JOSE GONZALES

["loop.pool" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

I'm so glad someone mentioned Jose Gonzales'  Veneer CD.

I'm so in love with this record; have been playing it over and over this 
week and I too, was curious
how he was accomplishing some of his stuff.

My wife has a few years training in classical guitar and tells me that 
everything he is doing is doable in real time
with classical techniques but I suspected that he might be looping.  There 
is one tune where he has a bass run
on one string against chords and he either looped it or accopmlished it 
himself with Buckethead sized hands
(saw him last night........................what freakishly long hands that 
monstrous guitarist has).

I got curious and picked up a beater classical guitar that we have and 
tried 
figuring out one of his tunes
and actually made some progress (and I'm a terrible guitar player, 
technically speaking).

I know that the percussion that he plays is doable in one of the later 
songs 
because that is a technique I've
stumbled on as a percussionist which is either putting the guitar into an 
open tuning or fretting a chord appropriately
and the banging your fist on near the sound hole to get a bass drum sound 
while the guitar chord plays very quietly
as a sympathetic  vibtration.

Still,  he might be looping.   I hope so only because this is the best 
acoustic singersongwriter record I've heard since
dear Eliott Smith passed away.   It's so zen simple and he has the most 
beautiful, clear and untheatrical voice.