clarkspicks.com

In 1964, when I was eleven years old, the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show. It seemed like everybody in America wanted to learn to play the guitar that year and be a Beatle. I was a big Beach Boys fan and begged for a guitar for my twelfth birthday. After weeks of searching my parents finally came up with a Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar for me. It was in their price range and it satisfied my craving, for a while.

Decades later I actually took some lessons. Wanamaker Lewis taught me how to “move my thumb back and forth” as Chet Atkins described the alternating bass technique used in Travis style fingerpicking. Rolly Brown attempted to drum some music theory into my thick head.

By this time I was hosting a weekly folk music radio show, “Nobody’s Bizness” on WKHS-FM on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The premise was that it was nobody’s business what kind of folk music I wanted to play on my show. I did that for sixteen years and finally came to the realization that my audience didn’t think Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt and Louis Armstrong were folksingers. Well, Django didn’t sing, so I guess they had a point.

I hope that you will enjoy watching and listening to the music videos on this blog and maybe learn something from them. If you should happen to find something that interests you in my Amazon store or an ad so much the better. It will help pay for my yacht in the Mediterranean and my private jet, which I keep on standby in case I get a last minute call to sit in on a gig in Vegas. ;0)

Trackback URI | Comments RSS