Tommy Emmanuel doesn’t just play guitar. He somehow makes one guitar sound like an entire band.
Ahead of Emmanuel’s Sept. 24 performance at Laxson Auditorium, Chico guitarist and instructor Dave Elke sat down with us to demonstrate just how difficult Emmanuel’s playing is to replicate—even for an experienced guitarist.
In the video below, Elke performs part of “You Needed Me,” featured on Emmanuel’s “Living in the Light” album, and breaks down what makes Emmanuel’s style so distinctive.
Local Guitar Legend Dave Elke’s Thoughts on Tommy
“What makes Tommy’s style so hard to learn is almost impossible to describe because there are just so many elements to it,” Elke said. “You can get the notes, you can get the rhythm, but to get the melody to sing in the way that he does, and to get the parts to separate the way that he does, and to get the whole thing to just feel the right way — I think only he can do.”
Part of that challenge comes from Emmanuel’s right-hand technique.
“He’ll pick notes, he’ll finger notes, he’ll pluck melodies, chords,” Elke said. “It’s a really complicated right-hand technique. The technique alone is super challenging.”
That combination of rhythm, melody and technique creates one of Emmanuel’s most recognizable qualities: the sense that several musicians are playing at once.
As Elke puts it:
“He is like a whole band in one person.”
And there is nowhere to hide when you’re creating all of that alone onstage. Emmanuel has described the demands of solo fingerstyle performance in similarly vivid terms: “If you want to do what I’m doing, you’d better be prepared to be naked on stage because there’s nowhere to hide.”
That idea lines up with what Elke sees in Emmanuel’s performances: technical difficulty paired with extraordinary confidence.
“One thing about Tommy is, he’s fearless,” Elke said. “He has practiced so much, but he’s also so amazingly talented that he comes out and plays a good two- or three-hour show flawlessly and completely inspired the whole time.”
For Elke, the opportunity to see a guitarist of Emmanuel’s caliber locally is part of what makes this performance special.
“The fact that he comes to our little town is amazing,” he said.
See why guitarists around the world study Tommy Emmanuel’s technique — and experience the sound of a whole band coming from one guitar.
See Tommy Emmanuel live at Laxson
Don’t miss the legend himself on September 24 @ 7:30pm