The artist this week comes by recommendation from guitar geek and Acoustic Tuesday viewer, Chadwick “C-dub” Wilczewski. Here is what he says about this weeks artist:
I love her ragtime infused finger style blues. Her playing is like listening to Robert Johnson but having a little something extra thrown in there. Kinda like eating your favorite dish at your favorite restaurant, but they won’t tell what the secret special ingredient is.
Each guitarist has their own tone stamp… it’s like a fingerprint but for tone, and if I was to describe this player’s tone I would use the words gritty, raw, thumpy, and purposeful. She plays with such command of the guitar, and such confidence in the notes that it is impossible to stop listening. She plays the blues the way the blues were meant to be played, raw and in your face. She is a true blues connoisseur from her playing to her vast knowledge of the genre’s catalog.
Mary Flower is a nationally renown and celebrated fingerstyle guitar player currently located in Portland, OR. Mary was a National Finger Picking Guitar Championship finalist in 2000 and 2002, a Blues Foundation Blues Music Award nominee in 2008, 2012 and 2016, and many times a Cascade Blues Assn. Muddy Award winner.
Mary Flower is just as comfortable on the lap style guitar as she is on a standard six string… and on each she can play the blues, but it’s not all blues… with Mary she is very much at home in the swing genre as she is ragtime, folk, and even jazz.
Mary is a top notch player and an acoustic musician you have to have on your radar, especially if you are a blues fan. Spend an afternoon with her vast catalog and you will see all of her musical sides. Mary is a one of a kind, and an acoustic musician that always seems to be taking herself to the next level by learning more styles, understanding different approaches, and expanding her musical comfort zone.
It’s fitting that Mary is continually expanding her repertoire because along with being a stellar player she is also a guitar educator. She actually helped develop the curriculum at Denver’s Swallow Hill Music School and has many instructional materials out there for blues, fingerstyle, and lap-slide guitar playing. Mary Flower is very much a guitar geek’s guitar geek; always learning and playing spreading the guitar geek gospel.
Currently she has 11 albums to her credit and it would very much be worth your time to dig right in because there are some absolute acoustic gems to discover and some lessons to be learned.
Mary Flower Links
