- My mom played guitar, dad played guitar.
My, both of my grandparents on both sides played guitar.
That was our life, music, right?
The whole family all the way around.
So it was just, you know,
destiny for me to grab a guitar and start learning.
You know, when I picked up the first guitar,
it was in my house out of like,
probably about five or six guitars that were laying around.
I just fell in love with it.
One, two, three, four.
(country guitar music)
(instrumental band music)
Well, the feeling was, I just got lost in it, man.
I was like, you know, I just remember my mom calling out,
"You're going to eat dinner?"
And I go, "Oh, I'm sorry."
I picked up the guitar like four or five hours before that.
If somebody wouldn't have called me, don't know,
I probably would be playing all night until bedtime.
So I put in my time.
I remember getting out of bed and my guitar
was leaning up on my bed.
I just, first thing I did was grab it and start playing.
I was studying, pretty much everything from rock
to blues to jazz.
But, country was the basis of what I was playing.
You know, as a kid,
my mom and dad were always like thinking,
"We've got to get him to Nashville."
because that's where it's all happening.
We loaded up into the Ford Econoline van,
headed to Nashville.
And my mom and dad decided to pull up
in the back of RCA Studio.
And sure enough, if we pulled up.
And there was Chet walking into the back door,
and mom goes, "There he is, get out, go on!"
They slid that door open and pushed me out.
I was like a deer in the headlights and I was playing
like a gut string guitar following Chad into the building.
Like I was in a mariachi band or something, right.
I followed him.
He maybe he didn't hear me, but,
or he didn't notice me or didn't want to.
Walked in,
and the door shut.
And I was like,
"Mom, why did you do that?
This is abuse."
The move full time is when I corresponded
with the steel guitarist, Paul Franklin.
and I had sent a tape off to him.
They started playing it on the bus.
I think it was The Tillis band guys.
And they, they loved my playing.
So I got invited to Nashville.
So I ended up moving there,
feeling like, well, I at least got to have a connection now.
They got me a gig at the StageCoach Lounge.
So that's where it all started.
I was about 19 or 20 when I started that.
It was kind of a musician's musician place, right?
I played at the StageCoach about seven nights a week.
The word started getting out to the band, like,
"this is a hot band", right?
This one night Chet Atkins showed up.
Started blowing solos, I was like, "Oh shit."
He was watching me play and,
he was all, you know, I noticed he was out there.
I talked to him.
He loved my playing and everything.
And then about a week later,
I got a call at home,
as he was asking me if I'd like to play
on his Stay Tuned album.
And you know, my heart was in my throat at that point.
And he goes,
"How you looking on the calendar for next Thursday?"
So I was trying to act cool.
I had a calendar pinned up on the kitchen wall.
And I was looking on it.
It was, it looked like a snow storm, right.
And I was going "Thursday, yeah.
Thursday is going to work.
Thursday will work great...
...or Friday, or Wednesday before..." It didn't, you know,
so he asked me to play on this record.
And it was like, this was my big break.
(country guitar music)
When I first came to Nashville, I didn't have much money.
I'd have to trade one guitar in to get another guitar.
So that's how this came about.
I wanted to have a Les Paul,
a Tele and a Strat, like to have all three though,
I could cover a lot of ground.
When I bought this guitar,
of course it wasn't bought like this with a three pickups.
So Joe Glaser put a mini humbucking-style pickup
in this middle pickup with the volume.
And the, of course the back, you know the bridge.
It was my attempt to get a guitar that plays everything,
all the sounds, you know?
Okay, B-Bender.
I was working on a Patty Loveless album
way back in the early nineties
and her husband, Emory Gordy Jr. was producing it.
And I was doing licks like...
(gentle guitar music)
I can't do it now, right?
(gentle guitar music)
All those kinds of bends like that.
And Emory was going, "Hey, you gotta B-Bender, great!
Let's really load it up with B-Bender licks."
And I was going, "Oh shit!"
I didn't tell him I didn't have a B-Bender.
'Cause I didn't wanna lose the gig.
The blood was coming off of my fingertips, trying to,
you know, all these.
(sharp guitar music)
All these kinds of things like that.
I thought I was fooling them.
And when I went home, I go,
"I gotta get a B-Bender for this guitar."
So I put one in,
Okay, this guitar has a lot of versatility.
I use this guitar on the obvious things like Alan Jackson,
George Strait and all that kind of stuff.
But I use it on the, on the soundtrack of Friends, you know,
You know, it was a lot of walk on stuff
where it was more like bluesy stuff.
It's got all of it's right here for everybody
that wants to play the stuff, like I play.
But even their own stuff, it don't have to be me, right?
It's just, it's a very versatile guitar.
And I think they're gonna find it,
like, real satisfying to
that it could play all different styles and sound good.
So we would show up at the studio,
and we didn't know what we were gonna play on
until we got there.
We didn't, we have never seen the music.
The music might not even be written out yet.
You know, sometimes the records were made pretty fast.
I remember I'll tell you one story.
I was, there was an artist, Tracy Byrd,
and I did some kind of a gut string intro on it.
And about six months later, George Strait did a song.
And somehow I forgot about the Tracy Byrd song.
And I played sort of the same intro on it.
Well, somehow they all came out at the same time.
The records came out at the same time,
and they were on the charts, right neck and neck.
And all the music goes,
"Hey, you play the same lick on!"
I go, "No, oh God, I know."
That's embarrassing.
(country guitar music)
(gentle guitar music)
What it takes to be a successful session player
in Nashville, is there's a lot of elements
that go into that.
First of all, you got to be a good study of music.
You got to know your history of music to conjure it up
on a minute's notice.
This it's an important thing to really
understand the artists that you're working with.
This is really not about me as a guitar player.
It's about what I can present to them and help their song.
And a good person,
a nice person, not a-hole, right?
Here's a new evolution now.
And it's time for that.
I'll show up at a session.
I'll see guys that are my daughter's age, right.
I'm looking around and going, "wow."
But I still am a session dog.
You call me, I'll be there.
And I got like a whole week booked next week.
- [Interviewer] Do you still love it?
- Yeah.
I love it.
(gentle guitar music)