When I first heard Martin Carthy in the late 1980s and started collecting his solo albums I picked up an original 1960s copy of this “Second Album” at a record fair. I’d owned the Topic Records re-issue of that album for a while and had started to collect multiple versions of his releases – a trait that continues to this day. I already owned what was then his most recent album “Out Of The Cut” with its striking Keith Morris cover photograph and what I noticed from the 60s Fontana release of “Second Album” that wasn’t immediately evident on the Topic version was that he was playing (or at least holding) the same guitar on the cover of both albums. When I eventually got to see Martin play live in 1988 he was playing that same guitar and though I wasn’t a player myself and knew relatively little about guitars and their technical properties I had by this point leant that the instrument he was playing was manufactured by C.F. Martin & Co. It’s quite possible that some of my musician friends – one of whom was and still is a luthier and Martin guitar collector – had mentioned that the model was a 000-18 but it’s unlikely that I would have retained this snippet of information and if I had it wouldn’t have meant much to me.

I saw Martin something like 15 more times between 1988 and 2003, usually either on his own or with Dave Swarbrick, and every time he was playing that same guitar. I got to know its particular characteristics quite well and fancy that I could have easily picked it out of a lineup, though how and why such an event would have possibly transpired I’m at a loss to imagine. In any event, as most of those gigs took place in small venues where I would rarely be more than a few feet from the stage I became quite familiar with the guitar’s unique markings: the strip of what looked like half-peeled Sellotape at the point where the neck met the body; the distinctive wood grain markings on various parts of the soundboard; the difference in shading that indicated the position of the original pickguard; the new pickguard itself which was much smaller than those I’d seen on any other guitars. Over the years a number of these indicators of uniqueness evolved and it became a little game for me to spot these changes: at some point a zero fret appeared where none had been before; a new two-piece bridge was fitted some time in the late-90s; the bridge pins changed at about the same time as the new bridge and changed back again at some point.

In October 2002 I had tickets to see 4 Martins at a largish concert hall in Manchester. Martin was the first to take the stage and even from the twelfth row I immediately noticed that he wasn’t playing his usual guitar. From that distance it certainly looked like he was holding a Martin and the shape told me it was likely to be the same model as his usual guitar but I couldn’t be sure of anything more specific than that. The mystery was solved half way through the show when Martin announced that he was in fact playing a brand new Martin Carthy signature edition model based on his trusty old 000-18 and manufactured to his own specifications by C.F. Martin & Co. Since then I’ve seen Martin about 30 more times and he’s always played his new 000-18MC signature model and for a couple of years afterwards Martin Guitars manufactured and sold this model through their various worldwide distribution outlets.

Signature model guitars have a specific set of characteristics that can either be based on unique customisations that appear on the artist’s personal guitar(s), designed to accommodate the specific requirements of their playing technique or made to incorporate a distinctive visual style. In the case of Martin Carthy’s 000-18MC signature model, there are a number of customisations that appeared on Martin’s original 000-18 that have been replicated on the 000-18MC signature model. Some of these, such as the zero fret and the two-piece bridge, were probably introduced on the original 000-18 to deal with issues arising from Martin’s famous use of alternative tunings whilst others appear to be less technical and may be due largely to aesthetic choice. In this post I’ll look at some of the characteristics of the 000-18MC and discuss how they mimic those of Martin’s original 000-18 and, in some case, how the changes made to the signature model differ from those on Martin’s original guitar.

