Guitar master
Australian musician Tommy Emmanuel headlines the Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival in Guthrie
Back in 2004, Tommy Emmanuel penned the spry instrumental tune “Tall Fiddler” in honor of world-renowned Guthrie-based musician Byron Berline.
That was the same year that the Australian guitar virtuoso last performed at Berline’s Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival, which the fiddler founded, organizes and hosts to showcase rootsy, acoustic American music, from traditional bluegrass and cowboy songs to folk and Western swing.
Emmanuel will make his longawaited return to the Cottonwood Creek festival grounds
Saturday night, when he will play the headlining spot at the 22nd annual event.
“I’m looking forward to playing at Byron’s festival again. We’ve been talking about it for years and just trying to get a date that worked for me,” he said.
Long-running festival
The festival continues Friday and Saturday and will include performances by The Kruger Brothers, Starkey & Clark and The Bluegrass Martins, with Berline’s band playing several sets. In addition to Emmanuel, international acts on this year’s bill include Japan’s Blueside of Lonesome and Canada’s April Verch Band.
Along with live music, the nonprofit festival includes camping, children’s activities, youth music contests, an open mic and more.
“It’s so important to keep this music alive,” Emmanuel said. “Most of us didn’t have an upbringing of going through music schools or music colleges or any of that stuff. We just jammed and were invited to come to jams and sit amongst people playing, and it just kind of goes into you eventually. You eventually understand it like a language.”
‘Accomplice One’
One of only five people ever named a Certified Guitar Player by music icon Chet Atkins, Emmanuel, 63, said he is bringing his one-man band routine to Guthrie but hoping that Berline will join him on stage.
A household name in his native Australia, Emmanuel has earned fans worldwide through his signature finger-style playing and a broad repertoire that incorporates country, bluegrass, pop, jazz and more.
He released earlier this year “Accomplice One,” a 16-track collaborative album featuring his duets with Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Rodney Crowell and more.
“I can still play my instrumental stuff and play my kind of solo, finger-style stuff and keep writing for that, but I also want a chance to do something different. That’s why I love collaborating so much,” he said.
Featuring a diverse group of collaborators, “Accomplice One” topped Billboard’s bluegrass album chart when it was released back in January, and it also bowed at No. 1 on the iTunes jazz albums chart.
“I had a bit of a wish list going, and I just really had to plan it around everyone’s schedules. I’m busy all the time — I do 300 shows a year — and other people are just as busy. So, it was really good fortune actually that I happened to be in England when Mark Knopfler had a minute to spare with me and (British acoustic guitar phenomenon) Clive Carroll could come into the studio. So, while I was in England I cut those tracks,” he said.
“While I was in Cuba teaching a guitar camp in Havana, Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo and I were teaching a group about putting arrangements together for multiple guitars, and we were in the old RCA studio in Havana. We took the entire group, which was 85 students, and we had them all seated in the orchestral room . ... We recorded ‘Djangology’ in front of the group, and it turned out so sweet.”
Collaborative effort
He was able to wrangle several of his collaborators in Nashville, Tennessee, where Sallisaw native Brad Benge, formerly of the Byron Berline Band and Horseshoe Road, worked on the album as an engineer, musician and co-producer.
“I just rang Ricky Skaggs out of the blue and I said, ‘Well, what are you doing next Tuesday?’ And he said, ‘I’m in town; what do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to record a song with you.’ And he said, ‘Oh, great, OK. I’ll see you at 10 a.m.’ So, he turned up, and then when I finished with Ricky, then Jason Isbell came in,” Emmanuel said.
He and Isbell open “Accomplice One” with the old Doc Rivers’ tune “Deep River Blues.”
“Brad Benge, he put some kind of big, old-fashioned bass on it ... and it sounded really sweet,” Emmanuel said. “I felt that Jason was exactly the right person to sing that song because he’s from Muscle Shoals (Alabama), and he’s just got that beautiful, laidback vocal approach.”
The album includes other interesting covers, including a spirited acoustic guitar rendition of the Otis Redding classic “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of The Bay” with J.D. Simo and a rollicking instrumental version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” featuring dobro master Jerry Douglas. Arguably the most intriguing cover on the album is a reimagining of Madonna’s iconic pop hit “Borderline” as a waltz.
“I was looking for something for Amanda that would be different, totally unexpected and would give her a chance to sing the way she sings. I played her that version of the song that I’d arranged, and she loved it and just really, really took to it. It’s a funny thing, but when I first said, ‘You remember Madonna’s “Borderline?”’ everybody went, ‘Ooh, you don’t want to touch that.’ I said, ‘Look, it’s a good song, and a good song is a good song. It doesn’t matter how you approach it,’” he said.
“I recorded it with her singing and me playing the rhythm. And then I overdubbed her fiddle playing; she put that on later. Then, she left and then I put bass and drums and some electric guitar on it. And it became a band.”
The guitarist said he recorded more than one song with each of his “Accomplice One” collaborators and is working on a new wish list for a planned sequel. He will release in January another duets album called “Heart Songs,” which he recorded with fellow Certified Guitar Player John Knowles. The collection of ballads will include a few originals but primarily feature new arrangements of beloved love songs like “Cold Cold Heart” by Hank Williams, “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)” by Billy Joel and “Somewhere” from the musical “West Side Story.”
“I don’t waste time in the studio. I get to work,” he said.
Still, he said, nothing compares to performing live for an entertainer.
“I still play like it’s live when I’m in the studio. I don’t approach it any differently,” he said. “But there’s no feeling like that playing in the moment and the excitement of the crowd and all that. That’s what I live for.”