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Winslow Yerxa joins me on episode 126.
Winslow is originally from Canada, now living in San Francisco. He started out playing blues harmonica before becoming interested in the traditional music of French Canada and British origins, among others. Winslow plays in harmonica ensembles and produces his own compositions using a wide variety of harmonicas, including the diatonic, chromatic, tremolo, the Pentaharp, XB40 and the recent Gamechanger harmonica.
Winslow created the Harmonica Information Publication (HIP) magazine in the 1990s, with much of the publishing and writing done by himself. This led on to him writing Harmonica For Dummies and Blues Harmonica For Dummies.
Winslow was also the President of SPAH from 2012 to 2015.
Links:
Winslow’s website:
https://winslowyerxa.com/
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/WinslowYerxaHarmonica/
Bandcamp:
https://winslowyerxa.bandcamp.com/
The HIP magazine:
https://winslowyerxa.com/articles/hip-the-harmonica-information-publication/
Videos:
Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@winslowyerxa8505
Tommy Reilly playing Chez Helene TV theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da6dW7aV7D0
The Rounder’s Rag:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKZmcSAanc4
Spanish Changes with Tuula Tossavainen Cotter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30BatYKOOC0
JDR Trochilus / Bushman Gamechanger harmonica:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0NM1mxtzHw
Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com
Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB
Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ
Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
--------------------------------
Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.com
Chapters
1. Winslow Yerxa interview (00:00:00)
2. Winslow is from Canada, where his family has been since 1784, with the Yerxa name descending from the Netherlands (00:01:38)
3. Now lives in San Francisco (00:02:35)
4. First heard the harmonica from the blues rock bands of the 1960s (00:02:55)
5. Went to music school and moved to San Francisco, joining the band 'Cool Breeze' which used African and Caribbean rhythms (00:03:48)
6. Heard Scottish and French Canadian music and joined the San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers club, playing harmonica with them (00:04:03)
7. This club helped developed Winslow’s playing of traditional music, how to read from notation and which harmonicas to use (00:05:29)
8. Recorded the album Harmonica: Northern Traditions Reimagined album in 2006, of traditional tunes (00:06:01)
9. Studied voice at music college (there were no options to study harmonica) (00:07:26)
10. Started out playing blues harmonica, after converting from playing an electric kazoo (00:07:42)
11. The Tony Glover Blues Harmonica book was an early source of learning about the different blues harmonica players, but that book had some inaccuracies (00:09:37)
12. Received first Marine Band as a Christmas present aged 15 (00:10:14)
13. Was always interested to learn more about harmonicas, and that has led on to gathering the knowledge that he has gone on to share widely with the harmonica community (00:10:27)
14. Picked up playing the harmonica quickly and listened to great players as part of learning, including chromatic players (00:10:55)
15. Learnt diatonic and chromatic at the same time (00:11:49)
16. Initially learnt third position blues on chromatic (00:12:01)
17. The great tonal varieties of Larry Adler (00:12:25)
18. Winslow was a child when he first heard Tommy Reilly playing, the theme on a Canadian children’s TV show called Chez Hélène (00:12:54)
19. SPAH, founded in 1963 in Detroit. The founders of SPAH were largely employees of the Ford motor company. SPAH was initially focused on the chromatic harmonica (00:14:09)
20. Different harmonica clubs still exist in the US and the chromatic versus diatonic SPAH wars (00:14:31)
21. Winslow takes part in a number of harmonica ensembles (00:16:02)
22. Sophisticated pieces for harmonica bands are available (00:16:50)
23. Usually plays chromatic in the harmonica bands, and occasionally some bass and chord (00:17:32)
24. Winslow was the President of SPAH from 2012-2015 and what that involved, including the yearly conventions and the SPAH magazine (00:17:53)
