Transatlantic Guitar Trio combines Django, Chet Atkins and more
Richard Smith, Joscho Stephan and Rory Hoffman performs at Alva’s in San Pedro. Photo by Jefferson Graham
If you love great music, and watching three master musicians at the top of their game, do yourself a favor and get hip to the Transatlantic Guitar Trio.
Take German gypsy guitar master Joscho Stephan, who plays in the style of Django Reinhardt and two Nashville guitarists, Richard Smith, who usually performs solo shows in the Chet Atkins/Jerry Reed school, and Rory Hoffman, a blind multi-instrumentalist who plays the guitar on his lap and you’ve got the trio, currently on their third tour of America, which ends May 14 in Las Vegas.
Smith describes them as a “power guitar trio” that tries to play something for everyone: from Atkins and Django standards to music by the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson.
They wowed audiences last week in San Pedro at Alva’s. Friday they will be at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, Sunday at the Civic Center in Mission Viejo and Monday in Santa Barbara at the Soho, before closing in a Saturday house concert in West L.A. and then a gig at City Hall in Henderson, Nevada, near Las Vegas.
Stephan and Hoffman will then return home, while Smith will remain in California, with gigs next week in Culver City, Westwood and Santa Monica.
German guitarist Joscho Stephan
Stephan, who plays in in Germany with a gypsy jazz trio, says it’s the versatility of the Transatlantic trio that he finds inspiring. “If you go out with three fingerstyle players, or three flamenco players, everybody is playing the same style. The fact that we all have different styles is what makes us unique.”
Take Hoffman for example. With the Trio he’s a third guitar player, whose handmade archtop guitar features a bottom string that lets him double as a bassist. Back home in Nashville, he plays with many different groups–polka, jazz, country and western and swing, but his main instrument back there is accordion. “There are a million great guitar players in Nashville,” he says. “Not so for accordion.” He also serves as a pianist for a Nashville group as well.
Hoffman’s take on the guitar is unique: instead of holding it upright, like most do, he plays it lap-style, across his legs, something he says that started at age 3 because he couldn’t grab the neck traditionally, and has stuck ever since. He’s been playing music professionally–get this–since age 3.
Asked about playing guitar “left handed,” he says there’s no such thing. “Ever heard of a left-handed piano?” he asks. “You play with both hands. Same with the guitar.”
Multi-instrumentalist Rory Hoffman
The tours are short because Stephan likes to get back home to Germany, but the group will be doing a European tour later this year and hope to return here in 2024. How do they choose this area to play in?
“We love California,” says Smith. “There are 41 million people who live here. Most other places we could pick up some weekend gigs. In California, I can book us every night of the week, because there’s so many people.”
Guitarist Richard Smith
Their music would be considered niche, but in Germany and here, “we always get at least 100 to 200 people showing up,” says Stephan.
The three guys met separately at jams, and formed the trio, despite the location differences. They’ve recorded two albums in their various home studios, apart from each other, by e-mailing their parts and mixing them together. Their CDs are only available for purchase at the shows.
On stage, they play ultra-fast guitar licks, in three-part harmony, despite not being together to rehearse before they go on stage. Smith says they learned how to do it by listening to the mixes that were e-mailed.
Unlike big groups with a record contract and tour support, there’s no big tour bus taking them from hotel to hotel. While here, they drive together to every gig in Smith’s Toyota Rav4, and usually stay in people’s homes. “This is the glamorous life of a musician,” says Stephan. “Staying in a beautiful house with beautiful people.”
Smith, as a matter of fact, has been driving non-stop since earlier this year, when he left Nashville for gigs in Florida, made his way out to Arkansas and Colorado for more work, and eventually got to California.
He loves touring the country, especially leaving the cities. “I often go to places you would never otherwise go to, that are not on tourist map, but great to visit, places you drive through that end up being little oasis’s.”
How do they know of him there, and get enough people to fill a room?
“It’s the musicians thing, one gig leads to another,” Smith says. “They will promote it to their crowd. It’s all about grass roots.”
For guitar geeks, Smith plays a nylon string guitar made by Kirk Sand of Laguna Beach, while Stephan’s steel string, in the style of Django’s guitar, is also homemade, in Germany, by Guergen Volkert, and Hoffman’s archtop homemade guitar is by Nashville luthier John Boscarino.