Tommy Emmanuel

Guitarist extraordinaire!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Lefts Podcast. My
guest today is guitarist Extraordinary Tommy and men Will. Tommy
has a new album, Living in the Light. Tell me
about the new album.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Tommy, Thanks, Bob. How are you today? By the way,
I'm pretty good.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm thrilled to be talking to you.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Thank you. Yeah, Well, the same here the new album,
Living in the Light. It's just it was something that
I'd been writing a few songs on the road and
I was home taking a walk along the Percy Priest
Lake here in Nashville with a friend of mine, and

(00:51):
he said, well, you just walked three miles and you're
not even raising a sweat, you know. He said, Man,
you look so well. You must be living in the light.
And the moment he said that, I was like, that's
a great phrase, living in the light. I love that.
So it's kind of what started the ball rolling on

(01:13):
the name of the album and all that and the
direction of everything. Just that one conversation. And I had
written some songs and one called Scarlett's World. Scarlett is
my oldest granddaughter, she's seven, and you know, I was

(01:33):
just thinking one day, what the world will be like
when she's twenty one years old, you know, what will
our world be like? And what is Scarlet's world going
to be? So that kind of gave me some a
kind of a theme to work towards. And I have

(01:55):
another granddaughter named Georgia, and so I wrote the song
Little Georgia for her. And then basically I wanted to
work with a man named Van Vance Powell who's a
great producer, a great engineer, and I like working with

(02:17):
people who have, you know, a great experience behind the
sound desk and all that. And I listened to a
lot of his work with Chris Stapleton and Jack White
and stuff like that, and I thought this, if I
could get to work with him, it would be wonderful.

(02:37):
So we contacted him, and I could only get him
a year in advance. I could only get him for
four days, so I had to get the whole album done, finished,
and mixed in four days, and we did it. We
finished at like six o'clock on the day on the
fourth day. We finished everything. So that's how it came

(02:59):
up about some of the songs on there that are
that are going to come out on video where that's
the take And I only did it once and we
filmed it and there it is. That's how that came out.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Okay, what is the process? Do you wait for inspiration
or do you say, I haven't had an album in
a long time. We're always thinking about recording in the future.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
I never think about recording when I'm writing and stuff.
A songwriter like me, even though I very rarely write lyrics,
my songs are still songs to me. They still tell
the story even without words, and that's kind of how
I approach it. I always my brain does this automatically.

(03:52):
When I start writing a song, I'm looking for the
lead singer's part in the melody, in other words, and
then I'm looking for the band to do interesting chords underneath.
So the lead can have the same kind of melody,
but the chords can change underneath, and so that makes
the song have a certain repetition that your ear loves,

(04:16):
but your senses want to feel something a little different,
So you do the same melody, but you change the
chords underneath. Things like that, And I always think that way.
I always think of, you know, how can I make
this be repetition but yet interesting all the way? And

(04:37):
things like that.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
You know, so in terms of writing, are you writing
all the time or thoughts come into your brain or
do you say I'm going to write now, let me
sit down and write.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
I wish I could just turn it on. But the
truth is, Bob, a songwriter waits patiently for something to
happen you. You wait for you either get a real
good idea that comes to you because of something. Normally,
for me, it's somebody I meet, something I hear, or

(05:14):
something I watch. And I know I've written many songs
from watching films and I just get I get inspired
by a story or a character or how a movie
is made. I remember when I watched Lincoln, the beautiful
Steven Spielberg film, and because of that song, Because of

(05:40):
that movie, I wrote the song Old Photographs. And when
I was writing the song, I was an old lady
in Ireland sitting playing piano. That's what I was in
my head, and the song came to life in that

(06:00):
kind of way. And I was also reminded of my
grandparents who have been gone for I don't know, sixty
five years or something. And I was reminded of when
I used to visit my grandparents and my grandmother would
take out the little cookie tin and open it and

(06:24):
there'd be all these old photographs in there, and she'd
tell me stories about everyone in the photo and photos
of my uncle's that never came back from the war
and things like that. And that's kind of how that
song appeared, because that movie put me in that frame
of mind. You know.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Okay, let's drill down a little bit further. You're sitting there,
you're watching the movie. Do you start to write the
song in your head while you're watching or do you
try to maintain the mood after the film ends? And
how long after is the period of inspiration before it

(07:06):
feeds away or does it never feed away?

Speaker 2 (07:09):
If I'm totally engrossed in the film, then I'll stay
there till the end, and then if I feel like
I can write something or I've got an idea, then
I'll just pursue it. You know, I'm like a dog
with a bone, and when it comes to it, if
I've got one good idea, I'm going to I'm going
to chew it to death until it becomes something. You know,

(07:33):
but it has to be My instincts have to tell
me that it's good enough, you know. I remember when
I was writing Scarlett's World. And it started out like
a ballad, and I liked the I like the melody
because it was one note. And then the chords changed
underneath dude, and then I thought, ah, that that's all working,

(08:01):
but it's too sad. So I made it into like
a rock and roll groove, and then it became dum
dun d du that, and then it started to live
under my hands, and I ended up writing the rest
of the song. And actually I wrote a lot of

(08:25):
stuff to put in the song, trying to be clever,
and most of it I threw out because the song
itself just needed to tell the story and that's it.
So all the other stuff that I was trying to
be clever creating, I ended up tossing out because it
just wasn't working.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Okay, let's go back. Let's say you're watching Lincoln. Obviously,
you can go to a theater. You can watch it home.
When you watch it home, you can watch on demand.
Stop just to get my story straight here, You could
be watching the movie get inspired at home and stop
the movie and say I got to pick up my
gets are? Is that how it works?

Speaker 2 (09:03):
You possibly could, but I don't think i've ever done that.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
So is when you say you saw the movie Lincoln,
since that is what did you see it at home
or did you see it in the theater?

Speaker 2 (09:14):
I saw it in the theater.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Okay, you stay for the whole film. When do you
start writing the song?

Speaker 2 (09:21):
When I get when I get back to where I'm staying.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
And is it possible that Let's assume you saw the
movie and then you were in a situation for twenty
four hours where you just couldn't sit with your guitar.
Would you lose it or would you still have the inspiration?

Speaker 2 (09:39):
I've lost it a million times. Yeah. I've also written
a song called the Wide Ocean was on my album
Tommy Songs. I wrote that song completely in my head
on a flight from New York to Beijing. And because
I can play the guitar in my mind, I can

(09:59):
hear hear it and sense it and hear the inversions,
the melody and all that, I can hear it all
in my head, and I can visualize where the melody
is and all that. And then I got to Beijing,
got straight to the hotel, got my guitar out to
make sure that my hand's new where they needed to go,

(10:23):
and it was fine.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Let's just assume you're in that situation. You get into
the hotel, we start to play, you turn on your
phone or you have some recording device to make sure
you have it.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, I have voice memo on my iPhone. That's my
I've got all my song ideas on that. And you know,
during COVID, when we were in lockdown, I was approached
to write music for a film called The Tiger Rising,

(10:59):
which was a quick in Latifah movie, and the guy
who was the producer of the film was a big
fan of my music. He particularly liked my song The
Mystery and wanted to use some of that song in
the film. And I said, well, why don't you send

(11:20):
me some of the film and I'll see if I
can write something full exactly for the film. And so
I ended up doing the whole film and I wrote everything,
with the exception of the opening theme, which was written
by an LA guy. But I wrote the whole thing
and recorded bits of it on my iPhone, texted to

(11:43):
the music director of the film. He orchestrated it with
his keyboards and all that, and we dropped it in
the film bit, you know, three minutes of the film
to see that it all worked, and that's how we
wrote the whole film. And then when locke Down was
finally let go of and he was able to travel,

(12:06):
he came here to Nashville and we recorded the songs
for real with me in one studio and I did
all the guitar parts, and then we overdubbed the orchestra
the next day and put it together.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Okay, when you do get inspired and you are writing
A how quickly do you work? And B how much
do you or do you not change it thereafter?

