Richard Smith with Pat Bergeson and Stuart Duncan

Tiger Rag featuring Stuart Duncan on fiddle. Richard Smith guitar, Pat Bergeson guitar, Charlie Chadwick Bass, Tom Giampietro drums.

Here’s another blistering Richard Smith video with the above players featured in a group called the “Guitar Hot Club of Nashville.”

If you are familiar with Richard, you know or at least suspect that he’s in the Tommy Emmanuel category on guitar, but what you may not know is the guitar playing of Pat Bergeson.. What a pleasant surprise as I’ve never heard him before now. Shame on me!

Pat may not be quite as flashy of a guitarist as Richard, but he’s definitely got so much to say… and in a big way. The solo he takes here is so musical… he’s always in total control and very very tasteful. His ending line is just so jazzy… obviously a well schooled musician.. I’m saying all this without looking up a bio on Pat so, I’ll include that below. Here’s another thing I’m not sure about… I’m suspecting that Pat Bergeson is the guitar force in this band and Richard perhaps is sitting in? I don’t know too much about this group – maybe someone can fill me in here…

Pat’s bio:

“Guitarist and harmonica player Pat Bergeson has written, toured, and recorded with many of his musical heroes. Beginning at the University of Illinois in his home state, he moved on to New York City and picked up a Jazz Studies degree at William Paterson University. After playing in New York for ten years, he moved to Nashville upon the request of Chet Atkins who heard Pat on a demo tape. Chet invited him to play on his album “Sneakin’ Around” with Jerry Reed, and later featured Pat’s guitar and compositions on his 1994 release Read My Licks. They were good friends and toured together for several years.

A versatile guitarist as well as chromatic and diatonic harmonica player, Pat’s style incorporates jazz, blues, rock and finger style and he is known for his session work with a variety of artists. He has been in the studio with Lyle Lovett, Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, Bill Frisell, Martin Taylor, Suzy Bogguss, Bill Evans, Peter Frampton, Michael McDonald and many others. He has toured with Shelby Lynne, Madeleine Peyroux, Wynonna Judd, Suzy Bogguss and then four years with Lyle Lovett and his Large Band. Pat has been a teacher and producer and has appeared on many movie soundtracks.” read more

Okay, as suspected, Pat went to William Paterson… that’s here in my state of New Jersey (not New York as his bio implies). WP is an excellent jazz school that a lot of my buds graduated from.

You know, I could have wrote this whole article on Richard Smith, or even Stuart Duncan. As far as the music goes, I’ve found that a lot of people here don’t care for the swing Django Gypsy Jazz stuff. I’m still trying to figure out why, as I think this kind of guitar playing is just about as hot as it gets… and you will also notice that all the really great players love and play this style. Sorry folks, got to include this valuable music form!