I want to introduce you to one of my favourite acoustic guitar players. His name is Tommy Emmanuel. He is originally from Australia and briefly lived in England to move permanently to Nashville in USA. In his music, Tommy Emmanuel combines elements of country, jazz, blues, rock and popular music. The primary influence in his music comes from the great Chet Atkins, Merle Travis and Jerry Reed, among many others.

If you love the sound of the guitar, especially the acoustic guitar, you need to give him a go. I initially saw him on YouTube in 2006 playing ‘Guitar Boogie’, and since then he kept coming up in all guitar-related YouTube searches.

I even developed a habit of watching Tommy’s interviews whenever I felt unmotivated or down about my guitar playing, and he has always managed to inspire me to pick up the guitar and practice. I loved his honest and straightforward approach to playing the guitar and practising.

As a rock and blues guitar player, I always had a sweet spot for Tommy’s solo acoustic guitar. Finally around four years ago around the time my son was born, I have started playing more and more acoustic( probably so he wouldn’t wake up;-) )

Today I am thrilled to share that I can play some of the songs of Tommy Emmanuel I could never dream about playing four years ago. One of them is ‘Only Elliot’ and the ‘Halfway Home’ both having a very upbeat feel to it and making me feel great! They are also great crowd pleasers at Tommy’s gigs. Please check out the videos of me playing if you have a minute.

The songs of Tommy Emmanuel you must listen are ‘Angelina’ , ‘Fuel’ ‘It’s Never Too Late’, ‘Lewis and Clark’, ‘Papa George’ You also should check his rendition of Classical Gas by Mason Williams.

Finally, I hope that you will find some inspiration from listening to his music and possibly you will get something out of it that you can use in your guitar playing.