Guys & Guitars 2 - Available Online

Posted 2008-04-22     Updated 2008-04-22

Losing sleep because you missed the on-air broadcast of Guys and Guitars on April 16th on Canada Live! ? Well, fret no more. The entire concert is available on the CBC Radio 2 Concerts on Demand website.

For those of you who haven't heard the story so far, I had the pleasure of hosting this concert that celebrated the diversity of music played on the guitar for CBC Radio.

For the evening I was joined by four other guitarists, each performing their own distinctive style of guitar music. Rodolfo Pino-Robles, of Saskatoon, performed music from South America on the guitar and several other instruments derived from or related to the guitar; Tim Vaughn, also from Saskatoon, held down the fort for electric guitar with some of his original R&B and Funk; tunes; Regina’s own Kris Craig brought the classic sounds of the electric jazz archtop, and Vancouver's Don Alder, the 2007 International Fingerstyle Guitar Champion, dazzled the audience with his contemporary steel-string fingerstyle guitar techniques.

New CD - 4 On 6 - The Beatles for solo guitar

Posted 2007-11-29     Updated 2008-05-24

4 On 6 is now in stock and available for purchase.

See below for an audio preview of the album's tracks.

If you live in the Regina area, copies are available through

• Bach and Beyond
• Cobb Swanson Music
• B-Sharp Music
• Long & McQuade
• Cumberland Art Gallery Gift Shop (Legislative Building)
• Royal Saskatchewan Museum Gift Shop

In Saskatoon copies are available at McNally Robinson and Long & McQuade

For delivery elsewhere, you can order online or via snail mail through the Acoustic Tonic Music Store.

On the other hand, if you haven't even heard of the CD ...

... I should explain 4 on 6 is a collection of 12 classic tunes by The Beatles arranged for solo guitar.

I grew up with their music as the soundtrack to my youth. Now, almost 45 years later, I still can't quit humming the tunes. The melodies are so strong and the chord progressions so malleable they can easily be bent and reshaped without breaking. This makes them ideal material for arranging for guitar.

For some years I've enjoyed doing exactly this and I now find myself with a fair collection of these arrangements. Some of them simply try to capture on six strings the energy and spirit of the original, while others are reinterpretations. My previous CDs have featured a couple of Beatles tunes, but I decided that a CD dedicated to them would be in order. 4 On 6 is the result of this labour of love.

So sit back and enjoy the preview, or head on over to the Acoustic Tonic Music Store to place an order.

Woodsongs Old Time Radio performance now available online

Posted 2007-11-17     Updated 2007-12-02

The Wailin' Jennies and I appeared on The Woodsongs Oldtime Radio Hour on Nov. 5, 2007. The podcast versions of the program - both audio and video - have now been posted on the Woodsongs website.

To view and/or download, go to www.woodsongs.com and follow the menu links to the Archives page. The program featuring myself and the Wailin' Jenny's is 462.

Be sure to check out other previously archived shows for some great performances by great guitarists like Tommy Emmanuel, Edgar Cruz, Thom Bresh and others as well as other fine performaers.

The Slippery Slope Available on YouTube

Posted 2007-09-10     Updated 2008-04-07

Mel Bay has posted a copy of the video for my tune The Slippery Slope on YouTube as a promotion for the DVD Masters of Fingerstyle Guitar Vol 1 ( see the article below for details and to purchase ).

You can view the video on YouTube by clicking here

I was also pleased to find there are several covers of a couple of my other tunes (Dune and On The TIp Of The Tongue) that have been posted on YouTube by other guitarists. Thanks guys for putting the time in on a couple of my tunes!