Speaker 2 (12:37):
I'm usually a pretty fast rider. But it really really
depends on how inspired I am. But when I play
my own songs, say if it's a song I haven't
played in a while and I play it, the first

(12:57):
thing I noticed is, oh, yeah, I recognize it is
the construction of this song. I recognize that that part
there needed this, you know what I mean. So you know,
I'm still thinking like a pop songwriter. It doesn't matter
whether it's country, bluegrass, jazz, whatever, I don't care. I
always think like, I want got to get this to

(13:18):
the people. This song is for people to hear. It's
not it's not trying to be clever for the sake
of being clever or whatever it's. It's trying to write
the best song that I can, and I have to
satisfy my my barometer, my my quality control, which is

(13:39):
right here, you know. And and so because I look
at it like this, Bob, they're up in here is
all the all the clever guys. They're all throwing ideas
and they've got things going and they're you know, but
this this guy down here is the one that has
the final say.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Just for those weeks, since we're audio only, you're talking
about the guys in your head and then talking about
your heart having the final say. So, yeah, you work quickly.
Do you go back and change it before recording or
you just go and write something else.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Now, I don't play it for anybody until I know
it's absolutely one hundred percent done, and then I can't
wait to play it to people, because there is no
greater feeling than playing your new song to an audience.
That's the most exciting damn thing that I know.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, let's talk about classic rockers. They'll go on the
road and they play new music. The audience goes to
the bathroom. When you're playing live and you're playing new music.
You find the audience is unfamiliar with the music, but
they're receptive or they're less receptive.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oh, they're very receptive. And I usually opened my show
with something brand new every time. You know, it's very
rarely that I would come out and play, you know,
a very well known song of mine or something like that.
I do enjoy it sometimes, like for instance, on this

(15:23):
last tour that I just did where I played in China.
We did ten shows in China, and my song Angelina
is you know, it's really that's the song that people
are always waiting for. And when I played in the show,
I just play the first chord and sing a little

(15:45):
intro and people yell and scream, and then I go
into the body of the song and they applaud again,
and we know this song, we like this song. So
what I did on my shows in China is I
opened the show with that song and then I went

(16:07):
off into other things just for fun, just to try
something different. But normally I would open the show with
it with two to three brand new songs in a
row that people have never heard before.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Okay, to go to China. How big are the venues
you play and are the people familiar with your work.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Oh yeah. The venues are called Lifehouse. They're like rock clubs,
and some of them are like a thousand people standing,
six hundred people sitting, that kind of thing, and they're
really nice. And the in house product, the PA, the

(17:02):
sound production, and the lights and everything are really first
class and they're really modern and my team makes good
use of them, believe me. So a normal day in
China would be we would get to the city where

(17:23):
we're playing about lunchtime, check into a hotel, eat something,
have a nap for twenty minutes, then go to the venue.
My lighting director would go early so because he's got
a program the light and then me and my sound
man who's my tool manager, we go to the venue
about three o'clock and we get set up and then

(17:49):
we do a sound check and I come out and
plug in and play as if the audience are already
in kind of thing. You know. I don't waste time
noodle around on stage. I get to you know, get
to the business of getting the sound as best as
best as we can get it. And so I do this.

(18:12):
I play a few tunes and I play with a
similar intensity of the show. So we can see where
things are going. Once we're all happy with the sound
and everything, then we eat something and then I usually
do a meet and greet. I meet like one hundred
and fifty people, sign their guitars, sign autographs, get a photo,

(18:38):
and then it's showtime.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Okay, So on the road, it's the three of you.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, okay, it's my lighting director and my sound man.
Who's my tool manager?

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Okay, you're meeting these people? What are the one or
two questions they always ask?

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Will you play Angelina? Will you play Lewis and Clark?
You know, I hear the same kind of you know,
and can you give me one of your picks?

Speaker 1 (19:16):
So if I'm there and I asked for one of
your picks, what are you going to say?

Speaker 2 (19:20):
I'm going to say I've got a pocket full of
Just hang on a second, And I.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Mean, do you have a merch table at your gigs
where people can buy them?

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yes? Yeah, I was only talking about China. We definitely
had merch there, but the promoter took care of everything.
You know. It's a whole different world compared to touring
anywhere else. You can't compare it, you know, So.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Tell me some other things that are different about touring in.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
China, Well, Pristadoff, the people pay extra for the IP
ticket and for that they get a chance for me
to sign their guitar and then they get a photo
with me, and that takes time. So we set the

(20:12):
maximum at one hundred and fifty people, So that's one
hundred and fifty guitars I have to sign, and then
they regroup and they shuffle them through and we get
a photo together then and then that's another one hundred
and fifty people like that and getting a photo and
all that, and then that's it. So you could not

(20:34):
do that here in America. You just couldn't do that
because you know, the Chinese are very much aware that,
you know, they have to be you know, corralled and
told this is how it works. And if you don't

(20:55):
do it this way, you're out trying to thing, you know.
So but it worked really well. I mean I would
meet one hundred and fifty people, sign their guitars, then
they'd come back around and we do photos with everybody,
and that whole thing took forty five minutes. You know,
that's like impossible.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
If you sign one hundred and fifty guitars, does it
tire out your hand for playing later.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Now, I in the last two hours, I just signed
I don't know, two hundred straps, a whole bunch of
vinyl and some CDs.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
I have not seen your signature. There's some people make
a few scratches and you know, hey, you know that
person signed it, but you could never read it. And
there are other people they spell out their whole name.
So how do you do it?

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Well, if I'm just writing on on like a record
or a CD, I'll just write Tommy CGP. They know
who that is. If I'm writing on your guitar, I
write my whole name.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Okay, how do you feel about doing all that? That's
not literally playing music? It certainly generates some cash. Do
you see that a's just something you have to do,
something you wish you didn't have to do, or something
you like to do.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
No, I enjoy it because it makes people happy, and
it gives me a chance to interact with people, even
if it's just short. You know, I enjoy it. And
I don't get to China that often, and it's just

(22:48):
I don't know, I like it, and I know that
not many artists do stuff like that because they want
to be you know, they want to remain a mystery
to the public, and I don't give a damn about
that bullshit, you know, so I'm happy to sign, you know,

(23:12):
I'm happy to sign people's guitars. And the other thing
that I like is that you just never know what
kind of guitar are you're going to come across. And
sometimes I'll be sitting there and they've got guitars going
on the table and I'm signing and the next one
and then this, you know, beautiful old Gibson will appear

(23:33):
and I'll want to play it. Stuff like that. But
you know, seeing people so it gets so happy is
a great, great part of my day that that's for sure.
You know, a lot of people, especially when I'm doing
interviews about touring life, people are like, you know, you

(23:53):
meet people before the show, aren't you trying to get
in the zone, and aren't you you know, don't you
want to be alone? And blah blah, And I'm like, no, no,
you don't get it. You walk into a room with
fifty people who are enthusiastic and excited to meet you.
There's a level of mojo, of excitement, of positive energy

(24:20):
that's going to seep into you. You know you're going
to take it on. And then and you do something
that you know is going to mean a lot to
this person. You get a photo with them, you talk
with them for a minute, you sign the thing, and
you look in their eyes and you be real, you know,
just and when it's done, then you take all that

(24:45):
good feeling and you give it back to them from
the stage. You know, I'm stealing their energy to create
something through me and give it back to them.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Okay, every audience is different, and I've certainly been to
shows where the act is never connected. I've also been
on shows on stage where the act is aware that
the audience isn't paying attention. They look to the band
members whatever, and they win the audience over. What's it
like for you? To what degree are you connecting with

(25:18):
the audience when you're playing and worried about where they're are?

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Well? I think probably. I mean, I try to connect
with the audience the moment I walk on stage, I
look at them, I yell hello, and I waved my
hand and I look at them, and then then I
get playing and I can tell if they're into it

(25:49):
straight away, you know, once I once I get playing,
and I'm I'm like two or three songs in, I've
already opened the door, and you know, I've already started
to really kick it up. And I never feel I'd

(26:11):
never feel disconnected from my audience, never, But you know,
there are I remember playing a show in England about
twenty years ago and there were people in the front
row and there must have been something going on with them,

(26:34):
and the guy kept looking kept looking at his watch,
you know, and he's right in front of me, and
his wife's kind of trying to keep him calm, and
he's you know. Anyway, we played the last song and
everybody just jumped to their feet and they were like

(26:55):
really yelling we played a good show and everybody was
doing this. And that guy, that girl that were right
in front of me, he looked really distracted. They took
that chance to run, and so as they were running
out to go to the door, I said, I'm so
glad to see you go goodbye. You know. I said

(27:18):
sorry to have kept you like that, you know, That's
what I was saying to them. So, you know, I
felt bad about it later, but that's how I felt,
and I let it out, you know.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Okay, you're very skilled. There are some people who play
their most well known material and while they're playing it,
they're thinking, oh God, I got to do my laun tree.
Is there enough time to catch the plane when you're playing,
which demands a lot of dexterity with your fingers whatever?

(27:53):
Are you always one hundred percent focused or are you
so practice that your mind is drifting elsewhere?

Speaker 2 (27:58):
No, I I try not to let my mind wander.
It's a bad thing to do because if you do that,
you will make a mistake. For sure. You know you'll
do something like is this a third time I played
the bridge? You know what I mean? So you don't

(28:21):
want to do that. So this is why I'm tired
after a show. It's not that I'm physically like I mean,
I'm very physical when I play, But that's not what
wears me out. It's up here where I get worn out,
and so my brain is tired. It takes a lot
of brain power to push myself to play these kind

(28:47):
of complex arrangements, but then go off into improvisation all
the time and be inventive right now this very second
and push it and push it. And you know, because
you're always waiting for the magic to happen. So you're
always pushing to try and get the magic to happen,

(29:09):
and sometimes it just shows up and holy smoke, what
a great night, unbelievable. But then you have the problem of, oh,
I've got to do it again tomorrow. Shit, how am
I going to beat this? You know? And that happens
to me a lot.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Do you have any idea what triggers magic or just
some nights it's there, sometimes it's not.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, yeah, most of it is depending how open I am,
you know, and depend on what's going on. The truth is, Bob,
I expect it to be magic every single time, and
when it isn't, I have to get through that, and

(29:54):
I have to still try to play well because if
I if I struggle and the struggle people don't even
know I'm struggling. But if I do struggle because I'm
just not coming up with the ideas that they're pleasing me,
then I just try to play well and pick the
good songs and the good arrangements and try to play

(30:16):
them with all my heart. Because you can't manufacture that mojo.
It's got to come from wherever it comes from. And
so I'm always I'm always expecting it to be magic
and hoping that it will be, but it isn't all
the time, and so in that case, you better have

(30:37):
some good songs to play.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Okay. You know, when you have an outstanding night, does
the audience know or they just think it's another great
Tommy Emmanuel show.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
That's a really interesting question. And I think some people
in the audience know when when you're flying your kite
pretty high, and I think some people know when I'm struggling.
But in general, the night that I think I suck

(31:23):
and that I played like crap, someone had come up
and say, God, that was the best show I've ever
seen you play, and be like, oh god, Okay.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
I remember talking to Jeff Beck once and complimenting him
about how he doesn't make any mistakes. He rolls his eyes.
Oh yeah, I make mistakes all the time. Blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, that's right, everybody does.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
That's my question. One. Do you make mistakes? And does
anybody other than you catch him?

