“She gets on the intercom and says, ‘There’s a boy from Australia here to see you.’ I hear him say, ‘Is he a fingerpicker?’” Tommy Emmanuel knocked on the door of his biggest guitar hero – and ended up jamming with him
(Image credit: Martin Philbey / Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
Sometimes, you bump into high-profile players when you least expect it. If you’re anything like Tommy Emmanuel, though – who literally walked up and knocked on the door of his guitar hero – you meet them exactly when you expect to.
Speaking on The Zak Kuhn Show, the Aussie acoustic guitar virtuoso reflected on the time he first visited Music Row in Nashville as an aspiring musician and took the opportunity to swing by the abode of none other than Chet Atkins.
After heading over to the Atkins household during his pilgrimage to Nashville, Emmanuel explains, “He had a lady named Caroline working for him and I knocked on the door and she let me in. I had my guitar and I had a photo album with photos of me holding up his albums and stuff as a kid.
“I’m waiting downstairs and she gets on the intercom and says, ‘There’s a boy from Australia here to see you.’ And I hear him say, ‘Is he a fingerpicker?’ She looks at me and I go, ‘Yeah!’ She goes, ‘He says he is.’ [Chet says], ‘I’ll be right down.’
“I’m waiting and then down the stairs he comes, and there he is, looking exactly like he does on his record. There he is, my hero, the guy I have learned [and] stolen everything from.”
A guitar lesson with Tommy Emmanuel – YouTube
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This wasn’t an ordinary meet and greet, though. Emmanuel had come prepared with his guitar, and Atkins was keen to make his fan’s trip worthwhile.
“He came straight up to me and he said, ‘You want to pick a little?’” Emmanuel remembers. “We go into a side room and I start playing Me and Bobby McGee, and he doesn’t play straight away. He’s just sitting there.
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“He’s just watching me, and I get to the end of the first chorus, and when it comes into the verse, he joins in when the second guitar comes in on the arrangement. What he played made me sound so good.
“What he played was so beautiful and so tasteful. And then when the chorus came around, he went straight to a harmony. He phrased it like I phrased it.”
The encounter gave way to one of the most important lessons that Emmanuel ever learned – something the acoustic virtuoso uses to inspire other aspiring players.
“He listened to me and it was so beautiful,” he continues. “I thought, ‘Chet was not just a great player and a great arranger and a great producer and all that, he was a great listener.’ And I learned a lesson from that.
“So, when anyone says, ‘What advice would you say to musicians?’ I always say, ‘Be a listener first, be a player second.’”
It would be the start of a fruitful relationship between the two fingerstyle maestros, who would go on to release The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World in 1973.
In related news, Mark Knopfler recently recalled the time he was called up by Chet Atkins to jam following the release of Brothers in Arms.
Matt is the GuitarWorld.com News Editor, and has been writing and editing for the site for almost five years. He has a Masters in the guitar, a degree in history, and has spent the last 19 years playing everything from blues and jazz to indie and pop. During his GW career, he’s interviewed Peter Frampton, Zakk Wylde, Tosin Abasi, Matteo Mancuso and more, and has profiled the CEOs of Guitar Center and Fender.
When he’s not combining his passion for writing and music during his day job, Matt performs with indie rock duo Esme Emerson, and has previously opened for the likes of Ed Sheeran, Keane, Japanese House and Good Neighbours.
