What a Sweetie

During CMA Festival week, Atlanta-based Guitar Artist Paul Heller had the opportunity to meet the charming RaeLynn Woodward at Miranda Lambert’s fan club party. RaeLynn was coached by Blake Shelton and received a great deal of additional mentoring and encouragement from his wife, Miranda Lambert. I found RaeLynn very friendly and sincere in our conversation. Enjoy the photograph of her playing the “Air” Guitar Art.

RaeLynn is from Baytown, Texas (population 73,000) and grew up on a farm. She graduated from high school two years early to enable her to move to Los Angles to pursue her life dream of becoming a professional singer. She was inspired by Miranda Lambert at age eleven with her first album ever being bought by her mother after hearing “Me And Charlie Talking”.

Since meeting RaeLynn I have followed her on Twitter. I find her tweets personable and sensitive in sharp contrast to her coach and mentor Blake Shelton’s style of outrageously funny tweets (a main topic of a recent Jay Leno interview):

RaeLynn:

Sometimes you forgive people because you still want them to be in your life.

I like any food that I don’t have to cook” said by my father.

Too many people choose to be offended these days, takes the fun out of the good stuff …. Some people don’t understand our humor. Laugh a little.

Blake Shelton

I walked into the airport, pulled down my pants and shouted this is my only carry-on, but I could use a hand.

I walked into McDonalds, pulled down my pants and shouted can I get this super-sized?

A Strong Finish and Lucky “Third Place” Finish Paralleling Miranda Lambert’s Nashville Star Finish?

RaeLynn finished strong being among the top twelve overall performers and third on Team Blake in the second season of The Voice. After being eliminated RaeLynn was extremely positive stating “It’s awesome to have Miranda backing me. She’s a great person. She (Miranda) finished third [on Nashville Star] and she bigger than the person that won. You don’t have to finish first to win ultimately. You just do your best and that’s what’s going to help you win. I take that to heart and I finished third on Blake’s team and that means a lot to me.”

The Voice Season 2 Format

The format of the popular reality show The Voice consists of the following selection and elimination process:

• Successful audition candidates perform for the four judges (Blake Shelton, Christine Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine) without the judges visually seeing them. Once a judge decides to vie for a candidate they are able to spin around and see the performer. If more than one judge vies for the same performer, the performer gets to choose which judge’s team they want to be on. Each judge forms a team of 12 performers.
• The next round is a “battle” round which I find bias and distasteful. The judges match up two performers and they battle each other by singing only one song where they have separate and common parts. Based on only one song each judge is forced to slice their twelve person team in half from twelve to six. For these performers to get that far and half of them eliminated over one song and no public voting is unfair.
• The remaining weeks the now 24 performers sing and are eliminated off by a combination of viewer ship voting and judge decisions.

Exquisite Custom Guitar Art based out of Atlanta has completed its newest guitar, a beautiful Hollow Body style guitar that includes a brass Bigsby vibrator bar. With light-box technology the beautiful color tones of red, brown, yellow and white are beautifully illuminated on this stained glass and mosaic guitar. The light-box technology involves creating a cavity behind the main face/sound board of the guitar and applying an intense light source. This intriguing Guitar Art is produced by founder and creative designer, Paul Heller, for applications in commercial developments, museums, offices and personal residences.

Illuminated Guitar Art Creates Incredibly Intriguing Effects

The beautiful stained glass coloration changes dramatically between states of  illumination or no illumination. A programmable timer circuit allows the coloration to change gradually or as quickly as desired. It is amazing how much more additional attention art attracts when lighting is varied. Whereas most art is observed by viewers for a couple seconds; this dynamic Guitar Art can lure attention for minutes at a time.

The Evolution of Hollow Body Guitars Which Began in the 1930s

Hollow Body guitars, also referred to as semi-acoustic, date back to the 1930s and contain both the sound box and at least one electric pickup. In 1936 Gibson manufactured the first semi-acoustic guitar in attempt to increase the sound volume produced in comparison to other band and orchestra instruments that were naturally much louder. These guitars became very popular especially with Jazz musicians as well as others.

These early Hollow Body guitars were ultimately the first step towards the evolution of the full electric guitars that were first made in 1940 with a totally solid face avoiding any type of sound box. The decorative holes that function as the sound box are simply called “f holes” as they resemble this alphabetic letter in shape. Vibrators are a common addition to many Hollow Body guitars with Bigsby being a leading manufacturer.

Hollow Body guitars are actively used by famous musicians/groups including John Lennon, the Zac Brown Band, Dave Matthews and Chet Atkins. When actor Jake Gyllenhaal was dating Taylor Swift as a birthday gift he gave her a Hollow Body guitar signed by Chet Atkins.  Today’s popular versions include Gibson’s ES-335 and ES-175 in addition to Rickenbacker’s 330JG.

Exquisite Custom Guitar Art can easily be contacted by accessing their website at Exquisite-Guitars.com.

 

Side View With Gold and Metallic Spiraling Highlights

The CMA Festival is an annual pilgrimage that my wife Diane and I immensely look forward to each year. In addition to the amazing CMA sponsored music at LP Field,  Riverfront stage and other stages; we have found that fan club parties are lots of fun. The fan club parties provide an intimate venue to see your favorite artists perform up close, take great pictures, hear the artists chat informally, and meet them for a quick conversation and pose for a picture with them. Depending on how hot the weather is, it’s also a way to mix things up and enjoy “indoor” music avoiding being exposed to the prolonged, punishing heat common during the daytime at the Riverfront stage.

Rodney Atkins Fan Club Party

His fan club party was at a very fun venue, the Loveless Barn. His performance was outstanding followed by a gracious meet and greet where people had plenty of time and space to gather with Rodney. With Rodney’s unique guitar with the pick guard detail artistically extending out to cover most of the sound board; it would be a fun Guitar Art piece to make.

We always enjoy and appreciate Rodney’s music a bit more as we have seen the extremely talented songwriter Dave Berg play in Nashville numerous times. Dave’s songs that Rodney has recorded include two number one hits: “These are my people” and “If You’re Going Through Hell”.

 Lee Brice and Jerrod Niemann Fan Club Party

These guys are both really cool and rising in county music stardom big time this year. Some fan club party formats allow you to hear artists sing their songs with a simple acoustical guitar versus the full band sound. The beauty of the music and lyrics behind many mellower songs seems much more apparent with an acoustical version which we truly enjoy. Hearing acoustical versions of such songs as “Lover, Lover”; “One More Drinkin’ Song”, “A Woman Like You” and “Hard to Love” was incredible.

During the meet and greet Lee and Jerrod really enjoyed the Guitar Art. Jerrod proclaimed that Miranda was going to need to see my Pink Guitar Art piece even before I explained that I had designed it after hers. Lee was really excited about my purple and yellow light-up Guitar yet scorned the colors being those of LSU. I am currently looking into finding purple and orange glass to hopefully arrange making a Guitar Art piece for Lee. Lee is performing in Atlanta July 13th as part of Miranda Lambert’s “Four The Record” tour at the Lakewood Amphitheater. I hope to meet briefly with him to show him some stained glass options.