Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Lefts Podcast.

My guest today is guitarist Extraordinary Tommy and men Will.

Tommy has a new album, Living in the Light.

Tell me about the new album.

Tommy, Thanks, Bob.

How are you today?

By the way, I'm pretty good.

I'm thrilled to be talking to you.

Thank you.

Yeah, Well, the same here the new album, Living in the Light.

It's just it was something that I'd been writing a few songs on the road and I was home taking a walk along the Percy Priest Lake here in Nashville with a friend of mine, and he said, well, you just walked three miles and you're not even raising a sweat, you know.

He said, Man, you look so well.

You must be living in the light.

And the moment he said that, I was like, that's a great phrase, living in the light.

I love that.

So it's kind of what started the ball rolling on the name of the album and all that and the direction of everything.

Just that one conversation.

And I had written some songs and one called Scarlett's World.

Scarlett is my oldest granddaughter, she's seven, and you know, I was just thinking one day, what the world will be like when she's twenty one years old, you know, what will our world be like?

And what is Scarlet's world going to be?

So that kind of gave me some a kind of a theme to work towards.

And I have another granddaughter named Georgia, and so I wrote the song Little Georgia for her.

And then basically I wanted to work with a man named Van Vance Powell who's a great producer, a great engineer, and I like working with people who have, you know, a great experience behind the sound desk and all that.

And I listened to a lot of his work with Chris Stapleton and Jack White and stuff like that, and I thought this, if I could get to work with him, it would be wonderful.

So we contacted him, and I could only get him a year in advance.

I could only get him for four days, so I had to get the whole album done, finished, and mixed in four days, and we did it.

We finished at like six o'clock on the day on the fourth day.

We finished everything.

So that's how it came up about some of the songs on there that are that are going to come out on video where that's the take And I only did it once and we filmed it and there it is.

That's how that came out.

Okay, what is the process?

Do you wait for inspiration or do you say, I haven't had an album in a long time.

We're always thinking about recording in the future.

I never think about recording when I'm writing and stuff.

A songwriter like me, even though I very rarely write lyrics, my songs are still songs to me.

They still tell the story even without words, and that's kind of how I approach it.

I always my brain does this automatically.

When I start writing a song, I'm looking for the lead singer's part in the melody, in other words, and then I'm looking for the band to do interesting chords underneath.

So the lead can have the same kind of melody, but the chords can change underneath, and so that makes the song have a certain repetition that your ear loves, but your senses want to feel something a little different, So you do the same melody, but you change the chords underneath.

Things like that, And I always think that way.

I always think of, you know, how can I make this be repetition but yet interesting all the way?

And things like that.

You know, so in terms of writing, are you writing all the time or thoughts come into your brain or do you say I'm going to write now, let me sit down and write.

I wish I could just turn it on.

But the truth is, Bob, a songwriter waits patiently for something to happen you.

You wait for you either get a real good idea that comes to you because of something.

Normally, for me, it's somebody I meet, something I hear, or something I watch.

And I know I've written many songs from watching films and I just get I get inspired by a story or a character or how a movie is made.

I remember when I watched Lincoln, the beautiful Steven Spielberg film, and because of that song, Because of that movie, I wrote the song Old Photographs.

And when I was writing the song, I was an old lady in Ireland sitting playing piano.

That's what I was in my head, and the song came to life in that kind of way.

And I was also reminded of my grandparents who have been gone for I don't know, sixty five years or something.

And I was reminded of when I used to visit my grandparents and my grandmother would take out the little cookie tin and open it and there'd be all these old photographs in there, and she'd tell me stories about everyone in the photo and photos of my uncle's that never came back from the war and things like that.

And that's kind of how that song appeared, because that movie put me in that frame of mind.

You know.

Okay, let's drill down a little bit further.

You're sitting there, you're watching the movie.

Do you start to write the song in your head while you're watching or do you try to maintain the mood after the film ends?

And how long after is the period of inspiration before it feeds away or does it never feed away?

If I'm totally engrossed in the film, then I'll stay there till the end, and then if I feel like I can write something or I've got an idea, then I'll just pursue it.

You know, I'm like a dog with a bone, and when it comes to it, if I've got one good idea, I'm going to I'm going to chew it to death until it becomes something.

You know, but it has to be My instincts have to tell me that it's good enough, you know.

I remember when I was writing Scarlett's World.

And it started out like a ballad, and I liked the I like the melody because it was one note.

And then the chords changed underneath dude, and then I thought, ah, that that's all working, but it's too sad.

So I made it into like a rock and roll groove, and then it became dum dun d du that, and then it started to live under my hands, and I ended up writing the rest of the song.

And actually I wrote a lot of stuff to put in the song, trying to be clever, and most of it I threw out because the song itself just needed to tell the story and that's it.

So all the other stuff that I was trying to be clever creating, I ended up tossing out because it just wasn't working.

Okay, let's go back.

Let's say you're watching Lincoln.

Obviously, you can go to a theater.

You can watch it home.

When you watch it home, you can watch on demand.

Stop just to get my story straight here, You could be watching the movie get inspired at home and stop the movie and say I got to pick up my gets are?

Is that how it works?

You possibly could, but I don't think i've ever done that.

So is when you say you saw the movie Lincoln, since that is what did you see it at home or did you see it in the theater?

I saw it in the theater.

Okay, you stay for the whole film.

When do you start writing the song?

When I get when I get back to where I'm staying.

And is it possible that Let's assume you saw the movie and then you were in a situation for twenty four hours where you just couldn't sit with your guitar.

Would you lose it or would you still have the inspiration?

I've lost it a million times.

Yeah.

I've also written a song called the Wide Ocean was on my album Tommy Songs.

I wrote that song completely in my head on a flight from New York to Beijing.

And because I can play the guitar in my mind, I can hear hear it and sense it and hear the inversions, the melody and all that, I can hear it all in my head, and I can visualize where the melody is and all that.

And then I got to Beijing, got straight to the hotel, got my guitar out to make sure that my hand's new where they needed to go, and it was fine.

Let's just assume you're in that situation.

You get into the hotel, we start to play, you turn on your phone or you have some recording device to make sure you have it.

Yeah, I have voice memo on my iPhone.

That's my I've got all my song ideas on that.

And you know, during COVID, when we were in lockdown, I was approached to write music for a film called The Tiger Rising, which was a quick in Latifah movie, and the guy who was the producer of the film was a big fan of my music.

He particularly liked my song The Mystery and wanted to use some of that song in the film.

And I said, well, why don't you send me some of the film and I'll see if I can write something full exactly for the film.

And so I ended up doing the whole film and I wrote everything, with the exception of the opening theme, which was written by an LA guy.

But I wrote the whole thing and recorded bits of it on my iPhone, texted to the music director of the film.

He orchestrated it with his keyboards and all that, and we dropped it in the film bit, you know, three minutes of the film to see that it all worked, and that's how we wrote the whole film.

And then when locke Down was finally let go of and he was able to travel, he came here to Nashville and we recorded the songs for real with me in one studio and I did all the guitar parts, and then we overdubbed the orchestra the next day and put it together.

Okay, when you do get inspired and you are writing A how quickly do you work?

And B how much do you or do you not change it thereafter?

I'm usually a pretty fast rider.

But it really really depends on how inspired I am.

But when I play my own songs, say if it's a song I haven't played in a while and I play it, the first thing I noticed is, oh, yeah, I recognize it is the construction of this song.

I recognize that that part there needed this, you know what I mean.

So you know, I'm still thinking like a pop songwriter.

It doesn't matter whether it's country, bluegrass, jazz, whatever, I don't care.

I always think like, I want got to get this to the people.

This song is for people to hear.

It's not it's not trying to be clever for the sake of being clever or whatever it's.

It's trying to write the best song that I can, and I have to satisfy my my barometer, my my quality control, which is right here, you know.

And and so because I look at it like this, Bob, they're up in here is all the all the clever guys.

They're all throwing ideas and they've got things going and they're you know, but this this guy down here is the one that has the final say.

Just for those weeks, since we're audio only, you're talking about the guys in your head and then talking about your heart having the final say.

So, yeah, you work quickly.

Do you go back and change it before recording or you just go and write something else.

Now, I don't play it for anybody until I know it's absolutely one hundred percent done, and then I can't wait to play it to people, because there is no greater feeling than playing your new song to an audience.

