Guitar

with Eddie Walker

Many of you know that I play a certain kind of American Roots based acoustic guitar music that encompasses old time country blues, ragtime, hillbilly, swing and folk. I’m a finger-picker and not a flat-picker or strummer with a plectrum. I mean I can, but usually I don’t! Hopefully there will be other guitar tutors there that cover this kind of playing and many other folk styles besides.

Not to be negative but I can’t in such a short time teach you exactly how to play the guitar if you can’t already. This is a group class usually and not one-on-one teaching. Then again at Common Ground I have been able to give some one-on-one sessions during free time to help players to push forward a little quicker!

All that said, I would not want to put-off any real novices or beginners. We’ve all gotta start somewhere! The only thing is, this won’t generally be a beginners class in the content of it, therefore and it’s up to students to assess whether or not they will get what they want from the tuition if it turns out to be a bit advanced for them. Mind you, what I’ve found in respect of those students at Common Ground who are just starting out, they can often learn an awful lot from players attending who are just a bit ahead of them. It doesn’t have to be me teaching when we can become one big help-each-other group. Now I think that is a very important feature of how we can work.

But if you’ve ever aspired to pick a little better, learn some of the tricks and get to grips with the music I love and have played for my living these last 30 years, then joining me for at least 5 days might be just up your street. And if in that time all you do is get a greater enthusiasm for the music then I still believe I will have succeeded. If you find out better where to go to, to listen to the real thing if you don’t already know where it is then I’ll have done my job too.

I’ll bring a few really nice guitars with me so you can have a play on them too. I’ll introduce you to the folk and blues finger-picking greats, both alive and passed-on, with their recordings, photographs and books that have been written about them, and you’ll discover a rich tradition of acoustic guitar playing just like I did when I first got interested as a teenager back in the 1960s when this Folk thing in Britain was in its flourishing youth! So come along and we can all flourish again together!!!

My heroes are Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Arthur Blake, Rev. Gary Davis, Big Bill Broonzy, Doc Watson, Jimmie Rodgers, Jelly Roll Morton and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. They are not all guitar players but their music can be played on the guitar. I love the songs of John Prine, Steve Goodman, Buddy Holly, Hank Williams and Ry Cooder and have them all in my repertoire. And I can show most all of it to you even first thing in the morning, at the crack of dawn!

Eddie Walker - Guitar, Blues & Ragtime.Eddie Walker is the arguably the finest ragtime and country blues performer this side of the Atlantic, and among the all time greats of this music on either side of the pond. more about Eddie Walker

This class will run in Guitar and Instrumental Week