How to go
Who: Blues guitarist Ernie Hawkins
When: A guitar workshop at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 20, with a performance that day at 8 p.m. (both events are held rain or shine)
Where: Veterans Park, 250 Cliff Park Road, as part of the Summer Arts Festival
Cost: Free
SPRINGFIELD — It used to be so much easier to learn how to play blues guitar.
All you needed to do was sign your soul over to the devil. No lessons needed.
Go on back home, enjoy life, play some mean-as-hell licks — and simply pay later.
When Ernie Hawkins got to the crossroads, he took a different path.
He sought out a Baptist preacher for guitar lessons.
“Had I known how hard it was,” Hawkins confessed, “I don’t know if I’d do it over.”
That was 45 years ago.
Hawkins, 62, admits he’s only now beginning to come closer to matching the finger-picking genius of his teacher, the Rev. Gary Davis.
“I can do some of it. Part of it,” he said. “There are still things that are baffling to me.”
Even still, Hawkins is considered one of the best acoustic pickers around, and he’ll return to the Summer Arts Festival on Sunday, June 20, to show off what he’s learned. Earlier that day, Hawkins will lead a free guitar workshop on the Veterans Park stage.
We’ve come a long way since 1965, when Hawkins moved to New York City to seek out Davis for lessons, but if you really want to play the blues, you’ve got to first respect the tradition.
Davis might not be the household name that Robert Johnson is, but the blind reverend from South Carolina influenced a generation of musicians before his death in 1972.
The classic Bob Dylan song “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” isn’t actually a Dylan song — it’s a Gary Davis song.
Same for “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” and “Samson and Delilah,” which often were covered by the Grateful Dead.
The thing is, Davis played like so few others. Technically, he played Piedmont blues, a style steeped in ragtime and named for the Appalachian region.
Not surprisingly, Davis had been “unbelievably poor,” Hawkins remembered.
“A blind sanctified singer has got a hard road,” he said.
But Hawkins is part of a family tree that also includes fellow Davis students Taj Mahal, the Dead’s Bob Weir, the Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen and slide guitarist Ry Cooder.
Here’s your chance to become another branch on that tree.
“It’s important to keep it alive,” Hawkins said.
“It’s a beautiful style of playing."
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