Welcome to "That Can Be Arranged," my first installment of a series on arranging for solo guitar. In this series we will learn by playing full arrangements and by looking at the harmony and arranging techniques used within each piece. In this first installment we’re going to take a look at the life of W.C. Handy and his most famous composition, “Saint Louis Blues.”
William Christopher Handy was born in 1873 in Florence, AL, and died of pneumonia in 1958 in Harlem, NY. Over twenty-five thousand people attended his funeral and over one hundred and fifty thousand filled the New York streets to pay their respects. W.C. Handy was a superstar of his time and one of the most beloved musicians and composers of his day.
His most famous composition, “Saint Louis Blues” was written in 1914. Bessie Smith’s 1925 Columbia version with Louis Armstrong is considered to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920s. The movie Saint Louis Blues, based on Handy's life, was made in 1958, the year he died. It starred Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, and Eartha Kitt. I highly recommend seeing it; the musical performances gave me goose bumps!
Thoughts on Arranging
While it is important to study harmony and have a command of the fingerboard, nothing can replace imagination. It is my belief that imagination is often crushed by stuffy teachers who wouldn’t know a creative thought if it slapped them. Regardless of your level of skill or harmonic knowledge, I encourage all of you to experiment, to be playful and to imagine. You do not need anyone's permission or approval—just do it! We teach harmony because it can be taught. We can not teach imagination. As I read more on Handy’s life, I was inspired to take a second look at an earlier arrangement, and feeling more of a connection to his music, I threw it out and started over. The result is something more connected to the flesh and bone of the man. It is a reminder that music is more than a lead sheet.
A Topographical Map of Saint Louis... Blues
“Saint Louis Blues” is a classic example of a twelve bar blues. In its simplest form a twelve bar blues is based on three chords: E7, A7 and B7, or the familiar 1-4-5 family (thinking in numbers is a great help, especially when playing in new key centers):
E7 (1) / / / A7 (4) / / / E7 / / / E7 / / / A7 / / / A7 / / / E7 / / / E7 / / / B7 (5) / / / A7 / / / E7 / / / E7 / B7 /
You can play the song in its simple form, or you can spice it up by adding new changes to the twelve bar structure. These new chord changes often do not totally replace the original chord but are added in what is called a split bar. This is nothing more than playing two chords for two beats each, in place of the original chord for four beats. I’ve put the split bars into brackets: E7- [ A7-A#dim] [E7- F7] E7- A7- [A7-A#dim] [E7-D7] C#7- F#7- B7- [E7-C#7] [F#7-B7]. You still end up with twelve bars, but with more harmonic interest.
You often hear jazz and blues musicians approach the target chord from a half step below or above. This half step approach can be a full two beats or played only on beat four. An example from a half step above would be [E7 - B%7] A7. Play the B%7 on beat four passing into the A7. An example of approaching from a half step below would be [E7- A%7] A7. Approaching the target chords from a half step below or above opens many harmonic doors for comping.
Harmonic rhythm is the pulse at which the harmony changes. It does not take a Mozart to understand that eight beats of any one chord can grow old. Likewise, I’ve heard some jazz guitarists put a new chord on every quarter note; and that also grows old and sounds like an intellectual exercise.
The Arrangement
For this article we will take a look at some of the overall elements that went into the A section of “Saint Louis Blues.” Chord symbols have been added to the music for harmonic reference and do not reflect fingerings. If the chord has an alternate bass, you will see what is called a slash chord. The symbol looks something like this: E7/G# or C7/E. The second half of the symbol indicates the bass note.
When playing the blues, you want to play the “blue note.” You’ll see this in the very first chord of the intro. The “blue note” is the #9 played against a dominant 7 chord. Some think of this note as a minor third. It is more accurate to call it #9 since the chord has a major third in it. This note comes from the blues scale.
Some bullet points you see in the arrangement are: grace notes, triplets, anticipations of the beat, contrary motion, filler licks, half step approach, and tritone 7 chords. I will point out a few measures where these devices happen.
