BLUES
Eric Gales is back, sounding better than ever. So join Ronan McCullagh as he shares the old and new sides of this veritable force of nature.
Ronan McCullagh looks into the playing of a man that came back from the brink. It’s great to have him back, the wonderful Walter Trout.
Born on October 29, 1974, in Memphis Tennessee to a family with a strong musical history, Eric Gales was hailed a child prodigy. Picking up the guitar at just four years old Gales was heavily mentored by his older siblings, Eugene and Manuel. His mother, a woman of the church, forbade ‘worldly’ music to be played in the house but when she was gone Eric and his brothers would break out the blues and rock. This exposure to Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, BB King, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robin Trower and Frank Marino among others, became the foundations of Gales’s style. However, Eric is no copycat and has made his own powerful and unique language from these influences.
Currently having 18 records to his name Gales refers to each of these as a glimpse into his life at the time. And it’s a life that’s had its ups and downs, including drug addiction and a spell in jail. All that behind him Eric is back out on the road and in the studio, his playing having undergone an explosion of style and technique. And speaking of which...
Gales has a very interesting approach. He is right-handed but plays left-handed with the strings still strung like that of a right-handed guitar. With the heavier strings at the bottom the weighting of a down strum or hybrid technique is reversed, with the lower strings often getting accented more. Eric also likes to fill the space between lead lines with chords, which he says is the influence of church keyboard players. To emulate his strong use of downstrokes you will need to lean heavily on upstrokes and strums.
Gales has picked up and dropped certain vocab through the years, so at times you can hear exotic flavours such as Harmonic Minor mixed with chromaticism and Eric Johnsonlike arpeggios. However, his lines remain essentially bluesy and Pentatonic based, with lots of sequenced ascents and descents.
Stylistically you wil notice rock, hard rock, blues, jazz, country, funk, soul and gospel influences - a really mixed bag. However, throughout all of this you will hear string bending that will remind you of Jimi, Stevie and BB King, but before or after these bends you will most likely hear a lighting speed Pentatonic run which Gales manages so effortlessly. Chord voicing-wise you can once again hear that Hendrix influence again, or indeed Eric Johnson-style open harmony voicings, reflecting the way Johnson often likes to break the chord apart.
ANYONE WHO’S SEEN ME PLAY KNOWS I CAN’T CONTAIN MYSELF. I’LL HAVE SPORADIC SCREAMS COMIN’ OUT… IT’S INTENSE, AMAZING! ERIC GALES
NEXT MONTH Ronan unravels the speedy and fiery soloing of the wonderful Walter Trout