PREMIER CLINIC
COUNTRY
Ladd Smith’s ModernNashvilleGuitar
Another Outlaw
The Drop-D tuning is a very popular thing
to use on Outlaw Music. This goes back to
it really being about those low frequencies.
Another thing to take note of historically
is that this whole thing came out of Texas,
some out of Tulsa also, but mostly Lubbock
and Austin. A lot of guitarists you might not
associate with Waylon and Willie– people
like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Billy Gibbons–
played a lot of the same clubs, festivals and
package shows with them, and were actually
close friends and advocates of the “Outlaw
Movement.” Outlaw Music seemed to cross
all genres at the time. What really amazed
Willie Nelson about the whole thing was
that for the first time in history, there was a
cross-pollinated audience of hippies, bikers,
cowboys and rednecks. It’s also a music that
broke down barriers of social class, race and
age. Notice, that there’s a lot of strumming
going on here, with articulation on certain
strings. This can take some practice to get
in—and stay in—the pocket with. A lot of
what happens with this style of guitar playing is behind the third and fourth frets—a lot
of open string pull-offs and hammer-ons.
