The arrival of the solidbody electric guitar back around the middle of the 20th century didn’t do the acoustic guitar any favors in the reputation department. Les Paul’s solidbody innovation did a tremendous lot to enable early rockers to invent what it means to “rock,” from early adopters of the Stratocaster like Buddy Holly to early adopters of the Gibson Les Paul like Carl Perkins.
When Jimi Hendrix came along to make sounds no acoustic could ever replicate, the humble acoustic lost most of its cachet with those who rock. With, of course, the exceptions that always plague the slinger of generalities, acoustics remained the instruments of choice only for earnest folkies and old-school country crooners.
Decades after the invention of the solidbody electric and the employment of feedback and effects pedals to make electrics sound like everything from exploding alien spacecraft to wasps in tin cans, it’s tough to be a hard-rocking rebel without an amplifier and a distortion pedal. It’s also rare for any acoustic guitar to approach the easy playability of an electric—a would-be shredder can get up to shredding speed far more quickly with the thinner strings and lower action that prevail with electrics.
Because of all that, the power of acoustics gets overlooked, and more’s the pity. As a longtime devotee of the Selmer-style acoustic jazz guitar, I know that acoustics don’t have to be hard to play. They really can be employed for some pretty heady fireworks in the speed department, even outside of genres like Gypsy jazz and classical.
Still, when I heard the strains of recent Calvin Theatre headliners Rodrigo y Gabriela, a Mexican acoustic guitar duo, I was startled to note that their acoustics emitted stout energy, speed and rhythm. In short, they rock. This is revelatory material.
Rodrigo y Gabriela accomplish this trick in large part by simply eschewing the more common method of using acoustics, the low-energy backing strum common to coffeehouses everywhere. Instead, the pair knock, bang and flutter all over the guitar in addition to laying down strongly rhythmic parts that fall somewhere between rock and flamenco.
They’re not the first to do so, as devotees of players like the seminal Michael Hedges might point out. They were preceded by fellow acoustic headbangers Days of the New. Yet such unhinged unplugged style remains unusual.
Maybe it’s partially because playing an acoustic that way requires a lot more energy than turning up an amp. Just check out one of the earliest (successful) attempts at rocking unplugged: Pete Townshend’s flailing acoustic madness in 1979’s The Secret Policeman’s Ball. It takes a Townshend to make an acoustic become a vehicle for unhinged rock.
The MTV Unplugged series, recently revived, is frequently a fascinating show to watch for its ongoing illustration of the vulnerability of playing acoustic. Bands who are used to creating a massive slab of sound with ease sometimes appear quite adrift when armed only with acoustics. Their sounds often become thinned out and contemplative, a fine thing in its own right, but not a necessary result of removing amplification.
Locally, there are groups and players who understand how to make an acoustic guitar do more than serve as a poignant backdrop. Bands like Rusty Belle and Swing Caravan don’t shy away from torqued-up rhythm; acoustic players like Mark Herschler and Zack Danziger could play circles around most anyone armed with an electric. And there are, of course, other players of such proclivities in the Valley.
Listening to Rodrigo y Gabriela made me wonder, maybe even hope, that more players in search of high-test sounds will discover just how much can be done with an old-fashioned wooden box with strings. In a time when things that used to be commonplace—sugar instead of high fructose in soft drinks, live action stunts instead of CGI effects—become newfangled, highly sought-after innovations, the time is right for the humble acoustic to become a centerpiece for fretboard wizardry once more.
