Tomo Fujita & Blue Funk

Tomo Fujita & Blue Funk - Put On Your Funk Face - 1996 - Tomo Fujita Music

"In my private lessons and blues/funk labs, I teach fundamental techniques for playing good music—getting a good tone from the guitar and keeping a good rhythm. But I try to teach something more valuable for the future, so I really emphasize feeling. Especially in blues playing, I emphasize expression, tone, and time. Sometimes these simple things are really difficult to achieve with quality and detail. So I teach a lot of grooves and rhythm. After I graduated from Berklee, I was interested in discovering more about the blues. I listened to all the records of B.B. King and T-Bone Walker, and I started playing with blues bands. I could play blues technically, but emotionally I couldn't connect myself to the music. I tried to connect my soul with the guitar, to get away from any theory or technique, to stop thinking too much. I started playing gospel music at a Baptist church every Sunday. There were no charts; for every song, all I got was the key. It taught me a lot about feeling, and I thought, 'That's really what music is all about.' You hear things, and you have to feel things. If you make someone read music, and they don't know about the sound of the music, that's like reciting words or sentences that don't mean anything to them. Everything that they play sounds technically right, but musically it's not there. So I try to teach my students as though they're blind. I say, 'Before you start to play your guitar, find an object close to the ceiling, or buy a picture and hang it above eye level. Look at that, and then play. Try to disconnect your mind from time and place while you're playing, so that after you finish the song you don't know where you are, because that much energy is going into the music." - Tomo Fujita

Tomo's influences include B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Pass, Larry Carlton, Ray Charles, James Brown, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and many others. "Put On Your Funk Face" is a great jazz rock/funk album with a blues touch. The album is a studio recording with a "live" feel and contains eleven good instrumental tracks from a very talented guitarist backed by some very experienced and hugely talented musicians. Read more about Blue Funk @ http://www.tomofujita.com/us/band.html Listen to Tomo's great "Pure" album on which he is backed by Will Lee, Steve Gadd, Bernard Purdie, and Steve Jordan [All tracks @ 320 Kbps: File size = 106 Mb]

TRACKS

1. Crossing 6:00
2. Burbank street 5:31
3. Song For Samantha 5:16
4. Meltdown 3:58
5. Just Funky 6:55
6. Dreaming Of You 1:28
7. Orange Juice & Water 5:36
8. I Like Your Smile 4:00
9. Cat Walk 1:06
10. I Have No Clue 1:22
11. Don't Wake Me 5:44

All tracks composed by Tomo Fujita

BAND

Tomo Fujita - Guitar
Anthony Vitti - Bass
Dave Limina - Keyboards
Larry Finn - Drums

SHORT BIO

Tomo Fujita possesses all the elements of great musicianship: astounding technical ability, flawless rhythm skills, and a total command of his instrument. But if asked, Tomo would tell you that music is not just about playing. It’s about feeling. He has a remarkable ability to inject emotion into every phrase he plays, whether the style is blues, jazz, funk or rock. Tomo earned a degree at Berklee College of Music and has been a faculty member at Berklee since 1993. Perhaps the most famous of his former Berklee students are Soulive guitarist Eric Krasno (Kraz) and John Mayer. Tomo is also affiliated with the major music schools in his native Japan. His articles have been published in the Japanese magazines Jazz Life and Jazz Guitar, and he is a regular contributor to the Japanese edition of Guitar magazine. His instructional materials are especially popular in Japan, where guitar players have bought more than 100,000 copies of his videos and books. Tomo has performed with some of the best, including Phil Collins, John Mayer, James Genus (Saturday Night Live), Will Lee (Late Show with David Letterman), Kenwood Dennard (Jaco Pastorious, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Smith), Darryl Jones (Miles Davis, Sting, Rolling Stones), Paul Jackson (Herbie Hancock, Headhunters), Ronnie Earl, Steve Gadd, Bernard Purdie, Steve Jordan and Susan Tedeschi. Tomo also enjoyed a guitar-playing gig in a Boston production of the musical Rent. © 1999 - 2013 TrueFire http://truefire.com/blog/gifted-guitarists/part-4/