Josh Smith - How To Play 'Brown Gatton' Part 1
LIVE FROM FLAT V by Josh Smith.
JAMES MEETS DANNY.
“BROWN GATTON” is a song Josh Smith recorded in 2017 for his album Still, which leaned on the jazzier side of things. As the title suggests, the tune is essentially his expression of “James Brown meets Danny Gatton.” Singer and bandleader James Brown is, of course, the Godfather of Soul, and Danny Gatton, for those who may be unfamiliar, was one of the greatest all-around guitarists of all time.
JAMES MEETS DANNY.
“BROWN GATTON” is a song Josh Smith recorded in 2017 for his album Still, which leaned on the jazzier side of things. As the title suggests, the tune is essentially his expression of “James Brown meets Danny Gatton.” Singer and bandleader James Brown is, of course, the Godfather of Soul, and Danny Gatton, for those who may be unfamiliar, was one of the greatest all-around guitarists of all time.
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MusicTranscript
00:00 All right, Josh Smith back again. This month we're going to start talking about my song
00:08 "Brown Gatton." This tune is from my album "Still," which was a jazzier album I did,
00:13 and the title should tell you a few things about this tune. It's basically James Brown
00:19 meets Danny Gatton. That's at least what I was thinking when I wrote it. So it's at its
00:24 heart a James Brown shuffle, like, you know, but mixed with Danny Gatton hybrid picking
00:34 and ideas, and of course some interesting twists and turns. So the phrase of the song,
00:39 the melody, the head of the song, has a two-beat bar, every third bar. So it goes like this,
00:47 "One, two, three." So what's happening there is, "Da da da da da da da da da da da da da
01:08 one two three four da da da da da da one two da da da da." So it's turning itself around
01:17 with a two-beat bar after every third bar of the melody. This leads to some cool twists
01:24 and turns, especially when you go through the change, because then the second time we
01:28 do it, we modulate to C. So we go...
01:43 So that adds a lot of kind of forward motion to the tune. When we hit those two two-beat
02:06 bars, it kind of, the audience kind of feels something, because something different than
02:11 the ordinary is happening, but it doesn't feel out of place, because it's still in the
02:15 same time signature. You're just dropping two beats and starting a phrase in a weird
02:20 spot as far as what the ear is used to. And then when we get into the solo later, that
02:25 makes for really great, cool phrasing things, because you can have licks that cross the
02:30 bar in a different way than you're used to and resolve in a weirder spot, and I love
02:35 that. And that was kind of the Danny Gatton twist on the James Brown thing. Then we get
02:39 to the bridge of the song, which goes to the four chord, and we're full on James Brown
02:44 here, where I'm playing straight eighth notes.
03:03 So we're basically chromatically moving around the four...
03:10 With those stabs on the five chord, and then we're into the solo. So that's the meat and
03:24 the potatoes of this tune, "Brown Gat."
03:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]