Notice how, in the video below, Steven Tyler makes harmonica look easy. Maybe that’s because it actually is easy. Steven is rocking the house with some fairly simple second position harmonica playing. He’s no Howard Levy (and neither am I for that matter). Don’t get me wrong, I really love Steven Tyler… always have… I’m just wanting you to know that it may not be as far a stretch as you think for you to kick butt at Steven’s level.While I had been aware of Brandon O. Bailey before I actually met him it was not until Memphis while I was walking through a breeze-way at my hotel that the familiar riffs of Jason Ricci’s “Snowflakes and Horses” caught my attention. In a park across from the hotel a young man sat playing a most compelling harmonica solo. Nothing doing but I had to check this out more closely. Before crossing the street to the park the familiar J. Geils “Whammer Jammer”, began followed by the Sonny Boy Williamson/Willie Dixon tune “Bye Bye Bird”. I was totally captivated as this tall, angular, handsome teenager as he shifted his effects and swung into “Billie Jean”, a Michael Jackson classic. Needless to say, that I hung around for the total performance so that I could learn more. The following explains why Brandon has caught the attention of master harmonica players. In 2008 he rose through the ranks of several hundred contestants to make the finals of the Orpheum Star Search competition in Memphis winning it handily. The Blues Foundation has awarded scholarships to Brandon two summers in a row to assist in his further advancement and studies of the harmonica. Brandon adapted the post-modern harp-boxing style made famous by Son of Dave: blues riffs intertwined with beat-box rhythms. This brings the art form to a new level of awareness for a much younger generation of music fans. Although still in his teens, he’s already played with some of the best harmonica players and bands in the country including Adam Gussow of Satan and Adam, Jason Ricci and New Blood, Billy Gibson, Charlie Wood, and Blind Mississippi Morris. Kings Blues Club in Memphis, The Rum Boogie Cafe, The Orpheum Theater in Memphis, TN the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival in Helena, The Mid South Fair, and the Jefferson Awards in Washington D.C. How did you choose the harmonica, or did it choose you? I began playing the harmonica after my grandmother told me that my great grandfather (her father) used to play harmonica train songs around the house to entertain the family. What prompted you to learn the looping technique? When did you first find out about that? This prompted me to ask my mom to purchase a harmonica, and I started from there. I was searching through some music videos on YouTube one day around two years ago, and somehow stumbled upon the work of a former member of “the crash test dummies” named Benjamin Darvill who now goes by the stage name Son of Dave. He was using a looping pedal to layer beat boxed grooves and bass hummed harmonies, and was playing harmonica and singing over the top.
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