Why I Suck.. Series 4, Episode 6: SRV Pt. 4 - Finishing Up "Couldn't Stand The Weather"!

And we are back with a long standing blog favourite, the mighty Texan Tornado himself, Stevie Ray Vaughan! Over the last few posts we've covered his electrifying first album, “Texas Flood”, grabbed the odd track here and there from the back catalogue before last year making a concerted effort to tackle the second album “Couldn't Stand The Weather”, and... running out of time half way through! So this time around I resolved to pick up where I left off and get this done, seeing what I could learn along the way.

Did I succeed? Well, yes... sort of! As it turns out there have been a variety of different issues of “Couldn't...”, beginning with the initial 1984 release:

Scuttle Buttin'

Couldn't Stand The Weather
Things I Used To Do

Voodoo Child
Cold Shot
Tin Pan Alley
Honey Bee
Stang's Swang

And then the 1999 re-release added:

SRV Speaks (not really applicable here!)
Hideaway
Look At Little Sister
Give Me Back My Wig
Come On Pt III

And then in 2010... the Legacy 2 CD issue adding another 19 tracks! So I contented myself with getting all the original and '99 tracks...

By this time, SRV was firmly established as a modern blues icon with the Double Trouble line up of Tommy Shannon on bass and Chris Layton on drums, although sax player Sam Harrison was brought in to guest on the jazz track “Stang's Swang” and at this point the stresses of touring had not yet led to the subsance abuse issues that would ultimately cause the band so many problems, so this album sees the band and SRV himself having establshed their sound and style on “Texas Flood” and starting to branch out past the 12 bar format on tracks like “Stang's Swang” and “Couldn't Stand The Weather” - although tracks like “Tin Pan Alley” are absolutely soaked in minor blues feel, so they are still very much in touch with their roots at this point. The next album, “Soul To Soul” - which we'll be tackling next year at some point, Putin/plague/random asteroids allowing – would see literal mounds of cocaine being snorted off the hammond organ during recording sessions, which rarely works out as a sustainable strategy...

Anyway, time for some licks! The first example is taken from “Tin Pan Alley”, a slow blues in C minor using the C blues scale, and this lick is dripping with signature SRV techniques – notice the use of slides in unusual places to connect up positions 2 and 1 of the blues scale, as well as the use of repetitive phrasing – almost as if SRV is “making his point” using a variety of musical devices (semitone slides, whole tone slides) to do so before resolving to the root note C on the 10^th fret D string, and then tailing off descending the scale down to the low E.

The second example is taken from “Look At Little Sister” in the key of E, using E minor pentatonic and focused around our “3 magic notes” - 14^th fret G, 12^th & 15^th fret B, and featuring the 12^th fret high E, pounding out high tempo triplets and using the double stop effect on the 12th fret B & E to keep the sound full and dynamic despite the fact there's no rhythm guitar filling out the sound – this is a really useful trick if you're playing in a trio and want to avoid the “drop” when you switch to a solo!

Double stops were always a big part of SRV's style, right back to "Texas Flood", and in this example from “Honey Bee” (again in E) we see him switched into high gear, again using triplets and doublestop 3rds to keep the dynamics up and intense – starts with E & G – root and minor 3^rd of the I chord, moving to A & C, the same root and 3^rd of the IV , then B & D (you guessed it, root & minor 3^rd of the V) and then E & G an octave higher than the start position.

Finally, we'll take a look at the “pedal tone” idea from “Come On Pt. III” here, SRV is once again in E, using E minor pentatonic, but here he's creating a visceral dynamic effect kicking in the wah pedal and pulling off to the open high E string from the 15^th fret and using a three against 4 “hemiola” effect – a three note melodic passage forced into a four note rhythmic grouping meaning that the accent note falls in a different place in the beat each repetition – this passage is all about momentum and dynamics, far more so than melodic effects. He then develops this idea, bringing in the 15^th fret and open B strings before resolving down a more conventional E minor pentatonic idea.

So that wraps another look at the gift that keeps on giving in the form of one of the greatest blues guitarists ever to have lived – next up, one of his heroes, as we're back to Jimi and this time I'll be attempting to transcribe the whole of “Axis: Bold As Love”... let's see how this goes!

Keep an eye on the YouTube channel @jmguitartuitionuk for the demo video – past 300 subscribers at the time of writing, welcome one and all! Always room for more though, so drop me a line for things that you would like to see covered, and see you next month!