Okeh, so I was off writing about Geoff Achisons' performance at the Dino BBQ (where the music is always free!) here in Rochester, and while it was a very nice overview of his show and amazing self – it somehow wasn't what I really wanted to say. So, I decided to scrap the whole thing, and put it down like this . . .   So, we have like a quadrabizillion guitarists, and maybe 1 billion of those can be lumped into the 'blues' category. I'd be hard pressed to say any of the ones I have seen in the last year suck, and that's down to the local level too. Yeh, some are faster, others more stylistic, and some go beyond the norm in their own special way. Geoff Achison is one of those guitarists. His performance (with the Northeast contingent of the Souldiggers) was NOT your typical I-IV-V, major/minor pentatonic blues.   Acho grew up in a remote part of Australia, listening to records of mostly modern day bluesmen. He did not know how to re-create the sounds he was hearing on the records (I did say REMOTE) so he invented ways that would accomplish those sounds that he was hearing.   In this day and age, with an orgy of stomp boxes available at deep discounts, it can often take away the focus of actually playing the guitar. Thursday night it was evident that Geoff knows how to play a guitar and 'he don't need no stinking pedals'. What we were privileged to take part in was a musician who bent, twisted, stroked, fondled, and just about any other verb I can come up with, his guitar. By doing so he created a landscape of music – not noise – music that propelled the blues both forward and backwards in the same night.

It was funny, the Dino was quite packed for a Wednesday night and he hit the stage at about 10:15 pm, armed with a big ol' Gibson acoustic, it took him about 1 minute to get the crowd to stop jabbering, close in about the stage and listen to what he was playing. As he ended his first number the crowd, almost in unison, sighed 'who is this guy again?'   Personable, and humble he then mentioned an Allman Brothers song that he was going to try to do, what it turned out to be was an all out attack of “Whipping Post” acoustic style – but loud, brash and covering the sound spectrum from amazingly loud to so soft that we were holding our collective breaths to listen to where he was going to take us. Stick a fork in the crowd – we were done.   Switching to electric, and bringing up 'his lads', he ventured into the works of Robert Johnson, Stevie Wonder, as well as his own works. The cover of Johnsons' “Walkin' Blues,” tho electric, pushed me into the past as I envisioned, say, Charlie Patton, playing using just his guitar to create a surreal-like aural landscape that was both revealing and mystifying in it's complexities and subtleties. I chose Charlie Patton because, while Johnson was a qualified and outstanding guitarist, it was Patton who electrified the audience with his on-stage guitar pyrotechnics.   All artists strive to create a bond with their audience; Geoff did this with his original music. Funny how while the covers were outstanding, it was his original works which let us into his world were the ones we seemed to embrace more. Songs about his working in an assembly plant (Apparatus), to the parental warning of “Don't Play the Guitar, Boy” spoke of his upbringing and trials he faced attempting to live the life he loved.   As to his 'work' on the guitar – using various methods such as palm-muting to achieve a wah-wah like effect, to various forms of raking the strings to create a layer of sounds for both solos and rhythm chords, served up with sides of de-tuning, and harmonics and 'shakes' to keep everyone well fed and hoping that he would dish out just a bit more of the good stuff for dessert. And he did, welcoming the spirit of Roy Buchannon into the room, Geoff expertly worked the volume pot rising and lowering it to suit the desired notes.   An inspiring performance, by a damn good guitarist, I can only hope you get a chance to see him so you can enjoy it as much as we all did that night.