James Limerick Kerr is a guitar wizard from New Haven. Currently a professor at Northampton’s Smith College, one couldn’t help but notice the guitar nerdiness worn on his sleeve. The guitar for the first half of the performance was an unusual custom 7-string. Allowing for more bass and a larger neck for fret tapping, the songs had a Keller Williams meets Christopher Parkening (read hippie vs. classical) vibe. His record Seven Smiling Strings is an homage to the instrument. He plays several in this style: Clear Slate for All, The Lifeline and the Castaway, and The Messenger from Afar. While discussing the difficulty in odd tunings, he describes his recent release where he transcribes lute compositions of the 16th century Italian composer Simone Molinaro for rendering on the 7 string. Molinaro was almost relegated to trash can icon of history before being discovered by a New England guitar prodigy half a world and centuries apart, thanks internet. These songs oozed the renaissance lute and I’m sure were a bitch to transpose for play on the 7-string. He played a tremolo heavy composition then moved into something he called Gallup Study 1 or as he puts it “Iron Maiden Visiting a Spanish Village”. For the last third of the set, he picks up a Dobro or resonator guitar. I could have googled this, but better to have a legit guitar prof explain that the Dobro was the creation of the of Slovak immigrant John Dopyera and his brothers in the late twenties. They fashioned an outward facing metal cone that allowed for pre-pedal echo and sustain that was popular among blues musicians and the American south. The instrument is often played face up with with a bottle neck or slide (thanks to the Ballad of Curtis Lowe). He stays with the geography and plays Package of Peaches, Hay Barn in the Rain, and Bluegrass 511. Closed with the only tune with vocals, a heart wrenching version of the Blind Willie McTell number “Momma Taint Long For Day”. Beautiful guitar music again.
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