Back where it all began

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

By Aaron Davis

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Through 14 years of incessant touring, The California Guitar Trio has played all over North America. It tours in Europe and Japan, and its music was even sent as wake up music for the crew aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavor. And where did it all begin for founding member Paul Richards of Salt Lake City?

“I was in a teenage rock band, and my first traveling gig ever was at Snow King Resort in the Shady Lady Saloon,” said Richards, who will soon perform in the Center Theater.

Richards met his bandmates—Bert Lams of Brussels, and Hideyo Moriya of Tokyo—in England at one of Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft Courses in 1987. After completing several of the intensive courses, the three toured worldwide with Fripp’s League of Crafty Guitarists. Lams moved to Los Angeles soon after, where the three convened and founded the band in 1991.

“It was a challenge to communicate in the beginning, but the interesting thing to me was how our cultures were brought together in such an intimate way,” Richards said of those early days, living and rehearsing together. “This integration comes out in the music too.”

None of the three members live in the namesake state anymore. Richards lives in Salt Lake, Lams in Pennsylvania, and Moriya commutes from Japan up to twelve times a year! They email scores and mp3s prior to tour, developing ideas individually before rehearsing new material.

By way of emphasizing technical virtuosity and humor, CGT has fused European classical music, rock, blues, jazz, world music, bluegrass, and surf music into its own instrumental style. Over the course of 12 albums, CGT has managed to appeal to a diverse audience. Its arrangements of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” or the mash up of “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” with The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” are recommended primers. There’s a lot of emotion in their music.

“One time at a show, a 90-year-old woman really liked a Pink Floyd song we played,” Richards said. “I think we end up in settings that make it more possible for people to relate to certain music that they would not have been exposed to otherwise.”

CGT’s sophisticated, weaving interplay is certainly rare in guitar-based ensemble music. Its use of a Roland effects unit, the VG-99, along with acoustic-electric Breadlove Guitars, allows for different textures to be applied to its sound. While CGT will hold nothing back at the Center for the Arts, some environments call for a change in the game plan.

“We play clean most of the time, but it can be controversial playing in more classical settings where distortion is not always accepted,” Richards said, “but we adapt by leaving the electronics behind.” JHW

California Guitar Trio will perform at 7 p.m., Sunday, at Center Theater. $25. 733-4900.

COURTESY SRO ARTISTS
California Guitar Trio blends virtuosity and humor at the Center Theater on Sunday

PERMALINK:
Back where it all began | Planet JH News Article: Music Box

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