My Guitars

I generally play my Blueridge jumbo dreadnought cutaway. It's imported by Saga Musical Instruments, and it has a neck like a baseball bat--I like it that way. Once I tried the Elixir strings made by Gore, at Cosy Sheridan's urging, I never went back. They last forever. I use medium gauge strings on the Blueridge.

My other main guitar is a Baby Taylor. I got this because with the new job at Sony, I am traveling often, and it was driving me nuts not to have a guitar while on the road. This one sounds like a real guitar, and fits in an overhead bin. This is the one I keep in the office. It needs light gauge strings, and I've found that I have to play it completely differently from the Blueridge because of that.

I use Kyser capos because you can reverse them and do partial capoing easily. There's more about that down in the section below.

I've also got my father-in-law's 1962 Gibson, which has been badly treated, and which I mostly use for slide. But I suck at slide, so...

Recently I inherited my grandfather's ukelele. I have many fond memories of his playing this thing down in Key Largo during the summers, a large crowd gathered to enjoy the singalongs. But I can't play it yet.

Guitar Tunings

I rarely play or write anymore in standard tuning. And ever since Don Conoscenti introduced me to the wonderful world of the partial capo, I've been doing a lot of that too. Here's some of the tunings I enjoy playing in:

EADGBE: Standard.
DGDGBD: Open G, for Chuck Brodsky's "Blow 'Em Away," Greg Brown's "Poet Game," and lotsa blues. I also find it to work nicely for Spanish-inflected pieces.
DADGBE: Dropped-D (tune low E string down to D).
DADGBD: Double dropped-D (tune both E strings down to D).
DADGAD: a classic modal tuning. I play Richard Thompson's "'62 Vincent Black Lightning" in this tuning, as well as much of my own material.
DADGAE: This has some very nice qualities to it. I play modal stuff and also jazzy stuff in this tuning.
DADF#BD: This is a lot of fun for blues in a major key.
Standard, partial capo 4th fret, all but high E: This gives you a distinctive sound in C#minor.
Standard, partial capo 2nd fret, strings 3, 4, 5: Both Don Conoscenti and Diana Jones are using this a lot. You can play standard tuning chords and modal scales at the same time. Try it. You may never go back. You can take a standard Kyser capo and put it on upside-down (use the rubber foot on the strings instead of the regular part) if your neck is wide enough. Otherwise you may have to cut a capo yourself.
DADGAD, partial capo 2nd fret, strings 3,4,5: the DADGAD variant of the above. Lots of harmonics, lots of potential.
DADGAD, partial capo 3rd fret, all but two lowest strings: You have to put the capo on backwards for this one. Very dark.
DADGAD, partial capo 5th fret, all but two lowest strings: As above, but up. Great for fluid picking.
DADGAD, partial capo 7th fret, all but two lowest strings: Like playing a high-strung guitar in D, with access to the bass notes. I play with my thumb over the neck a lot on all of these tunings. I even have one piece written up at the 9th fret capo with this setup...