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Pretty early? People, if I make a mistake, I'm really
good at covering it up. I'm good to turn it
into something else. And there are sometimes when I've made
a mistake on stage that I'll finish the song and

(32:20):
I'll say to the audience, I really didn't play the
bridge really well. Do you mind if I play it again?
And so I play it again and get it right?

Speaker 1 (32:29):
You know, how do you cover up a mistake? What
made a mistake be.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
A mistake? Might be that I just didn't get to
the note with the clarity that I needed because my
mind wandered for a second or something or whatever. And
so but you just keep moving, you know, because songs
go by like this, you know, songs going here's the verse,

(32:59):
here's the or is that you know, songs that have
a movement to them. And if you, if you, if
you fluff up one little bit or whatever, just keep going.
You know, when I was really young and I had
my own band and was playing back in Australia a lot,

(33:22):
if I had a bad night where I made a
few mistakes or whatever, it'd take me three days to
get over it. You know, I'd be I'd be down
in the dumps about it and feeling like a you know,
a complete loser. But these days, I mean, I make
I'd probably make mistakes every night, but some nights, uh,

(33:45):
some nights are just magical and they're the nights that
that are really hard to emulate the next night, you know.
So to me, I'm always trying to find ways of

(34:06):
making my improvisation interesting and to build something right in
the spur of the moment, you know. And then that's
why I still play songs that require whole sections of
where I can play as long as I want. I

(34:27):
can start this solo here in this tune and I'm improvising,
and i can go, go, go if it's flowing. If
it isn't, then I'll do something else and get to
the next verse.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Okay, you talk about the mental energy and the mental
strain and wearing out of your brain to do a show. Yeah, A,
when the show is over, what is your routine? And
B how long after the show can you fall asleep?

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Half an hour?

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Really?

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Oh yeah? Nowadays? I mean I'm seventy years old. I
still use a lot of energy, and I play anyway
between ninety minutes and two hours, you know, And I'm
pouring my whole life into every note, you know. And

(35:22):
so when I'm done with that, I packed my stuff
up and they take me back to the hotel and
I'm ready to sleep in half an hour.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Wait, you're in front of a thousand people, let's say,
who think you're God, who give you a great reaction.
There's a vibe there you can't get anywhere else whatever,
and it makes you feel good, especially on a night
when you're hot. You know, when the magic is working.

(35:54):
How can you disconnect emotionally so quickly?

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Because I have to do it again tomorrow, you know.
And also I was there in the moment. I was there,
I was present, and I appreciated it, and I gave
it my best. Now I've got to do that again tomorrow.
So what's important now is that I get some rest

(36:22):
so that I can be at my peak again at
eight o'clock tomorrow night. You know, that's how I look
at it. I mean, when I was younger, I went
out drinking and partying and all that sort of stuff,
all like everybody else, and I didn't need near as
much rest and nourishment, you know. But these days it's

(36:48):
so important to me to be in good shape and
have time to play. And you know, I do all
my own guitar tech stuff. I changed my strings, I tune,
I set my guitars up how I like them, and
I'm totally dedicated to that.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Are you like a gear head? There are certain people
they can pick up any instrument. They once it's in tune,
they play, that's it. Other people it's got to be
exactly right before they'll play or you know, are happy now?
Where are you on that spectrum?

Speaker 2 (37:25):
I can get music out of a golf ball, you know,
so it doesn't matter. But if like most guitar players,
who who I hand my guitar to to feel it
or to play it, they're like, oh my god, it's

(37:46):
so beautiful to play. I said, it's supposed to be,
you know, it should be set up so you don't
want to put this thing down. It's so beautiful, you know.
So basically, I break a few rules to make things
how I like them. And I'll get the neck of

(38:06):
the guitar and I'll over straighten it till the strings
are buzzing, and then I'll let it off until the
strings stop buzzing. Then I'll leave it there and the
action is like low and flat, but you know, and
I'll just watch it, you know, just to make sure
that there's no bad buzzes going on. But you know,

(38:29):
you'd be amazed how many people they just get used
to the action of their guitar, and then they start
talking about couple tunnel and repetitive strain and all that,
And I play the guitar and I go, I don't
wonder that thing would wear me out in five minutes.
You know, you've got to get the next straight, and
you've got to get the next sitting at the right angle,

(38:52):
you know, so the guitar can speak and you can
play it all day and all night.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Okay, so relatively speaking, you know, I've read online you
like a later gauge, but how high action? What gauge strings?
And how did you end up coming to what you like?

Speaker 2 (39:12):
I like twelve to fifty fours when I'm using normal tunings.
When I'm using low tunings, I use bigger strings. I
use thirteen to fifty six or thirty into sixty, depending
on the on the guitar. As far as strings go,

(39:32):
you've you've got an experiment and you've got to find
what strings work best for your guitar. You know, how
does when you put the string on, how does it sound?
How in tune can you get it? How does it

(39:53):
feel when you come up the neck here? And you know,
all that sort of stuff. So I find I find
the brands of strings that I like and the gauges
for which guitar on I'm music, you know, and so yeah,
every guitar is different. You know. I carry three on

(40:14):
the road with me and they're they're they've all got
the same pickup and microphone system that comes with the
mate and guitars that I use, but they all sound
very different, you know, different tunings, different kind of strings,
all that kind of stuff. And that's a good thing.
You know. You don't want to have the same sound,

(40:37):
the same tuning in every song of the whole show.
You know. I'm trying to keep people engaged and and
do things that surprise them. So I have a guitar
with real big strings tuned down low, and so when
I go into the song, it's like all there. It's

(40:57):
it's big and wide, and my sound man puts this
beautiful long reverb on it, and you know, it just
sounds like you can jump inside the sound. It's so big.
And that's good for me because it takes me to
another place as a player and as a performer. And

(41:20):
I use things like sustain and holding chords and things
like like that that really makes people feel real calm inside,
you know.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
So let's say you go to the Maiden factory and
you're picking out guitars at this late date, certainly in
the fifties and sixties, maybe in the seventies, everyone varied.
Do you find that every instrument still has its own
particular sound or it's more uniform these days?

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Oh, every interest, every instrument is it definitely has its
own voice. But you know, Martin D twenty eight, I've
probably played a thousand of them, and I haven't played
a bad one. They've all been good. You know. Gibson
J forty five is one of my favorite guitars. I

(42:15):
love those guitars. But the mat and guitar for me
is that's my voice right right there, and it's the
best guitar I know for show up, plug in, get
a sound in five minutes, Okay, let's go. You know,

(42:36):
that's nothing I've played out there comes close to that.
And my soundman, Steve and I we we set everything flat.
You know, there's no processing, there's no digital clever stuff.
There's just two signals and both of them are with

(42:59):
a bass on five, middle on five, travel on five.
Everything's flat, and then we work from there, and it's
just it's so easy to get a sound when you're
not trying to make a sound that that isn't really real,

(43:23):
you know, like it's been hollowed out, and and it's
there's a fake bass going on. A lot of guitar
players use optive divider where they where they put like
a bass sound from a bass guitar and those low frequencies,

(43:46):
they put that on a couple of their their low
strings on the guitar, and so it's this big, massive
sound and it's great, but that's not how a guitar sounds.
That's how guitar through processing sounds and that suits some
people and I like it for a short time, but

(44:09):
I wouldn't want to put my whole show through that,
you know, so I try to keep it as simple
as possible. Two signals flat there, it is amp and
pre amp.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Okay, you're not working every night live. Does a day
go by where you don't play or do you play
every day? And how much do you play every day?

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Well, it depends. Like I just got back from a
long tour and a lot of shows, and the first
thing I did when I got home was started playing
some of my guitars that I haven't played in a while,
and I've played quite a bit today, so I do
play every day.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
How many guitarist do you have?

Speaker 2 (44:59):
I have a few I've got. I don't really know
how many I have, but it's because I've never counted them.
But guitars come and go. In my life, Bob, I've
given away so many guitars and given a lot of

(45:19):
my favorite things up for you know, different charities and
things we do auctions and stuff like that. Plus I'm
an ambassador for guitars for Vets, so they've received quite
a bit of my personal collection and to try and
raise money for them. And so guitars come and go.

