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Rob Eberhard Young is a unmistakable and nimble-fingered musician/guitarist currently based in Naples, Florida (U.S.A.) who denotes his playing style as acoustic fusion ("thru-age"), as a music fan can hear on his most recent recording, "Consistent Variation".  His workhorse guitars consist of a Froggy Bottom Model K and a Tom Higgins 12-fret parlour guitar. Young has been playing guitar since 1979, and putting it simply, relates his career objective, "I been fortunate enough to achieve lots of them already in terms of getting
a major label deal, touring internationally, and playing with some of the
best musicians alive, but today my immediate goal is to continue to afford
to stay home by continuing to do scoring work. In 10 years I would like to
be a competent classical composer (I'm working on it...) and travel the
world again - but this time sitting in the audience listening to my music
played by others for a change!"
When requested to let slip his top choice for an effect for the guitar, Young resolutely answered, "Definitely reverb if I only had one, but I love delay too for poly-rhythmic effects," and then outlined his musicial goals, "Scoring has taught me the value of minimalism and always striving to say
"just the right thing.", and not a note more. I'm not sure I have done that
yet on any guitar music that I have recorded yet. I've gotten real close
probably a dozen times, but then I guess I'll never be totally happy with
anything I've done anyway.Also, I don't want to sacrifice melody in favor of
texture. I love dense rhythm and harmony as it associates to it. So I guess
a general compositional goal would be to write huge yet intimate, dense yet
sparse, moving music that has really simplistic and memorable melodies. Does
anyone else out there find that as difficult as I do?" He maintains a desire to, at some point, study classical piano ("but I will probably never have the time"), and is at the moment listening to John Adams, Fleetwood Mac, Tori Amos, David Lee Roth, Tuck Andress, Brian
Setzer, and himself (in his own head). His most important gratification? "Actually has nothing to do with music...Hanging out at home with my fiance'
when I'm not working. It took me 37 years to figure out that having a great
soulmate IS more important that having great bandmates," he explains without hesitation.
Young winds up by mentioning long-term and forthcoming endeavors insightfully, by saying, "There are three: First is to release my full band acoustic guitar based
fusion record, which was produced by Kip Winger (we recorded it at his home
studio a few years ago in Santa Fe). The record features Michael Manring on
fretless bass, Rod Morgenstein (Dregs/Winger) on drums, Alan Pasqua
(Holdsworth's old band) on piano, Andy Snitzer (Rolling Stones) on sax, and
Chris Botti (Sting) on trumpet. Second, I have an album of original film
score oriented music almost all written, which will be my first commercial
release with absolutely no guitar. And finally, I have another mostly solo
guitar album in the works. It is a bit more experimental in nature, and will
also have Manring and Pasqua playing on a few tunes as well."
Guitar Nine Records visitors have compared the playing style and/or musical approach of Rob Eberhard Young to guitarists such as Michael Hedges and others.
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Vol. 17, No. 2: Feb.-Mar. 2012
