“Jerry’s Breakdown” – Brent Mason, Tommy Emmanuel & Richard Smith
“Fasten your Seatbelts. This is HIGH OCTANE Guitar Pickin’. Brent Mason, Tommy Emmanuel and Richard Smith perform “Jerry’s Breakdown” at the 2nd Annual “Jerry Reed Guitar-Man Tribute Concert” 2014, held at 3rd & Lindsley in Nashville, TN. With Bart Pikes on the Bass, Ric McClure on the Drums, Mike Wyatt on Percussion, Pat Bergeson on the Harmonica and Mark Thornton on the Acoustic Guitar.”
The above is the description from YouTube…. this certainly would have been a great concert to attend for sure! Unfortunately there is now a copyright claim on that video (that’s the bad news). The good news is, there is a back stage jam on this song plus a link here to the original video , If you “just have to see it,” I found the original video now on Bilibili.
Bilibili fyi is China’s version of YouTube. And unlike YouTube, Bilibili doesn’t exactly adhere to any of the copyright laws of the USA. Although that might not be such a good thing for the artists or the songwriters, at least we have the chance now at seeing the video of Tommy, Richard Smith and Brent Mason.
Jerry’s Breakdown written by Jerry Reed is one of the most innovative country instrumentals that influenced the way modern country guitarists play today.
Now a lot of you are probably not as familiar with Brent Mason as you are Richard Smith and of course Tommy Emmanuel…
For many decades, Brent has been one of the most recorded sessions musicians in Nashville. Brent has played on so many hit songs). If there was an A team session then, he was there for sure. For this gathering, the trio perform Jerry’s Breakdown with Brent leading the way., Now I can’t be sure but my guess is that Tommy might not have learned this song note for note, as he’s just improvising on the melody (I guess the only way to find this out would be to ask one of those guys or Tommy?) Richard Smith on the other hand knows the song (I’ve seen him do this before in another video) but is only twinning the song with Brent at the end.
I’m not a big fan of drums with acoustic guitars and in this mix of the stage show, the drums drown out the guitars to the point where it’s difficult to hear what’s going on. Even though the camera work (or lack there of) is not on the “backstage video,” you get to hear the 3 guitars going at it by themselves even without Richard Smith iin the shot.
Hot playing by Brent Mason, Tommy Emmanuel and Richard Smith for sure.
Author: Robert Harris
So sorry about the copyright claim filed by Jerry Reed’s estate… It’s not like you are trying to make money from sharing the video. Regardless, I did go to the Bilibili site to watch the video. I’m a huge fan of Tommy Emmanuel and Richard Smith, especially when they play together. Sadly, I am not familiar with Brent Mason but will be looking fro more videos of him going forward. Incidentally, my wife and I will be attending the Tommy Emmanuel Guitar Camp next month in Nashville. We are both fledgling players and hope to learn a lot and hopefully not just be overwhelmed with all the activity and other players.
Hey Docbob, I’m glad you were able to see the vid over at Bilibili. Yes, Brent Mason is a great player and really did most of the A team session guitar work in Nashville for many years. I’m not surprised though that you haven’t heard of him as I don’t think he was really pursuing a solo guitar career like Tommy and Richard have done. BTW, you will have to let me know how it goes at the guitar camp.. that sounds fantastic and if I wasn’t booked with gigs myself, that’s something that I would love to attend. Thanks again and have fun at the camp- keep me posted!!
bob