Showing them how it's done with my '53 Gibson LG-2

[twalker]

REVIEW: Guitarist Toby Walker's ramblin' delights Listen Live Music audience

 

 

During his show Saturday at Listen Live! Music in Macungie, guitarist Toby Walker portrayed himself as the rambling musician – speaking of his underfunded travels, his hard knocks in the business and his brushes with those greater than himself. But if there are musicians out there working bars and dives who are as talented as Walker, someone should be out there looking harder to find them.

 

Walker gave an extremely enjoyable show of 22 songs in two sets totaling an hour and 50 minutes, showing a finger-picking mastery that most top rock and blues stars would find it hard to improve upon.

 

But more than that, his show was made better by his ability to connect. He seemed very much like an everyman, except that he played guitar really well.

 

Walker opened the show with “Swing Bean,” an instrumental that introduced his “band”: his thumb on bass strings, his index finger on lead guitar, and even a horn section from the fingers between. And, indeed, it often during the set sounded as if there were several people playing Walker’s guitar.

 

His first set was mostly traditional blues: Pink Anderson’s “Try Some of That,” before which he unconvincingly told the audience the song’s salacious lyrics were about cookies; the Mississippi blues of Louisiana Red’s “Dead Stray Dog,” which he played on electric slide; and his melody of Blind Blake’s ragtime blues as “Puttin’ on the Blakes,” during which he produced sounds his introduced as his trombone and clarinet.

 

He introduced most songs with humorous stories. Sometimes they would be preludes to the songs, such as before his own “Everything I Want,” and sometimes he simply would finish a story by saying, “That’s got nothing to do with the song I’m about to play.”

 

But it told volumes about who Toby Walker is, and sometimes his magnificent noodling as he spoke, such as before “Corrina” told just as much.

 

He often sought participation from the audience of about 40, asking men in couples to sing along to their women on “She’s Got Something There.” On that song he also let the resonator guitar, on which he played string-scratching-slide Delta blues, “talk” about its own feelings -- even stepping to the edge of the stage to play it unamplified.

 

When Walker sang, it sometimes was in a blue-eyes blues voice, as on “She’s Into Something,” but on the set-closing “Glory Glory,” his voice sounded authentic amid a cyclone of electric slide and a hurricane flurry of notes.

 

The second set was far more eclectic, opening with his own autobiographical ”I Was Gone,” then playing Willie Johnson’s “God Moves” in his own arrangement on 12-sting guitar and Tampa Red’s instrumental “Boogie Woogie Dance.”

 

After a fun and demonstrative “Full Figured Woman” (on which he played his fifth guitar of the night) Walker strayed from his prepared program to play a stomping “Texas Tornado” that moved right into “Got My Mojo Workin’” – the audience’s loud applause for the former moving right into clapping along to the latter. And Walker was, indeed, working it.

 

“The whole setlist just went to hell,” Walker said. “This is just too much fun.”

 

He closed with the stomping Chicago blues of “Talk About Your Woman,” the audience again clapping along, a cute “Roaches” and “Highway.”

 

For the encore, Walker played an audience-requested “Slingo Creek” and Chesapeake,” songs by Grammy-winning acoustic finger-style guitarist Al Petteway.

 

Wonderfully intricate, yet wonderfully jaunty, Celtic-flavored music, they showed Walker’s talent on guitar and as a showman, and made you wonder why he’s still a rambling musician.

[EuroAussie]

Toby, when will you do a Euro tour, would love to see you in Prague. Great venues, best and cheapest beer, and Ill let you play some of my Gibons, hows that for a deal :-)

[zombywoof]

You can keep all that signature guitar crap, Toby may just be the most eloquent spokesman for Gibson out there.

 

Funny thing though while I was reading the review I kept thinking to myself tell me something I don't know.

[twalker]

Toby, when will you do a Euro tour, would love to see you in Prague. Great venues, best and cheapest beer, and Ill let you play some of my Gibons, hows that for a deal :-)

 

 

Closest I'm coming to you is in Germany in April.

[twalker]

You can keep all that signature guitar crap, Toby may just be the most eloquent spokesman for Gibson out there.

 

Funny thing though while I was reading the review I kept thinking to myself tell me something I don't know.

 

Thanks Zomby.

 

Yeah... sig guitars have their place but those Gibsons sing a different tune.

[RichG]

You can keep all that signature guitar crap, Toby may just be the most eloquent spokesman for Gibson out there.

 

The Toby Walker Signature Gibson would have to be a 6/12 string acoustic/electric/resonator with a rosewood/mahogany/metal body and a spruce/hog/metal top. If Gibson could make that, it would make it a lot easier for Toby to travel to gigs.

[twalker]

 

The Toby Walker Signature Gibson would have to be a 6/12 string acoustic/electric/resonator with a rosewood/mahogany/metal body and a spruce/hog/metal top. If Gibson could make that, it would make it a lot easier for Toby to travel to gigs.

 

Oooo...

[MuddyDitch Zhuangzi]

Great show in Macungie last night Toby. I was really glad to hear you play Savannah Mama it's one of my favorites.

Anyway, I tried upload a few pics of my own in this post but I'm not real computer savvy and we'll see if it works.

 

Erik

 

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