Geoff Hansplant Profile
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Folk Blues Troubadour Geoff Hansplant’s new release is a groove centered mix of Piedmont Blues, Ragtime and contemporary folk, exploring many aspects of the journey of life. |
About
| Geoff Hansplant | |
| Blues & Folk | |
| Southeast Pennsylvania | |
| www.geoffhansplant.com | |
| A lot of folks believe that music should be played to or played for an audience. I've always thought that the best music is played with an audience. When a great groove sneaks into your soul and drags you feet first into a song, a connection between the performer and the listener is forged and there is a chance that each will grow from the experience of the other. After all, making music is a human endeavor as old as time and has always served as a portal to other worlds, other ways of knowing. In many ways, music is the grease for the engine of community. In the end, no matter what musical genre I borrow from, I'm a folk musician. Maybe more of a folkbluesrootsrocktroubadour (how's that grab ya?). The way I see it, the music belongs to the people and I'm just lucky enough to be the conduit for it. If asked what I call the kind of music I play, it's Piedmont Blues, a kind of fingerstyle blues guitar which originated in the Carolinas in the early part of the 1900's and was the guitar player's equivalent of ragtime piano. It is known for its syncopated bass lines and flashy treble runs and is a much sweeter sounding blues than its Delta cousin. I don't think of it as a crying in your beer kind of blues. This is a blues for dancing. The key to the Piedmont Blues is the groove. The groove has to draw the listener in and get them moving because once you get someone's body moving to the music, its a hell of a lot easier to captivate their spirit. As a student of the Piedmont style, I learned to play a lot of songs written by the masters, guys like Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Willie McTell, Jesse Fuller and Blind Lemon Jefferson. I grew to love the one guitar, one voice approach to performing because of the intimacy of the whole arrangement. And the Piedmont style allowed for a loose, spacious sound that felt fully developed and arranged at the same time. I still play a lot of these classic tunes in my shows, but increasingly, I am moving toward my own songs, songs written in this style but with lyrics which are my own life's stories. Today, my writing is inspired by the best of the modern songwriters (blues and otherwise). When I want to listen to something good, I reach for Richard Thompson, Chris Smither, Alan Hull or Eliza Gilkyson. Continuing in their shoes, I want to write songs that dig deeper into the human psyche, to find out what it is that really makes us all tick. I want to understand and reveal and live in the shoes and hearts of the people I meet and know and love. I think that is what is worth writing about. I think it is what is worth singing about. And I think it is what might bring all of us a little bit closer to the truth. | |
| guitar,bass, dobro, mandolin, bouzouki |
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Pilgrim's Progress is currently available at DigStation and as CD or digital download at through CDBaby |
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