(45:44):
You know what I would think.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
I think there are certain guitars that you say I've
never partoned with this.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I have felt that way about certain guitars. But the
older I get, the more I realize, really I could
live without that guitar. I could just get another one,
or I could, you know, try something else. I try
not to get like too attached to stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Okay, since you started on your contemporary the music business
has completely changed. Yeah, people who know Tommy Emmanuel put
you at a top of the list are really reverent,
but not everybody knows who you are at this late
date in terms of career ambition, career aspiration. To what

(46:45):
degree do you think about that.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
One of the things I have to tell you that
I really love about my life is the fact that, yes,
I can tour the world. It was my dream when
I was young to be able to travel. I've always
felt like a citizen of the world, and I dreamt
of playing in all the places that I play now.

(47:09):
Right But the good thing is I'm still invisible, and
I love that I can still get in my car
and go down to Starbucks, have a coffee and sit
in the corner and read a magazine or hang out
with some friends of mine or whatever, and nobody, you know,

(47:29):
screams and yells and calls the police. I'm still invisible,
and I love that. You know. There's a song that
I did with Ricky Skaggs on my album Accomplish One,
and it's a song written by a friend of mine
and I played on the original back in the seventies,

(47:51):
and it says, I won't ask much of your time
or that you recall my name, because fame is just
a momentary curse. But if you recall a song or
two that lingers when I'm gone, then I guess a
song and dance man could do worse, you know, And
that's me. I'm a song and dance man. I play

(48:13):
because I love to play, but I don't I don't
always play for myself. What really blows my dress up
is when I play for you. When I see what
I do affect you, That's why I love it, And
so that gives me a sense of purpose. It gives

(48:36):
me a sense of I'm here for a good reason,
and I've been given whatever it is that I've got
for a very good reason, for the benefit of everyone else.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I can understand you're wanting to keep theme at arm's length,
but I never met an artist who didn't want their
artistry to reach more people.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Oh, I'm always trying to reach more people, Bob. Absolutely. Yeah.
Whatever I can do to get myself out there and
get this music out there, you know, that's that's what
I'll do. You know, And you know, I know from
some of your previous podcasts where you're talking about how

(49:22):
the music business has changed and how it's really hard
for people to there's no mailbox money anymore so to speak.
You know, if I don't tour, then how can I
keep my team on a wage? How can I help
my ten year old daughter through school and college in Australia,

(49:44):
you know, and all that sort of stuff. That's how
I make a living. That's how I pay my bills.
I tour.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
How'd you end up in Nashville?

Speaker 2 (49:57):
I came here in nineteen eighty to meet my hero,
Chet Atkins, and we just hit it off straight away.
And when he dropped me at the airport, he said,
you'll be back and this is where you belong. And
that's all he said to me. And I never forgot that,

(50:19):
you know, And we stayed in touch, and he he
had people because we were both with the same label
with Sony. When Chet signed with Columbia, I was on.
I was on Columbia out of Australia, and we had

(50:39):
four platinum albums in a row in Australia and I
won every award there was to win. It was just
like it was unbelievable. And I think a lot of
people kept him in touch with what I was doing.
And so in ninety five I was part of the

(51:01):
Sony Country Music showcase that took Australian country music artist
to Nashville for for the CMA week you know, where
all the artists go on and do their do their thing. Well.
So on the bill was you know, a whole bunch

(51:21):
of singers, songwriters including Keith Urban and mark O'Shea and
a whole bunch of Australian artists, and I was I
was viewed by those artists as the token instrumentalist, so
let's get him on first and then we'll get the

(51:41):
real real stuff going, you know, which was which suited
me great because it was where we were playing was
a club called the Ace of Clubs, and that that
place is always you know, pretty heavy drinking people and
YAHOOE people. So I was on first. Everybody was still sober,

(52:02):
and I came out and hosed the shit out of
them for like twenty minutes and they went nuts and everything.
And I'm back in my dressing room and incomes chat
with all the people from Columbia, you know, and they
had never seen anything like what I did, and they said,

(52:25):
are you on tomorrow night? I said yeah. So they
brought down like fifty people or something and they were
all down the front and chat chet Atkins there in
the audience, standing like at a rock gig, and it
was beautiful. And I played the second night and about
a week later, my phone rang. I was back in

(52:47):
Melbourne and Australia. My phone rang and it was chat
and he said, boy, these Columbia people are excited about
you and would you like to record together? And that
was the start of our recording project. And so that's
how that came about. He because we'd known each other

(53:10):
since nineteen eighty. Prior to that, I had written a
fan letter to bless you. I had written a fan
letter to Chet when I was eleven, and I sent it.
I sent it to him and he wrote back. He
wrote back and sent me a photo signed and everything

(53:31):
in you know, it was amazing. That was nineteen sixty seven,
so you know, it was sixty six, and you know
he was the busiest guy in town who was producing
everybody and running RCAA records, and you know he took
time to write back to some kid.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
So he come to the stage and you meet us,
beautiful beating you euro What was that like?

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yeah, oh my god, it was wonderful. And so I
rang his office. He'd given me his office number, and
up on music row and I rang and he answered
the phone and I said, I'm looking for mister Atkins.

(54:21):
He said this is he and I said, chat, it's
Tommy Emmanuel, thinking he'll he won't have a clue who
that is, you know, and he goes, hey, Tommy, I
was just listening to your tape. I've got a friend
here and he likes you picking and blah blah blah
the way he went and he said, are you in town?
I said yeah, I'm up the road at the Holiday Inn.

(54:43):
He said, well, come on down. I'll see you right now.
So I jumped in the car and went down to
his office and I'm waiting downstairs and his secretary Caroline
gets on the intercommon she says, there's a boy from
Australia here and he says he wants to see you,
and I hear Chet's voice. He says, is he a fingerpicker?

(55:07):
And I hold my thumb pick up, you know, and
she says he says he is, and he says I'll
be right down. So a couple of minutes later, down
he comes down the stairs and there he was. I mean,
he looked exactly like he did on his records, and
I just couldn't believe I was meeting him, you know.

(55:30):
And he came up to me and he put his
arm around me and he said, you want to pick
a little and I said yeah. So he took me
into side room and he said, what do you want
to play? And I said, how about this? And I
went straight into me and Bobby McGhee like the arrangement
that he recorded on an album called chet Atkins Alone.

(55:53):
It was a beautiful version, and I'd learned it and
I was playing it and he was watching real carefully
in there. When the chorus came round, he just joined
in and played beautiful harmonies and it was just like
it was so magical. What he played made me sound
really good. So there was the lesson and it was beautiful,

(56:20):
and he asked me to play a few other things,
and then he took me upstairs and he said, I
want you to meet the greatest player that walks the
earth right now. And so he took me up to
his private office and in that room was a guy
named Lenny Brow. And Lenny was sitting there playing and

(56:44):
I knew exactly who it was. I knew everything he
was doing. I listened to him a lot and the
three of us sat there around the table playing tunes,
and I heard chedd Atkins play beebop licks that were
just mind blowing, like Charlie Parker and you never hear

(57:07):
him play like that. I heard it, and I had
no idea he could do that, but he was so
into that stuff and played it so well, and there
were little quotes he'd be playing a tune, he'd play
a little bit of dizzy fingers or something in the
in the middle of how high the Moon, you know,
stuff like that. It's brilliant. And then he asked me

(57:31):
to take Lennie to where he was playing and take
care of him and all that time.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
So he took Lenny to where he was going. Then
what happened?

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Then I stayed and watched Lenny play two sets and
then took him home where he was saying, what.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Was your next interaction?

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Okay, my next interaction with him?

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Wait, so you show up music, you have this amazing
experience and you wave goodbye and you don't have any
contact for years.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Oh well.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
And he's communicating it all living in Australia. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah.
I mean I could call him anytime, but I was busy,
and so was he. You know, he was busy as
one armed fiddler, as he used to say. But I

(58:35):
came over in ninety three to make an album called
The Journey, which was my third album for Sony, and
it was recorded and done in l A. And Chet

(58:56):
was playing at Ventura Concert Club and outside of LA.
He was doing a show there and I got tickets
and I went to see him and saw the show
and everything. Because I've never seen him play live, only
what we did at the office, I've never seen one
of his shows. And it was beautiful. And I asked

(59:21):
him if he would play on my album and he
said sure. And he said, but you'll have to come
to me. I've got a studio in my house. You'll
have to come to me. I said, no problem. So
we got all the backing of the track and my
lead parts and everything, and then I flew from LA

(59:42):
to Nashville and went to Chet's house and he recorded
a couple of solos. The funny thing was he heard
the track and everything and he goes, oh, this is
a bit modern for the old man. And I said,
don't worry, Chief, You'll just take a solo. Just just

(01:00:04):
be yourself. You know it's going to be fine. And
his first first take is the one I used because
he played an incredible solo, was beautifully tasty and just gorgeous.
You know. He did two more takes and I ended
up using the first one when I when I mixed it.
But we had a really lovely time together and I

(01:00:28):
had to leave that night to go back to LA
And then then we ended up doing the album the
day Fingerpickers Took Over the World. That was recorded at
Chess House, and that was a two week project and
I did all the pre production with Randy Goodrum, the

