This is the fourth installment in a series following my musical journey to the present day. If you're following along, thank you!
Previous Posts in the Series
My Musical Journey - Part 1
My Musical Journey - Part 2
My Musical Journey - Part 3
We've got up to the beginning of 2004 in the story that began in 1991. I've got my Lakewood M-14 and my Heiner Dreizehnter Model A, and I've finally met my biggest guitar hero Tony McManus. I'm spending a lot of time playing on my own and talking guitars on Internet forums.
I'll talk a bit less now about guitar acquisitions and sales as there have been many. I will just touch on what came and went, but focus more now on the playing and the people I met along the way.
Little Brother Jams
I can't recall exactly when I met Little Brother online, but it must've been in 2003. He was prolific on the guitar forums and, in 2003, held his first acoustic jam at his home in Conyers, GA, USA. I didn't go, but I enjoyed reading about it on the forums. There was a lot of buzz and it was a great success. So much so, in fact, that he held them annually for the next few years.
The first one I attended was in 2004 and what a trip that was! First though, a minor diversion to talk about El McMeen.
El McMeen
I discovered El McMeen's music around 2003, possibly on the Celtic Guitar Talk forum. Remember those forums I mentioned earlier on which I spent so much time? Well, after finding the wonderful world of Celtic fingerstyle guitar through my introduction to Tony McManus, I decided to put my new-found web design skills to the test and set up my own forum, Celtic Guitar Talk. It's still online, but only because it contains a lot of great content and I don't want it to disappear. It was pretty popular for a few years. El was another musician with a prolific catalogue of fingerstyle guitar, including a lot of arrangements of Celtic music.
In late 2003, I contacted him to ask if he would give me some remote lessons. The Internet wasn't robust enough at the time, but I would send him DVDs that I burned of my playing and he would critique by email. It wasn't a great success, but that's more down to me than to him.
However, as I'd booked my flights to go to Little Brother's jam in 2004, I thought I'd tie in a trip to visit El in New Jersey and get an extended face-to-face lesson with him. And that's just what I did. I left Atlanta, flew to Newark, hired a car and drove to El's home for two extended lessons on fingerstyle guitar. Then drove to JFK for my flight home. Deal!
Georgia on my Mind
I flew to Atlanta in September 2004 and Little Brother picked me up and took me to his home. I was one of the first to arrive, as I flew on the Thursday to give myself a bit of time to get over the flight. This became the pattern for future jams too. I freshened up at LB's then we headed out to Northside Tavern, a great little blues joint in downtown Atlanta, where I got to meet Mudcat for the first time. Mudcat's a blues guy - the real deal. Northside had a really great blues vibe about it and LB was a regular in there, playing gigs and jamming with the blues cats. It was wonderful.
Here's a video of jam host Little Brother playing with the wonderful Bill Sheffield in 2004.
Guitar players from all over the USA attended the jams, and a couple of Brits. I was made to feel very welcome and I had the best weekend I’d ever had. It was there that I broke my performing cherry in 2004. To be honest, I can’t remember that much about it, except how nervous I was. I thought I had some video footage and photos of the jam, but I’ve not been able to find them. They might have got lost in a hard drive crash a couple of years ago. I also can’t find anyone else’s photos as all the guitar forums that were around in those days have gone. It’s a real shame.
All I have is a video of the man I became good friends with, Dave Skowron of Red Bear Trading, my Brook Bovey guitar that I've managed to harvest from Facebook.
This was also where I heard bluegrass music for the very first time. There were a bunch of guys from Kentucky and Tennessee that had a little bluegrass jam in the garage in 2004 - guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonies, and I was spellbound. My love of that style of music has only grown since then and I played in a bluegrass band for the last three years, finishing in December 2017.
I attended Little Brother's jams every year between 2004 and 2007 and it was the highlight of my year. The friends I made there were lifelong and the hospitality was second to none.
Dave of Red Bear Trading and I started a business relationship after the 2004 jam and hooked up later in 2005. More on that in another post!
I picked up a new guitar that I had bought from Little Brother at the 2004 jam. He had started a company and commissioned a bunch of 12-fret L-00 styles to be built in two models - the Clarksdale Corrinna, in spruce/maple, and the Clarksdale Crossroads in mahogany. I bought a mahogany one to mark the birth of our daughter in 2004.
In 2005 I met John Thomas, author for the Fretboard Journal, Gibson guitar historian and guitar collector. That introduced me to Kim Walker's guitars for the first time and so began my 9-year wait to get my own Kim Walker guitar. More on that to follow.
It was also at the 2005 jam that I won a raffle prize donated by Santa Cruz Guitar Company dealer Kelvyn to order a custom guitar at cost price, the result of which was my Vintage Artist model.
I broke my teaching cherry at that jam too - giving a Celtic workshop focussing mainly on dropped D and DADGAD. It was actually quite fun and I began teaching at home on the back of it.
In 2007 I was there for my birthday and was surprised on the day by receiving a Soundseat from the jam attendees. Amazing.
There was a jam in 2008, which I missed because we'd just moved to Scotland from Luxembourg and just couldn't manage it. The 2008 wasn't at Little Brother's place - I'm not sure why, but that turned out to be the last one until a revival one-off jam in 2011, which happily coincided with my 40th birthday.
The 2011 jam turned out to the be the last one, and I'm all the richer for having attended these wonderful events and meeting so many friends.
Next up: selling picks to fund a trip to Steve Kaufman's Acoustic Kamp!
Photo Gallery
Click image below to go to Flickr Album.