Pickguard

The pickguard (sometimes called the scratchplate) is a laminated and polished piece of material (usually plastic) that is fitted next to the sound hole and is designed to protect the guitar’s finish from scratches. When he first started playing it Carthy’s original 000-18 featured what has become the standard black Martin pickguard design. This is a relatively large piece of black material that, when fitted, covers an area that starts at the point the guitar neck meets the sound hole and ends somewhere very close to the guitar’s bridge. Album covers and live photos all show Carthy’s 000-18 fitted with this standard design throughout the 1960s and 70s but the cover of his 1982 album “Out Of The Cut” clearly shows that the pickguard has been removed. The same cover, incidentally, also shows that the guitar’s body appears to have had its protective varnish completely stripped so it’s quite possible that it was in the middle of a major overhaul or customisation at this time. By the late 1980s a new, much smaller, probably custom made pickguard was in place and this can clearly be seen in the 1992 “British Fingerstyle Guitar” video. The 000-18MC signature model features a pickguard that is different to both the original standard Martin version and Carthy’s customised smaller version. It is, in fact, the pickguard from a Martin OM-18 model with a tortoise shell finish that is smaller than the standard Martin version and larger that Carthy’s customised version.

Two-Piece Bridge / Saddle

The bridge is the area where the strings are affixed to the guitar body and where the vibrations from the strings are transferred to the soundboard. The saddle is the small raised object usually bone or acrylic that sits on the bridge and onto which the strings sit. The standard bridge on a Martin guitar features and single-piece saddle and this was evident on Martin Carthy’s original 000-18 right up until the “British Fingerstyle Guitar” video in 1992. Some time later a two-piece saddle was fitted to the bridge – a large piece used to accommodate the four thicker bass strings and a smaller piece for the two thinner treble strings. Opinion is divided as to the merits of the two-piece saddle but it’s generally accepted that when used they are intended to improve the overall tone of the guitar and in particular the two treble strings. In Carthy’s case it’s quite likely that the two pieces were introduced to accommodate his unusual tuning which requires the use of the heaviest strings available and, as it is tuned down so low, the top string is actually the same gauge as the second string. Carthy’s two-piece bridge/saddle arrangement on his original 000-18 can just about be seen in photos taken for the cover of his 1998 “Signs Of Life” album and very briefly in an interview he did for the 2008 Channel 5 documentary “Eliza Carthy: My Music”. The 000-18MC signature model features a standard single piece saddle.

Bridge Pins

These sit immediately behind the saddle and help to locate the strings in their relative holes on the bridge. On Carthy’s original 000-18 he appears to have used various combinations of brass and black acrylic – some photos show four brass pins on the bass strings and two black pins on the treble strings, some show two black pins on the bass strings and four brass strings on the treble strings and most earlier photos show six black pins and no brass pins. The 000-18MC signature model features three black pins with abalone pearl dots for the bass strings and three brass pins for the treble strings.

Zero Fret

A zero fret is a metal fret fitted immediately behind the normal bone or acrylic nut at the end of the guitar neck. Again, opinion is divided amongst guitarists as to the merits or otherwise of the zero fret and it is not a standard feature of Martin guitars. Early photos show that Carthy’s original 000-18 did not include this feature but at some point before 1992 it was added as a customised feature and is again likely to have been included to accommodate Carthy’s unusual tunings. Standard new 000-18 guitars include a bone nut with no zero fret whilst the 000-18MC signature model has a Micarta composite nut and a zero fret.

Martin discusses his original 000-18 and the 000-18MC signature edition in 2008 in this clip from “Eliza Carthy: My Music” (starts at 3:40)

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,600 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Click in a thumbnail to enlarge photo

Interestingly, the poster for this concert (shown below) features a photograph by my friend and Northern Sky editor Allan Wilkinson taken at a show we both attended in Doncaster a couple of years ago.

Photographs © Kevin Boyd

These come from the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on 29 September.

Click on a thumbnail to view photograph.

More photos from earlier in the tour here and here.

This time from the MAC (Midlands Arts Centre) in Birmingham on 25 September.

Click on a thumbnail to view photograph.

More photos from earlier in the tour here and from a little later here.

These are from the show at The Met in Bury, Greater Manchester on 1 September.

Click on a thumbnail to view photograph.