(01:00:50):
keyboard player, and and then we programmed like a bass
drum and a high hat just to get with a
boot keep time kind of thing. And then I overdubbed
brushes and bass and rhythms and stuff and made it
sound like a band. And then Chet and I did

(01:01:12):
our parts. And I had to get back to Australia
for a tour, and so I basically mapped out all
the bits where Chet had to take the melody, take
a solo, harmonies in here, stuff like that. I mapped
it out and left it with him because he'd been

(01:01:34):
in hospital having cancer treatment and so he was in
recovery from that, and basically when he was feeling strong
enough he would come down and work on the strust.
He ended up getting it all done, and I finished
my tour. And then when I got back to Nashville

(01:01:59):
and got into my bedroom because I was I used
to stay at the house, the Chetney owner's house, and
on my on my bed was his guitar and his
microphone and a note from him saying, you may wish
to take the guitar to mix and if there's anything

(01:02:20):
I'd missed, just drop it on. You know. He knew
I could, I could play his part, and so I
ended up putting some harmonies on one song that he'd
forgotten to do. And but I never told anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Okay, you grew up exactly where in Australia all over.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
I was born north of Sydney, up in the air,
up in the coal mining near the city of Newcastle,
and then we moved out out west and that's where
we started playing music. And I was the youngest one,
and so my eldest brother Chris, was a drummer, My

(01:03:16):
sister Virginia was playing the lap steel, and my brother
Phil was the lead guitar. Player, so my job was
to play the rhythm and cover the bass part. We
just didn't know that's what I was doing, so there
was no bass guitar in the band. I covered the

(01:03:38):
bass part when I played rhythm and played because there
was the sound that we heard on the record. We're
just trying to make that sound. And basically I had
to do that playing rhythm and with the bass part.
And that's kind of how my style evolved because so

(01:04:00):
that's the way I heard it. I heard it as
the rhythm player playing that low part, but it was
actually the rhythm, normal rhythm, but with a bass player. Well,
I just no one mentioned the word bass guitar or
bass player to me. You know. We just were listening
to records and we listened to the music on the

(01:04:20):
radio and trying to emulate it. So that's how I
developed the way of being able to play a bass
part and a rhythm part at the same time. And
then when I heard Chat on the radio, I immediately
knew he was playing everything at once. And people were like, oh, no,
it's a recording trick, you can't do that, and I'm like,

(01:04:42):
I could hear it. I just didn't know how to
do it, you know, And it took me a while
to work it out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
So how did you learn how to play?

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
I just was inspired by the songs that I heard.
That's the thing. The real inspiration comes from the music.
It's not always the artist, it's generally always it's generally
the music that inspires you. And so if you're like me,

(01:05:13):
and you're not going to quit me just because it's
getting hard or something, then you're not going to make it.
But I, when I started working out how to make
that sound, it came together somehow. It was rough, and

(01:05:34):
I was, you know, pretty ignorant musically, but I could
figure it out. And so I worked out how to
play Windy and Warm and freight Train and Oh the Warbash,
Cannonball and a few of those kind of songs and

(01:05:58):
Merl Travis's Cannibal Rag and nine pound Hammer, Blue Smoke,
sixteen tons and stuff like that. And I'd play both
the parts, but i'd play with a straight pick as well.
I would use the straight pick and my three fingers,
and that's how I was doing it until in sixty

(01:06:21):
five a guy gave me a chedd Atkins record, and
on the cover of the record, I saw he had
a thumb pick on, and I went, ah, that's it,
you know. And as soon as I put a thumb
pick on, it was like someone opened the gate and
the horse come running out, baby, because it set me free,

(01:06:41):
and all of a sudden, I realized, oh god, this
is outworks, you know. So it was just discovery. They was.
I was just.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
Okay, you know the basic chords. How do you learn
the chords? Was there a book? Did someone show you?

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
No? Other showed me how to play D and G
and A seventh and E and B and all that.
And the more songs I learned, the more chords I
had to learn. And it wasn't long before I started
getting the relationship between the chords and things. I could hear,

(01:07:20):
Oh that song in D, that's D, and that's the
sound of a B minor and that's a E, and
I start recognizing the sounds. So I never had any
any training, any teaching. And I don't read music. I
play everything by ear, and I hire people to write

(01:07:41):
my books because that's what they do and they're really
good at it and all that kind of stuff. But
it's still all by by ear.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Okay. So you talk about everybody in the family playing,
having a group. What did that look like? How often
did you play? Did you travel?

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
We traveled all the time until dad died in sixty
six May of sixty six, And yeah, my dad was
forty nine when he died. He had a massive heart
attack and was gone, and it just he was here
one minute, gone the next. But we had We started

(01:08:29):
touring in sixty one and we made our way north
and we basically had what we call a forwarding agent,
which was a guy who booked the hall and put
up posters, and then he would move on to the
next town, booked the hall, put up posters and that
kind of stuff. That's how it worked, and we would

(01:08:51):
be like three weeks behind him, and so that's what
we did. When then we finally got on TV, we
got on radio and all that sort of stuff, and
we just tried everything we could to get into the
show business. And when dad died, my mother had to

(01:09:16):
make the decisions. She had six children, and she said,
do you want to just stay here and go to
school and we'll have a normal life here, or do
you want to go on the road. And we all
said we want to go back on the road. So
we ended up getting a job with a touring country
kind of variety show, and that was good experience. We

(01:09:40):
learned a lot about putting a show together and comedy
and lights and all that sort of stuff, you know,
and it was good. But we ended up getting shut
down because the child Welfare department thought that we were
slave labor, you know, we were we were being taken

(01:10:02):
advantage of. And of course we were only there because
we just loved to play on stage, that's all, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
But okay, so how old were you when it got
shut down?

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Okay, So we started touring just before I was six,
and I turned six on that tour, and so that's
sixty one, and up until dad died sixty six, it
was five years. And then we carried on a little
bit longer. Then I ended up. We ended up settling

(01:10:37):
in another town and we got into normal schools, and
it wasn't long before my brother and I put a
band together with some local guys and we were playing
every weekend, playing the dancers and all that sort of stuff.
And I was twelve years old, and I'll never forget

(01:10:58):
I was teaching Tuesday and Wednesday nights to try and
make some extra money to help mom out because we
were renting a little house and it was really weird.
I'm twelve years old trying to teach adults how to
play DG and a seventh and tap their foot and

(01:11:19):
strum and it was just really weird, weird being a
kid and teaching adults, you know. But yeah, it was
an interesting period.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Okay, But when before your father passed, in the time
after that, you were on the road without him. What
about school?

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
We did correspondence. We did school through the mail. There
was an organization in Australia which was a British school
called Blackfriars and it's called Correspondence School. So we would
we would get a week's worth of work. So here's

(01:12:02):
here's the Monday, here's Tuesday, here's Wednesday. So we get
it all in one brown envelope. And we would do
our schooling daily and my mother made us read every day.
She made us do the times tables with math, maths

(01:12:26):
and and all that sort of stuff. And then she
would test us on history stuff and all that sort
of stuff. And so that's what we did. When we
got to a normal school, we were okay, we weren't.
We weren't the sharpest knife in the in the draw.

(01:12:49):
But we were definitely we had some good education from
traveling around and talking to people and understanding our a
bit more other world works, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Okay, so now you're settled down, you're going to regular school,
you got a band playing on the weekends. Yeah, how
long does that go on? Do you graduate from school?
What's the next transit?

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Now there's no graduation. I uh so I got into
high school. My first year of high school, I had
a lawn mowing business, and I was teaching guitar two
nights a week. And I also we had a band
and we played Friday Saturday nights, and so I was,

(01:13:35):
I was busy. I was. I was doing lawn mowing
after school and then teaching at night, and then playing
on the weekends and doing school as well. So we
were we were really busy, you know, just trying to
make ends meet. And but my my goal and my

(01:13:57):
dream was to get to the big city of Sydney
and to become a studio musician. That's what that's what
I wanted. I wanted to be like the big guys
who who were you know I saw on TV and
read their name on a record and stuff. That's what
I wanted to do. I just didn't have a clue
how to do it. But anyway, so what I did

(01:14:19):
is I made the decision to move to Sydney. In
the start of my third year at high school, I
befriended some guys who were part of a kind of
religious organization and they were they were really nice people

(01:14:40):
and everything, and they said, oh, there's a place where,
you know, a lot of our friends stay and it's
quite close to Sydney Harbor and you can rent a
room there if you want. It's like nine dollars a
week and blah blah blah, you know, and I said, oh, okay.
So so they were going down the following week and
I said, I'll come with you. So I handed my

(01:15:03):
books in and told my mother that I was leaving.
You know, she was pretty distraught, I can tell you,
because she wanted me to finish school and get my
high school certificate and all that sort of stuff, and
I just didn't want any part of that. I wanted
to be getting some experience and being around people who

(01:15:27):
were a lot better than I was. And so I
moved to Sydney. And my first thing I did is
got a newspaper and got a day job five days
a week as a messenger boy. And then I went
and auditioned for a guy who was a country singer

(01:15:47):
and an actor. He was in a drama series called
Homicide on TV in Australia, but every weekend, Friday and
Saturday night he would be playing in clubs and Sydney
and drawing quite a crowd. And the guitar player that
worked with him was leaving for something a bit more lucrative,

(01:16:11):
I'm sure, And so I auditioned and I got the
job because I knew the songs. I knew all how
to play all the guitar parts, and I knew all
the harmonies to sing. And you know, he nearly swallowed
his tongue on the first run through because he looked

(01:16:32):
at me. I was fifteen year old kid, and he said,
I can't believe I'm doing this, you know, like you're
way too young for this and all that, and I said,
let's just give it a go. You know. We went
straight into the songs and I just I did everything
that I felt was the right thing for the song,

(01:16:53):
and he loved it, and so he offered me the
job straight away. I started working for him on the
weekends and that was that was my first introduction into
the music scene in Sydney in the sixties, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
So what happened after that?

