A Saturday of Strawberries and Searing Stratocaster
When I headed out to the Strawberry Festival yesterday, I thought I might possibly hear some good music, but I was primarily interested in just getting outside, enjoying some BBQ and getting as far away from stress as humanly possible. Plus, sadly, even though I'm a musician, these days it seems to take a lot to make me stop and listen. “Oh, wow, another band.” (yawn) “So where’s that stand that serves hamburgers on the Krispy Kreme doughnuts?”
But occasionally you happen across a musician who shakes you out of your slumber and makes you sit up and take notice. That’s what happened yesterday as my friend and I wandered into the Cool Whip Entertainment Tent at this year’s Strawberry Festival to check out the Jason Young band. I had just been treated to an amazing BBQ chicken meal, but I didn’t realize I’d be served a heaping helping of amazing guitar riffs for dessert.
The first thing that caught my ear about the band was actually the drummer. It was immediately evident from his crisp, precise attack, quick kick fills and occasional flourishes on the kit that he wasn’t your average bar band smasher. Plus, I noticed he was wearing socks, no shoes. This guy was obviously very into what he was doing.
So that drew us out front to grab a seat. And I'm sure glad I did, because my attention immediately honed in on the guitar player - this guy was absolutely smoking! He was laying down these fluid, extremely musical fills overtop of these fairly straightforward (but heartfelt) tunes. He had the fluidity of Eric Johnson mixed with the occasional Stevie Ray moment of stinging blues... And he was adeptly adding all this guitar-driven excitement without stepping all over the vocalist. Nice...
He was playing a sunburst strat through a Mesa combo - his tone was beautiful - clean, singing sustain that fit right into the mix. And he was occasionally making it even more subtle by using his right-hand thumb to pluck the strings instead of using his pick. And he was getting a lot of mileage out of the neck pickup to make it even smoother.
Afterwards I went up and shook his hand and let him know that what he was doing hadn’t been lost on this guitar player. His name was Adam. Adam Klingman. Here's a picture from his MySpace page:
 Adam Klingman of the Jason Young band
I just wish that I had brought my trusty Flip video camera with me! I hoped there would be plenty of footage on YouTube to send to a few other guitar player friends. Unfortunately, while there are a few video clips on his band’s MySpace page, and an acoustic number on his own MySpace page, I couldn’t find anything that really showcases this guy’s command of the instrument.
So I guess you’ll just have to check these guys out at one of their many Tampa-area appearances to see for yourself. It’s definitely worth it to track these guys down!
Rock on,
Bill Cote
The Reverse Engineers
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