Reflections on the Art of the Guitar Duo

A sublime combination

Apr 01, 2025

Before weighing in let me announce my record release show THIS THURSDAY celebrating my own guitar duos release: https://publicrecords.nyc/events/joel-harrison-record-release-guitar-talk-vol-2/

My love of the guitar duo goes back to my earliest music memories. From the beginning many of the bands I loved best had two guitars: The Beatles, The Dead, The Stones, The Allman Bros. Then came Julian Bream and John Williams, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Norman Blake and Tony Rice, and on and on.

Keith Richards once remarked that one guitar was fine, but that two was an orchestra. I agree. Two guitars can do just about anything. Beautiful harmony, cross rhythms, walls of sound, intricate interplay, counterpoint, an almost infinite array of texture. The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve enjoyed taking part in the entire spectrum of possbility.

As a teenager I used to see duos such as Joe Pass and Herb Ellis at Blues Alley in Washington D.C. I discovered duo records that John Abercrombie did with Ralph Towner and John Scofield. Metheny and Scofield paired up in the group Bass Desires, as did Frisell and Scofield. Perhaps the apotheosis of the guitar duo is the Assad Brothers. Every one of their records is a treasure, some an astonishment.

But it wasn’t until I started producing the guitar summit that I really saw the infinite magic of the guitar duo. In the first summit I brought Brandon Ross and Michael Gregory Jackson together for the first time. Soon after came Nels Cline and Fred Frith which was an order of magnitude different than any other pairings. It was beautiful, wild, unpredictable. Julian Lage with Frisell…and so many more.

It has been amazing watching duos at the Alternative Guitar Summit camp, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Gilad Hekselman, Kurt and Isaiah Sharkey, Julian Lage and Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell and Wayne Krantz. Endless imagination, a small gem of a melody taken into the stratosphere and back again. Guitar duos can be so beautifully intimate. So quiet, so much can be going on.

On my new record, a double record (!) I tried to explore as many sounds that two guitars can make as possible.

It comes out April 18 online, but you can check it out and buy it now here:

Guitar Talk Vol. 2 is a double CD, and a follow up to 2020’s Guitar Talk which was a series of duos as well. It includes an album of classical guitar music performed by Daniel Lippel and Fareed Haque. Both are amazing players I was lucky to work with. Fareed is best known as a jazz musician, but he is a fantastic classical player as well. Dan is the New York city new music guitarist. He plays compositions so complex that it boggles my mind. I don’t know how he does it. This is my first collection of fully notated work for classical guitar. Why did I wait so long? Maybe because the guitar was so close to home I needed to write for everything else first? It was remarkable how easy it felt compared to writing for, say, cello or piano.

The 2^nd disc is a discursive collection with some of my favorite improvisers, including a tribute to Dickey Betts with Nels Cline, an anthemic jazz -rock piece with Mike Stern dedicated to my hometown, Washington D.C., and a Latin-tinged tune with Camila Meza, whose wordless vocal is quite beautiful. There are ambient, experimental romps with Anthony Pirog (of The Messthetics), a piece dedicated to singer Luther Vandross with Adam Levy, and a 12-string and electric combo with Gregg Belisle-Chi. Tones, moods, approaches move and morph.

It was SO FUN to do—conversations with friends using notes instead of words.

Here are a few favorite guitar duos:

Norman Blake and Tony Rice: Blackberry Blossom