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
Then I got a job working in a band with
my brother and it was it was four piece band
with a girl singer and we were called Shiloh. And
I had to learn all the Chuck berrys songs. I
had to learn all the Credence tunes and you know

(01:17:39):
little Richard music, Ray Charles. I had to learn all
these different things and get myself an offender telecaster and
an ant Fender amp and all that. It was great.
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much. And when
we ended up on this kind of circuit in Australia,

(01:18:03):
the hotels were run by the same company. It was
a huge brewery company that ran all the hotels. So
they used an agent who have moved bands around Australia
and so we ended up playing like a three week

(01:18:23):
residency at this really nice hotel the Gold Coast, and
we just stayed upstairs and went down to the beach
every day and swam and then played at night. And
then we moved somewhere else and we were there for
three months and then we moved somewhere else and it
was great experience and it was good money. It was

(01:18:44):
the first time I got some savings and ended up
buying got a loan from my first car and stuff
like that. I was sixteen, keep going. So that lasted
about a year and a half, and then I moved

(01:19:06):
back the band kind of. We disbanded and Phil went
off to work with another artist. And because my brother
Phil was really in demand in those days. He was
just really good at playing great lead parts, and you know,

(01:19:28):
he could play rock and roll music, country music, and
he'd have a go at anything, and so he was
getting a lot of a lot of work. I went
home to be with my mother and working a local
garage for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
So wait, wait, wait, wait wait, what was going through
your mind? You were living the life of a king
at age sixteen on the road. Are you're back living
with your mother with no high school degree working in
a garage?

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
So what was your state of mind? I would think
you were depressed about that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
Oh I wasn't depressed, not at all. I was happy
to be with my mother. And anyway, here's what happened.
A show came to town and I knew the people,
and well, let's just say I met a young lady

(01:20:28):
in that show that I wanted to be with, and
so they offered me a job and I said yes,
just so I could be with her. And that's what
I did. I quit my job in the garage and
loaded up my car and joined them. And it was
a traveling show where we drove everywhere. And I did

(01:20:50):
that for like three years, I think, and then I
eventually moved back to Sydney.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
When I was before you got back to Sydney. What
happened with the girl?

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
She she didn't want to stay on the road, so
she ended up leaving. And but I'd already I'd already
committed to her father, who was the guy I was
working for, and so I had I stayed on and
kept working with him because I was playing in the show.
I was playing banjo, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, working the lights,

(01:21:29):
doing fixing the flat tires, I mean, I was doing everything.
So yeah, it was It was a good learning time
for me and I got a lot of good experience
on the road. It was hard work and not much money,
but I eventually left and moved back to Sydney, where

(01:21:55):
I pursued my my my playing and my and I
wanted to learn more, you know, I wanted to improve
and I'd just done as much as I could on
my own kind of thing. And now I was hanging

(01:22:15):
around with guys who played jazz and who played fusion
music and great rock and roll music that I'd never heard,
you know, And I recall it was about seventy five
seventy six. By that time, I'd learned like every Neil

(01:22:36):
Diamond song that there was, and every Creedence song. And
I had many different jobs. I was a singer in
a band. I was a bass player in a band.
I was a drummer in a band. I had to
go with everything, okay, and continue with the narrative, okay. Well,

(01:22:58):
So I moved into Sydney and I started developing my
style that I have now. I started working on arrangements
of songs where I could like move the bass around
and stuff like that. I have an arrangement of a
great old song called Blue Moon. And I was living

(01:23:19):
in a house with three other musicians, and one of
them was a saxophone player who grew up, you know,
with jazz and he he heard me trying to work
out this arrangement, and he said, why don't you put
the bass through the changes? And I said, well, what

(01:23:41):
do you mean? And he played, you know, he said,
what you're trying to do is this, So he with
his right hand he played dirty, Dirty, there's the melody,
and the left hand went boom boom boom boom boom
boom boom boom boom, and the bass moved around while

(01:24:03):
the melody played on top, and you could hear the chords.
When the bass changed and the melody moved, you could
hear that that's the chord. And I just didn't think
that way, and he showed me that, and it just
like opened a door for me. And then I met
a guy who was big into Where's Montgomery and people

(01:24:26):
like that, and turned me onto that kind of music.
So it was exciting for me. And you know, George
Benson had just come out with Breezen and stuff like that,
and all of a sudden people were into instrumental music
and everything. So I had to pursue that way to go,

(01:24:48):
you know, And I ended up really pursuing my songwriting
as well, and I got signed by Universal, who were
Actually it wasn't Universal then. My first my first publisher
was Northern Songs, which was Paul McCartney's company, and I

(01:25:10):
got signed by them, and then I got moved to MCA,
and then that eventually became Universal. So I got signed
in seventy eight and I'm still with Universal after all
those years.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Okay, I did you have a manager? How'd you get signed?

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
I didn't have a manager. I got signed because I
was playing on people's records as a studio player, and
people were looking for songs. And I would play some
of my songs to people and they'd say, holy shit,
have you got publishing? You know? Said no, Oh, okay,

(01:26:00):
you got to talk to this guy. I don't. So,
you know, I did it all myself by just networking
and stuff like that. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
So, at what point in this story does it become
Tommy Emmanuel doing what you're doing now?

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Well, I started doing solo stuff and writing for me
to play solo. In the early eighties, I started writing songs.
I was already pursuing songwriting for to get a hit
record with some artists, you know, and I did. I

(01:26:37):
got a cover with Sheena Easton, and I had a
cover with Olivia Newton John and in those days, if
you could get a song on a Livy Newton John record,
you were doing well. And that was my that was
my goal. And my good buddy Steve Kipner, who wrote
Let's Get Physical and Twister Fate and heart Attack and

(01:26:59):
all those great songs, I wrote with him a lot,
and that was great. And I really grew as a
writer because of people like him and learned so much
from him. But then I started writing songs for me

(01:27:21):
to play as instrumentals, and I found the courage to
put them in put them in my set when I
was when I was playing like wine bars and places
like that, I would play some of the songs that
everybody knew, like a Beatles song or whatever, and then
I would play one of my songs and people were

(01:27:43):
coming up to me after the show and saying, Hey,
I really like that that new song you played. Did
you write that? I was like, yeah, yeah, Wow, that's
really good. You should keep that, you know. So I
started to get positive feedback and which gave me the
courage to keep doing that, you know. And so yeah,

(01:28:09):
I ended up in some pretty big rock bands in Australia,
playing guitar in the band, but when the band came
off the road, I would go and do my own
solo thing, and you know, and that was the beginning
of what I'm doing now. So that was like the
mid eighties. That's when I started doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Okay, you're playing with John Farnham and others. Did you
like that music?

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
I loved it? Are you kidding? Every song is killer?

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
Okay, So you're not a country Chad Akins purist. You
like rock too.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
I love any music that has soul. You know, when
people ask me, you know, what guitar players do you
listen to? My answer is I very rarely listen to
many guitar players. I'm not that interested. I'm interested in

(01:29:09):
good songs and I don't really care where they came from,
you know, And I love singers. You know. That's why
I loved working with John Farnham, a guy named Doug Parkinson,
and you know, I was in a band called Dragon
because I love their songs. I loved their music and

(01:29:31):
you know, you could train a monkey to play my
parts in the songs. But I love the songs so much,
and I learned so much about how important having a
great melody and a great hook and just really nailing
it in a way that reached out and grabbed people.

(01:29:51):
And I just learned a lot about the importance of
every song. Song's got to be a killer, Every song
has to be a winner. You know, the days of
having a record with two hits on it and the
rest of it's all just fillers. That those days are

(01:30:12):
long gone. And so, you know, I remember just trying
to write, you know, twenty five good songs to pick,
fourteen to go on an album and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
You know, So when did you only start playing yourself
as opposed with other people or does it agree you
ever did that?