That's the most exciting damn thing that I know.

Okay, let's talk about classic rockers.

They'll go on the road and they play new music.

The audience goes to the bathroom.

When you're playing live and you're playing new music.

You find the audience is unfamiliar with the music, but they're receptive or they're less receptive.

Oh, they're very receptive.

And I usually opened my show with something brand new every time.

You know, it's very rarely that I would come out and play, you know, a very well known song of mine or something like that.

I do enjoy it sometimes, like for instance, on this last tour that I just did where I played in China.

We did ten shows in China, and my song Angelina is you know, it's really that's the song that people are always waiting for.

And when I played in the show, I just play the first chord and sing a little intro and people yell and scream, and then I go into the body of the song and they applaud again, and we know this song, we like this song.

So what I did on my shows in China is I opened the show with that song and then I went off into other things just for fun, just to try something different.

But normally I would open the show with it with two to three brand new songs in a row that people have never heard before.

Okay, to go to China.

How big are the venues you play and are the people familiar with your work.

Oh yeah.

The venues are called Lifehouse.

They're like rock clubs, and some of them are like a thousand people standing, six hundred people sitting, that kind of thing, and they're really nice.

And the in house product, the PA, the sound production, and the lights and everything are really first class and they're really modern and my team makes good use of them, believe me.

So a normal day in China would be we would get to the city where we're playing about lunchtime, check into a hotel, eat something, have a nap for twenty minutes, then go to the venue.

My lighting director would go early so because he's got a program the light and then me and my sound man who's my tool manager, we go to the venue about three o'clock and we get set up and then we do a sound check and I come out and plug in and play as if the audience are already in kind of thing.

You know.

I don't waste time noodle around on stage.

I get to you know, get to the business of getting the sound as best as best as we can get it.

And so I do this.

I play a few tunes and I play with a similar intensity of the show.

So we can see where things are going.

Once we're all happy with the sound and everything, then we eat something and then I usually do a meet and greet.

I meet like one hundred and fifty people, sign their guitars, sign autographs, get a photo, and then it's showtime.

Okay, So on the road, it's the three of you.

Yeah, okay, it's my lighting director and my sound man.

Who's my tool manager?

Okay, you're meeting these people?

What are the one or two questions they always ask?

Will you play Angelina?

Will you play Lewis and Clark?

You know, I hear the same kind of you know, and can you give me one of your picks?

So if I'm there and I asked for one of your picks, what are you going to say?

I'm going to say I've got a pocket full of Just hang on a second, And I.

Mean, do you have a merch table at your gigs where people can buy them?

Yes?

Yeah, I was only talking about China.

We definitely had merch there, but the promoter took care of everything.

You know.

It's a whole different world compared to touring anywhere else.

You can't compare it, you know, So.

Tell me some other things that are different about touring in.

China, Well, Pristadoff, the people pay extra for the IP ticket and for that they get a chance for me to sign their guitar and then they get a photo with me, and that takes time.

So we set the maximum at one hundred and fifty people, So that's one hundred and fifty guitars I have to sign, and then they regroup and they shuffle them through and we get a photo together then and then that's another one hundred and fifty people like that and getting a photo and all that, and then that's it.

So you could not do that here in America.

You just couldn't do that because you know, the Chinese are very much aware that, you know, they have to be you know, corralled and told this is how it works.

And if you don't do it this way, you're out trying to thing, you know.

So but it worked really well.

I mean I would meet one hundred and fifty people, sign their guitars, then they'd come back around and we do photos with everybody, and that whole thing took forty five minutes.

You know, that's like impossible.

If you sign one hundred and fifty guitars, does it tire out your hand for playing later.

Now, I in the last two hours, I just signed I don't know, two hundred straps, a whole bunch of vinyl and some CDs.

I have not seen your signature.

There's some people make a few scratches and you know, hey, you know that person signed it, but you could never read it.

And there are other people they spell out their whole name.

So how do you do it?

Well, if I'm just writing on on like a record or a CD, I'll just write Tommy CGP.

They know who that is.

If I'm writing on your guitar, I write my whole name.

Okay, how do you feel about doing all that?

That's not literally playing music?

It certainly generates some cash.

Do you see that a's just something you have to do, something you wish you didn't have to do, or something you like to do.

No, I enjoy it because it makes people happy, and it gives me a chance to interact with people, even if it's just short.

You know, I enjoy it.

And I don't get to China that often, and it's just I don't know, I like it, and I know that not many artists do stuff like that because they want to be you know, they want to remain a mystery to the public, and I don't give a damn about that bullshit, you know, so I'm happy to sign, you know, I'm happy to sign people's guitars.

And the other thing that I like is that you just never know what kind of guitar are you're going to come across.

And sometimes I'll be sitting there and they've got guitars going on the table and I'm signing and the next one and then this, you know, beautiful old Gibson will appear and I'll want to play it.

Stuff like that.

But you know, seeing people so it gets so happy is a great, great part of my day that that's for sure.

You know, a lot of people, especially when I'm doing interviews about touring life, people are like, you know, you meet people before the show, aren't you trying to get in the zone, and aren't you you know, don't you want to be alone?

And blah blah, And I'm like, no, no, you don't get it.

You walk into a room with fifty people who are enthusiastic and excited to meet you.

There's a level of mojo, of excitement, of positive energy that's going to seep into you.

You know you're going to take it on.

And then and you do something that you know is going to mean a lot to this person.

You get a photo with them, you talk with them for a minute, you sign the thing, and you look in their eyes and you be real, you know, just and when it's done, then you take all that good feeling and you give it back to them from the stage.

You know, I'm stealing their energy to create something through me and give it back to them.

Okay, every audience is different, and I've certainly been to shows where the act is never connected.

I've also been on shows on stage where the act is aware that the audience isn't paying attention.

They look to the band members whatever, and they win the audience over.

What's it like for you?

To what degree are you connecting with the audience when you're playing and worried about where they're are?

Well?

I think probably.

I mean, I try to connect with the audience the moment I walk on stage, I look at them, I yell hello, and I waved my hand and I look at them, and then then I get playing and I can tell if they're into it straight away, you know, once I once I get playing, and I'm I'm like two or three songs in, I've already opened the door, and you know, I've already started to really kick it up.

And I never feel I'd never feel disconnected from my audience, never, But you know, there are I remember playing a show in England about twenty years ago and there were people in the front row and there must have been something going on with them, and the guy kept looking kept looking at his watch, you know, and he's right in front of me, and his wife's kind of trying to keep him calm, and he's you know.

Anyway, we played the last song and everybody just jumped to their feet and they were like really yelling we played a good show and everybody was doing this.

And that guy, that girl that were right in front of me, he looked really distracted.

They took that chance to run, and so as they were running out to go to the door, I said, I'm so glad to see you go goodbye.

You know.

I said sorry to have kept you like that, you know, That's what I was saying to them.

So, you know, I felt bad about it later, but that's how I felt, and I let it out, you know.

Okay, you're very skilled.

There are some people who play their most well known material and while they're playing it, they're thinking, oh God, I got to do my laun tree.

Is there enough time to catch the plane when you're playing, which demands a lot of dexterity with your fingers whatever?

Are you always one hundred percent focused or are you so practice that your mind is drifting elsewhere?

No, I I try not to let my mind wander.

It's a bad thing to do because if you do that, you will make a mistake.

For sure.

You know you'll do something like is this a third time I played the bridge?

You know what I mean?

So you don't want to do that.

So this is why I'm tired after a show.

It's not that I'm physically like I mean, I'm very physical when I play, But that's not what wears me out.

It's up here where I get worn out, and so my brain is tired.

It takes a lot of brain power to push myself to play these kind of complex arrangements, but then go off into improvisation all the time and be inventive right now this very second and push it and push it.

And you know, because you're always waiting for the magic to happen.

So you're always pushing to try and get the magic to happen, and sometimes it just shows up and holy smoke, what a great night, unbelievable.

But then you have the problem of, oh, I've got to do it again tomorrow.

Shit, how am I going to beat this?

You know?

And that happens to me a lot.

Do you have any idea what triggers magic or just some nights it's there, sometimes it's not.

Yeah, yeah, most of it is depending how open I am, you know, and depend on what's going on.

