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JOURNEY OF THE GUITAR ALCHEMYST
"With incense burning between strings, wearing bells on both ankles, the passionate ritual begins. The stage echoes, rolling like thunder under his bare feet, pounding a mesmerizing heartbeat. Dancing in a circle, shaking his dolphin guitar like a shaman shaking his magic medicine rattle, he lifts the guitar to his lips and howls the ancient cries from the deepest seas, leading us on a mesmerizing journey."
Scott Huckabay is a brilliant guitarist whose groundbreaking style incorporates elements of Rock, Blues, Jazz and Fusion. To watch Huckabay play the guitar today, you are struck by his overall mastery of the fretboard and the way in which his fingers fly up and down the neck of his acoustic guitar. Including using a meteorite for a guitar pick, Scott utilizes every known guitar trick and then adds a few of his own just for fun. Behind the explosive dynamics and pulsating rhythm of Scott Huckabay's alchemical guitar work lies an inspiring story of healing and recovery that is perhaps, more powerful than the music itself.
In August, 1987, Scott was involved in a near-fatal motorcycle accident in Arizona. Doctors told him that he would never walk or use his right hand again. He turned to the acoustic guitar for therapy and a new music began to well up from deep within his soul.
Scott attributes his healing not only to his new music, but also to the year he spent recuperating on a Hawaiian beach, swimming and being inspired by dolphins and whales. He has accepted this entire experience as a gift. Scott believes his mission in life is to share this gift with the world and to help others find healing, joy, and peace through music.
Inspired by the genius of Jimi Hendrix, as much as by dolphins, Scott's performances are powerfully electrifying. Using violin bow, E-bow, percussion stylings and other effects, he creates mystical landscapes that are vast and breathtaking. Scott's original style of making music with the guitar has led him to many awards, such as BAM Magazine's Guitarist of the Year Award and his release of Alchemy that won the Independent Music Award album of the year in 2000.
Scott has performed with such adverse artists as Chicago, Steve Morse, Joe Satriani, Crosby, Still & Nash, Bonnie Raitt, Albert Lee, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Shadowfax, Jackson Browne, John Trudell, Toni Childs, Sarah McLachlan, Pierre Bensusan, Ram Das, Hapa, Bob Weir, and Randy Hanson. Scott has performed at various festivals, theatres, stadiums, and coffeehouses across the United States & all over the world including the recent performance for the World Peace Concert in Cairo, Egypt which was televised live on National Cairo Television.
Scott plays with an endless supply of energy, which he gives to his audience freely and generously. At the end of each performance, his audience is physically and emotionally renewed. Scott's music encompasses a joy of being, a passion for life, and a love for all of Earth's creatures.
.A RAPTUROUS CELEBRATION
"At times, Scott's music is like an ancient dream, long forgotten, that transports us to the cool and misty heavens where we can find that which has been lost to us. At others, it is a passionate and rapturous
celebration of life, and of the divine energy of Love that binds all living creatures and is the nature of the Universe itself. When Scott plays his music, he has a profound connection to this Divine Light that
so many of us seek and yet find so elusive, and while he is playing we are able to experience that connection ourselves through his music." From an inspired fan
MUSIC FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Scott Huckabay's self-description as a "sonic alchemyst" may seem like a stroke of promotional embellishment, yet the tag genuinely captures his inventive approach to crafting acoustic-trance soundscapes. Musically, Huckabay lives and breathes as a one-man-band on stage, where he communes with his lovingly battered Taylor guitar, looping and layering acoustic rhythms and percussive textures into a rich, holistic union.
Huckabay dabs from an extensive sonic palette, incorporating lush modal voicings, two-hand tapping, harmonics, helixing rhythms, percussive pounding, ankle-bell foot percussion, E-bow, and gobs of other effects-soaked string ambience. Picture a blend of Jimi Hendrix, fingerstylist Michael Hedges, Jimmy Page, The Edge, and David Gilmour, with a splash of Robert Fripp. Huckabay's passionate performance rituals emit a shamanistic spiritual vibe as well, often culminating with his spinning like a cosmic dervish, his hands a fleshy blur around his guitar.
Considering Huckabay's "live" multi-tasking approach, the notion of hatching an album in the hermetic environs of a recording studio runs the risk of masking Huckabay's unique strengths. Fortunately, he enlisted ace producer/engineers Sylvia Massy Shivy and Rich Veltrop (Tool, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down), who understood how to harness Huckabay's creative spirit. Recorded at Massy Shivy's RadioStar Studios near Mt. Shasta, California, the crew set up as if it were a live performance and recorded the album over three days, in single takes with no overdubs. It's an impressive feat, given the amount of auto interplay involved in each song.
Huckabay's tricked-out acoustics manage to sound both organic and other-worldly. One can imagine a rapturous crowd at Burning Man gyrating to the trancelike title track, as a supple lead line snakes through a hypnotic Middle Eastern dance groove.
Angular harmonics and fluid tapping add color to the melodic contours of "Spirit Wind", while the fast-churning "Solar Flare" blends aggressive tapping and percussive turbo-strumming. From the trippy atmospherics of "Sweet Intuition" to the exotic, dreamy headspace of "Spiral Eclipse", Huckabay's latticework strikes a dynamic balance between reflective and energetic moods, in a way that's neither sleepy nor gratuitously self-indulgent.
Ultimately, looping tools in the hands (and feet) of an innovative sonic craftsman like Huckabay afford him incredible expressiveness as a solo artist. The deeply felt, uplifting songs on Secret Portal dramatically showcase the expanded possibilities of solo performance, and guide the listener on a musical journey that reveals Huckabay to be an inspired mystical pilot.
heart-breaking Dolphin massacre in Japan
Please find out how you can help raise awareness about this senseless inhumane slaughtering for thousands of dolphins every year: http://www.savejapandolphins.org