More photos from later in the tour here and here.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Martin Carthy celebrated his 70th birthday (a week early) at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on Saturday 14 May 2011. Martin’s guests were Tom Robinson, Eliza Carthy and Dave Swarbrick and I was lucky to be given permission to photograph the event.

Watch the slideshow or click on the thumbnails at the bottom of the page to view hi-res versions of the images.

Click HERE to read my review of the concert on the Northern Sky website. 

Click HERE for black & white versions of some images.

Many thanks to Harriet Simms at Glass Veiling PR and Alan Bearman for arranging my pass.

Click to view slideshow.

Martin Carthy: “Essential” Topic Records TSCD770
Release date: 9 May 2011

I don’t envy David Suff and Tony Engle the task of whittling down almost 50 years of recordings from the career of Martin Carthy into the 34 tracks presented here and I’ll admit that in a number of instances I’d have made some (occasionally wildly) different choices. But I suppose that would be the case for anyone who’s followed Carthy’s recording career with any degree of interest so it’s a no-win situation for Suff and Engle and a rather pointless exercise on the part of the reviewer to start listing alternative choices. Having said that, it is interesting to consider what has – and occasionally, what hasn’t – been included given that the compilers had access to the majority of Carthy’s recorded output: 17 out of 18 solo albums (1972′s “Shearwater” continues to evade Topic), half a dozen each from Waterson:Carthy and Brass Monkey, plus of course those classic 1970s/80s Carthy-era Watersons releases. 

Disc A of this double-CD set takes us from Carthy’s eponymous 1965 debut through to 1982′s “Out Of The Cut“, including tracks from the classic 1960s collaborations with Dave Swarbrick and the equally celebrated 1970s solo releases. We get the lovely clean vocals that were a feature of his earliest releases on tracks like “Scarborough Fair“, “Lord Franklin” and “Poor Murdered Woman” and his later explorations into innovative guitar accompaniment on the likes of “Seven Yellow Gypsies“, “Skewbald” and “The Bedmaking“. We even get a debut CD appearance for “The Bee’s Wing” from Carthy & Swarbrick’s 1967 “No Songs” EP. What we largely miss out on however is that period during the early- to mid-70s where Carthy made the conscious decision to omit the guitar completely where he felt is didn’t add anything significant to an arrangement. We only get Dave Goulder’s “January Man” from “Landfall” (1971) to represent this period and although this is a fine recording there are far more striking unaccompanied vocal performances on “Sweet Wivelsfield” (1974) and “Crown Of Horn” (1976) that we don’t get to hear on this compilation. 

Nevertheless, this disc is still largely successful in representing the first couple of decades of Carthy’s recording career. We end with three distinct tracks that demonstrate the diversity of approaches that Carthy was beginning to take as the 1970s rolled into the 80s. “The Siege of Delhi” from 1979′s “Because It’s There” is a virtuoso guitar performance that, for me, hasn’t been matched since. “The Prickle Holly Bush” is the sole contribution here from The Watersons and is still a track that makes me wish Martin would have occasionally  shown a little less humility and taken the lead on more of their 70s/80s repertoire. The final selection is “I Sowed Some Seeds”, one of a number of tracks from “Out Of The Cut” (1982) that showcased the nascent Brass Monkey.

Disc B is a much more diverse affair, chronicling as it does the four major directions that Carthy’s career would follow from the 1980s onwards. We get the solo work of course, and with ever fewer releases to choose from we’re treated to at least two tracks from each solo album during this period. The late 80s and early 90s also saw the re-emergance of the Carthy/Swarbrick duo which is represented by a couple of nicely chosen examples of their later work. Brass Monkey and Waterson:Carthy also loom large during this period and with a dozen albums between them and little more than 70 minutes playing time available it’s inevitable that the omissions here are perhaps more striking than the inclusions. We do however get “Sovay” and the straight up classic “The Maid And The Palmer” from Brass Monkey’s 1983 debut and the more recent (2004) “Maid Of Australia” which is by all accounts the only track that Carthy specifically asked to be included. If this seems a little stingy then Waterson:Carthy fare even worse with the inclusion of just two tracks, “Rackabello” (1997) and “Christ Made A Trance” (2004), the latter being essentially a solo recording anyway. 

