John Culp

Hi! My name's John Culp. I live in Bristol, Tennessee, "The Birthplace of Country Music." (Too bad I'm really not much into country music!) Some of you know me as "Ricochet" from various blues and guitar related boards. (I'm sure I'm not the only one out there with that handle.) I play for fun, mostly by myself. I've been into music of various sorts for most of my life, but I just took up guitar in 2001 at the age of 45, a year after nearly tearing my right arm off in a motorcycle accident. I was getting enough function back that I thought I could do it, my teenage son had started taking guitar lessons, I'd long wanted to play guitar, and decided to go for it. My kid's a lot better than I am, but I have fun! I play nearly entirely slide stuff in open tunings. That just "clicked" with me, which standard tuning fretted playing never has for some reason. I think the open slide stuff is reminiscent of keyboard, and I started off with piano as a kid. I'm learning to play a 1967 Hammond H-182 organ that I recently acquired. I've just gotten a lap steel and am learning to play it. I like to do silly stuff like record blues songs for my answering machine messages. It's all for fun!

I occasionally play in church or at open mic events. The picture I posted is of me playing an open mic at JJ's House of Music in Bristol, Tennessee.

I grew up with the music now called "classic rock." Didn't really learn until recently how heavily blues influenced it was, indeed a lot of it was remakes of blues classics. Got interested in some of the Delta blues roots (like Robert Johnson) and learned that there was a whole fascinating musical world of the blues! I like the older country blues a lot, the classic Chicago blues like Muddy Waters' stuff, and I'm particularly fond of R.L. Burnside and many of the other Fat Possum blues artists such as Johnny Farmer and Charles Caldwell. I like The Black Keys, too. I haven't tried to copy anyone directly.

Johnson Style 1 Tricone resonator guitar, Agile AS-820 semihollowbody with P-90 pickups, assorted other guitars that are mostly in my son's possession (I keep sneaking the Agile back from him), an Artisan lap steel, and my main amps are an Epiphone Valve Junior (just got that one, it's sweet!), an Electar Tube 10, and a Pignose G40V. I plug straight in, no effects.