Charlie Hunter - 2/18/07 @ World Cafe Live (upstairs) - Philly, PA
I think I first heard of Charlie Hunter from a small article in the City Paper about his upcoming residency at North Star, way back in 2003. It may have had a picture of his wicked 8-string guitar - it's probably what caught my attention. This dude built his own guitar - with 3 bass strings and 5 guitar strings - each with separate channels leading to two different amps (with two different chords coming out of the back of the guitar) - and plays them both at the SAME TIME. It's bizarrely confusing and mind-boggling to think about it. How can you keep a bass line with your thumb and a couple of your fingers, all the while ALSO playing a guitar solo with the other fingers of the same two hands? Well, Charlie Hunter does it and does it extremely well. He's lumped into Jazz but he's more groove/jam/whatever. He can rock, he can swing. I told Jim about this show the day before it happened and he was all for checking out this guitar wizard.
I didn't get my tickets super early, but it sold out by the time we got there. And since I accidentally took a very scenic route to the gig, we had no chance of getting a seat. We got decent spots in the middle of the bar and settled in. Unfortunately, I took well over twice as many pictures as you see here and these are the best. Not much to show for the effort.
Crazy white-afro drummer kid. LOVE the way the sticks blur on this shot.
That's a little better. Good view of the guitar here, with bass strings on the top and guitar on the bottom. Notice the different sized tuners on the head.
Kid was CRAZY on the drums!
Nice shot of the trio.
Keys boy was way over to the right and I usually had someone's head blocking my view.
Looks like he's in deep thought, which you'd think he would be in a lot since he has like 5 things going on at once in every song. But he hardly ever looks at his hands. Damn.
Not a good picture, but I like how the guitar looks.
Close up of the crazy bent frets. It befuddles me. Do you understand? He's the bass player AND the guitar player. In every song!
