Review: Don Ross at Carleton University

P1070209, originally uploaded by palm0014.

Saturday afternoon, Mike and I headed to pick up Eric for his surprised birthday event; an afternoon with Don Ross at a guitar clinic.

I was introduced to Don Ross by Troy. Don Ross (of Ontario) is a finger style guitar player and is quite amazing…so amazing that he has won the North American finger style championship twice in his life; a feat that has not been duplicated as of yet. I find his stuff amazing and he puts all those other guitarists you see on YouTube to shame (alright, not to shame but he is pretty darn good.) He uses the guitar like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

So a few weeks ago I was walking through University of Ottawa and saw a poster indicating he was giving a guitar clinic over at Carleton University. I asked Troy if it’s worth going to see and he responded with an enthusiastic YES! So then I realized that it was the same weekend as Eric’s birthday and knowing that Eric shares the same likes as Mike and I, I realized that he probably would find Don Ross to be impressive.

The plan was hatched. First, I had to get in touch with his wife to see if she would be at home on Saturday or not. Unfortunately, she was working but in the end, managed to find a baby-sitter. Excellent! Tickets were ordered, the date approached.

Saturday morning I realized that there was a kink in the plan…what if Eric was out with his kid when we went to pick him up? I quickly called him and arranged to ‘jam’ with him after lunch, ensuring he would remain at the house.

At 12:30, we headed over, gave him some instructions on the event we were going to, headed out after the babysitter came along and voila, we were going to see Don Ross!

He was playing at the Southham Hall at Carleton University (where we also saw the Trews last year). It’s a nice auditorium with about 444 seats inside. We managed to snag a seat about 7 rows from the stage, but there is no bad spot in the house. It’s the size of a classroom…not some concert hall.

Don Ross came on stage and started out with one of his tunes, Dracula II Mikrokosmos. Troy once told me that he names his songs about things he’s thinking about at the time…Lord only knows what he was thinking about at this time! He then also played another tune (to which I don’t remember the title). He then began the guitar clinic portion of his show and started explaining the difference between his regular guitar and his baritone guitar (both constructed by Marc Beneteau…I believe the same guy that Troy got his custom made guitar from). Essentially (and this will get technical for some readers, and at the same time, was too technical for me to comprehend at some parts), a regular guitar has equally spaced frets along the fret board and everything is all about harmonics and the stretching of the string, yada yada yada. But this baritone guitar was constructed in a way that the fret board does not have equally spaced frets…in fact they looked like they were fanning across the fret board where some the frets closest to the bridge fan from left and then to right as it hits the top of the fret board. It had something to do with the fact that…ah man, I don’t even know if I can explain it. It had something to do with putting the guitar in a more natural state…more in tune with nature, so to speak. Something to do with the fact that nothing in nature is equally spaced (like the frets) and that the intervals between the frets should be spaced differently. If I find some information on what he was talking about, I’ll send it out. Either way, he said that this style of guitar is getting more and more popular as the regular stringed instrument was kind of a ‘best they could come up with’ solution but ‘not perfect’.

He then played another tune (unknown?) and took some questions from the audience. One guy talked about the tune he just played and how his high string ALWAYS snapped when tuning it and Don gave him some tips as to how he can avoid it. He then went into the fact that he has all sorts of different tunings for his songs. Later on in the guitar clinic, he talked more about the different tunings and how he went about finding a different tuning. He would start out with a melody in his head and start playing it…for example he was playing a tune that resembled a Bruce Cockburn tune. But then at one point he realized that in order to hit one of the finger positions on the guitar he would have to stretch the heck out of his hand to match the tune in his head. So he would just tune the bottom string a different way to make it more convenient. Then he would go along and realize that he would need to tune another string to make it easier. I found this fascinating (but sometimes bewildering to understand…talks of fourths, fifths, relative minors…I know them fairly well but there was some stuff which went right over my head. I noticed Eric had the same feeling at some points and he was lost completely in what Don was talking about.) It was still great to hear a guitar God talk about things we don’t understand.

He also talked about the importance of theory and how he wanted to join the music department at a University but failed the music theory exam, and subsequently had to move with his parents to Toronto (from Montreal). He then realized that he needed to brush up on some music theory, went to a music shop and they gave him a booklet which was 20 pages long. He never realized that music theory could be so easy! He said he understood a lot of what was written inside it, but never knew it properly.

There were also questions about his seven string guitar. He said he loves the seven-string guitar but it’s very hard to get pickups made for them and does not like bringing it out on the road for that reason. He hopes to find a pickup manufacturer in the near future to accommodate his needs.

Let’s see…someone asked about his nails. It turns out that he plays with a thumb pick, and then glues Shopper’s Drug Mart nails onto his hand to help with his playing! He ends up gluing two nails per finger before every gig and he also talked about how it is a little embarrassing to go into a nail salon and request to get nails on three fingers of his right hand but he always says “But it’s because I’m a guitarist!” I thought this was hilarious.

There were a few requests in the audience which I thought was amazing in the fact that he had no problem with playing them and just had to remember what tuning they were in. One kid in the front row asked if he could play Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. Everyone had a great laugh at that and Don said “Well I’m sure I could play it, but I don’t know how it goes.”

Someone also asked him about the gear he has on stage and literally talked for 30 minutes on the subject. At one point I must admit I was getting a little overwhelmed at the details, but at the same time, I enjoyed his enthusiasm! He talked about the pickups in his guitar which split into stereo channels and how the pickups really picked up the wood sound of the guitar. He also talked about his new effects rig which he was still playing with.

He also talked about YouTube and how it’s changing lives in the finger style guitarist community. For example, his friend Andy McKee (whom he has recorded a new album recorded with) ended up on the front page of YouTube one day and it just happened to be the same week that Time Magazine published a front page about YouTube. In the end, his video received 12 MILLION VIEWS and he now is writing music for TV shows and traveling as a touring musician for other bands. Quite incredible! He also talked about how his record company (or marketing? I’m not sure) just slapped some footage up on YouTube of him playing and it wasn’t professionally done or anything but still gets an enormous amounts of hits. We also noticed that he had a video camera set up for the show so no doubt he probably takes a look at anything that could go up on the Internet later on.

He also talked about how he created a studio in his home from computers, mics, etcs…essentially the new-age studio and how he didn’t know if it would work out well but in the end, he brought his wife’s new album down to New York to some professional mixer (can’t remember his name but he was big in the business) and Don was really worried about any comments he may have about the recording quality. In the end, the guy finally did ask him where he recorded it and Don sheepishly said “Uh…our house?” and the mixer thought it was amazing and he was surprised that it wasn’t from a regular studio. Just goes to show that I am on my way to making some high quality recordings here guys!

All these anecdotes are definitely out of order…he played this amazing tune called “The First Ride” and I fell in love. I must hunt down the album it is on and learn it.

We got out of there around 4:30 and were amazed at the sheer amazing things we saw and heard. It was great to take part in a guitar clinic like that and I definitely would like to see him in full performance mode someday. Eric ended up picking up a DVD so we’ll have to look at that. Mike and I also picked up an album.

Don Ross…go see him. Be amazed! Some pictures were are included here are the best we have but they aren’t the best in quality considering I had to shut my flash off.

I trust Eric had a great birthday. Too bad there was no beer. 😉