The truth is, Bob, I expect it to be magic every single time, and when it isn't, I have to get through that, and I have to still try to play well because if I if I struggle and the struggle people don't even know I'm struggling.

But if I do struggle because I'm just not coming up with the ideas that they're pleasing me, then I just try to play well and pick the good songs and the good arrangements and try to play them with all my heart.

Because you can't manufacture that mojo.

It's got to come from wherever it comes from.

And so I'm always I'm always expecting it to be magic and hoping that it will be, but it isn't all the time, and so in that case, you better have some good songs to play.

Okay.

You know, when you have an outstanding night, does the audience know or they just think it's another great Tommy Emmanuel show.

That's a really interesting question.

And I think some people in the audience know when when you're flying your kite pretty high, and I think some people know when I'm struggling.

But in general, the night that I think I suck and that I played like crap, someone had come up and say, God, that was the best show I've ever seen you play, and be like, oh god, Okay.

I remember talking to Jeff Beck once and complimenting him about how he doesn't make any mistakes.

He rolls his eyes.

Oh yeah, I make mistakes all the time.

Blah blah blah.

Yeah, that's right, everybody does.

That's my question.

One.

Do you make mistakes?

And does anybody other than you catch him?

Pretty early?

People, if I make a mistake, I'm really good at covering it up.

I'm good to turn it into something else.

And there are sometimes when I've made a mistake on stage that I'll finish the song and I'll say to the audience, I really didn't play the bridge really well.

Do you mind if I play it again?

And so I play it again and get it right?

You know, how do you cover up a mistake?

What made a mistake be.

A mistake?

Might be that I just didn't get to the note with the clarity that I needed because my mind wandered for a second or something or whatever.

And so but you just keep moving, you know, because songs go by like this, you know, songs going here's the verse, here's the or is that you know, songs that have a movement to them.

And if you, if you, if you fluff up one little bit or whatever, just keep going.

You know, when I was really young and I had my own band and was playing back in Australia a lot, if I had a bad night where I made a few mistakes or whatever, it'd take me three days to get over it.

You know, I'd be I'd be down in the dumps about it and feeling like a you know, a complete loser.

But these days, I mean, I make I'd probably make mistakes every night, but some nights, uh, some nights are just magical and they're the nights that that are really hard to emulate the next night, you know.

So to me, I'm always trying to find ways of making my improvisation interesting and to build something right in the spur of the moment, you know.

And then that's why I still play songs that require whole sections of where I can play as long as I want.

I can start this solo here in this tune and I'm improvising, and i can go, go, go if it's flowing.

If it isn't, then I'll do something else and get to the next verse.

Okay, you talk about the mental energy and the mental strain and wearing out of your brain to do a show.

Yeah, A, when the show is over, what is your routine?

And B how long after the show can you fall asleep?

Half an hour?

Really?

Oh yeah?

Nowadays?

I mean I'm seventy years old.

I still use a lot of energy, and I play anyway between ninety minutes and two hours, you know, And I'm pouring my whole life into every note, you know.

And so when I'm done with that, I packed my stuff up and they take me back to the hotel and I'm ready to sleep in half an hour.

Wait, you're in front of a thousand people, let's say, who think you're God, who give you a great reaction.

There's a vibe there you can't get anywhere else whatever, and it makes you feel good, especially on a night when you're hot.

You know, when the magic is working.

How can you disconnect emotionally so quickly?

Because I have to do it again tomorrow, you know.

And also I was there in the moment.

I was there, I was present, and I appreciated it, and I gave it my best.

Now I've got to do that again tomorrow.

So what's important now is that I get some rest so that I can be at my peak again at eight o'clock tomorrow night.

You know, that's how I look at it.

I mean, when I was younger, I went out drinking and partying and all that sort of stuff, all like everybody else, and I didn't need near as much rest and nourishment, you know.

But these days it's so important to me to be in good shape and have time to play.

And you know, I do all my own guitar tech stuff.

I changed my strings, I tune, I set my guitars up how I like them, and I'm totally dedicated to that.

Are you like a gear head?

There are certain people they can pick up any instrument.

They once it's in tune, they play, that's it.

Other people it's got to be exactly right before they'll play or you know, are happy now?

Where are you on that spectrum?

I can get music out of a golf ball, you know, so it doesn't matter.

But if like most guitar players, who who I hand my guitar to to feel it or to play it, they're like, oh my god, it's so beautiful to play.

I said, it's supposed to be, you know, it should be set up so you don't want to put this thing down.

It's so beautiful, you know.

So basically, I break a few rules to make things how I like them.

And I'll get the neck of the guitar and I'll over straighten it till the strings are buzzing, and then I'll let it off until the strings stop buzzing.

Then I'll leave it there and the action is like low and flat, but you know, and I'll just watch it, you know, just to make sure that there's no bad buzzes going on.

But you know, you'd be amazed how many people they just get used to the action of their guitar, and then they start talking about couple tunnel and repetitive strain and all that, And I play the guitar and I go, I don't wonder that thing would wear me out in five minutes.

You know, you've got to get the next straight, and you've got to get the next sitting at the right angle, you know, so the guitar can speak and you can play it all day and all night.

Okay, so relatively speaking, you know, I've read online you like a later gauge, but how high action?

What gauge strings?

And how did you end up coming to what you like?

I like twelve to fifty fours when I'm using normal tunings.

When I'm using low tunings, I use bigger strings.

I use thirteen to fifty six or thirty into sixty, depending on the on the guitar.

As far as strings go, you've you've got an experiment and you've got to find what strings work best for your guitar.

You know, how does when you put the string on, how does it sound?

How in tune can you get it?

How does it feel when you come up the neck here?

And you know, all that sort of stuff.

So I find I find the brands of strings that I like and the gauges for which guitar on I'm music, you know, and so yeah, every guitar is different.

You know.

I carry three on the road with me and they're they're they've all got the same pickup and microphone system that comes with the mate and guitars that I use, but they all sound very different, you know, different tunings, different kind of strings, all that kind of stuff.

And that's a good thing.

You know.

You don't want to have the same sound, the same tuning in every song of the whole show.

You know.

I'm trying to keep people engaged and and do things that surprise them.

So I have a guitar with real big strings tuned down low, and so when I go into the song, it's like all there.

It's it's big and wide, and my sound man puts this beautiful long reverb on it, and you know, it just sounds like you can jump inside the sound.

It's so big.

And that's good for me because it takes me to another place as a player and as a performer.

And I use things like sustain and holding chords and things like like that that really makes people feel real calm inside, you know.

So let's say you go to the Maiden factory and you're picking out guitars at this late date, certainly in the fifties and sixties, maybe in the seventies, everyone varied.

Do you find that every instrument still has its own particular sound or it's more uniform these days?

Oh, every interest, every instrument is it definitely has its own voice.

But you know, Martin D twenty eight, I've probably played a thousand of them, and I haven't played a bad one.

They've all been good.

You know.

Gibson J forty five is one of my favorite guitars.

I love those guitars.

But the mat and guitar for me is that's my voice right right there, and it's the best guitar I know for show up, plug in, get a sound in five minutes, Okay, let's go.

You know, that's nothing I've played out there comes close to that.

And my soundman, Steve and I we we set everything flat.

You know, there's no processing, there's no digital clever stuff.

There's just two signals and both of them are with a bass on five, middle on five, travel on five.

Everything's flat, and then we work from there, and it's just it's so easy to get a sound when you're not trying to make a sound that that isn't really real, you know, like it's been hollowed out, and and it's there's a fake bass going on.

A lot of guitar players use optive divider where they where they put like a bass sound from a bass guitar and those low frequencies, they put that on a couple of their their low strings on the guitar, and so it's this big, massive sound and it's great, but that's not how a guitar sounds.

That's how guitar through processing sounds and that suits some people and I like it for a short time, but I wouldn't want to put my whole show through that, you know, so I try to keep it as simple as possible.

Two signals flat there, it is amp and pre amp.

Okay, you're not working every night live.

Does a day go by where you don't play or do you play every day?

And how much do you play every day?

Well, it depends.

Like I just got back from a long tour and a lot of shows, and the first thing I did when I got home was started playing some of my guitars that I haven't played in a while, and I've played quite a bit today, so I do play every day.

