About
Carl Weingarten is an American guitarist, photographer, and founder of the independent music label Multiphase Records. Described as "one of the best indie musicians working today" by the San Francisco Chronicle, Carl is best known for his atmospheric sound and use of the slide guitar and Dobro. Weingarten has played a significant role in the progressive independent music scene for 30 years, recording numerous solo and collaborative instrumental albums.
An early practitioner of the recording/performing technique called Looping, Carl’s 1980s trio Delay Tactics used tape, and later digital delays as the heart of their sound. Carl has since toured nationally as both a solo artist and band member, adding his unique atmospheric guitar in rock, jazz and ambient music settings.
Carl’s music has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and the syndicated radio programs Hearts of Space, New Sounds, and Echoes. His 2002 CD escapesilence was voted the #1 album on the annual Echoes Radio Listener’s Poll. Carl’s most recent release Life Under Stars was nominated in 2015 by Zone Music Reporter in the Best Instrumental Album category.
Carl is currently the guitarist with Blue Eternity, an ambient-jazz ensemble featuring Michael Manring bass, Jeff Oster trumpet and Celso Alberti drums. The group recently headlined at Yoshi’s Jazz Club in Oakland, California.
A Few Kind Words . . .
Roots Moderne | The Zine for Adventurous Guitarists
“Slide guitar is as rootsy as it gets, but Carl Weingarten has taking the technique into realms that would astonish Elmore James and perhaps even give Ry Cooder pause. Tapping the strings both in front of and behind the slide, scraping it against the strings Weingarten creates washes of delayed and looped tones for a cinematic journey in sound. Honing his art over three decades has produced a singular voice that honors the slide’s history while pushing it into the future.”
Something Else!
“I’m often amazed at the technique displayed by some of the world’s finest guitarists, but over time, I’ve also come to appreciate the sounds wrung from a guitar by some of the more out-of-the-box practitioners of the instrument. Robert Fripp, Richard Pinhas, and even a brilliant technician like Pat Metheny create some amazing noises from his Synclavier guitar. There’s someone else who has quietly been blazing his trail in creating textural sonicscapes from six strings and a fret board, and if you’re into this kind of stuff, you should get to know his name: Carl Weingarten.
Carl’s brand of instrumental music is often labeled “ambient”. Influenced early on by the blues, Weingarten is proficient at guitar, slide guitar and dobro. He’s also a champ at looping, a demon at digital delays and a master of the mighty EBow. Weingarten doesn’t rely just the normal tools of the trade to make new music, he comes up with a few of his own. That’s a good part of why his music stands a bit apart from others in his field. While, say, Pinhas bolsters his ambience with a metal edge, Weingarten supplements his with the earth-bound sounds of the slide guitar and other blues and rock-inspired tones.
There’s more to Weingarten that I have room to talk about here (he’s and accomplished photographer, holds a degree in cinema production and has had his own record label Multiphase Records since 1980, for instance), but there’s plenty enough to dissertate on his solo recordings alone. A fine survey of Weingarten’s work can be found in the compilation Hand In The Sand: A Collection 1990-2004." --S. Victor Aaron
