On a trip to my grandmother's while still in gradeschool, my grandmother bought me a harmonica at the local drugstore. I honked and tooted along on that thing endlessly..... annoying anyone within earshot.
At 11, while on a vacation, we stopped in a little side of the highway Arkansas stripmall and in the stripmall was a music shop. The owner inside sold harmonicas and I bought one. He took the time to teach me blues harmonica bending to get proper blue notes, and while I was there, it really 'clicked' for me. Rapidly after that, I quickly got better playing blues harmonica - and as I learned I became a fan of the blues.
One blues man in particular caught my ear - Stevie Ray Vaughn. So with that, I had to get a guitar. Tragedy hit me however as I managed to cut off one of my fingers on my left hand. Not completely off, but I almost lost it. The doctor suggested learning guitar as a way to rebuild my hand and make it work again. So I bought a guitar.
Not long after, I was trying my hardest to sound like SRV and play the blues. I listened to WEVL blues shows in the morning and listened to every influence that guys like SRV, Kenny Wayne Sheppard and Eric Clapton listed in interviews with them in magazines. I was not as good a blues guitarist as I was a good blues harmonica player.
The final step for me came in college. I was lucky enough to meet a guy named Kent Dushane (sp?) He is a Dobro playing blues man who learned from the greats. His skill was wonderful, and from him, I managed to learn to play bottleneck/slide blues in open tunings on the guitar. Again, something I'm not great at, but can play a handful of tunes on....
So a year ago, I bought my first mandolin and very soon after had figured out the blues scales on the mandolin and began researching mandolin blues. That takes me to here....
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