How many guitarist do you have?

I have a few I've got.

I don't really know how many I have, but it's because I've never counted them.

But guitars come and go.

In my life, Bob, I've given away so many guitars and given a lot of my favorite things up for you know, different charities and things we do auctions and stuff like that.

Plus I'm an ambassador for guitars for Vets, so they've received quite a bit of my personal collection and to try and raise money for them.

And so guitars come and go.

You know what I would think.

I think there are certain guitars that you say I've never partoned with this.

I have felt that way about certain guitars.

But the older I get, the more I realize, really I could live without that guitar.

I could just get another one, or I could, you know, try something else.

I try not to get like too attached to stuff like that.

Okay, since you started on your contemporary the music business has completely changed.

Yeah, people who know Tommy Emmanuel put you at a top of the list are really reverent, but not everybody knows who you are at this late date in terms of career ambition, career aspiration.

To what degree do you think about that.

One of the things I have to tell you that I really love about my life is the fact that, yes, I can tour the world.

It was my dream when I was young to be able to travel.

I've always felt like a citizen of the world, and I dreamt of playing in all the places that I play now.

Right But the good thing is I'm still invisible, and I love that I can still get in my car and go down to Starbucks, have a coffee and sit in the corner and read a magazine or hang out with some friends of mine or whatever, and nobody, you know, screams and yells and calls the police.

I'm still invisible, and I love that.

You know.

There's a song that I did with Ricky Skaggs on my album Accomplish One, and it's a song written by a friend of mine and I played on the original back in the seventies, and it says, I won't ask much of your time or that you recall my name, because fame is just a momentary curse.

But if you recall a song or two that lingers when I'm gone, then I guess a song and dance man could do worse, you know, And that's me.

I'm a song and dance man.

I play because I love to play, but I don't I don't always play for myself.

What really blows my dress up is when I play for you.

When I see what I do affect you, That's why I love it, And so that gives me a sense of purpose.

It gives me a sense of I'm here for a good reason, and I've been given whatever it is that I've got for a very good reason, for the benefit of everyone else.

I can understand you're wanting to keep theme at arm's length, but I never met an artist who didn't want their artistry to reach more people.

Oh, I'm always trying to reach more people, Bob.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Whatever I can do to get myself out there and get this music out there, you know, that's that's what I'll do.

You know, And you know, I know from some of your previous podcasts where you're talking about how the music business has changed and how it's really hard for people to there's no mailbox money anymore so to speak.

You know, if I don't tour, then how can I keep my team on a wage?

How can I help my ten year old daughter through school and college in Australia, you know, and all that sort of stuff.

That's how I make a living.

That's how I pay my bills.

I tour.

How'd you end up in Nashville?

I came here in nineteen eighty to meet my hero, Chet Atkins, and we just hit it off straight away.

And when he dropped me at the airport, he said, you'll be back and this is where you belong.

And that's all he said to me.

And I never forgot that, you know, And we stayed in touch, and he he had people because we were both with the same label with Sony.

When Chet signed with Columbia, I was on.

I was on Columbia out of Australia, and we had four platinum albums in a row in Australia and I won every award there was to win.

It was just like it was unbelievable.

And I think a lot of people kept him in touch with what I was doing.

And so in ninety five I was part of the Sony Country Music showcase that took Australian country music artist to Nashville for for the CMA week you know, where all the artists go on and do their do their thing.

Well.

So on the bill was you know, a whole bunch of singers, songwriters including Keith Urban and mark O'Shea and a whole bunch of Australian artists, and I was I was viewed by those artists as the token instrumentalist, so let's get him on first and then we'll get the real real stuff going, you know, which was which suited me great because it was where we were playing was a club called the Ace of Clubs, and that that place is always you know, pretty heavy drinking people and YAHOOE people.

So I was on first.

Everybody was still sober, and I came out and hosed the shit out of them for like twenty minutes and they went nuts and everything.

And I'm back in my dressing room and incomes chat with all the people from Columbia, you know, and they had never seen anything like what I did, and they said, are you on tomorrow night?

I said yeah.

So they brought down like fifty people or something and they were all down the front and chat chet Atkins there in the audience, standing like at a rock gig, and it was beautiful.

And I played the second night and about a week later, my phone rang.

I was back in Melbourne and Australia.

My phone rang and it was chat and he said, boy, these Columbia people are excited about you and would you like to record together?

And that was the start of our recording project.

And so that's how that came about.

He because we'd known each other since nineteen eighty.

Prior to that, I had written a fan letter to bless you.

I had written a fan letter to Chet when I was eleven, and I sent it.

I sent it to him and he wrote back.

He wrote back and sent me a photo signed and everything in you know, it was amazing.

That was nineteen sixty seven, so you know, it was sixty six, and you know he was the busiest guy in town who was producing everybody and running RCAA records, and you know he took time to write back to some kid.

So he come to the stage and you meet us, beautiful beating you euro What was that like?

Yeah, oh my god, it was wonderful.

And so I rang his office.

He'd given me his office number, and up on music row and I rang and he answered the phone and I said, I'm looking for mister Atkins.

He said this is he and I said, chat, it's Tommy Emmanuel, thinking he'll he won't have a clue who that is, you know, and he goes, hey, Tommy, I was just listening to your tape.

I've got a friend here and he likes you picking and blah blah blah the way he went and he said, are you in town?

I said yeah, I'm up the road at the Holiday Inn.

He said, well, come on down.

I'll see you right now.

So I jumped in the car and went down to his office and I'm waiting downstairs and his secretary Caroline gets on the intercommon she says, there's a boy from Australia here and he says he wants to see you, and I hear Chet's voice.

He says, is he a fingerpicker?

And I hold my thumb pick up, you know, and she says he says he is, and he says I'll be right down.

So a couple of minutes later, down he comes down the stairs and there he was.

I mean, he looked exactly like he did on his records, and I just couldn't believe I was meeting him, you know.

And he came up to me and he put his arm around me and he said, you want to pick a little and I said yeah.

So he took me into side room and he said, what do you want to play?

And I said, how about this?

And I went straight into me and Bobby McGhee like the arrangement that he recorded on an album called chet Atkins Alone.

It was a beautiful version, and I'd learned it and I was playing it and he was watching real carefully in there.

When the chorus came round, he just joined in and played beautiful harmonies and it was just like it was so magical.

What he played made me sound really good.

So there was the lesson and it was beautiful, and he asked me to play a few other things, and then he took me upstairs and he said, I want you to meet the greatest player that walks the earth right now.

And so he took me up to his private office and in that room was a guy named Lenny Brow.

And Lenny was sitting there playing and I knew exactly who it was.

I knew everything he was doing.

I listened to him a lot and the three of us sat there around the table playing tunes, and I heard chedd Atkins play beebop licks that were just mind blowing, like Charlie Parker and you never hear him play like that.

I heard it, and I had no idea he could do that, but he was so into that stuff and played it so well, and there were little quotes he'd be playing a tune, he'd play a little bit of dizzy fingers or something in the in the middle of how high the Moon, you know, stuff like that.

It's brilliant.

And then he asked me to take Lennie to where he was playing and take care of him and all that time.

So he took Lenny to where he was going.

Then what happened?

Then I stayed and watched Lenny play two sets and then took him home where he was saying, what.

Was your next interaction?

Okay, my next interaction with him?

Wait, so you show up music, you have this amazing experience and you wave goodbye and you don't have any contact for years.

Yep.

Oh well.

And he's communicating it all living in Australia.

Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah.

I mean I could call him anytime, but I was busy, and so was he.

You know, he was busy as one armed fiddler, as he used to say.

But I came over in ninety three to make an album called The Journey, which was my third album for Sony, and it was recorded and done in l A.

And Chet was playing at Ventura Concert Club and outside of LA.

He was doing a show there and I got tickets and I went to see him and saw the show and everything.

Because I've never seen him play live, only what we did at the office, I've never seen one of his shows.

And it was beautiful.

And I asked him if he would play on my album and he said sure.

And he said, but you'll have to come to me.

I've got a studio in my house.

You'll have to come to me.

I said, no problem.

So we got all the backing of the track and my lead parts and everything, and then I flew from LA to Nashville and went to Chet's house and he recorded a couple of solos.

