Chet Atkins Convention - July 2008

24th Annual Convention of The Chet Atkins Appreciation Society July 9th-12th 2008 at the Sheraton Music City, Nashville, Tennessee.

This was my eighth visit to the CAAS annual bash and I have to say that it was a bit disappointing this year. It didn't have the usual buzz about it and numbers appeared to be down on previous years, probably a) because of the recession in USA and b) Tommy Emmanuel was not there. Tommy has been the natural successor to Chet Atkins and has, in my opinion, held the event together since the passing of Chet. However Tommy is not Chet and this event should not rely on the virtuosity of one man however good he is. There was no headline act for the Saturday night concert as Brent Mason could not appear and there was no one in place to stand in for him. The Joscho Stefan Trio were not present and they have been stalwart performers for at least five years and they were improving each year. Buster B Jones was there but only a shadow of his normal self and he did not dominate the lobby area late into the night like he used to. Terry Wedding who usually turns up uninvited and plays for hours in either one of the corridors or the Belmont Room and sells a few cds was not there either which was a big disappointment to me as I just love his jazzy playing and his never ending tales of life with Lenny Breau. No John Goldie from Scotland or Gareth Pearson from Wales.

Still, there were plenty of ace performers including Richard Smith, Muriel Anderson, Thom Bresh, John Knowles, Jim Nichols, Daniel Bazzani, Jerome Malaval, Pat Kirtley, Ray Cummins, Duck Baker, Guy Van Duser, Tony McManus, Bob Evans, Nokie Edwards, Pete Huttlinger, Mark Casstevens and The Frank Vignola Band. There were a host of very young players including Bryan Browne and Joe Robinson, names for the future. There were still lots of guitars for sale and oceans of books, tab, cds dvds and old vinyls and if you got bored you could eat as there was never any shortage of food for sale.

My young friend Lance Allen was there with his guitar and a bunch of cds to sell. We met about six years ago on his first visit to CAAS when he was a teenager. He now makes a living teaching guitar and "gigging". He has made a couple of cds all self penned material and he has a very good website www.guitarlancer.com Lance will do well as he knows how to market his talents and he is ably helped by his wife Twila who is an excellent photographer.

Young Bryan Browne caused a bit of a furore when he borrowed a copy of Joe Maphis's Mossrite Special double neck guitar and blasted away at a succession of Joe's tunes. I was amazed that a teenager from Australia could trot out the collected works of Joe Maphis, who was probably not that well known outside the USA. It turns out that Bryan has a double neck guitar in Australia and plays Joe Maphis material regularly. He may have been tutored by Tommy Emmanuel's brother Phil who is a great "speed picker". The owner of the Mossrite Special copy also has the top neck from Joe Maphis's original guitar (see photograph), a bit of guitar history.

I also met luthier Mel McCulloch who has built a copy of Jerry Reed's "cut-away" Baldwin guitar. This one was built with love and care whereas Jerry took his Baldwin into his garage and cut a piece out of it with a hand saw and then patched it up to form the cut away. A great shame about the passing of Jerry Reed on 31/08/08. Lets hope he and Chet can get together at the great pickin' party in the sky.

I stood in a queue to get Fred Gretsch's autograph on a poster celebrating 125 years of the Gretsch company. They started as a music shop and then made drums but didn't make any guitars until the 1920's. I cannot play the guitar but the Gretsch range has to be the best looking

I don't think I will go to CAAS in 2009 even though it will be the 25th Convention and should be a momentous occasion. The dollar rate is moving against us and there are a lot of good guitar events here in the UK during the summer, if we have one.