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
I think probably the last the last tour that I
did with a band, with a rock band was eighty seven,
and then I started playing my own music. I got
my own band, and it was mostly electric, with a
few acoustic songs. You know, it was most electric. And

(01:31:03):
so the funny thing was, Bob, when I made my
first solo album, I recorded it between midnight and five
in the morning because I was offered some free studio
time because I played on someone's record for them as
a favor, and the guy who owned the studio said,

(01:31:24):
you can have the studio from midnight till six am
or whatever, free of charge. So I recorded my album,
then we mixed it and everything, and I took it
into EMI and I said, this is my album and
I'd like to get it out. And the guy listened

(01:31:44):
to a couple of tracks and he said, there's no
market for solo acoustic records. There's no market for it,
so it may as well forget it. I said, all
I want you to do is put it out, you know,
just get it distributed, and I will create market. And
he's like, you'll create a market. I said, yes, I

(01:32:05):
will create the market. And so I must have convinced him.
But you know, as luck would would have it, I
was getting good crowds under my own name in my
own country, and I was so lucky because the people
who were my agents were part of a big chronic

(01:32:29):
conglomerate that were international promoters as well. And in nineteen
eighty eight I got offered the John Denver tour and
it was like the most perfect tour for me because
it was like fifteen to twenty thousand people a night
and I got to come out there and play twenty

(01:32:50):
minutes as this new artist to the public. Who you know.
Ninety nine percent of them didn't know who I was.
They'd seen they they recognized me from the TV shows
I'd done, but they didn't really know much about me.
So it was great. I got a new audience, and

(01:33:10):
within like a month of doing that tour, my album
debuted in the top ten nationally and he and I
were like so amazed. You know the guy, that's the
guy who said there's no market for or music, and
I told him I'd created That's what happened. And then

(01:33:31):
I toured with another couple of artists, and then in
nineteen ninety I got offered the Eric Claptain tour with
his album Journeyman, which I love that record, and Eric
was so nice and his band Nathan and Greg Fillingaines
and oh Steve Ferroni on drums, and it was just

(01:33:56):
fabulous band. And every night we just got standing ovations
and we got a great response. And the funny thing
was the English road crew guys were a bit upset
that we were going over so well. And the very

(01:34:20):
first night I played the and I got two standing
ovations at the end of the set, and when I
came off, the tour manager came straight up to me
and said cut your set down by blah blah blah,
and that's all he said, you know, And I said, yes, sir.
And the next night I played two minutes shorter, still

(01:34:41):
got the same standing ovation.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
And was this solo acoustic No, no, this was.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
My band, and then a couple of acoustic pieces in
the middle. And then here's what happened after that, after
that too. After that Aeric Claptain tour, my ticket sales
went up like they doubled, tripled it. They were the
stepping stones for me to getting to a level where

(01:35:14):
I could sell out some decent sized halls in Australia.
And on one tour I would come out and sign
autographs after the show and meet everybody and all that
sort of stuff, and people started saying to me, we

(01:35:35):
really loved the show, we loved the band, but the
best part of the night was when you just played
on your own. And enough people kept saying that to
me that I thought maybe I should give that a try.
So I rang my agent and I said, book me
back into that area where we were after the Aeric

(01:35:56):
Claptain tour, and that those that you know and just
call it Tommy Manuel solo and he said what and
I said, yeah, it's just me on my own. Oh,
you reckon, that'll work and I said yeah, And sure
enough everything sold. I got the same size crowd as
if was a band or a band or no band.

(01:36:18):
I got the same size crowd and people had a
great time and it really spurred me on. And then
I finished up with the band in ninety six, I
think it was, and from then on I've been solid.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
Okay, the elephant in the room is you're in Australia.
Like that little river song from Las Vegas, Hilton, It's
twelve thousand miles away. Yeah, I certainly know. Like Kadinsky
told me, the big carture promoter or a label person,
he said, you know, I like being a big fish
in a small pod. And then also, I've been there

(01:37:01):
and everybody's thrilled that I came. I came that far.
So to what degree are you in Australia thinking about America,
thinking about the rest of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:37:13):
I've always thought about the rest of the world. I've
always felt like a citizen of the world, and I
just I'm one of these people that I've always had
a sense of confidence that it's not arrogance. It's just confidence.
And as I say to people who you know, big

(01:37:36):
promoters or my management, you know, I'm like, you just
helped get me out there, and I'll deliver. I promise
you that I will deliver. If you can get me there,
I'll do the rest, you know. And that's how I've
always been.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
So what point did you start playing outside Australia.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
I used to go to LA. I would finish finished
playing on Saturday night and Sunday I'd fly to LA
and on I'd get in on Monday and I would
play the Baked Potato Mony, two shows on Monday night,
and then i'd fly back on Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:38:25):
Yeah, I mean we're talking commitment here. And I never
made any money, but I started to build something. And
then I started coming to the chet Atkins Convention. In
ninety six was my first year there. And when they
saw me at the CHET Convention, all the different guitar

(01:38:47):
societies wanted me to come and play. So we put
a whole package together where I went into Kentucky and
played in Louisville and Lexington and all that, and then
I went up to Cincinnati and played up there for
the Ohio Fingerpickers Club blah blah, and then I went
down to Orlando to the Fingerpickers down there, and then

(01:39:11):
I went across to LA and played in mccabs and
and all that. So I started in America right around
the country, but just in all little small things that
helped me. You know. I got connected through the chedd
Akin Society people and they were really wonderful. But it

(01:39:33):
was small, but it was a good start, and it
wasn't long before, you know, it was less than two
years of doing that that I was, you know, playing
to six hundred to eight hundred people and playing in
the town theater in these small towns. So it built,
it built pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:39:53):
When did the international business beyond Australia and the United
States start?

Speaker 2 (01:40:01):
It started in the nineties. When I went to LA
to record, i'd come back, I'd go and play in
San Francisco. I was getting some airplay on KKSF and
on the Wave, those smooth, kind of smooth jazz stations.
I had a couple of records that people really liked,
and I was getting some play. So I was going

(01:40:24):
over there and doing stuff like listener appreciation shows and
stuff like that. There was no money involved, but it
was good experience and it was a way of building
an audience.

Speaker 1 (01:40:41):
You know, what about you say you went to China,
Maybe should I say where haven't you been? Have you
basically played everywhere South America?

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):
Well, at the moment, we're trying to get to a
stage where we can go to Brazil, to Mexico, to Chile,
places like that, just finding a venue, finding a promoter,
and being able to people know about me there. I

(01:41:13):
just can't get there yet.

Speaker 1 (01:41:16):
What about Europe and other parts of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:41:19):
I have a wonderful career in Europe. I'm so grateful.
Europe is as has been a wonderful place for me. Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium,
up to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, all those countries and

(01:41:45):
Russia and Ukraine and all those places have been so wonderful,
And I'm so sad that I can't go back there.
You know, I can't go back to Russia right now,
I can't go back to Ukraine. And that makes me sad. Yeah,
I'm just you know that the world is changing so quickly,

(01:42:10):
really is.

Speaker 1 (01:42:19):
Okay? You're in Nashville Music City, Yeah, to what degree
are you plugged into the player culture of Nashville, or
to what degree you're Tommy Emmanuel and you just happen
to live in that Shville.

Speaker 2 (01:42:36):
Well, a lot of my favorite players are here, and
I have a lot of good friends here. And when
I'm home, I find out who's playing where, and I
it's the only time I get a chance to go
and see other players. So whenever Guthrie Trapper is playing

(01:42:58):
with his trio, I always try to get to see
Guthrie and he doesn't The band don't play much anymore,
but Brent Mason's band, the players. I used to go
and sit in with them a lot and go see
those guys play. And and and Jack Pearson is another
great guitar player locally who I used to love going

(01:43:21):
and play play the first set with Jack, he would
he would always play some acoustic and then he'd switched
to the band with with with electric, you know. And
and I do the opry about four times a year,
and and I I do the rhyme in every two years,

(01:43:42):
and I've got it coming up in a couple of weeks.
And so I enjoyed that. But see, I built I
built Nashville in the same way as I built everywhere else,
I came to town. I I I played in small places
and then I played in a small theater three hundred
seedter and it went well. So I booked myself back

(01:44:08):
there and I filled it and then I did two nights.
Then I moved to the tea Pack. Then I moved
to the War Memorial Hall. Then I moved to blah
blah blah, and then I got to the rhyme and
eventually and that was fifteen years of my life.

Speaker 1 (01:44:24):
Okay, you're obviously very business savby. Do you make all
these decisions? You know? Do you have a manager?

Speaker 2 (01:44:33):
Oh? I have a wonderful manager. Yeah. Absolutely. In the
old days, a lady named Gina Mendelo is a friend
of mine from a long way. She was working at
Sony in Sydney when her and I became friends, and
she marketed the album I did with Chep and so
her and I kind of ran the ship together for

(01:44:56):
a long time. And then in twenty thirteen I started
talking with Brian Pennix from Vector, but he was actually
a promoter in those days, and Brian Brian became my

(01:45:18):
manager and we've been working together ever since, and he
done an amazing job. I mean, he's got quite a
roster of artists, you know, Jerry Douglas and Little Feet
and Nitty Gritty and all those people. He manages a
lot of different artists. But he does amazing work for me,
he really does. And he's been one of the best

(01:45:42):
friends I've ever had.

Speaker 1 (01:45:45):
So how does being an itinerant musician affected your relationships,
your love relationships and family.