The funny thing was he heard the track and everything and he goes, oh, this is a bit modern for the old man.

And I said, don't worry, Chief, You'll just take a solo.

Just just be yourself.

You know it's going to be fine.

And his first first take is the one I used because he played an incredible solo, was beautifully tasty and just gorgeous.

You know.

He did two more takes and I ended up using the first one when I when I mixed it.

But we had a really lovely time together and I had to leave that night to go back to LA And then then we ended up doing the album the day Fingerpickers Took Over the World.

That was recorded at Chess House, and that was a two week project and I did all the pre production with Randy Goodrum, the keyboard player, and and then we programmed like a bass drum and a high hat just to get with a boot keep time kind of thing.

And then I overdubbed brushes and bass and rhythms and stuff and made it sound like a band.

And then Chet and I did our parts.

And I had to get back to Australia for a tour, and so I basically mapped out all the bits where Chet had to take the melody, take a solo, harmonies in here, stuff like that.

I mapped it out and left it with him because he'd been in hospital having cancer treatment and so he was in recovery from that, and basically when he was feeling strong enough he would come down and work on the strust.

He ended up getting it all done, and I finished my tour.

And then when I got back to Nashville and got into my bedroom because I was I used to stay at the house, the Chetney owner's house, and on my on my bed was his guitar and his microphone and a note from him saying, you may wish to take the guitar to mix and if there's anything I'd missed, just drop it on.

You know.

He knew I could, I could play his part, and so I ended up putting some harmonies on one song that he'd forgotten to do.

And but I never told anybody.

Okay, you grew up exactly where in Australia all over.

I was born north of Sydney, up in the air, up in the coal mining near the city of Newcastle, and then we moved out out west and that's where we started playing music.

And I was the youngest one, and so my eldest brother Chris, was a drummer, My sister Virginia was playing the lap steel, and my brother Phil was the lead guitar.

Player, so my job was to play the rhythm and cover the bass part.

We just didn't know that's what I was doing, so there was no bass guitar in the band.

I covered the bass part when I played rhythm and played because there was the sound that we heard on the record.

We're just trying to make that sound.

And basically I had to do that playing rhythm and with the bass part.

And that's kind of how my style evolved because so that's the way I heard it.

I heard it as the rhythm player playing that low part, but it was actually the rhythm, normal rhythm, but with a bass player.

Well, I just no one mentioned the word bass guitar or bass player to me.

You know.

We just were listening to records and we listened to the music on the radio and trying to emulate it.

So that's how I developed the way of being able to play a bass part and a rhythm part at the same time.

And then when I heard Chat on the radio, I immediately knew he was playing everything at once.

And people were like, oh, no, it's a recording trick, you can't do that, and I'm like, I could hear it.

I just didn't know how to do it, you know, And it took me a while to work it out.

So how did you learn how to play?

I just was inspired by the songs that I heard.

That's the thing.

The real inspiration comes from the music.

It's not always the artist, it's generally always it's generally the music that inspires you.

And so if you're like me, and you're not going to quit me just because it's getting hard or something, then you're not going to make it.

But I, when I started working out how to make that sound, it came together somehow.

It was rough, and I was, you know, pretty ignorant musically, but I could figure it out.

And so I worked out how to play Windy and Warm and freight Train and Oh the Warbash, Cannonball and a few of those kind of songs and Merl Travis's Cannibal Rag and nine pound Hammer, Blue Smoke, sixteen tons and stuff like that.

And I'd play both the parts, but i'd play with a straight pick as well.

I would use the straight pick and my three fingers, and that's how I was doing it until in sixty five a guy gave me a chedd Atkins record, and on the cover of the record, I saw he had a thumb pick on, and I went, ah, that's it, you know.

And as soon as I put a thumb pick on, it was like someone opened the gate and the horse come running out, baby, because it set me free, and all of a sudden, I realized, oh god, this is outworks, you know.

So it was just discovery.

They was.

I was just.

Okay, you know the basic chords.

How do you learn the chords?

Was there a book?

Did someone show you?

No?

Other showed me how to play D and G and A seventh and E and B and all that.

And the more songs I learned, the more chords I had to learn.

And it wasn't long before I started getting the relationship between the chords and things.

I could hear, Oh that song in D, that's D, and that's the sound of a B minor and that's a E, and I start recognizing the sounds.

So I never had any any training, any teaching.

And I don't read music.

I play everything by ear, and I hire people to write my books because that's what they do and they're really good at it and all that kind of stuff.

But it's still all by by ear.

Okay.

So you talk about everybody in the family playing, having a group.

What did that look like?

How often did you play?

Did you travel?

We traveled all the time until dad died in sixty six May of sixty six, And yeah, my dad was forty nine when he died.

He had a massive heart attack and was gone, and it just he was here one minute, gone the next.

But we had We started touring in sixty one and we made our way north and we basically had what we call a forwarding agent, which was a guy who booked the hall and put up posters, and then he would move on to the next town, booked the hall, put up posters and that kind of stuff.

That's how it worked, and we would be like three weeks behind him, and so that's what we did.

When then we finally got on TV, we got on radio and all that sort of stuff, and we just tried everything we could to get into the show business.

And when dad died, my mother had to make the decisions.

She had six children, and she said, do you want to just stay here and go to school and we'll have a normal life here, or do you want to go on the road.

And we all said we want to go back on the road.

So we ended up getting a job with a touring country kind of variety show, and that was good experience.

We learned a lot about putting a show together and comedy and lights and all that sort of stuff, you know, and it was good.

But we ended up getting shut down because the child Welfare department thought that we were slave labor, you know, we were we were being taken advantage of.

And of course we were only there because we just loved to play on stage, that's all, you know.

But okay, so how old were you when it got shut down?

Okay, So we started touring just before I was six, and I turned six on that tour, and so that's sixty one, and up until dad died sixty six, it was five years.

And then we carried on a little bit longer.

Then I ended up.

We ended up settling in another town and we got into normal schools, and it wasn't long before my brother and I put a band together with some local guys and we were playing every weekend, playing the dancers and all that sort of stuff.

And I was twelve years old, and I'll never forget I was teaching Tuesday and Wednesday nights to try and make some extra money to help mom out because we were renting a little house and it was really weird.

I'm twelve years old trying to teach adults how to play DG and a seventh and tap their foot and strum and it was just really weird, weird being a kid and teaching adults, you know.

But yeah, it was an interesting period.

Okay, But when before your father passed, in the time after that, you were on the road without him.

What about school?

We did correspondence.

We did school through the mail.

There was an organization in Australia which was a British school called Blackfriars and it's called Correspondence School.

So we would we would get a week's worth of work.

So here's here's the Monday, here's Tuesday, here's Wednesday.

So we get it all in one brown envelope.

And we would do our schooling daily and my mother made us read every day.

She made us do the times tables with math, maths and and all that sort of stuff.

And then she would test us on history stuff and all that sort of stuff.

And so that's what we did.

When we got to a normal school, we were okay, we weren't.

We weren't the sharpest knife in the in the draw.

But we were definitely we had some good education from traveling around and talking to people and understanding our a bit more other world works, you know.

Okay, so now you're settled down, you're going to regular school, you got a band playing on the weekends.

Yeah, how long does that go on?

Do you graduate from school?

What's the next transit?

Now there's no graduation.

I uh so I got into high school.

My first year of high school, I had a lawn mowing business, and I was teaching guitar two nights a week.

And I also we had a band and we played Friday Saturday nights, and so I was, I was busy.

I was.

I was doing lawn mowing after school and then teaching at night, and then playing on the weekends and doing school as well.

So we were we were really busy, you know, just trying to make ends meet.

And but my my goal and my dream was to get to the big city of Sydney and to become a studio musician.

That's what that's what I wanted.

I wanted to be like the big guys who who were you know I saw on TV and read their name on a record and stuff.

That's what I wanted to do.

I just didn't have a clue how to do it.

But anyway, so what I did is I made the decision to move to Sydney.

In the start of my third year at high school, I befriended some guys who were part of a kind of religious organization and they were they were really nice people and everything, and they said, oh, there's a place where, you know, a lot of our friends stay and it's quite close to Sydney Harbor and you can rent a room there if you want.

It's like nine dollars a week and blah blah blah, you know, and I said, oh, okay.

