every potential, nor would two lifetimes be long enough; the endpoint is far too far away to even imagine a picture of it. And this is still and simply referring to one guitar, one tuning, and ten fingers. Playing bottleneck slide is still a ten finger approach - the slide bar being one of them - which still allows the potential possibilities to seem endless, even if it's understood that they are not. But if a full-lived life is not long enough to find them all, then it might as well be emraced and thought of as endless, because functionally it will be. So...bottleneck playing contains within it the sense of endless possibilities whereas the lap-style approach does not. This is not to say, in no way at all, that playing lap-style can't be completely and thoroughly enjoyable and fun and moving and creative. It can be all these things, for the player and listener both. However; once this conversation makes its way to me personally, I will always say that the lap-style journey started with beautiful seas, favorable winds, a wonderfully seaworthy boat, and a good crew. We sailed those seas for ten solid years; lost but one man, suffered through few devastating hardships. We set out on a journey knowing not what we'd find, and returned home ten years later, older, wearied, happy to have returned alive, enriched and thickened through the experiences and the telling of their stories. Perhaps having returned somewhat wiser as well. Perhaps, not. So now a new journey has started, with a new boat and crew, and I’m sailing from a different port than I've ever sailed. I know nothing about these waters, nor the people that inhabit them, nor the creatures under them. Nor do I know how long it will take; I will only know that once I've returned, it’s the kind of thing that'll light a fire under one's boots, and in one's belly.

Thanks for posting that.
That second answer is quite a statement.
MJRB