Grace notes: These are quick notes added for color and have no rhythmic value of their own. They are usually played as slurs. You’ll see these in measures 6, 10, 11, 14, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26 and 27.
Triplets: I just cannot play the blues without triplets! It’s a very piano-like device. Tripletsare a group of three notes played in the time of two. You’ll see these in measures 4, 8, 11, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27 and 28.
Anticipations: These are sometimes referred to as a “push,” which is a description of what is happening. Most often, the anticipations are played on the upbeat and tied to the following downbeat. Sometimes, such as in measure 26, the chord is not tied and a rest is in place of the downbeat. Anticipations can be single notes, chords or bass notes. You’ll see many in this arrangement. Contrary Motion: An example of contrary motion is found in measure 16. Contrary motion is two or more musical lines moving in opposite directions.
Filler Licks: One of the first signs of a boring arrangement is dead air! Learn to play little melodic fragments that fill the dead space between the melodic activity. This dead space can also be filled with bass lines and or chords. See measures 8, 9, 16, 21, 28 and 29.
Half Steps: One of the more colorful half step connections in this arrangement happens on beat four in measure 21. You’ll see A%7 leading into A7 in measure 22. Melodic and chordal half steps happen frequently in this arrangement.
Tritone 7ths: Pianists have used this device for decades. In the guitar world, Lenny Breau was one of the first to use this sound. The name tritone comes from the interval distances of a raised 4th. They are dominant 7 chords that only use the 3rd and b7 intervals (no root). This interval can also be inverted to b7 and 3rd.
If you have an interest in arranging, go for it! I promise you will get better with each attempt. Trust your ear—if it sounds good it is good.
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For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).
Goldsmith’s lyrics spoke to me the loudest, with lines like “Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks / Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back” (a casual Nietzsche paraphrase); and “Oh, the snowfall this time of year / It’s not what Birmingham is used to / I get the feeling that I brought it here / And now I’m taking it away.” The way his words painted a portrait of the sincere, sentimental man behind them, along with his cozy, unassuming guitar work and the band’s four-part harmonies, had me hooked.
Nothing Is Wrong and Stories Don’t End came next, and I happily gobbled up more folksy fodder in tracks like “If I Wanted,” “Most People,” and “From a Window Seat.” But 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Folk Albumschart, didn’t land with me, and by the time 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die was released, it was clear that Goldsmith had shifted thematically in his writing. A friend drew a thoughtful Warren Zevon comparison to the single, “When the Tequila Runs Out”—a commentary on vapid, conceited, American-socialite party culture—but it still didn’t really do it for me. I fell off the Dawes train a bit, and became somewhat oblivious to their three full-lengths that followed.
Oh Brotheris Goldsmith’s latest addition to the Dawes songbook, and I’m grateful to say that it’s brought me back. After having done some catching up, I’d posit that it’s the second work in the third act, or fall season, of his songwriting—where 2022’s Misadventures of Doomscrollercracked open the door, Oh Brother swings it wide. And it doesn’t have much more than Dawes’ meat and potatoes, per se, in common with acts one or two. Some moodiness has stayed—as well as societal disgruntlement and the arrangement elements that first had me intoxicated. But then there’s the 7/4 section in the middle of “Front Row Seat”; the gently unwinding, quiet, intimate jazz-club feel of “Surprise!”; the experimentally percussive, soft-spoken “Enough Already”; and the unexpected, dare I say, Danny Elfman-esque harmonic twists and turns in the closing track, “Hilarity Ensues.”
The main engine behind Dawes, the Goldsmith brothers are both native “Angelinos,” having been born and raised in the L.A. area. Taylor is still proud to call the city his home.
Photo by Jon Chu
“I have this working hypothesis that who you are as a songwriter through the years is pretty close to who you are in a dinner conversation,” Goldsmith tells me in an interview, as I ask him about that thematic shift. “When I was 23, if I was invited to dinner with grownups [laughs], or just friends or whatever, and they say, ‘How you doin’, Taylor?’ I probably wouldn’t think twice to be like, ‘I’m not that good. There’s this girl, and … I don’t know where things are at—can I share this with you? Is that okay?’ I would just go in in a way that’s fairly indiscreet! And I’m grateful to that version of me, especially as a writer, because that’s what I wanted to hear, so that’s what I was making at the time.
“But then as I got older, it became, ‘Oh, maybe that’s not an appropriate way to answer the question of how I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’ve spent enough years thinking about me! What does it feel like to turn the lens around?’” he continues, naming Elvis Costello and Paul Simon as inspirations along the way through that self-evolution. “Also, trying to be mindful of—I had strengths then that I don’t have now, but I have strengths now that I didn’t have then. And now it’s time to celebrate those. Even in just a physical way, like hearing Frank Zappa talking about how his agility as a guitar player was waning as he got older. It’s like, that just means that you showcase different aspects of your skills.
“I am a changing person. It would be weird if I was still writing the same way I was when I was 23. There would probably be some weird implications there as to who I’d be becoming as a human [laughs].”
Taylor Goldsmith considers Oh Brother, the ninth full-length in Dawes’ catalog, to be the beginning of a new phase of Dawes, containing some of his most unfiltered, unedited songwriting.
Since its inception, the engine behind Dawes has been the brothers Goldsmith, with Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums and sometimes vocal harmonies. But they’ve always had consistent backup. For the first several years, that was Wylie Gelber on bass and Tay Strathairn on keyboards. On We’re All Gonna Die, Lee Pardini replaced Strathairn and has been with the band since. Oh Brother, however, marks the departure of Gelber and Pardini.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is an intense time; this is a vulnerable time,’” remarks Goldsmith, who says that their parting was supportive and loving, but still rocked him and Griffin. “You get a glimpse of your vulnerability in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time when things are just up and running. For a second there, we’re like, ‘We’re getting a little rattled—how do we survive this?’”
They decided to pair up with producer Mike Viola, a close family friend, who has also worked with Mandy Moore—Taylor’s spouse—along with Panic! At the Disco, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis. “[We knew that] he understands all of the parameters of that raw state. And, you know, I always show Mike my songs, so he was aware of what we had cookin’,” says Goldsmith.
Griffin stayed behind the kit, but Taylor took over on bass and keys, the latter of which he has more experience with than he’s displayed on past releases. “We’ve made records where it’s very tempting to appeal to your strengths, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this, I’m just gonna nail it,’” he says. “Then there’s records that we make where we really push ourselves into territories where we aren’t comfortable. That contributed to [Misadventures of Doomscroller] feeling like a living, breathing thing—very reactive, very urgent, very aware. We were paying very close attention. And I would say the same goes for this.”
That new terrain, says Goldsmith, “forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do. I’m really excited in that sense, because it’s like this is the first album of a new phase.”
“That forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do.”
In proper folk (or even folk-rock) tradition, the music of Dawes isn’t exactly riddled with guitar solos, but that’s not to say that Goldsmith doesn’t show off his chops when the timing is right. Just listen to the languid, fluent lick on “Surprise!”, the shamelessly prog-inspired riff in the bridge of “Front Row Seat,” and the tactful, articulate line that threads through “Enough Already.” Goldsmith has a strong, individual sense of phrasing, where his improvised melodies can be just as biting as his catalog’s occasional lyrical jabs at presumably toxic ex-girlfriends, and just as melancholy as his self-reflective metaphors, all the while without drawing too much attention to himself over the song.
Of course, most of our conversation revolves around songwriting, as that’s the craft that’s the truest and closest to his identity. “There’s an openness, a goofiness—I even struggle to say it now, but—an earnestness that goes along with who I am, not only as a writer but as a person,” Goldsmith elaborates. “And I think it’s important that those two things reflect one another. ’Cause when you meet someone and they don’t, I get a little bit weirded out, like, ‘What have I been listening to? Are you lying to me?’” he says with a smile.
Taylor Goldsmith's Gear
Pictured here performing live in 2014, Taylor Goldsmith has been the primary songwriter for all of Dawes' records, beginning with 2009’s North Hills.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Fender Telecaster
- Gibson ES-345
- Radocaster (made by Wylie Gelber)
Amps
- ’64 Fender Deluxe
- Matchless Laurel Canyon
Effects
- 29 Pedals EUNA
- Jackson Audio Bloom
- Ibanez Tube Screamer with Keeley mod
- Vintage Boss Chorus
- Vintage Boss VB-2 Vibrato
- Strymon Flint
- Strymon El Capistan
Strings
- Ernie Ball .010s
In Goldsmith’s songwriting process, he explains that he’s learned to lean away from the inclination towards perfectionism. Paraphrasing something he heard Father John Misty share about Leonard Cohen, he says, “People think you’re cultivating these songs, or, ‘I wouldn’t deign to write something that’s beneath me,’ but the reality is, ‘I’m a rat, and I’ll take whatever I can possibly get, and then I’ll just try to get the best of it.’
“Ever since Misadventures of Doomscroller,” he adds, “I’ve enjoyed this quality of, rather than try to be a minimalist, I want to be a maximalist. I want to see how much a song can handle.” For the songs on Oh Brother, that meant that he decided to continue adding “more observations within the universe” of “Surprise!”, ultimately writing six verses. A similar approach to “King of the Never-Wills,” a ballad about a character suffering from alcoholism, resulted in four verses.
“The economy of songwriting that we’re all taught would buck that,” says Goldsmith. “It would insist that I only keep the very best and shed something that isn’t as good. But I’m not going to think economically. I’m not going to think, ‘Is this self-indulgent?’
Goldsmith’s songwriting has shifted thematically over the years, from more personal, introspective expression to more social commentary and, at times, even satire, in songs like We’re All Gonna Die’s “When the Tequila Runs Out.”
Photo by Mike White
“I don’t abide that term being applied to music. Because if there’s a concern about self-indulgence, then you’d have to dismiss all of jazz. All of it. You’d have to dismiss so many of my most favorite songs. Because in a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.” (He elaborates that, if Bob Dylan had trimmed back any of the verses on “Desolation Row,” it would have deprived him of the unique experience it creates for him when he listens to it.)
One of the joys of speaking with Goldsmith is just listening to his thought processes. When I ask him a question, he seems compelled to share every backstory to every detail that’s going through his head, in an effort to both do his insights justice and to generously provide me with the most complete answer. That makes him a bit verbose, but not in a bad way, because he never rambles. There is an endpoint to his thoughts. When he’s done, however, it takes me a second to realize that it’s then my turn to speak.
To his point on artistic self-indulgence, I offer that there’s no need for artists to feel “icky” about self-promotion—that to promote your art is to celebrate it, and to create a shared experience with your audience.
“I hear what you’re saying loud and clear; I couldn’t agree more,” Goldsmith replies. “But I also try to be mindful of this when I’m writing, like if I’m going to drag you through the mud of, ‘She left today, she’s not coming back, I’m a piece of shit, what’s wrong with me, the end’.... That might be relatable, that might evoke a response, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily helpful … other than dragging someone else through the shit with me.
“In a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.”
“So, if I’m going to share, I want there to be something to offer, something that feels like: ‘Here’s a path that’s helped me through this, or here’s an observation that has changed how I see this particular experience.’ It’s so hard to delineate between the two, but I feel like there is a difference.”
Naming the opening track “Mister Los Angeles,” “King of the Never-Wills,” and even the title track to his 2015 chart-topper, “All Your Favorite Bands,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t call these songs ‘cool.’ Like, when I hear what cool music is, I wouldn’t put those songs next to them [laughs]. But maybe this record was my strongest dose of just letting me be me, and recognizing what that essence is rather than trying to force out certain aspects of who I am, and force in certain aspects of what I’m not. I think a big part of writing these songs was just self-acceptance,” he concludes, laughing, “and just a whole lot of fishing.”
YouTube It
Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.
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