by: JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
9/16/2007 2:00 AM
Usually it takes years of hard, constant playing to wear the varnish off an acoustic guitar.
Willie Nelson, for example, has carved holes through the top of the nylon-string, classical guitar he has played for decades. But Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel prefers to take the direct approach.
Emmanuel has been known to take a bit of sandpaper to a brand-new guitar, scraping away the finish to the bare wood.
"It's done for a reason, to get a certain sound," Emmanuel once said. And the sounds Emmanuel gets from his collection of custom Maton guitars range from multiple melodies and rhythms that make a six-string sound like a six-piece band, to percussive whomps and whooshes designed to evoke the music of the Australian outback.
Emmanuel returns to Tulsa for the third straight year, as part of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center's Acoustic Music series.
Emmanuel has been performing since childhood, two years after laying hands on a guitar for the first time at age 4. He and his siblings played as a group for several years before Emmanuel moved to Sydney, Australia, to work as a session player, performing jingles and augmenting bands like Air Supply and Men at Work.
He recorded an album with his hero, Chet Atkins, called "The Day Fingerpickers Took Over the World," and earned an even higher accolade when Atkins proclaimed Emmanuel a "Certified Guitar Player" for his lifetime of contributions to the finger-pick style of playing.
Of Emmanuel's last performance in Tulsa, we wrote that Emmanuel's abilities and "a playful musical sensibility that easily melds rock, jazz, country, blues and folk styles (creates) music that really doesn't sound like anything else around. Emmanuel had guitar fans in the crowd alternately gasping in shock and giggling in delight."
Joining him for the show will be Bluehouse. Emmanuel produced the group's most recent recording, "One More Kiss," which is Bluehouse's first disc as a duo.
Guitarist Bernadette Carroll and bassist Jacqueline Walter have been performing together for 12 years, during which time they have created a strong following in their native Australia and in the U.S. for their finely crafted songs and beguiling harmonies.
James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
TOMMY EMMANUEL, WITH BLUEHOUSE
When
7 p.m. Sunday
Where
Williams Theater, Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Second Street and Cincinnati Avenue
Tickets
$30-$35, available at the PAC Ticket office, 596-7111; and www.tulsaworld.com/mytix
Copyright © 2007, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved
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