Over the last two columns, Josh Smith has been breaking down the song “Brown Gatton,” his ode to both Danny Gatton and James Brown, which Josh originally recorded in 2017 for his album, Still.
00:00These are a hundred percent Danny Gatton licks that I'm playing
00:14Then I play some really cool Danny stuff like this
00:22That one I got right from him
00:30So then this time that's we're into the second chorus of the song and I'm playing a lot of double stuff
00:47And you'll see I break out of it early and modulate to that C
01:00So the whole solo is basically three times through e to C e to C e to C
01:16And then we go back to the bridge, which is the same as the beginning the four chord
01:21And that's it. That's that's the whole song basically
01:24It's a simple song with a lot of twists and turns that gives me a lot of freedom
01:30To kind of mess around and play
01:33Chromatically play, you know all that hybrid picking stuff. You hear me play a lot of cascades sometimes in this song
01:39stuff like this
01:41Which is again straight out of the Danny playbook
01:53Because I mean that tension right there I can use that to walk up to the C
01:59I'll do that sometimes
02:02That's a good one. I'll play it slow for you
02:04Yeah, I don't think I actually got that one from Danny. I made that one up
02:19You know a lot of that is is from just years of playing in in and loving Danny Gatton
02:25But loving hybrid picking figuring out how to play those open string runs and and all your keys and use your open strings
02:31That stuff's so fun, you know, and that's kind of
02:35This song I think is very reminiscent of me and what I sound like
02:39Which is a mix of all these different styles blues and jazz and country technique and
02:45R&B and soul, you know, I love all those things and I kind of think that's what helped me find my voices when I was able to start mixing them all up together
02:54And that was one of my favorite things about Danny Gatton because he always sounded like
02:58He only played whatever he heard right that moment with no filter
03:01He wasn't afraid to play jazz on a weird country song or play blues on a country song or
03:08play, you know, jazz on a funk. He'd play anything anywhere anytime
03:12And I really respected that about him in addition to his amazing playing. So that was Brown Gatton
