K
K-dub
Well-known member
Stu Gort, who used to haunt these very pages w/ us years ago, passed on (I recently discovered). For those that knew him, he was an immensely talented fellow who had an exacting personality. It was his precise nature that made him an excellent guitarist - and guitar maker. It was his guitar making that I sought to share w/ a local luthier (here in Maine) where I discovered he was gone.
I'd been working on this mix with my most recent assembly of musical folks (Who We Are). WWA was a project meant to bring the works I present here to the live stage. They had one caveat in agreement: They got to play the songs the way they wanted to play them, not necessarily the way I'd recorded them.
I'd worked w/ Stu for decades trading files online. When I started the live project (in 2015) I kind of gravitated offline into 3D land again - working with local musicians. I sold my business in 2016, enabling me to gig live late nights again. The unit lasted until 2021, with live music dying a covid death in 2020. This was one of the last works we recorded.
Stu and I had worked on the original together YEARS ago, and with the band's parts tracked, the piece was still missing what I wanted to hear - which was ... Stu. His parts were a signature sound to the piece, forever etched in my musical mind as a seminal ingredient. There are few who can send me parts that are entirely unexpected and extremely musical at once. That was Stu's unique genius.
Although the new group had slowed the rhumba (it's kind of one) down in the tempo, the key was identical to the original. So I decided to pay tribute and take Stu's tracks, slow them down to match the BPM of the new recording and see if they fit as if they were intended to be played there in the revision. He does the jangly guitars, the e-bow, and the background vocals.
What do you think?
