Dan Crary at Music 6000

It's nice to be back in the States. Especially when one of your acoustic guitar heros show up for a workshop at a local music store. Dan Crary has been sitting behind an acoustic guitar since 1952, when he was 12 years old. All those decades of practice sure paid off--he makes that Taylor six-string of his talk. He and Beppe Gambetta worked through an assortment of polished flatpicking tunes, and fielded questions from all us picker wanna-bes.

The best advice of the evening regarded practice. Dan said you don't need five hours, three hours, or even an hour. Ten minutes of focused practice with a stated goal is worthwhile progress. You have to be specific about what you want to accomplish (e.g., the first two measures of a tune), then once you achieve it, tell someone about it to reinforce what you learned, and gain psychological momentum from achieving something worthwhile. That alone was worth my five bucks. (Well, that and the mazurka Beppe picked out with Dan's accompaniament...)

I had a chance to shake hands with this tall chap after the workshop, and told him abou the Olympia Irish Session donating musical instruments to children in Iraq. "That's great! Thanks for sharing that with me."