Check today’s Ottawa Citizen for an article and photo on guitarist Robert Farrell. The article is also available on-line.

The best ‘hidden’ guitarist in Canada

Billboard cites Ottawa’s Robert Farrell as a ‘gem’

Wes Smiderle
The Ottawa Citizen

Thursday, October 23, 2003

When Ottawa guitar wizard Robert Farrell recently told a student about how he was inspired to pick up the instrument again after seeing the movie Crossroads, he was forced to get more specific.

“I had to remind him that I wasn’t talking about the Britney Spears Crossroads,” recalls Farrell, a little sheepishly over coffee at the Westboro Oak on Wellington Street.

He was referring to the 1986 movie starring Karate Kid Ralph Macchio. Not exactly a classic, but the film was chock full of vaguely blues-inspired mythology and a lot of goofy musician nicknames like Blind Dog and Lightning Boy. Most important, Crossroads featured flashy guitar work, including an appearance by then-unknown Steve Vai, a brilliant guitarist who studied under Joe Satriani as a kid and played in Frank Zappa’s backing band at the age of 18. Vai later became famous playing with David Lee Roth (Vai’s presence is the only reason to listen to Skyscraper) and as a solo performer.

Farrell’s career as guitar-slinger began when he was a child, studying and playing classical guitar for six years at the local branch of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Growing bored with the routine of intensive practice sessions and infrequent band performances, Farrell let his guitar gather dust. He was a teenager attending Nepean High School when Crossroads came out.

“I saw that movie and started experimenting again,” says Farrell. “I was trying to learn all these bits, although the stuff in the movie was far beyond what I could do at the time.”

He was also hooked by Crossroad’s climax, a duelling guitar showdown featuring Macchio (Lightning Boy) squaring off against Vai in a nearly impossible instrumental rendering of classical music delivered in a simmering, southern blues-rock style. The moment Macchio beats Vai is impossible to take seriously, but it’s a good scene in a movie otherwise notable only for its great doses of blues music.

“I loved the blues aspects of it,” says Farrell. “Before that movie, I don’t think I’d ever sat down and listened to blues music that seriously. After, I started listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and I just kept going from there.”

Farrell has made music his life almost ever since. He started teaching guitar at 18 while performing solo or with a band.

Eighteen years later, Farrell has been hailed by Billboard magazine as “arguably the greatest undiscovered guitarist in Canada,” and has recorded four albums, with a fifth set for late November. The disc, Sun House Fury, will be the first in a trilogy of albums featuring first rock, then pop and finally more experimental, acoustic tunes.

Farrell is adept at many styles, but tends to get labelled as a blues guitarist. “That’s always been a sticky point for me,” he says. “I think I play a blues style of lead, but a lot of the music I write doesn’t follow a blues format.”

As a teacher and performer, Farrell has nurtured a reputation for his wild hands and the ability to play with a double-slide. He first started experimenting with two slides at once as a fluke, but somehow made the crazy slide sound work with various standard guitar techniques like pull-offs, roll-offs and hammer-ons. Farrell pulls out the double slide for “whenever I play something that sounds a little more banjo,” and the stunt has become a crowd favourite. “It looks neat with the slides whipping all over the guitar,” he says.

Farrell has developed a solid following through his students, albums and widespread Internet radio play.

“People come to see wild guitar playing,” he says. “One night, I made the mistake of not doing it and people came up to me after the show and said, ‘Y’know, we really want to see you play slide.’ They were so disappointed. I felt like I had to give these people their money back.”

Robert Farrell performs at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Bayou Blues & Jazz Club, 1077 Bank St. Admission is $8.

PHOTO CREDIT:
Wayne Cuddington,
The Ottawa Citizen

Robert Farrell, centre, Stephen Clarke, left, and Andrew Lamarche perform tomorrow night at the Bayou Blues and Jazz Club. Farrell is famous for playing with two slides at the same time.