So so they were going down the following week and I said, I'll come with you.

So I handed my books in and told my mother that I was leaving.

You know, she was pretty distraught, I can tell you, because she wanted me to finish school and get my high school certificate and all that sort of stuff, and I just didn't want any part of that.

I wanted to be getting some experience and being around people who were a lot better than I was.

And so I moved to Sydney.

And my first thing I did is got a newspaper and got a day job five days a week as a messenger boy.

And then I went and auditioned for a guy who was a country singer and an actor.

He was in a drama series called Homicide on TV in Australia, but every weekend, Friday and Saturday night he would be playing in clubs and Sydney and drawing quite a crowd.

And the guitar player that worked with him was leaving for something a bit more lucrative, I'm sure, And so I auditioned and I got the job because I knew the songs.

I knew all how to play all the guitar parts, and I knew all the harmonies to sing.

And you know, he nearly swallowed his tongue on the first run through because he looked at me.

I was fifteen year old kid, and he said, I can't believe I'm doing this, you know, like you're way too young for this and all that, and I said, let's just give it a go.

You know.

We went straight into the songs and I just I did everything that I felt was the right thing for the song, and he loved it, and so he offered me the job straight away.

I started working for him on the weekends and that was that was my first introduction into the music scene in Sydney in the sixties, you know.

So what happened after that?

Then I got a job working in a band with my brother and it was it was four piece band with a girl singer and we were called Shiloh.

And I had to learn all the Chuck berrys songs.

I had to learn all the Credence tunes and you know little Richard music, Ray Charles.

I had to learn all these different things and get myself an offender telecaster and an ant Fender amp and all that.

It was great.

I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed it so much.

And when we ended up on this kind of circuit in Australia, the hotels were run by the same company.

It was a huge brewery company that ran all the hotels.

So they used an agent who have moved bands around Australia and so we ended up playing like a three week residency at this really nice hotel the Gold Coast, and we just stayed upstairs and went down to the beach every day and swam and then played at night.

And then we moved somewhere else and we were there for three months and then we moved somewhere else and it was great experience and it was good money.

It was the first time I got some savings and ended up buying got a loan from my first car and stuff like that.

I was sixteen, keep going.

So that lasted about a year and a half, and then I moved back the band kind of.

We disbanded and Phil went off to work with another artist.

And because my brother Phil was really in demand in those days.

He was just really good at playing great lead parts, and you know, he could play rock and roll music, country music, and he'd have a go at anything, and so he was getting a lot of a lot of work.

I went home to be with my mother and working a local garage for a while.

So wait, wait, wait, wait wait, what was going through your mind?

You were living the life of a king at age sixteen on the road.

Are you're back living with your mother with no high school degree working in a garage?

Yep?

So what was your state of mind?

I would think you were depressed about that.

Oh I wasn't depressed, not at all.

I was happy to be with my mother.

And anyway, here's what happened.

A show came to town and I knew the people, and well, let's just say I met a young lady in that show that I wanted to be with, and so they offered me a job and I said yes, just so I could be with her.

And that's what I did.

I quit my job in the garage and loaded up my car and joined them.

And it was a traveling show where we drove everywhere.

And I did that for like three years, I think, and then I eventually moved back to Sydney.

When I was before you got back to Sydney.

What happened with the girl?

She she didn't want to stay on the road, so she ended up leaving.

And but I'd already I'd already committed to her father, who was the guy I was working for, and so I had I stayed on and kept working with him because I was playing in the show.

I was playing banjo, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, working the lights, doing fixing the flat tires, I mean, I was doing everything.

So yeah, it was It was a good learning time for me and I got a lot of good experience on the road.

It was hard work and not much money, but I eventually left and moved back to Sydney, where I pursued my my my playing and my and I wanted to learn more, you know, I wanted to improve and I'd just done as much as I could on my own kind of thing.

And now I was hanging around with guys who played jazz and who played fusion music and great rock and roll music that I'd never heard, you know, And I recall it was about seventy five seventy six.

By that time, I'd learned like every Neil Diamond song that there was, and every Creedence song.

And I had many different jobs.

I was a singer in a band.

I was a bass player in a band.

I was a drummer in a band.

I had to go with everything, okay, and continue with the narrative, okay.

Well, So I moved into Sydney and I started developing my style that I have now.

I started working on arrangements of songs where I could like move the bass around and stuff like that.

I have an arrangement of a great old song called Blue Moon.

And I was living in a house with three other musicians, and one of them was a saxophone player who grew up, you know, with jazz and he he heard me trying to work out this arrangement, and he said, why don't you put the bass through the changes?

And I said, well, what do you mean?

And he played, you know, he said, what you're trying to do is this, So he with his right hand he played dirty, Dirty, there's the melody, and the left hand went boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom, and the bass moved around while the melody played on top, and you could hear the chords.

When the bass changed and the melody moved, you could hear that that's the chord.

And I just didn't think that way, and he showed me that, and it just like opened a door for me.

And then I met a guy who was big into Where's Montgomery and people like that, and turned me onto that kind of music.

So it was exciting for me.

And you know, George Benson had just come out with Breezen and stuff like that, and all of a sudden people were into instrumental music and everything.

So I had to pursue that way to go, you know, And I ended up really pursuing my songwriting as well, and I got signed by Universal, who were Actually it wasn't Universal then.

My first my first publisher was Northern Songs, which was Paul McCartney's company, and I got signed by them, and then I got moved to MCA, and then that eventually became Universal.

So I got signed in seventy eight and I'm still with Universal after all those years.

Okay, I did you have a manager?

How'd you get signed?

I didn't have a manager.

I got signed because I was playing on people's records as a studio player, and people were looking for songs.

And I would play some of my songs to people and they'd say, holy shit, have you got publishing?

You know?

Said no, Oh, okay, you got to talk to this guy.

I don't.

So, you know, I did it all myself by just networking and stuff like that.

You know.

So, at what point in this story does it become Tommy Emmanuel doing what you're doing now?

Well, I started doing solo stuff and writing for me to play solo.

In the early eighties, I started writing songs.

I was already pursuing songwriting for to get a hit record with some artists, you know, and I did.

I got a cover with Sheena Easton, and I had a cover with Olivia Newton John and in those days, if you could get a song on a Livy Newton John record, you were doing well.

And that was my that was my goal.

And my good buddy Steve Kipner, who wrote Let's Get Physical and Twister Fate and heart Attack and all those great songs, I wrote with him a lot, and that was great.

And I really grew as a writer because of people like him and learned so much from him.

But then I started writing songs for me to play as instrumentals, and I found the courage to put them in put them in my set when I was when I was playing like wine bars and places like that, I would play some of the songs that everybody knew, like a Beatles song or whatever, and then I would play one of my songs and people were coming up to me after the show and saying, Hey, I really like that that new song you played.

Did you write that?

I was like, yeah, yeah, Wow, that's really good.

You should keep that, you know.

So I started to get positive feedback and which gave me the courage to keep doing that, you know.

And so yeah, I ended up in some pretty big rock bands in Australia, playing guitar in the band, but when the band came off the road, I would go and do my own solo thing, and you know, and that was the beginning of what I'm doing now.

So that was like the mid eighties.

That's when I started doing that.

Okay, you're playing with John Farnham and others.

Did you like that music?

I loved it?

Are you kidding?

Every song is killer?

Okay, So you're not a country Chad Akins purist.

You like rock too.

I love any music that has soul.

You know, when people ask me, you know, what guitar players do you listen to?

My answer is I very rarely listen to many guitar players.

I'm not that interested.

I'm interested in good songs and I don't really care where they came from, you know, And I love singers.

You know.

That's why I loved working with John Farnham, a guy named Doug Parkinson, and you know, I was in a band called Dragon because I love their songs.

I loved their music and you know, you could train a monkey to play my parts in the songs.

But I love the songs so much, and I learned so much about how important having a great melody and a great hook and just really nailing it in a way that reached out and grabbed people.

And I just learned a lot about the importance of every song.

Song's got to be a killer, Every song has to be a winner.

You know, the days of having a record with two hits on it and the rest of it's all just fillers.

That those days are long gone.

And so, you know, I remember just trying to write, you know, twenty five good songs to pick, fourteen to go on an album and stuff like that.

