Prior to that time, I had not heard The Gordons but after "Sawdust" got my attention I listened closely and was incredibly impressed with their whole set. As soon as they got off stage I went to find the lead singer and guitar player, Gary Gordon, and ask him where I could get a recording of "Sawdust." I found out that the song was written by Gary's son, Noah, and is on The Gordon's newest CD titled " End Of A Long Hard Day."

Although I got the CD in order to learn that one song, I discovered that all the songs on the CD are very well done and it has since become one of my favorite CDs. Gary and his wife Roberta are accompanied by Bill Cross on banjo, David Johnson on fiddle, Curtis Jay Hiner on bass, and special guests Noah Gordon (vocals), Katsuyuki Miyazaki and Mark Stoffel on mandolin. While all of the instrumental work on the CD is top notch, what I enjoy most about it is the singing. Gary and Roberta have been singing together for about 30 years, and not only are they good at it, you can tell that they are still passionate about it. In an interview I later conducted with Gary he said, "I just love harmony singing to death." And it shows.

Gary Gordon got his start in music by singing in the fields of his father's southern Illinois farm while he was weeding beans and corn. He said, "I started working when I was very young. We didn't use walkmans or anything like that in those days. Dad was into folk music and country." Gary remembers singing songs by such artists as Johnny Cash, Flatt and Scruggs, the Kingston Trio, and the Limelighters. He adds, "When I was still a young kid I also got into Ernest Tubb. He was on TV each morning."

Gary started playing guitar at the age of eleven, however, he started learning completely on his own. He says, "I tried to make some sounds that I had heard on Johnny Cash records and stuff like that. I was trying to do it by ear and I didn't have any success. I was trying to learn on a Silvertone that was very hard to play. About a year went by and I was able to get a Supro electric guitar. I started on electric guitar and tried it on my own for a while, but then I got a year's worth of lessons from this 'dyed in the wool' country guy named Webb Welter."

When asked what kind of songs he was learning to play at that time, Gary said that the Beatles had hit the US by then and he had become interested in rock music. His teacher, in order to keep his interest, was teaching him some of the Beatles songs, but since Webb Welter was really a country performer, Gary says, "His bridge to rock was through rockabilly, so he was teaching me songs by artists like Buck Owens and Carl Perkins."

From the start, Gary's interest in learning how to play guitar was primarily to back up his singing, so his teacher taught him how to play all of the common major, minor, and seventh chords. Webb also worked to insure Gary's timing and rhythm was solid. By the time Gary was twelve years old he was hired by some high school seniors to play rhythm guitar and sing harmony in their band. Gary said, "I went right to work playing dances twice a week." When I expressed my surprise at him having played in a band so early, Gary added, "It's crazy isn't it. But we are out in the country here!"

Gary continued playing bluesy rock and country music in dance bands all through high school. While he was playing electric guitar in these bands, he states that he had always had an interest in acoustic guitars from seeing Porter Wagner and Ernest Tubb.

He said, "I knew that they had really good guitars, but no body around here had one. Midway through high school I was at a guys house and his dad had a Martin. He snuck the thing out and we got to fooling with it a little. Other than that, I never had my hands on a good acoustic guitar. They were expensive."

On his eighteenth birthday (1971) Gary was given a Grammer acoustic guitar by his wife Roberta. The couple had met when they were fifteen and gotten married after high school graduation. About that same time, Gary also joined a rock and roll band and the band experienced quite a bit of regional success. The band, Farm, played to large regional crowds and were popular on the radio. In this band Gary played lead and rhythm electric guitar.

By 1973 the band Farm had dissolved and Gary began taking a serious interest in bluegrass. He had known about bluegrass all his life because he had grown up watching country music television shows that had featured bluegrass bands such as Flatt and Scruggs and Jim and Jesse. However, Gary says that what really sold him on bluegrass was the Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. He began buying bluegrass albums whenever he would see them and played bluegrass music everyday with his friends.

About the time Gary began exploring bluegrass music he bought his wife an autoharp. He says, "I bought her an autoharp for Christmas never really thinking she would learn to play it. She sang, but up to this point she hadn't learn to play any instruments. It didn't take her long to learn that autoharp and we began playing at home. Within six or eight months we were going out and playing two or three clubs each night. What we would do is go to places that were packed, play about 25 minutes, and pass the hat. This may sound like we were real bums or something, but we started this stuff and eventually developed this big circuit of clubs where we could go and pass the hat and I was able to quit my day job."

Gary and Roberta continued performing as a duo at these "pass the hat gigs" for about three years. The material they performed was all bluegrass and traditional country. Their current bluegrass band, The Gordons, grew out of that duo when they added a banjo and a bass in the mid-seventies. Gary has periodically held jobs outside of music over the pass 25 years, however, he and his wife have always kept the music going.

