Tommy Emmanuel, the hottest acoustic guitarist on the planet is coming to the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center on Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m. for an exclusive Southern California performance! Tickets start at only $35 and can be purchased by calling 800-595-4849 24/7 or by visiting laguitarfestival.com.
"The greatest fingerpicker in the world today." —Chet Atkins
"..run, do not walk, to a Tommy Emmanuel concert near you. True happiness is in tragically short supply right now, all over the world, but you will definitely find it there." —Richard McFalls, Cactus Cafe Show Review (Austin, TX)
Here's a wonderful interview with Tommy that appeared in the Easy Reader (Mark McDermott) July 2011 when Tommy was last in town, headlining the inaugural Los Angeles Guitar Festival:
Tommy Emmanuel first hit the road as a guitar player at the age of six.
His family had formed a band called the Emmanuel Quartet. One of his brothers played lead guitar, one drummed, a sister played slide guitar, and Tommy played rhythm guitar. He’d begun playing at the age of four, and after he and his siblings made national TV in their homeland, Australia, their father decided it was time to take this act on the road. He bought two station wagons, packed the family up – there were six kids total – and took off across Australia on a tour that ended up lasting five years.
They played anywhere and everywhere. Once on the road, they changed the name of the band—“People thought we were some kind of pastoral string quartet,” Emmanuel said—and became The Midget Surfaris. Frequently, the family traveled with circuses, literally as the sideshow.
“It was all part of the circus. I guess we must have looked like circus freaks when we were kids—standing up playing music, putting the guitars behind our heads, three of us playing one guitar. Every trick in the book we could come up with to try and entertain people. That is where we came from,” said Emmanuel in an interview last week.
Looking back at old photos, an unusual thing stands out. Emmanuel had extremely large hands. He played a full size guitar by the age of 5.
“I had abnormally big hands for a kid,” he recalled. “I am better proportioned now, but when I was a kid my hands looked gigantic—so obviously, that is what I was meant to be doing with them.”
Read the rest at http://www.easyreadernews.com/28433/tommy-emmanuel/
