The Nashville singer-songwriter scene is as crowded as ever, but Bay Area transplant Logan Ledger has a few more licks up his sleeve than the typical cowboy-chord strummer. And on Golden State, his second and latest album, Ledger lets his love for bluegrass and country virtuosos Tony White, Norman Blake and Clarence White shine.
“I always loved Clarence White’s flatpicking, but I got super-fascinated by the B-Bender in my early twenties,” he says, referring to the Telecaster mod that Gene Parsons created for White circa 1968 that allows players to raise the pitch of the B string by tugging at the neck. “[In] the little footage of Clarence that exists, he’s always so relaxed with it; he’s not jerking it around. He’s almost swaying with it.”
Ledger’s own B-Bender playing on All the Wine in California, a Golden State standout, is fluid and unhurried, a gentle undulation of the notes instead of a dramatic pull. But just as strong are the acoustic guitar techniques he uses throughout the album, switching from straight strumming to a hybrid picking technique he developed in part by watching Merle Haggard.
“Merle played leads with the pick, but when he was singing he would tuck it in between his fingers and use his thumb to play rhythm, which is a great way of not having to work the tone and volume on an electric guitar and still get kind of the same effect,” he says. “I tend to rely on my hands to be dynamic and change tone more than I do on knobs. It’s just instinctual.”
Such versatility and economy are native to the Bakersfield balladry Ledger explores on the poised and shuffling Midnight in L.A. and the loungey, jazzy Till It Feels Right. He cranks up his Fender Princeton on There Goes My Mind and Court of Love, though, grabbing the vibrato arm of his Jazzmaster on the latter to pull off the song’s signature surf-rock licks.
“I do feel that people should really do their homework and learn about the history of music and what came before whatever style or whatever you wanna do,” he says. “I feel like it’s important to know your influences and how modern music came to be the way it is.”
Golden State is out now via Concord.
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