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Hugh Pool Guitar Workshop

July 24, 2021 @ 10:00 am - 11:15 am

Hugh Pool GUITAR WORKSHOP
Saturday, July 24
9:30 Coffee and donuts,
10:00a – 11:15a workshop,  75 minutes
$25/person – 20 person capacity

Bottleneck Guitar Classic is a 75-minute group guitar lesson taught by Hugh Pool. The workshop-style lesson covers the main tunings for Delta and Chicago slide-blues guitar. It includes tips for setting up your guitar, approaches to right- and left-hand damping, right-hand picking, and getting a good tone out of the guitar. We’ll say it again, getting a good tone!

This workshop is geared towards intermediate players who want to walk away with new techniques to practice and the ability to tear through a classic, slide blues but players of all levels will get something from this course.

Hugh is no one-trick pony, hailing from the Rust Belt, which is where he draws inspiration for his backwoods amalgam of rock, country & blues. But living in New York for the last 20 years has tweaked his sensibilities a bit. His brand of trad psyche-delta stomp comes with a bit of New York noise damage.

Hugh Pool is a journeyman blues player whose guitar has taken him around the globe. From Indonesia to the Arctic circle, Hugh has ignited audiences with an original brand of jacked-up Delta Blues. WC Handy winning author Don Wilcock noted “The thing that I love about Hugh is that I get all the honesty that makes for a great blues show and also this guy, kicking my ass, like a great rock show”. What sets Hugh apart is that he built his rock from the bedrock of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, and other architects of early blues.

Hugh moved to New York City at 20 with $300 in his pocket and a 6 string guitar. Playing in the subway, on street corners, in cafes, coffee houses, and bars, he soon met a character named Professor Washboard and spent 4 years busking the streets of Europe. On busy weekends, Hugh and the Professor would routinely send 8 and 10 piece bands packing. CD sales were great and a booking agent came calling. Hugh traveled all over Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany in an old Mercedes Benz ambulance van with Professor Washboard playing hundreds of gigs; private parties, truck Grand Prix’s, wheelchair dance parties, headlining blues festivals, playing in Christmas markets, on boats, trucks and hay wagons…in beer tents, restaurants, clubs, cafes, discos, and on the finer walking streets of major European cities, Hugh and the professor played and played and played and played.

Hugh has released a dozen CDs under various names and has been lauded by The New York Times, Village Voice, The New York Press, and Blues Review. In 2015 he was inducted into the New York Blues Hall of Fame. He has appeared on TV shows including The Emeril Lagasse Show, ABC World News Now, ABC’s The City, The Mitch Albom Show, ABC’s Love Monkey, and Late Night With Conan O’Brien.

From tiny clubs in lower Manhattan to the Jones Beach amphitheater Hugh has played virtually every blues venue in NYC. He has opened for and/or played with: Johnny Winter, John Mayall, Government Mule, Patti Smith, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Ritchie Havens, Caned Heat, Joan Jett, Dave Edmonds, etc. He has been called out of the audience to jam by Leon Russell, Chris Whitley, John Campbell, and Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin. He has been punched on stage by Leslie West. He has been invited to party old school with Tony Joe White, Lonnie Mack, Rick Danko, and Paul Gerimiah.  In Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Los Angeles he’s had backstage conversations in the code of blues with legends Sunnyland Slim, Hubert Sumlin, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Les Paul, John Campbell, and Pinetop Perkins. Hugh has sung, talked, and played on jingles for Pepsi Cola, Dr. Pepper, Heineken, Pillsbury, Texaco, etc. He has written music for an award-winning AIDS documentary, an off-Broadway play, and a German movie along with the many usages of his music on Network and Cable TV.

In addition to his success as a musician, Hugh has also earned acclaim as a producer/engineer/mixer and session player at his Brooklyn-based studio, Excello Recording. Hugh’s talent behind the board and musical ears have led him to work with such talents as Taj Mahal, Hubert Sumlin, Michael Brecker, Debbie Harry, The National, Olu Dara, and Johnny Johnson.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette may have summed him up best – “You may not have heard of Hugh Pool now, but if there is justice in the world of  music, that will change.”

     

Details

Date:
July 24, 2021
Time:
10:00 am - 11:15 am
Event Category: