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Rob Ickes at
Monkey Finger Studio
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Again, this was Tim's suggestion. He and Rob Ickes had been fooling around with this classic Woody Guthrie song far a while with an eye towards doing it with Blue Highway. The idea never took hold in the band so we got it for this album. My personal opinion is that Tim is an especially expressive and compelling singer and that he should sing more often. "Pretty Boy Floyd" suits his voice perfectly and he and Rob simply nailed it. Great cut!
Rob used a converted steel string guitar on this tune which had belonged to his grandfather. I'm not sure if it was made for slide work but it did have a thick, triangular neck and Hawaiian motif, so who knows? With no resonator it has a warm, woody sound that complements Tim's sparse guitar accompaniment quite well.
"Although not a truthful account of the life of Charles Arthur Floyd by any stretch, Woody Guthrie's song does pay homage to one of the most notorious 'hero outlaws' of the 1930s. I first heard this song sung in 1974 by the late Wiley Cox, a wonderful singer and mentor from Bristol, TN, while he was performing with the group Country Comfort."
"Pretty Boy Floyd is a song I really like and I thought my Grandpa's guitar would sound good on it. He bought it new in the 1920's from a Montgomery Ward catalog. I took it to Gruhn's last year to see if they could tell me who made it and they told me it was made in Chicago during the 1920's on Wabash Avenue. Apparently there were several guitar companies making very similar guitars at that time - Regal, Kay, Washburn, etc. They told me it would be impossible to find out exactly which company made it, so I just call it my 'Wabash Avenue guitar'. I really like playing this guitar, it cuts a mike real well in the studio and it seems to come with a lot of soul already in it. It practically plays itself!"
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