You know, So when did you only start playing yourself as opposed with other people or does it agree you ever did that?

I think probably the last the last tour that I did with a band, with a rock band was eighty seven, and then I started playing my own music.

I got my own band, and it was mostly electric, with a few acoustic songs.

You know, it was most electric.

And so the funny thing was, Bob, when I made my first solo album, I recorded it between midnight and five in the morning because I was offered some free studio time because I played on someone's record for them as a favor, and the guy who owned the studio said, you can have the studio from midnight till six am or whatever, free of charge.

So I recorded my album, then we mixed it and everything, and I took it into EMI and I said, this is my album and I'd like to get it out.

And the guy listened to a couple of tracks and he said, there's no market for solo acoustic records.

There's no market for it, so it may as well forget it.

I said, all I want you to do is put it out, you know, just get it distributed, and I will create market.

And he's like, you'll create a market.

I said, yes, I will create the market.

And so I must have convinced him.

But you know, as luck would would have it, I was getting good crowds under my own name in my own country, and I was so lucky because the people who were my agents were part of a big chronic conglomerate that were international promoters as well.

And in nineteen eighty eight I got offered the John Denver tour and it was like the most perfect tour for me because it was like fifteen to twenty thousand people a night and I got to come out there and play twenty minutes as this new artist to the public.

Who you know.

Ninety nine percent of them didn't know who I was.

They'd seen they they recognized me from the TV shows I'd done, but they didn't really know much about me.

So it was great.

I got a new audience, and within like a month of doing that tour, my album debuted in the top ten nationally and he and I were like so amazed.

You know the guy, that's the guy who said there's no market for or music, and I told him I'd created That's what happened.

And then I toured with another couple of artists, and then in nineteen ninety I got offered the Eric Claptain tour with his album Journeyman, which I love that record, and Eric was so nice and his band Nathan and Greg Fillingaines and oh Steve Ferroni on drums, and it was just fabulous band.

And every night we just got standing ovations and we got a great response.

And the funny thing was the English road crew guys were a bit upset that we were going over so well.

And the very first night I played the and I got two standing ovations at the end of the set, and when I came off, the tour manager came straight up to me and said cut your set down by blah blah blah, and that's all he said, you know, And I said, yes, sir.

And the next night I played two minutes shorter, still got the same standing ovation.

And was this solo acoustic No, no, this was.

My band, and then a couple of acoustic pieces in the middle.

And then here's what happened after that, after that too.

After that Aeric Claptain tour, my ticket sales went up like they doubled, tripled it.

They were the stepping stones for me to getting to a level where I could sell out some decent sized halls in Australia.

And on one tour I would come out and sign autographs after the show and meet everybody and all that sort of stuff, and people started saying to me, we really loved the show, we loved the band, but the best part of the night was when you just played on your own.

And enough people kept saying that to me that I thought maybe I should give that a try.

So I rang my agent and I said, book me back into that area where we were after the Aeric Claptain tour, and that those that you know and just call it Tommy Manuel solo and he said what and I said, yeah, it's just me on my own.

Oh, you reckon, that'll work and I said yeah, And sure enough everything sold.

I got the same size crowd as if was a band or a band or no band.

I got the same size crowd and people had a great time and it really spurred me on.

And then I finished up with the band in ninety six, I think it was, and from then on I've been solid.

Okay, the elephant in the room is you're in Australia.

Like that little river song from Las Vegas, Hilton, It's twelve thousand miles away.

Yeah, I certainly know.

Like Kadinsky told me, the big carture promoter or a label person, he said, you know, I like being a big fish in a small pod.

And then also, I've been there and everybody's thrilled that I came.

I came that far.

So to what degree are you in Australia thinking about America, thinking about the rest of the world.

I've always thought about the rest of the world.

I've always felt like a citizen of the world, and I just I'm one of these people that I've always had a sense of confidence that it's not arrogance.

It's just confidence.

And as I say to people who you know, big promoters or my management, you know, I'm like, you just helped get me out there, and I'll deliver.

I promise you that I will deliver.

If you can get me there, I'll do the rest, you know.

And that's how I've always been.

So what point did you start playing outside Australia.

I used to go to LA.

I would finish finished playing on Saturday night and Sunday I'd fly to LA and on I'd get in on Monday and I would play the Baked Potato Mony, two shows on Monday night, and then i'd fly back on Tuesday.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean we're talking commitment here.

And I never made any money, but I started to build something.

And then I started coming to the chet Atkins Convention.

In ninety six was my first year there.

And when they saw me at the CHET Convention, all the different guitar societies wanted me to come and play.

So we put a whole package together where I went into Kentucky and played in Louisville and Lexington and all that, and then I went up to Cincinnati and played up there for the Ohio Fingerpickers Club blah blah, and then I went down to Orlando to the Fingerpickers down there, and then I went across to LA and played in mccabs and and all that.

So I started in America right around the country, but just in all little small things that helped me.

You know.

I got connected through the chedd Akin Society people and they were really wonderful.

But it was small, but it was a good start, and it wasn't long before, you know, it was less than two years of doing that that I was, you know, playing to six hundred to eight hundred people and playing in the town theater in these small towns.

So it built, it built pretty quickly.

When did the international business beyond Australia and the United States start?

It started in the nineties.

When I went to LA to record, i'd come back, I'd go and play in San Francisco.

I was getting some airplay on KKSF and on the Wave, those smooth, kind of smooth jazz stations.

I had a couple of records that people really liked, and I was getting some play.

So I was going over there and doing stuff like listener appreciation shows and stuff like that.

There was no money involved, but it was good experience and it was a way of building an audience.

You know, what about you say you went to China, Maybe should I say where haven't you been?

Have you basically played everywhere South America?

Well, at the moment, we're trying to get to a stage where we can go to Brazil, to Mexico, to Chile, places like that, just finding a venue, finding a promoter, and being able to people know about me there.

I just can't get there yet.

What about Europe and other parts of the world.

I have a wonderful career in Europe.

I'm so grateful.

Europe is as has been a wonderful place for me.

Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, up to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, all those countries and Russia and Ukraine and all those places have been so wonderful, And I'm so sad that I can't go back there.

You know, I can't go back to Russia right now, I can't go back to Ukraine.

And that makes me sad.

Yeah, I'm just you know that the world is changing so quickly, really is.

Okay?

You're in Nashville Music City, Yeah, to what degree are you plugged into the player culture of Nashville, or to what degree you're Tommy Emmanuel and you just happen to live in that Shville.

Well, a lot of my favorite players are here, and I have a lot of good friends here.

And when I'm home, I find out who's playing where, and I it's the only time I get a chance to go and see other players.

So whenever Guthrie Trapper is playing with his trio, I always try to get to see Guthrie and he doesn't The band don't play much anymore, but Brent Mason's band, the players.

I used to go and sit in with them a lot and go see those guys play.

And and and Jack Pearson is another great guitar player locally who I used to love going and play play the first set with Jack, he would he would always play some acoustic and then he'd switched to the band with with with electric, you know.

And and I do the opry about four times a year, and and I I do the rhyme in every two years, and I've got it coming up in a couple of weeks.

And so I enjoyed that.

But see, I built I built Nashville in the same way as I built everywhere else, I came to town.

I I I played in small places and then I played in a small theater three hundred seedter and it went well.

So I booked myself back there and I filled it and then I did two nights.

Then I moved to the tea Pack.

Then I moved to the War Memorial Hall.

Then I moved to blah blah blah, and then I got to the rhyme and eventually and that was fifteen years of my life.

Okay, you're obviously very business savby.

Do you make all these decisions?

You know?

Do you have a manager?

Oh?

I have a wonderful manager.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

In the old days, a lady named Gina Mendelo is a friend of mine from a long way.

She was working at Sony in Sydney when her and I became friends, and she marketed the album I did with Chep and so her and I kind of ran the ship together for a long time.

And then in twenty thirteen I started talking with Brian Pennix from Vector, but he was actually a promoter in those days, and Brian Brian became my manager and we've been working together ever since, and he done an amazing job.

I mean, he's got quite a roster of artists, you know, Jerry Douglas and Little Feet and Nitty Gritty and all those people.

He manages a lot of different artists.

But he does amazing work for me, he really does.

And he's been one of the best friends I've ever had.

So how does being an itinerant musician affected your relationships, your love relationships and family.

