A front row seat to inspiring guitarists

This story is part of a web series called Music that Matters with the host of CBC Yukon's Airplay, Dave White. Dave sits down with Yukoners to talk about five pieces of music that inspire them. 

Manfred Janssen's guitar playing has been part of the Yukon music scene for decades. He's been involved in a lot of bands and projects, playing a variety of styles on an assortment of acoustic and electric instruments.

So we thought it would be good to sit down with him and find out which songs inspired and influenced him.

Bruce Cockburn's early classic Going To The Country was his first choice.

"When I first heard this, it was from a friend of mine playing it at a coffee house," he said. "I thought 'who's song is this that you're playing, and the guitar work, how did you do this, how did you learn it?'

"He told me it was Bruce Cockburn, so I dug the album out and started to learn it and just got into it more and more."

Janssen's second choice was a tune that has inspired countless guitarists over years: Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix.

"I'd just never heard anything like this before in my life," said Janssen. "For me it was a real game changer. I had sort of been into the whole acoustic thing, and played some R&B earlier, and then I decided I wanted to get back into playing electric guitar. And then when I heard him play it was, 'Oh, boy.'"

The Band's The Weight, a true Canadian classic, was Janssen's third choice.

"Back in the day I used to play in a club in Norville, Ontario, called the Riviera Club.... A couple of shows we did were with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. So at the end of this show we did on a Sunday night we were all sitting at the table and little did I know it was actually Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko.... Little did I know they would become The Band."

Janssen chose another classic from another musical giant for his next selection.

"Kashmir [by Led Zeppelin] has a very odd feel in it, everything's in different times and the tuning Jimmy Page used in that song inspired me to get more into opening tunings and play this kind of music.... Very cool tune."

Finally, Janssen picked Boy In The Bubble from Paul Simon's Graceland album for his last song.

"It goes back to the synthesis of the two cultures," he said. "There's this called called township jive and accordion jive. It's street music from Soweto [in Johannesburg, South Africa]. When I heard this I thought this is just brilliant. The rhythms, the jangly guitars, the accordion.... I got the chance to go to South Africa a couple of years ago and actually saw that sort of music played on the street."