Hello and welcome to the instalment of a series of articles about the guitar players you really should know. The purpose of this series of short articles is spreading the word about the good stuff rather than trying to look smart.
The first guitar player I highly recommend you check out is Doyle Dykes. Doyle is a fingerstyle acoustic guitar player who continues the tradition of great Chet Atkins. Merle Travis and Jerry Reed. In my opinion, he is a great guitar player in his own right.
I was fortunate to see Doyle Dykes live in Epsom! He came to Guitar Guitar in 2016 to promote the Godin guitars that by the way, are a superb guitar company from Canada.
What I love about Doyle is all Chet Atkins style Boom-Chick picking as well as his banjo rolls, open string cascading licks and fast artificial harmonics. The unique thing that Doyle does and I haven’t seen it anywhere else is: the string bends behind the guitar nut and three-finger tremolo picking that sounds truly amazing.

Doyle doesn’t limit himself to only playing country music. You will hear his music influences from many genres, including classical, jazz, blues and rock and even pop!

The songs you need to check are: Jazz In The Box, Marthas Kitchen, Guitar Poor( that should be every guitar players anthem), Bridging the Gap, Country Fried Pickin’, Celtic Cowboy, Thumpy, Blue Cathedral and finally his rendition of Classical Gas on a 12 string guitar which sounds even more epic than Tommy Emmanuel’s version.

Doyle Dykes puts the music first. He is a showman and a real entertainer, but he doesn’t play just to show off or please other guitar players. Doyle plays from his heart to ordinary people. He is also a great storyteller!

On a personal level, Doyle changed my life and the direction I took as a guitarist. He inspired me to get into fingerstyle guitar and start using a thumb pick. Just before coming on stage at Guitar Guitar he sat beside my wife and me and smiled then went on stage and did one of the most memorable guitar performances in my life!

A while ago now I have published this short video lesson featuring Doyles’ open string cascading lick. The open string idea came originally from Chet Atkins but Doyle Dykes took it to the next level. Perhaps it’s something you could work into your own music style. These open string cascading licks are great as song endings or even some short lead breaks or just nice guitar fills to spice things up. I hope you will enjoy this short demonstration. I totally stole it from Doyle’s video;-)

If you wish to look up Doyle visit his website: www.doyledykes.com

and check out his YouTube channel: Doyle Dykes on YouTube

I will be back shortly with another guitar player recommendation for you. If you wish to share some of your favourite guitar players and feature them here use the contact form to let me know. Also if you are into fingerstyle guitar and you struggle a bit feel free to get in touch to arrange some lessons. I offer the first lesson free of charge wherever you are in the World!