So You Want to Be an Acoustic Guitar Player?

If you are an inspiring guitarist, I want you to pay close attention to this next video. Here’s a guy that’s playing his ass off in the street for maybe a few coins. This is what it’a like to live the life of a real musician.

Now I’m especially digging the part after the song is over….. almost an embarrassing amount of silence. If you have played these types of gigs (or in the streets), you know what I’m talking about.

Here’s something to think about…..  take this guy, put him on a big stage (with some clean clothes and a shower) and the audience would perhaps deem him as the next Paganini of the acoustic. Yet in this setting, he is totally ignored.

The moral of the story is, for every great guitarist you see on a big stage, there’s 10 others that play just as well (maybe even better) that you will never hear of.

Oh, one little story for you. I was playing this gig (this is going back many years) and it was one of those play guitar for the uptown dinner crowd gigs. Well, after playing a few songs to start and of course no applause or acknowledgement whatsoever that I was on stage, I decided to do an upbeat song. Finally after I was through, I got what I first thought, was a hand from one of the patrons. I looked up and noticed he wasn’t clapping, he was hitting his palm on a ketchup bottle.