Speaker 2 (01:46:00):
Well, it's been. It's been incredibly hard on everyone. And
you know, this is this is what I warn young people.
I see, if you want to do what I'm doing,
then you better you better remember that if you want
to have a home and a family, you're going to
have to work around that. But yeah, I've been married

(01:46:27):
three times and I have I have two daughters and
two granddaughters by one marriage. And I have another daughter
by my previous marriage, and she's going to school in
Sydney and they moved from California. She was born here

(01:46:50):
in Nashville and she's ten years old. And so but
I'm I'm I'm on my own right now, although I
don't feel like I'm on my own. I feel like
I have friends everywhere and family everywhere, and I basically

(01:47:14):
try to fit in as many visits with my family
as I can. There came a point back in two
thousand and two or two thousand and three, around that time,
when my wife, who I'd been married to for fifteen years,
you know, took off with someone else and decided that

(01:47:39):
she didn't want the lifestyle of me coming and going
all the time anymore. And I totally get that. So
but I then made the decision that I've really got
to get to work. I've got to get going, And
so I called a family meeting and I said to

(01:48:01):
the girls, Look, this is what I do. This is
who I am. I'm a road person. I play concerts,
and this is how you can live in that nice
house and your mom can drive that lovely car, and
you can go to that good school because dad goes
and gets to work. And that's how it's going to

(01:48:23):
be for a while, and you're going to have to
be all right about it. And they were okay about it.
We still wish we could see each other a lot more,
but you know, it just doesn't work for me to
be off the road for too long. You know, how
many dates a year are you doing? Right now? We're

(01:48:47):
kind of cut back to about two hundred, so I
was doing well. Some years I did three hundred and
fifty shows, you know. And yeah, my biggest problem, Bob,
is that things just keep getting better. That's my biggest problem.

(01:49:09):
If only it all turned to crap, and then I
could say, well, it's been wonderful, see you later. I'm
just going to go be granddad now, you know. But
I love playing for people so much, and you know,
it's what I do. I play and people get happy,
and I just can't imagine doing anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:49:34):
Let's just go back to the new album a little bit.
What is so special about the gentleman you worked with?

Speaker 2 (01:49:42):
You mean Vance Powell.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:49:45):
Oh, he's an engineer. He's technically on an incredible level
about getting sounds, being creative and doing it now and
doing a quick you know. He's the type of guy.
We're going to start at ten and we finished at six.

(01:50:06):
That's it. I don't work at night, and I totally
get that, so we don't waste time in here. We
get to work and then you have a listen to
what you've just recorded, you played in the car or something,
and it's like, holy hell, this sounds good, you know,
this sound real, and I just loved working with him,

(01:50:34):
and he was he was really helping me do what
the way, do it the way I wanted to. And
he also gave me some advice. I was struggling with
playing and singing with headphones on and all that playing

(01:50:54):
and singing this song and I just couldn't hear the
pitch properly. You know. I was really struggling with it
because I wear hearing aids. I was born with yellow fever,
so my hearing is burnt out before I came into
the world. And anyway, he said, look, take your headphones

(01:51:14):
off and just sing as if I'm sitting right here
beside you. Sing the song to me and we'll just
let the mics do their do their thing. So I did,
and I got it first take, and the vocal was fine,
you know, and needed a few little pitch things here

(01:51:35):
and there, but basically it was a good take and
the guitar sounded beautiful. And he really showed me that
anything is possible and if I'm struggling with something, to
let him know and he can come up with a solution,

(01:51:56):
you know. And I learned a lot from that.

Speaker 1 (01:51:58):
It was good, Okay, So you make a record, how
much overdubbing fixing is done?

Speaker 2 (01:52:06):
On this album, the overdubbing was on the tracks where
I had I put some drums on like a heat
programmed a drum part, and then I overdubbed some stuff
on it, and then I put bass on it, and
then I put other rhythm part. Then I put an
electric guitar on, and then I got a girl to

(01:52:26):
come in and we constructed the backing vocals as a
unit and put that together. And you know, that all
happened pretty quickly. But as far as fix ups and
overdubs and stuff, most of the solo songs that I played,

(01:52:48):
Scarlet's World, A Drowning Heart, black and white to color
all that, most of those were one take. You know,
I can do it live, I have to do it
in the studio.

Speaker 1 (01:53:01):
So the album's finished, the album's coming out. What do
you have planned? What's setting Stone going forward?

Speaker 2 (01:53:08):
All right, Well, I've got a bunch of TV and
radio things to do, and then I've got this tour
starting after the Rhyming show in a couple of weeks,
and then I've got a long tour which finishes at
Carnegie Hall on the thirtieth of this month. So that's

(01:53:30):
the first leg of the tour with the new album,
and then the second one is in December, and the
videos will drop every like every two weeks. There'll be
a new video, a new video of all the songs.
And so we've already we've already got two out there
now and third one's coming soon. But they're all done.

Speaker 1 (01:53:56):
Okay. You talk about the breakthrough of the tour with
John Denver. Is it purely been hard work or have
there been a series of lucky breaks?

Speaker 2 (01:54:09):
Well, you could call it a lucky break being offered
the John Denver tour, but I think I was the
right person. And you know, they didn't have to lug
ten people around and fly them and accommodate them. It
was just me, you know. So there's elements of luck

(01:54:35):
out there, and there's also elements of you know, I'm
pretty easy going. I'm very self contained. All I need
is to just get a good sound and let me go,
you know. So you know, I'm a I'm not a

(01:54:57):
demanding person. I'm very demand of myself, but I'm not
a demanding person with other people. I want people to
treat me like I treat them. So you know, I
got no time for complainers. I hate people who are

(01:55:18):
in the music business. They're making a living playing music,
and all they do is complain about it. Well, get
the hell out of it. You know, you don't know
how lucky you are. You're making living and you're making music.
Holy smoke. Doesn't get better than that.

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):
And when you view your work today, do you view
it as a long continuum or do you feel you're
better than before? Or do you look back at the past?
A I wish I knew then what I know now?
What's your tike? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:55:54):
Absolutely, I wish I knew then. What I know now
is exactly what it's like being my age and knowing
what I know now. But you know, that's that's life,
isn't it. Life is our teacher. And you know, I
think I don't think people realize how much work it

(01:56:19):
takes to get anywhere in the business. And you know,
like I've heard this said two people. You know, be
careful what you wish for. You might just get it
and it might destroy you. I've seen people be destroyed
by fame and fortune, you know, so don't don't look

(01:56:40):
for that. Money comes and goes, money flows in and
out of your life, and and and fame is a
momentary curse. So you know, you've got to get yourself
out there. But at the same time, you you've got
to find a balance. You know. I can't do a

(01:57:03):
good job if I'm frazzled and stressed and worried about
this and blah blah blah. I don't want to be
like that, you know. So I don't try to take
on too much as in other things. You know, I'm
not a guy who says, oh, I've got to go
fly fishing. Oh I've got to go car racing. I

(01:57:23):
want to play football, I want to blow hit the
golf ball. I want to do this, and have you
seen this? We've got to go to the movies. I
don't I know how to be still. I know how
to be quiet, and I know how to just relax,
you know. And so you know, what matters to me
is that I do a good job when I play.

(01:57:44):
And if I struggle with anything, then I'll just work
on it, you know. And it's it's not rocket science.
It's you know, find where your strengths are, find what
you're good at and what really works, and go for it,
and go for it with all your heart and all

(01:58:07):
your energy. Don't half ass anything. It's all or nothing.
That's how it is for me. You know. My attitude
to people is if I see you on stage only,
you know, not really trying or giving, not giving all

(01:58:30):
of yourself. If I see that, then get the hell
off that stage because I'm coming on. You know. That's
my attitude to people who who half assed things. You know,
so it's definitely all or nothing for me every time.

Speaker 1 (01:58:48):
Well, Tommy, I want to thank you so much for
taking the time, being honest, giving your philosophy. At the end,
people have no idea how hard it is to make it,
no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:58:59):
Yeah, they just yeah and they and they want it now,
and it's not. Life doesn't work like that, you know,
where it's ever evolving. And you know, when I think
of the stuff that I did, I'm so glad I
did it. I'm glad I did cruises where I was
expected to play in a ballroom dancing band, and then

(01:59:22):
I had to play be the lead guitar player and
the lead singer and sing the whole Hot August Night
album start to finish in one set for two hours.
And then I had to play you know, bosting over
music down by the pool in the afternoon, and that's
how I gained experience and knowledge by taking on a job.

(01:59:44):
And then I got a job in a band playing bass,
and then I got a job playing drums, and I
did all that, and I kept working on it, and
I kept saying, yes, I can do that, and then
I'm hoping that I could, you know, because I needed
the experience and and all that stuff, and you know,
it really pays off. What I do know is that

(02:00:07):
you know, it doesn't matter how many views you have
on YouTube, it doesn't matter how many millions of likes
you have. They do not equal concert tickets sold. So
you've you've got to build your audience by hand, brick
by brick. That's how you do it.

Speaker 1 (02:00:30):
On that note, I think we're going to close. There
are two kinds of people. People who are Tommy Emmanuel
fans and people who just haven't heard him yet. If
you're not familiar with his music, pull it up and listen. Tommy.
I want to thank you for taking all this time
to speak with my audio.

Speaker 2 (02:00:46):
I appreciate it and less of love to you brother.

Speaker 1 (02:00:49):
Okay, till next time. This is Bob left sets,