{"id":28601,"date":"2024-12-28T05:30:28","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T10:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28601"},"modified":"2024-12-29T09:33:07","modified_gmt":"2024-12-29T14:33:07","slug":"ping-rose-all-roads-lead-to-and-from-the-blues-part-1-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/28\/ping-rose-all-roads-lead-to-and-from-the-blues-part-1-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ping Rose: All Roads Lead To and From the Blues (Part 1 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Many artists start in one musical style and continue with it through their entire career. Nashville-based guitarist, singer and songwriter Ping Rose has traveled a more nuanced path. But his journey \u2013 through punk, country, jazz, classical and pop, with stops along the way in a music conservatory, cruise ships gigs and dive-bar club dates \u2013 eventually led him back to the source, back to the blues. His new album, Conjure Man<\/i> is a fully-formed musical statement of purpose that folds in soul, r&b and rock but wraps it all in the blues. And it marks a major departure from his previous effort, 2020\u2019s Sketchbook<\/i>.<\/p>\n

When Ping Rose put together his debut album, he pointedly chose its title. Calling it Sketchbook<\/i> made sense: in many ways, the album presented a collection of musical ideas that felt developmental: solid and appealing, but ultimately the work of an artist who hadn\u2019t quite settled upon a distinct musical character. Released in 2020 but in fact made nearly a decade ago, Sketchbook<\/i> would only hint at the direction Rose would eventually pursue.<\/p>\n

\u201cSketchbook<\/i> was really a very old album [of songs] that I just didn\u2019t want to waste,\u201d Rose explains. \u201cSo I put it out in anticipation, to keep going.\u201d At that point in his musical journey, Rose already had an impressively wide set of experiences upon which to build. His back story includes a jazz and classical conservatory education and years spent backing country musicians. \u201cI had a scholarship to play guitar, but I wasn\u2019t a music major,\u201d he explains. Rose found himself playing \u201cevery kind of worship music imaginable,\u201d he says: black gospel, contemporary Christian, southern gospel, bluegrass. \u201cThat was my job to earn my scholarship.\u201d<\/p>\n

His studies focused in part on the business side of music, an education that served him well when a major label came calling. \u201cI was offered a deal at Capitol more than a decade ago,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I rejected it.\u201d Rose explains that the offer was \u201cworse than a 360 deal,\u201d a common arrangement in which a label offers financial support in return for a larger cut of all of the artist\u2019s revenue streams; such a deal gives the label a piece of the profits for everything from album sales to merchandise, songwriting royalties and endorsement deals. Like many artists, Rose views that kind of arrangement as antithetical to creativity. That helps explain why Conjure Man<\/i> is an independent release.<\/p>\n

Yet Rose\u2019s foundation as a savvy, business-minded musician is only one piece of the puzzle. At his core, he\u2019s a musician and songwriter completely at home in the blues. \u201cI\u2019m from Memphis,\u201d he emphasizes. \u201cI grew up playing on Beale Street. My real foundation has always been blues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rose put that foundation to work upon finishing his studies; his first job out of school was in the B.B. King Club Room on three successive cruise ship tours. \u201cThe way that worked was that we had to play Just Like the Record,\u201d he explains. \u201cNot karaoke machine style, not \u2018fake book\u2019 stuff. No charts.\u201d The music had to sound right, and it had to sound good.<\/p>\n

Conjure Man<\/i> continues to support those values. But the album uses blues as its bedrock, incorporating other styles to support Rose\u2019s artistry, not to dilute or distract from his blues sensibility. With the sequencing of the album\u2019s tracks, he boldly stakes out territory as a serious player. The record opens with \u201cCloverhill Stomp,\u201d an instrumental showcasing his dexterity on steely slide guitar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have this duality,\u201d Rose explains. \u201cI\u2019m both a singer and musician, separate from the singer-songwriter concept.\u201d Asked to name some of his guitar-playing inspirations, he ticks off names that aren\u2019t always mentioned in the same breath: B.B. King, Jerry Reed, Ry Cooder, Wes Montgomery, Robert Randolph, George Benson, Al DiMeola and Jimmy Herring, to name a few. And his playing style reflects that omnivorous approach. \u201cI can throw some really heavy country chicken-pickin\u2019 into the pot along with some dirty slide and Mississippi blues,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Rose\u2019s melodic sense brings those potentially disparate styles together in a unified manner on Conjure Man<\/i>. As a kid growing up in Memphis, he was into the tuneful side of pop music. \u201cI was into Michael Jackson and Prince,\u201d he says. \u201cOn guitar I was playing System of a Down; I was heavily into rock.\u201d He found a way into the blues through the music of Jimi Hendrix, and applied his technical mastery to that style. He laughs at that memory of his younger self: \u201cI was like, \u2018I know a blues scale. I can play anything<\/i>!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many artists start in one musical style and continue with it through their entire career. Nashville-based guitarist, singer and songwriter Ping Rose has traveled a more nuanced path. But his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,49],"tags":[5571],"class_list":["post-28601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","category-new-release","tag-ping-rose","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28915,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28601\/revisions\/28915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}