I am aware of how much of a social media junkie I have become. It’s kind of like a scratching block for the obsessive / compulsive type. I honestly try to use it to look up other guitar players and factoids and music in general, but then get lost in the minutiae of fast food philosophers, and McDonalds grade spirituality being slung across the wire. It really has become a marketer’s playground of self-promotion, pandering, and sludge for the soul. Like I am doing now. But I defer.

About 10 years ago, I found myself in Nashville, and walked in to a honky tonk on Lower Broadway (think that’s what it’s called!). This street was pretty much what you’d expect – colorful neon lights, inviting honky tonks with ads for $2 beers, and people dressed in a Tennessee type of way, etc. Well, this one place had a country band playing in a very informal setting. As I walked in I spotted this guitar player sitting on a pool table with a Telecaster in his hand, and plugged in to a Fender Princeton amp. He didn’t look like much as he slouched over, looking about as bored and jaded as someone could look, so I sort of only glanced (It’s always good to judge a book by its cover). It took a few moments to take in the surroundings and soak in the atmosphere of this place, and to sort of “get” where I was. But when his turn came to solo I knew. He barely flinched – and my God! The things that came out of that guitar. The most twisted, hillbilly, bluegrass licks I had ever heard up to that point that quite simply tore my head off. I had no head, basically. This guy was like nothing I have seen on the west coast, or anywhere else for that matter. It was disturbing how easily he threw out this phenomenal, twangy, genius. In a good way of course. I looked at my friend Karl (who was with me) and probably gave him a look of fear, after of course, my $2 beer spit-take.

I walked down the street and turned in to the next place. There was a boogie woogie piano player ala Jerry Lee Lewis. Same thing. Two words; holy crap! (Oh, and another wasted beer via spit-take). And this repeated itself in every place I walked in to. What the hell was going on around here? So I finally broke down and asked a cab driver a very astute question, “What the hell is going on around here?!” He told me that most of the session and tour guys played here from 6-9 during the week when they are off tour or not working in the studio to keep their chops up. I think the “very descriptive” epiphany that popped in to my brain went something along the lines of, “Huh”?

One night later I was in Memphis and same thing; Blues players all up and down Beale Street playing like the masters. A sixteen year old throwing out BB King songs like they were nothing. This was a serious uprising for this guitar players now shattered ego.

When I got back to the west coast I thought about those nights, and had a theory that you really only could play that way if you lived there. To receive it through osmosis or something. I tried to gather all the material I could find but still couldn’t quite stay with it, because it wasn’t being played here. It wasn’t in the air. And the further I searched, the more I came up short. The competitive balance in those places was on an entirely different level. You couldn’t be just okay, because the guy next to you was throwing down greatness nightly, and the audience had got used to hearing it that way. They could tell the difference.

So now I use social media to seek out these same people who are not only promoting, but posting video of licks and tips and things of that nature. But it still isn’t the same as seeing it live in a small setting where you pick up the nuance, the sound, the overtones, and the vibe. And every now and then I find it. It’s like digital travel. Every time I travel somewhere I hear how the musicians are doing basically the same thing as I am, but just a little different. That has to be because of geography and what they are used to hearing. Only difference is that now I can do it from my computer chair. But inevitably, I get lost in the hamster cage that is Facebook and Twitter and lose focus. Wait, what was I saying?