Well, it's been.

It's been incredibly hard on everyone.

And you know, this is this is what I warn young people.

I see, if you want to do what I'm doing, then you better you better remember that if you want to have a home and a family, you're going to have to work around that.

But yeah, I've been married three times and I have I have two daughters and two granddaughters by one marriage.

And I have another daughter by my previous marriage, and she's going to school in Sydney and they moved from California.

She was born here in Nashville and she's ten years old.

And so but I'm I'm I'm on my own right now, although I don't feel like I'm on my own.

I feel like I have friends everywhere and family everywhere, and I basically try to fit in as many visits with my family as I can.

There came a point back in two thousand and two or two thousand and three, around that time, when my wife, who I'd been married to for fifteen years, you know, took off with someone else and decided that she didn't want the lifestyle of me coming and going all the time anymore.

And I totally get that.

So but I then made the decision that I've really got to get to work.

I've got to get going, And so I called a family meeting and I said to the girls, Look, this is what I do.

This is who I am.

I'm a road person.

I play concerts, and this is how you can live in that nice house and your mom can drive that lovely car, and you can go to that good school because dad goes and gets to work.

And that's how it's going to be for a while, and you're going to have to be all right about it.

And they were okay about it.

We still wish we could see each other a lot more, but you know, it just doesn't work for me to be off the road for too long.

You know, how many dates a year are you doing?

Right now?

We're kind of cut back to about two hundred, so I was doing well.

Some years I did three hundred and fifty shows, you know.

And yeah, my biggest problem, Bob, is that things just keep getting better.

That's my biggest problem.

If only it all turned to crap, and then I could say, well, it's been wonderful, see you later.

I'm just going to go be granddad now, you know.

But I love playing for people so much, and you know, it's what I do.

I play and people get happy, and I just can't imagine doing anything else.

Let's just go back to the new album a little bit.

What is so special about the gentleman you worked with?

You mean Vance Powell.

Yeah.

Oh, he's an engineer.

He's technically on an incredible level about getting sounds, being creative and doing it now and doing a quick you know.

He's the type of guy.

We're going to start at ten and we finished at six.

That's it.

I don't work at night, and I totally get that, so we don't waste time in here.

We get to work and then you have a listen to what you've just recorded, you played in the car or something, and it's like, holy hell, this sounds good, you know, this sound real, and I just loved working with him, and he was he was really helping me do what the way, do it the way I wanted to.

And he also gave me some advice.

I was struggling with playing and singing with headphones on and all that playing and singing this song and I just couldn't hear the pitch properly.

You know.

I was really struggling with it because I wear hearing aids.

I was born with yellow fever, so my hearing is burnt out before I came into the world.

And anyway, he said, look, take your headphones off and just sing as if I'm sitting right here beside you.

Sing the song to me and we'll just let the mics do their do their thing.

So I did, and I got it first take, and the vocal was fine, you know, and needed a few little pitch things here and there, but basically it was a good take and the guitar sounded beautiful.

And he really showed me that anything is possible and if I'm struggling with something, to let him know and he can come up with a solution, you know.

And I learned a lot from that.

It was good, Okay, So you make a record, how much overdubbing fixing is done?

On this album, the overdubbing was on the tracks where I had I put some drums on like a heat programmed a drum part, and then I overdubbed some stuff on it, and then I put bass on it, and then I put other rhythm part.

Then I put an electric guitar on, and then I got a girl to come in and we constructed the backing vocals as a unit and put that together.

And you know, that all happened pretty quickly.

But as far as fix ups and overdubs and stuff, most of the solo songs that I played, Scarlet's World, A Drowning Heart, black and white to color all that, most of those were one take.

You know, I can do it live, I have to do it in the studio.

So the album's finished, the album's coming out.

What do you have planned?

What's setting Stone going forward?

All right, Well, I've got a bunch of TV and radio things to do, and then I've got this tour starting after the Rhyming show in a couple of weeks, and then I've got a long tour which finishes at Carnegie Hall on the thirtieth of this month.

So that's the first leg of the tour with the new album, and then the second one is in December, and the videos will drop every like every two weeks.

There'll be a new video, a new video of all the songs.

And so we've already we've already got two out there now and third one's coming soon.

But they're all done.

Okay.

You talk about the breakthrough of the tour with John Denver.

Is it purely been hard work or have there been a series of lucky breaks?

Well, you could call it a lucky break being offered the John Denver tour, but I think I was the right person.

And you know, they didn't have to lug ten people around and fly them and accommodate them.

It was just me, you know.

So there's elements of luck out there, and there's also elements of you know, I'm pretty easy going.

I'm very self contained.

All I need is to just get a good sound and let me go, you know.

So you know, I'm a I'm not a demanding person.

I'm very demand of myself, but I'm not a demanding person with other people.

I want people to treat me like I treat them.

So you know, I got no time for complainers.

I hate people who are in the music business.

They're making a living playing music, and all they do is complain about it.

Well, get the hell out of it.

You know, you don't know how lucky you are.

You're making living and you're making music.

Holy smoke.

Doesn't get better than that.

And when you view your work today, do you view it as a long continuum or do you feel you're better than before?

Or do you look back at the past?

A I wish I knew then what I know now?

What's your tike?

Oh?

Absolutely, I wish I knew then.

What I know now is exactly what it's like being my age and knowing what I know now.

But you know, that's that's life, isn't it.

Life is our teacher.

And you know, I think I don't think people realize how much work it takes to get anywhere in the business.

And you know, like I've heard this said two people.

You know, be careful what you wish for.

You might just get it and it might destroy you.

I've seen people be destroyed by fame and fortune, you know, so don't don't look for that.

Money comes and goes, money flows in and out of your life, and and and fame is a momentary curse.

So you know, you've got to get yourself out there.

But at the same time, you you've got to find a balance.

You know.

I can't do a good job if I'm frazzled and stressed and worried about this and blah blah blah.

I don't want to be like that, you know.

So I don't try to take on too much as in other things.

You know, I'm not a guy who says, oh, I've got to go fly fishing.

Oh I've got to go car racing.

I want to play football, I want to blow hit the golf ball.

I want to do this, and have you seen this?

We've got to go to the movies.

I don't I know how to be still.

I know how to be quiet, and I know how to just relax, you know.

And so you know, what matters to me is that I do a good job when I play.

And if I struggle with anything, then I'll just work on it, you know.

And it's it's not rocket science.

It's you know, find where your strengths are, find what you're good at and what really works, and go for it, and go for it with all your heart and all your energy.

Don't half ass anything.

It's all or nothing.

That's how it is for me.

You know.

My attitude to people is if I see you on stage only, you know, not really trying or giving, not giving all of yourself.

If I see that, then get the hell off that stage because I'm coming on.

You know.

That's my attitude to people who who half assed things.

You know, so it's definitely all or nothing for me every time.

Well, Tommy, I want to thank you so much for taking the time, being honest, giving your philosophy.

At the end, people have no idea how hard it is to make it, no idea.

Yeah, they just yeah and they and they want it now, and it's not.

Life doesn't work like that, you know, where it's ever evolving.

And you know, when I think of the stuff that I did, I'm so glad I did it.

I'm glad I did cruises where I was expected to play in a ballroom dancing band, and then I had to play be the lead guitar player and the lead singer and sing the whole Hot August Night album start to finish in one set for two hours.

And then I had to play you know, bosting over music down by the pool in the afternoon, and that's how I gained experience and knowledge by taking on a job.

And then I got a job in a band playing bass, and then I got a job playing drums, and I did all that, and I kept working on it, and I kept saying, yes, I can do that, and then I'm hoping that I could, you know, because I needed the experience and and all that stuff, and you know, it really pays off.

What I do know is that you know, it doesn't matter how many views you have on YouTube, it doesn't matter how many millions of likes you have.

They do not equal concert tickets sold.

So you've you've got to build your audience by hand, brick by brick.

That's how you do it.

On that note, I think we're going to close.

There are two kinds of people.

People who are Tommy Emmanuel fans and people who just haven't heard him yet.

If you're not familiar with his music, pull it up and listen.

Tommy.

I want to thank you for taking all this time to speak with my audio.

I appreciate it and less of love to you brother.

Okay, till next time.

This is Bob left sets,