MM & John E Dopyera

[Michael Messer]

Katerina Erentova from Trnava, Slovakia, just turned this photo up after 22 years. It is me and the late John E. Dopyera about to do a Face to Face TV show on the subject of Dobros, Nationals and playing them. It was great, but there was a slight problem in that we were both a little drunk having been seriously wined and dined a few minutes earlier. We had a few coffees to sober us up and then did our TV show, both babbling and gabbling about anything that came into our minds!


Photo: Blažej Vittek

It looks like we are deep in conversation about the inner sanctums of a resonator, but actually we were saying..."I'm really drunk, I wish they had told us before we started drinking that we were going to be on TV this afternoon"

This is Katerina's note... What a beautiful memory I found! John Edward Dopyera ❤️ and Michael Messer at Dobrofest Trnava 1998

Phew...where did that 22 years go?

Shine On
Michael

[Wyzzy93]

Love the track at 19:48.

[Michael Messer]

May 26, 2020 10:25:03 GMT Wyzzy93 said:

Love the track at 19:48.

WOW!!! That was quite a day! I remember we had a gig on a steam train at around 9am and they filled us with stuff that felt like it was around 90% proof, then they took us out to lunch and we gargled more of their wonderful concoctions, and then we ended doing this Face to Face on live TV, which was quite an experience considering what we had consumed.

Shine On
Michael

[janatore]

A real enjoyable time document.
I liked how the songs were played (and that in a non sober state).

The wood body Triolian sounds (nearly or even) exactly like your Fine resophonic wood body resonator guitar i think. Wow! And your tone is really sweet and delicious i not often hear so far on virtual sources.
Did not see a longer hawaiian guitar sequence by you Michael. Lively and lovely.

Thanks for uploading that.

[Michael Messer]

Thank you Jan. Much appreciated. I got the Fine Resophonic a couple of months after this was filmed. I guess there is not really that much online of what I do and have done over the decades, just snippets of certain projects. As well as the blues, there is the Hawaiian stuff that I used to play a lot. There has also been a life as an old time style country Dobro player. There is none of that online as far as I know. And then the whole electric guitar and lap steel thing. I actually have a lot of stuff on VHS and Betamax video tapes that should be run onto a hard drive, stuff I haven't seen for many years!

Shine On
Michael

[calvoi]

Would love to hear/watch a MM bootleg special of some of your old videos.

[Deleted]

Great feel and touch on the lap slide MM especially being a bit Brahms. Betamax--now there's a blast from the past. Makes me think of an Austin Allegro.

[Michael Messer]

Thanks! Hmmm... there's a lot of old video tapes with some wonderful stuff on them. I also have recently been going through old DAT and cassette tapes, cataloging it all onto a hard drive. Phew...stuff that I had forgotten ever existed.

I remember almost the same thing happening a few days earlier on that trip. The festival organisers, who in fact are friends of mine now, had a wonderful way of not telling you what was happening the next day, or even later that day. So after an insane night of being wined and dined at the Dolna Krupa house of music and playing Beethoven's piano! .... they dropped me and Ed of at our hotel at around 5am, and just as I was getting out of the bus, they said they would pick us up at 7am because we were going to Bratislava to play live and be interviewed on National TV's big breakfast show. Phew...once again we were not fit to be out, never mind be on TV! Damn, I wish I could do that tomorrow morning.

We had a good time in Slovakia in 1998.



This has just reminded me that Rob Ickes and I tried to make an album together, but Rounder Records didn't want to fund it and like many musical collaborations planned on the road, it drifted. Would have been fun.

Shine On
Michael

[janatore]

More and more i am astonished and really want to see more like that; shared memories and anectdotes of musicians' "entries in the journal" or smth.

I like the way you just remember and share theese memories here via a photo or a recording or smth.
When you stated your many different interests and routes as a slide/resophonic guitar player and expertise institution/networker and that every route had its time i realized how honest that statements are. And how sane it feels reading texts like that:

We all i guess have to cope with our lives and playing the guitar or being a music enthusiast or something compareable is mostly not the thing we can do/be all the day. Work, other business, raising a family or other things need our encouragement too.
However. And we can not or only hardly fullfill all the rolemodels daily life supposes us and our imaginations wants us to be (is that understandable english?).
For example an old time country Dobro player, a hot swing guitar player, a hawaiian guitar expert, a surf lapsteel guitar player and so on all at the same time (or only for no compromise and 100 or more percent going exactly that route).
But we do what we do whenever we can and we work for that having time to do so. Because it pleases one self.

Interesting.
Thanks Michael and the others for sharing such thoughts.

And: the community seems not that far far away as i imagine (when you tell that an album with Rob Ickes was in kind of a planning...who can tell such things). Although it is far away for me.
Wow.

[Michael Messer]

Jan, Thank you for your kind words. I have had other people comment in similar ways about the occasional anecdote I have told. It has got me thinking about how time passes by and that the world moves on. I play Hawaiian, country, blues, Indian, bits of African guitar and a few other things most days. I always have, it is just that most of the the world tends to view me as a bottleneck slide player, which is not in any way how I view myself, or ever have. Returning to the point... Over the past few months I have been considering the idea of starting to write it all down, so that my grandchildren and their children and their children know who I was, what I did with my life and why I made a load of albums. I am not thinking of it as an egotistical exercise in any way, but sometimes having talked about my past and my present, I think it should be documented, even if only for posterity. I can't stand people that talk too much about themselves, whoever they are, but I am aware that when done with self control it can be interesting to hear about other people's lives, especially when it is done with honesty and integrity. In other words, without any bullshit.

I certainly don't see it all in the past as I have a new musical project I am working on right now, which got halted by the lockdown. I still love touring, recording and being a professional musician as much as I ever did, possibly more so because I am more relaxed about stuff, and I still have loads of energy to go out and do it. I just hope that someday we will be allowed out again.

I always enjoy reading your posts and hearing you play.

Shine On
Michael

[janatore]

Thank you for the reply.
Quote: "I always have, it is just that most of the the world tends to view me as a bottleneck slide player, which is not in any way how I view myself, or ever have"
I understand that totally.
(Even if that is of no further interest) i am not only a slide player too. (The other day last winter i met a turkish oud and saz player in my corner's drink shop. We endet up in a long session playing material i usually do not play. A project was foundet from that but sadly pauses at the moment).
The (musical) world is so big and i guess we are all somehow effected or influenced by its waves, ways, styles etc.
I think you did not understand it the way that i may meant to reduce you or others to a slide player only.

I find it good to hear about your activities and projects.
May be i have spoken more for myself and my current point of view due to my live situation (being a work and family man mainly) in that last posting.

I wish my grandfathers had written down memories. Of course things can be told. Often that does not happen. To learn each other more closely talking is an importand way to do it. I still need to talk to my father for example just to learn a bit more of his life.
So i think it is a good idea to write down those things. By writing one can clear one's mind and it might show how one's life was (full of memorable situations, learning lessons and may be realizing that one survived a lot of scary things; what ever that might be).
Plus i asume you have a lot of things to tell that is of interest for any music fan.