Album Notes

I love fingerpickin' and bottleneckin' vintage blues and novelty songs. This collection of songs represents how that passion has influenced my original songs and music.

All songs and compositions were written, arranged and performed by Reggie Miles

Recorded, edited and mastered by Marc Willet at Falcon Audio in Sultan, WA

Jacket photos are courtesy of Mark Terrano

Guitars featured on this recording:

My homemade 'Nobro' resophonic (3, 5, 6, 11)
1967 Martin D 12-20 (1, 2, 4, 10)
1918 Knutsen Hawaiian (8, 9)
1939 Kalamazoo flattop acoustic (7)

More Reggie Miles recordings you will enjoy!

"Stray Dog Blues" - 14 Bottleneck Blues
"51 Highway Blues" - 11 New & Used Blues
"War Mongerin' Man" - 13 Original Political Songs
"These Old Shoes" - 12 Sweet and Silly Original Songs

Have Blues - Will Travel
Invite me to entertain at your next gathering: reggiemiles@gmail.com

STARVING FOR YOUR ATTENTION PRODUCTIONS
ABEL VISION ENTERPRISES
NOBRO RECORDS 015 © 2008

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My guitar tunings -

I've had many ask about what tuning I use when I open tune my guitar to play bottleneck slide. The tuning used on all of the open tuned guitars on this recording is an open E form, or a modified version of the same. By modified I mean that though the key may change from either tuning the guitar to a higher pitch or down to a lower pitch, I'm still using the same open E form.

(Except for the title song #1, "Handsful O' Blues" and song #9, "Katrina Blues", these were played in an open E minor form.)

If that sounds a little confusing, think of it like this. If you've tuned your guitar to open E (low-EBEG#BE-high) but desire to play in an open G, you could simply add a capo on the third fret. This then is essentially like creating a barred G major chord and looks like this: (low-GDGBDG-high). From open G you could move this tuning up to Ab by placing a capo on the fourth fret etc.

I don't use a capo when I'm in open tunings and playing bottleneck slide. Instead, I prefer to tune all of my strings up or down to the pitch desired. So, that means that when I play a song in open G my strings are tuned like this (low-GDGBDG-high), if in open D (low-DADF#AD-high), in open E (low-EBEG#BE-high) or open C# minor (low-C#AbC#EAbC#-high) etc.

If this explanation is as clear as mud, try searching for open guitar tunings online. There are many helpful sites.

Happy pickin'!

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"Katrina Blues" is also featured in the 2006 documentary film about the Hurricane Katrina disaster, "Katrina and the 3 Million Dollar Tiger" by New York filmmakers Gustavo Villanueva and Alessandra Zeka.

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I've been nominated by the Washington Blues Society as one of the Best Acoustic Blues Guitarists in 2006 and as one of the Best Solo Blues Artists in 2009.

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My recently released song, "Wall Street Bail Out Blues", received worldwide attention via an article written by Robert Tomsho that made the cover of The Wall Street Journal on February 6th 2009, "No Dough In The Do-Re-Mi". A soon to be released major multimedia project will garner even more worldwide attention toward my musical endeavors. I'll be sharing more about this as the release date nears within the next couple of months.