Tommy Emmanuel, CGP

In my post about our time at the Phila Folk Fest, I said there were a few performers I needed to talk about in detail. Tommy Emmanuel is first and foremost.

He's a fingerstyle guitarist who I've discovered over the past year via Pandora, and he was the performer who I was most excited about when the Folk Fest announced this year's lineup. His style reminded me a bit of Chet Atkins, who I loved as a boy from my Dad's record collection. I wasn't completely surprised to find that he grew up idolizing Chet Atkins and spent endless hours trying to figure out his fingerpicking style.

I also found out the source of the "CGP" initials that he uses as a title, and which is imprinted on the 12th fret of his guitars. Chet Atkins coined the term "Certified Guitar Player", and gave the honor to himself and four others (I'll save you the Googling: John Knowles, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner, and Jerry Reed.)

Tommy was the next-to-last performer on the Saturday night concert, but we had a surprise. Janis Ian was two slots before him. I didn't know that much about her, except that she was a 70's folkie who had a big hit with "At Seventeen", which I love - I think it's a gorgeous song. Well, at the end of her set, Janis said that she'd just met Tommy Emmanuel for the first time backstage, and that he said he was a big fan, and asked if he could play a couple of songs with her. She said her first instinct was to say "no", but she reconsidered and brought him out.

They played "At Seventeen", and it was absolutely magical - a moment you couldn't script and couldn't re-create. The kind of moment you just consider yourself privileged to witness. The highlight of the Fest by far for me.

Then an hour later he came out and played his own set, and it was killer. He's an unbelievable guitar player, a fantastic showman, and seems like a friendly down-to-earth guy. He did things that just left me shaking my head, asking myself if I'd actually seen what I thought I saw.

Since getting home, I've been gorging myself on Tommy Emmanuel links and articles and YouTube videos. Here are a few highlights:

• TED Talk: My Life As A One-Man Band (if you look at one link, look at this)
• Drivetime (written for his daughter)
• Beatles Medley
• Tommy explains his stage setup

I saw somewhere that he gives 300 concerts a year. I thought that must be a typo, but he repeats that fact in his TED talk. I can only shake my head - that's 6 shows a week, 50 weeks a year. That sounds to me like a *crushing* travel load. But he talks about it as if he enjoys it. Boggling. But if that means he'll be coming around here soon, I'm all in favor of it.

Guitar Lessons

I've written before about the three months of guitar lessons I took...geez, over three years ago. It was an incredible learning experience - and as I wrote in that last link, I stopped because there was too much coming at me too quickly (the old expression "trying to drink from a fire hose" comes to mind.)

The things we worked on have stayed with me - technical things like how to hold the pick, and music theory things like why you memorize and practice different scales (surprisingly, it turns out they're not just something that music teachers use to torture students, they're the backbone of soloing and improvisation.) The knowledge of pentatonic scales has improved my guitar, bass, and mandolin playing a lot.

I mentioned in my last post that the pendulum of my attention is swinging back from the mandolin (which has been my primary focus for the past year or so) back to the guitar. I still love the mandolin and play it every day. But there's a new Martin in the house, I just can't keep my hands off of it.

I mentioned holding the pick. I'd never known the right way to hold it, so I'd been doing it wrong for my entire life. But changing it felt *way* too awkward, and I figured I never would. When I started mandolin, I did it the right way, as I was starting from scratch and had no bad habits to break. After a year of intensive practice, that's now the only way that feels natural. So I sat down with the Martin and started going up and down the scale while holding the pick the right way - and to my complete shock, I went quickly and cleanly (relative to anything I'd ever been able to do before) up and down the fretboard.

Holy smokes, what a pleasant surprise. My mandolin practicing had also paid off on the guitar. This gives me a string desire to improve technically, both in flatpicking and fingerpicking. I've liked the online mandolin lessons I've been taking through ArtistWorks, so I signed up for three months of the flatpicking course, taught by Bryan Sutton, who apparently is a big name in bluegrass guitar. Details soon on how it's going.

August Catch-up

A quick miscellaneous catch-up post, before a whole bunch of new stuff happens:

* Our annual Ocean City, MD vacation was two weeks ago. For the second straight year, I've brought my travel guitar with me, and playing it on the beach at night is a blast. I sit on the wall, facing away from the boardwalk, so no one really hears me (which is good - I don't want to be noticed or heard by people walking by.) One guy did sit down close to me one night, and after a while said to me, "That sounds great! Santana!" I smiled and thanked him - even though I was playing Hotel California.

* Eight days to folk fest! We're quite excited, both about the performers on the bill (final schedule is here), and even more about the jamming and the whole camp scene. Much more about this soon.

* July's Rosewood gigs at the bakery and the Craft Ale House were fun and successful. We've been offered more dates at both venues, so we'll be busy into the fall. We added a few songs into the set list, and one we really liked (and that went over very well) was Robert Plant's Band of Joy rockabilly version of "Rock and Roll." (Band of Joy version is here, our version at the bakery is here - Brother Chris can be heard singing along!)

* I've written before about what a huge amount of admiration I have for John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. This video is so interesting. He talks about how he started playing mandolin - basically, he'd heard it, thought the sound was interesting, and wanted a small instrument that he could take with him anywhere. So he saw one and picked it up on a whim. What he doesn't mention is that one year later he was playing it on Zeppelin albums and onstage as an integral part of their acoustic set. Boggling. And then he talks about going to bluegrass festivals and jams now - just walking up and buying a ticket! - and being surprised that Mike Marshall and Chris Thile want to play with him. I just shake my head.

* My Martin is the sweetest-sounding baby that ever existed. Well, you'll have a hard time convincing me that she's not. I'm playing every day, and it's pure pleasure. I'm still playing mandolin every day too, but the pendulum is definitely swinging back toward the guitar, from the mandolin (which has been my main focus for the past year.) More about that very soon.