Saucetone is a unique fusion of African and Hawaiian slide guitar. Refreshing honest music, the slide guitar is used in brand new ways and combined with programmed beats, African guitars and a double bass, to create a truly brand new sound.
Let’s face it, lap steel isn’t your average guitarist’s choice of axe. Just ask South African lap steel player Richard Bruyns. "Besides the violin and the saxophone, it probably has the closest sound to the human voice," says Bruyns explaining his predilection for an instrument originally invented in Hawaii at the cusp of the 20th Century before finding it’s way into blues, country, rock, pop, African and Indian music.
One of only a handful of lap steel players working in South Africa, Bruyns’ guitar journey began back in high school when he discovered the blues by pure chance. "I heard something on the radio that I thought was jazz. So I asked my dad and he played me Weather Report. But it was too complex a sound and I’d heard something raw. When he played me Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac I knew what it was - the blues. It actually turned out that it was Muddy Waters I’d heard".
It was this intuitive appreciation for the bouncing thumbed bass lines, picked and sung melodies and foot-tapped drum sounds of pioneering acoustic blues men like Blind Lemon Jefferson and the Reverend Gary Davis that kick started his dream of becoming a solo guitarist. A stint managing a CD shop during the early to mid 90s saw Bruyns expanding his listening horizons to include jazz, bluegrass, country and beyond. Now a fully-fledged finger picking guitar fanatic he honed his practical and theoretical skills under the tutelage of eminent acoustic guitarist Tony Cox. Yet rather than get caught up in the chordal cul-de-sac of Western composition, in the tonal roots based structures of African guitarists like Ali Farka Toure and the slide guitar technique of Ry Cooder he recognised his fundamental desire to improvise.
It was a desire that would ultimately find a voice on the steel guitar. "It’s a very free instrument," explains Bruyns "with more ‘open’ tunings than your standard guitars. Listen to guys like Kelly Joe Phelps or Buddy Emmons and you’ll hear their sound is free. And of course, Indian guys like Debashish Bhattacharya are the masters."
It was this tonal freedom that he brought to Greg Donnelly’s underground alt.country band Waxy O’Connor, experimental hip-hop collective the Original Evergreens and his own jam based combo Colossal Head. Following the fall out surrounding the Original Evergreens final CD release (1999), Bruyns took an hiatus from live performance, spending a few years as a PR for Sony Music to learn how the music industry functions before releasing his self-financed, independent debut album under the moniker of Saucetone in 2004.
"In many ways Saucetone is like a CV," informs Bruyns. Indeed, his collaborative outing with guitarist and programmer Antonio Orrico tunes the listener into an appetising cocktail of mellifluous acoustic blues, traditional Hawaiian folk and advert friendly neo-lounge flavours and proves to be an effective sonic calling card from a guitarist of rare idiomatic versatility.
Gear Check
Bruyns uses a Gibson Epiphone Acoustic with an action raised specifically for lap slide and a Goldtone lap steel guitar with a Sunrise acoustic pick up and an LR Baggs DI Box plugged into a Fender Champion Amp.
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