I've been playing the guitar since I was about 10, which equates to around 1966. Of course I wanted to play because of the Beatles, just like every other kid at that time.
I absolutely lusted for a neighbor's electric guitar, which my Dad brought me for Christmas. The kid was smart...he sold it to my Dad so he could get one that a person could actually play. I think Dad paid him $45.00, so it wasn't a painful deal. Anyway, Dad didn't realize that it needed an amp, so the day after Christmas we hit the music store for a used 30 watt amp. I was in heaven then.
My first garage band was like most...friends/neighbors, etc... Our first gig was the school PTA meeting, which I'm sure amused the hell out of the parents. We played all the classics (which were new at the time). Gloria... Louie, Louie...Wipe Out, etc... In a word, we stunk. I got to see the bass player a few years ago at my 20 year high school reunion. We had a good laugh over those days. I'd still like to find our drummer though....he was our leader/big cheese/head honcho, etc... Haven't seen him since junior high school though. Craig Campbell, if you're out there, drop me a note will ya?
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A number of garage bands and years later, I started getting into the acoustic guitar because of Stephen Stills....Buffalo Springfield just blew me away. And then the later Crosby, Stills & Nash just pounded in another nail. But I still felt something was missing, yet I couldn't put my finger on it (no pun intended). Then my best friend (my main guitar buddy by then) Mike O'Brien and I snuck into a St. Louis Missouri Loggins & Messina concert in late '69 or early '70......and some "band" by the name of "Leo Kottke" (http://www.leokottke.com) was opening for them. Just goes to show you how podunk we were.
Kottke came out....and simply blew us away. Right then I knew I had found what had been missing. We had never heard of this guitar style before, but we didn't waste any time finding out about it. In quick sucession, we "discovered" John Fahey, Peter Lang, Leadbelly, Big Bill Bronzey...and on and on.
Oh yeah, Loggins & Messina were okay that night. :-)
Since then, I've never stopped playing. In '98, I ran across some guitar nuts when I first got onto the internet that were just as engrossed by this style of guitar as I was. This group turned into the TABPigs (http://www.tabpigs.org) which has the largest archives of Kottke tab on the net. They are a great bunch of folks....but I wouldn't tell that to their face. However, this group really helped me along in my playing. Sad, but true!
I moved to Nashville in 1992 (via St. Louis, Chicago, and Houston) and started playing out solo in '99. Not counting some initial recording attempts that I really wasn't satisfied with, I self-produced and recorded my first CD "When Pigs Fly...". It is an all instrumental CD of 6 and 12 string guitar, but with absolutely none of that new-age noodling that you hear so much of today. Yeah, in case you couldn't tell, I don't like that stuff either. Give me a melody any day!
I play in Nashville on a regular basis, so check the calendar page for dates/venues. Also check out the "music samples" link, for mp3 samples of some of my tunes, or the "album" page for ordering my CD.
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