Re: Guthrie Govan – LIVE in Concert!!!

Hello All!

Well, it has taken me a while to reply to my own thread and give you all a review of the show I saw of Guthrie Govan playing at The Middle East Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts – U.S.A. – just outside of Boston, MA.)

The show started with an opening act called “Tappin'” Don Lappin (aptly named BTW!) He was a bit too one-dimensional for my tastes (Tapping, Tapping, and more Tapping!)

Then The Jon Finn Group came out and played some of their original instrumental material, and it was excellent! The only negatives I could relay about Jon the whole night is that once in a great while, his exuberance gets the best of him and he proceeds to get a bit “spazzy?” and ahead of himself? Besides that, his tone was very effective at times, but when he was on his distorted lead-tone, and in the lower-register in particular, his neck-humbucker tone got a bit “fuzzy-buzzy/farty” if that makes any sense? Other than those “nitpicky things,” Jon Fin was EXCELLENT! He displayed impressive chops, but also he showed a keen sense of melody and feel in general. 😎

Once Jon finally brought Guthrie out to join the Jon Finn Group, they immediately proceeded to fire off a bunch of Guthrie’s Erotic Cakes LP material! (I remember hearing: Fives, Waves, Wonderful Slippery Thing, Sevens, Rhode Island Shred, etc.) It was GREAT! Jon Finn’s Group did an OUTSTANDING job of not only learning Guthrie’s songs, but also playing them with the requisite conviction and groove necessary to do them justice! In fact, if I didn’t know ahead of time, I would’ve been hard pressed to know that this was NOT Guthrie’s regular full-time band. They were THAT GOOD!

BTW, one of the things that struck me throughout the night about Guthrie, is just how CLEAN he chooses to play! (I mean that on various levels too. Like of course being as awesome as he is, he plays cleanly in his articulation. His hands are ALWAYS in synch, and his sense of time is IMPECCABLE!) But I also mean clean as in NOT MUCH DISTORTION in his tone! He chooses to play with a strikingly bright (perhaps a wee bit too bright for my taste, but not annoyingly bright!) and edgy tone, but unlike most shredders, he DOES NOT opt for that “creamy-sustaining” amount of overdrive/distortion. In fact, in an attempt to prove what my ears were telling me during the show, I went up to the stage right after they finished to check out Guthrie’s rig, and as my ears had figured, he was using NO OVERDRIVE/DISTORTION pedal (just a Robotron auto-wah and a Cornford Roadhouse amp-switcher.) Guthrie is CONSTANTLY playing with his guitar’s volume-knob! Anyone who has studied Guthrie’s playing preferences and knows anything about the Guthrie Govan Signature Suhr guitar, knows that his penchant for volume-knob dynamics explains the inclusion of the “blower-switch” on his signature-guitar (The “blower” is a wire-bypass straight from the bridge-humbucker directly to the output jack at full-volume, regardless of the volume-knobs level or the pickup-selection at the time of the switch-engagement! This allows Guthrie to go from say, a clean funk-sound with volume at 30% on the neck&middle pickup-selection, and then rip right into an amp-overdriven solo at full-throttle with the flick of one switch/button! This feature essentially takes a single-channel tube-amp and turns it into a two-channel amp – sort of!) So the bottom line: Guthrie’s straight-ahead guitar rig would probably scare the crap out of mere mortals who rely on lots of creamy-distortion/sustain and a bunch of effects, but in his hands, his rig allows him to put the pedal-to-the-floor and yet ALWAYS remain clear and articulate. AWESOME! 😉

For me, the highlight came about 3/4 of the way through the set, when Guthrie introduced their next song (I don’t remember the song’s name – sorry!) as one that he (Guthrie) did NOT KNOW, and therefore, he would have to sight-read the chart they had on-stage. (Jon Finn chimed-in before he started the song with a plea to his many Berklee students in attendance: “Now you know why I’m such a ballbuster about the importance of being able to sight-read all you students out there!”) Now, I’m not gonna say that Guthrie proceeded to sight-read some crazy melody/head at a cooking-tempo, because he did NOT! In fact, Guthrie didn’t play the head at all! Instead, Jon Finn played the head (after a brilliant unaccompanied clean/jazzy intro – just beautiful and impressive!) The song was a jazzy-ballad of sorts, and I must say that although the slower-tempo made reading the chord-chart easier, the chord-changes themselves were NO PICNIC! There were some difficult chords to navigate in that chart, and Guthrie’s eyes were GLUED to the chart! After a couple of cycles around, it seemed that Guthrie was starting to memorize the changes a bit, which I suppose is a bit typical after a couple of passes through. What I was about to witness next absolutely raised the hair on my arms and sent a chill down my spine!!! Jon Finn signaled to Guthrie to take a solo, and Guthrie proceeded to tear the roof off The Middle East Club! What made this solo SO IMPRESSIVE, was a combination of melodicism, variety of ideas, dynamics, groove, articulation, flat-out-SPEED, etc. However, the thing that absolutely BLEW-MY-MIND above all else, was the fact that Guthrie LITERALLY made EVERY CHORD CHANGE in his solo!!! Again, remember what I said about the chord-changes…They were NOT your garden-variety I-vi-ii-V!!! He was implying the ALL of the chord changes BRILLIANTLY while “tearing-apart” every square-inch of his (borrowed I think?) Natural brown-stain finished Suhr guitar fretboard! In fact, if I had to sum it up with one of my typically annoying metaphors, it was like “Larry Carlton’s Brain/Ears-meets-Shawn Lane’s-Chops!” Good God almighty! I was floored!!! 😮 😉 😀

AT the very end of the night, they all got together and did the requisite “G3-approved” jam while trading-solos. This fell a bit flat for me, and after Guthrie’s set, it seemed a bit anti-climatic. That said, it was fun I suppose, and many in the crowd seemed to dig it. I wasn’t so thrilled about the jam personally. :rolleyes:

All-in-all I had a great time! Guthrie was AMAZING, and Jon Finn was excellent too. Kudos to The Jon Finn Group for doing an OUTSTANDING job of acompanying Guthrie! 😎

~Bill Meehan~ 😀