TommyFest in Virginia

Thursday night I met friends, Ted, Don, Mike and Linda for refreshments in Hampton and from there we headed to the Tommy Emmanual concert at the Ferguson Center for the Arts at Christopher Newport University. (Quick aside, the Ferguson Center is a great place for a concert — very intimate, approximately 450 seats with not a bad one in the house).

For those of you not familiar, Tommy Emmanuel is a native of Australia, with a small but strong army of fans world-wide. When I say small, I mean relatively small... say, compared to Britanny Spears. Tommyfest, as it is appropriately called, is a yearly three-day event but this was the first time I had made it. I knew of Tommy Emmanuel's music and had watched his live performances on youtube, and I knew he was going to be good, but I had no idea what I was really in for. I find myself wanting to write to y'all about this experience, but the fact is I don't really know where to begin. TE does so many different things on the guitar so well that it leaves me kind of speechless.

I don't want to get into the list of exhausted adjectives used already to describe his performances, so let me just say this: TE played that poor guitar within an inch of its life (and that poor guitar looked like it too); at times sounding like Earl Klugh, at times Chet Atkins, then Stevie Ray Vaughn, even Django Reinhardt. That said, don't let me make you think that TE is anything approaching a copycat artist; there was never any question who was playing the guitar here. It was all-Tommy-all-the-time. But he had incorporated the styles of many other great guitar players and blended them into a style that is all his own. Call it alchemy. At one point he started playing percussion on the guitar, with a snare brush in one hand. With eyes shut you would have thought an aboriginal marching band was strutting proudly through the hall.

A great part of my enjoyment too, came from TE's totally self-deprecating persona. even acting as stagehand for the other players in the show. Anthony Snape, another Australian, evidently hand-picked by Tommy opened the show, followed by Stephen Bennett of Gloucester, Virginia who later joined TE for a few duets. Both very good performers.

I remember afterwards saying to my friend Ted Pollard, who is a seriously good guitar player that I think I'm becoming a "total Tommy Emmanuel sell-out". I guess I could say that he's a pillar of modern guitar technique. That sounds lofty, doesn't it? In a very strange way, I felt like I had never heard anyone play the guitar before (and I've heard some of the best).

As I said before, the videos don't do him justice but I want to include one here for your enjoyment anyway. This is TE playing his original song "Angelina". The tune was in my mind for the next several days. In a couple of shots you can see the scratches on the finish of that poor guitar. Note too, the hybrid technique he's using with his right hand — playing with pick and fingers. I suggest you look at all of his stuff on youtube. Click: Tommy Emmanuel's Angelina.

Oh what the heck, here's another fun one of TE playing (click:) "Mombassa", another original with percussion solo. Listen carefully at the beginning and hear him affecting the sonorous sound of the didgeridoo.