25. How Winslow became President of SPAH (00:19:05)
26. SPAH convention is still well attended despite the impact of Covid on in-person get togethers (00:20:58)
27. Winslow is still involved with SPAH, on the youth and entertainment committees (00:21:17)
28. Harmonica UK and the name change from the National Harmonica League and the UK magazine (00:22:13)
29. Winslow is the author of the books: Harmonica for Dummies and Blues Harmonica for Dummies (00:23:12)
30. The Dummies series involves very intensive writing, with involvement from the editing team in both writing and hands-on editing (00:24:26)
31. Harmonica For Dummies is written for diatonic, covering different styles (00:25:56)
32. Lots of online resources for learning now, meaning learning from books is less appealing (00:26:35)
33. Floated the idea of a Chromatic Harmonica For Dummies book but publisher didn’t think it would sell enough (00:27:20)
34. How to monetise online content, and successful examples such as Liam Ward, Tomlin Leckie, Ronnie Shellist and Jason Ricci (00:27:53)
35. Published the Harmonica Information Publication magazine from 1992-1997 (00:28:36)
36. Winslow does have a good YouTube channel of harmonica content (00:28:37)
37. The initial idea for the magazine came from transcriptions Winslow had made of Toots Thielemans solos, and was in discussion with Toots about creating an instructional book with Toots (00:29:19)
38. Put the out HIP magazine by himself at first in an attempt to keep harmonica pedagogy from being part of an existing echo chamber that kept repeating the same articles by the same few writers (00:30:17)
39. The HIP magazines are available to buy from Winslow’s website (00:31:07)
40. Might publish the Toots Thielemans interviews that he did (00:31:23)
41. Winslow was a strong contributor to early harmonica forums, such as the harp-l email forum (founded in 1992 by Chris Pierce at Western Kentucky University) (00:31:58)
42. Composes songs which he releases via YouTube and Bandcamp, using lots of different types of harmonica (00:33:06)
43. Creates videos, often with narration over the top (00:34:43)
44. There It Stood song is played in 6th position (00:35:35)
45. Made recordings with violinist Tuula Tossavainen Cotter that included both jazz and traditional music (00:36:03)
46. Has made a series of YouTube videos on the JDR Trochilus / Bushman Gamechanger harmonica, which comes in three different tunings (00:37:27)
47. The blue JDR Trochilus / Bushman Gamechanger tuning explained (00:37:47)
48. The yellow JDR Trochilus / Bushman Gamechanger tuning explained (00:38:32)
49. The red JDR Trochilus / Bushman Gamechanger tuning explained (00:39:09)
50. Plays lots of different types of harmonica, with the JDR Trochilus / Bushman Gamechanger adding to that list (00:41:54)
51. The XB40 and harmonica players wanting the same form factor (00:42:20)
52. The Hohner Pentaharp (00:43:25)
53. More on the XB40 (00:43:55)
54. Teaches harmonica online and in-person and also taught at the Berkeley Jazzschool in California (00:45:28)
55. Ran the Harmonica Collective camp with Jason Ricci, with the last one being run in 2018 (00:46:12)
56. Ten minute question (00:48:10)
57. Uses special tunings and is interested in the chords they can produce (00:49:47)
58. No favoured brand of harmonica, as wants to remain impartial as an online reviewer and why doesn’t endorse any brand (00:50:08)
59. Uses overblows and learnt about the in the 1970s from Will Scarlett and the arrival of Howard Levy (00:51:11)
60. Toots Thielemans recorded overblows in the 1960s (00:52:13)
61. Alternative tunings can get you the missing notes but still sometimes nice to get the sound of an overblow (00:52:35)
62. Roland van Straaten use of overblows (00:52:44)
63. Embouchre: tongue blocking and puckering and corner switching, and briefly experimented with u-blocking (00:53:34)
64. Amps: has a clean amp and a Digitech pedal (00:55:06)
65. Mics: uses a vocal mic such as the Shure SM58, and recently bought a Blowsmeaway Ultimate SM57 (00:55:47)
66. Adds effects post-production when recording (00:56:26)
67. Future plans include more YouTube videos and instructional material (00:56:48)
68. Videos of the ‘Bunch O Guys’ recordings made at SPAH in 1997 with Joe Filisko, Dennis Gruenling, Larry Eisenberg and Chris Michalek, among others (00:57:07)
137 episodes