Even though Gary has played lead guitar in rock bands, he does not step out and solo on the acoustic guitar in the bluegrass setting. Gary says, "On the acoustic guitar, I like to play solid rhythm and really keep it flowing. I like to be a team player and I enjoy being 'dead on' behind the instrumentalists. I think it is cool to back people up -- I love it." He added that in the seventies, when The Gordons began traveling a lot and playing festivals, there were not many people playing lead guitar in the bluegrass setting so he stuck to playing rhythm because he felt like that was the traditional role of the guitar in bluegrass.

While Gary's concept of playing guitar in a bluegrass band kept the guitar in the traditional rhythm role, his rhythm style is not necessarily traditional. Coming from a country and rock background, Gary says that he tends to play more closed chord positions than the typical bluegrass player and that he probably plays a larger variety of chords and chord inversions than many of the traditional players.

When asked if he was influenced by any of the bluegrass guitar players that he met, Gary says that Norman Ford was a big influence. Norman was a player from Missouri who performed in a band called Dub Crouch and Norman Ford. Gary says, "Norman was a real driving player with great timing. He was also real active and lively with his runs."

Although Gary does not include too many runs in his rhythm playing these days, he says, "For several years I played a lot of runs. I played a little more fancy, in some ways, than I do now. The way I see it now, I try to play real simple while the singing is going on and keep it solid. During certain instrumental breaks, I will play runs for half the break. For instance I think that runs can really help to drive a banjo or fiddle break."

When asked about his approach to rhythm guitar in general, Gary said, "I tend to hear piano when I am playing guitar. People may think I am crazy out of that statement. But I think my playing might be slightly 'pianistic' because I will hit open notes and hammer-on notes inside of a chord. I hear piano players move those notes that way. I think it spices it up a lot." Gary also said that, when playing rhythm, his right hand is very active in that he changes its position relative to the bridge quite a bit. He says, "I don't like to stay around the bridge much. I might do some crosspicking back by the bridge, but other- wise, I like the richness of picking up over the soundhole. I will even pick certain pas- sages up over the fingerboard. You can get a lot of tonal difference and dynamic range that way."

One reason I felt that it would be interesting to feature Gary in this column is that he did not grow up playing bluegrass. His background was in country and rock music and he did not start playing bluegrass until he had already been playing professionally for a number of years. Knowing that Gary had come from a country, folk and rock background, I asked him if that background had had a great influence on the way he approaches bluegrass rhythm guitar. Gary said, "Absolutely. I think that because the electric guitar is very sensitive to how hard you pick it, I have always been careful to keep all of the notes clean. I don't get buzzing notes. I am not an acoustic player who overpicks. Some players say that my touch is delicate, but I can get down and grab some volume too. I am prone to not play quite so hard all the time. I want to hear a lot of dynamic range from my instrument. I think part of the comes from varying the position of my right hand."

Gary adds, "I have played the Parsons-White string bender on my electric guitar since 1980. I have always been a Byrds fan and we have always incorporated some Byrds material in every show we do. I think that playing the string bender on the electric guitar influenced the way I slide on and bend strings on the acoustic."

Summing up his approach to rhythm guitar, Gary says, "I'm very fortunate in that the players that I am working with are really good players and I really dig hearing what they are playing. I am careful to not play over them. I adjust my volume to the instrument. If the banjo players is playing softer, up over the neck, I'm going to lay back. If he is driving, I'm going to be driving. I've spent years trying to anticipate where the other player is going and it is very important to me to try and complement the other players and the vocalists."

Since Gary primarily became interested in playing guitar in order to back up vocals, I asked him to lend some advice about playing guitar in support of a vocalist. He said, "I think that you should not overplay and get in the way of the vocals. During vocals, simplify your runs, and don't do your runs over the words. Keep your little flourishes between stanzas. Lay back during the versus and dig in during the choruses."

Recently The Gordons played a show in St. Louis to a large, very attentive crowd. Half way through the show a man walked up to the stage. Gary thought he was coming up with a request. He walked right up in front of Gary and said, "Son, what kind of guitar are you playing?" Gary told him that the guitar was a Gallagher G-50. The man said, "It sounds great, I had to get a good close look at it." At the end of the same night, another man came up and said, "Your guitar playing is great." Gary replied, "It is just a tonal thing, I'm not that good." The man said, "It comes across just great." Gary said, "I think that is proof that you don't have to be the fastest player or the busiest player for people to love it."

Gary Gordon has been playing Gallagher guitars for about the last six years. Prior to that he had been playing a 1968 Martin D-35. He likes the dry tone, clear notes, and punch of the mahogany Gallagher guitar. He said that it is really present and never boomy. On stage Gary does not like to plug in or use a sound hole mic. He always carries his own mics and likes to use AKG 451 and an Audiotech 813. He likes GHS phosphor bronze strings on the Gallagher and uses the Clayton Ultem "gold" .80 mm picks.