Richard Sleigh interviews Dennis Greunling

If you're not familiar with Dennis Gruenling, I suggest you check him out - he's worth listening to. In fact, Dennis is a real student of the genre - virtually a blues historian.

The reason I'm posting these interviews here is because of a crucial point Dennis makes:You have to listen to what the OBGs (Original Blues Guys) listened to if you're going to really understand the music. Listen to too much modern music & you only hear PART of the story, filtered through someone else's soul. You have to hear this stuff undistilled, go back to the source, to really hear the music for what it was before it was covered, interpreted, remade into something else. It's like making a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy...get too many generations from the source and what comes out is almost unrecognizeable and certainly doesn't contain all the information, nuance, subtlety of the original. Imagine what the Constitution would look like if it had to be small enough to post on twitter, or what the Mona Lisa would look like if DaVinci were only allowed charcoal and an 8x10 canvas.

OK, so you're not interested in in playing just like it's already been done. Good. But how can your interpretation be authentic if you don't know what the source was?





The other part of the lesson here for musicians, i think, is to make yourself an expert on what you're doing and find every possible way you can to get yourself out there.