The really striking aspect of the second disc though is the quality of the solo recordings. 1988′s “Right Of Passage” is represented by three tracks and we get two each from “Signs Of Life” (1998) and “Waiting For Angels” (2004). “The Dominion Of The Sword” from 1988 is the earliest recorded example of Carthy collaborating with Chris Wood and his subtle fiddle work adds something special to this already astonishing track while “Sir Patrick Spens” from 1998 also benefits from some fine fiddle work, this time from Eliza Carthy. The absolute standout track here though is the ten minute tour de force of “The Famous Flower Of Serving Men” from 2004. By rights this should end the disc as there’s really nowhere else to go after this but the compilers instead choose to place it a few tracks from the end and we eventually finish up with the oft-requested “Harry Lime Theme“. 

By and large then, this is as good an overview of Carthy’s career as you’re likely to get within the constraints of a double-CD. You could squabble over the inclusion or omission of individual tracks here and there but you can’t argue with the overall quality of the work that’s included here or with the breadth of styles and approaches that are represented. It’s been a long journey which I’m sure is far from over but as he approaches his 70th Birthday Carthy must surely be happy that his long-term collaborators at Topic Records have done him proud with this release. 

Other links:

Blog: New Martin Carthy CD: “Essential”
Discography: “Essential” (2011)

This review of the legendary long-lost Watersons electric album was published in issue 12 of Southern Rag (now fRoots) on 1 April 1982.

THE WATERSONS
Electric Water (white label)

When this eventually finds release (at the moment we only have a white label pressing as the original company for which it was intended decided it was rather too controversial for its image), this cannot fail to become the most polarising record of the decade.

In simple terms, this is the Watersons’ disco album, but that would be altogether too dismissive a description. Hot on the heels of their guest appearance on Richard & Linda Thompson’s new record, the family were finally persuaded to put on tape the kind of supremely innovative arrangements that only their closest friends have heard them working on in the privacy of their Yorkshire retreat. For the first time, we hear Mike’s complex but poppy Farfisa organ, Lal’s amazingly funky fretless bass guitar work, and biggest surprise of all, Norma at full tilt on a screaming electric violin.

The cover photos for "Electric Water" have long been lost but "Come Sing It Plain..." has commissioned this artists' impression of what we think they may have looked like.

Martin’s contributions are less of a surprise, of course, though his electric guitar is wilder than before. He’s used synthesisers on his solo albums and they are present here in copious quantities, including maddeningly compulsive multi-overdubs of drum synths. And he’s often been quoted on his desire to use brass, so the appearance of the trumpet, trombone and sax players from the Whitby ska band The Disgracefuls makes complete sense.

But none of the multi-layered studio effects can disguise the Watersons’ singing. Most of the songs are familiar, mind you, from previous recordings, but even if it were all new material, the intertwining of those powerful rich harmonies would be unmistakeable.

As I said to call it simply a disco album is barely adequate. Certainly every track is proudly danceable, from the reggae/ska treatment of Dido, Bendigo, via a hot Latin/Salsa arrangement of The White Cockade, a spacey synthesiser-rockabilly variation on Heavenly Aeroplane to a Tamla-esque fresh look at their recently recorded Young Banker. But it is the breadth of vision, roots knowledge coupled with sheer exuberance, which makes this the most exciting modern folk album yet recorded – even more of a milestone than was Shirley Collins & Davey Graham’s Folk Roots, New Routes in its day.

On the debit side, the Kraftwerk styled version of The Lyke-Wake Dirge is desperately ponderous, and I must say that Martin looks singularly uncomfortable in silver leotard on the proposed cover. But all in all, the folk scene’s never going to be the same when this one’s finally released!

Stella Washburn