Guitar Villains
Guitar Villains
Tommy Emmanuel on Tuning Perfection, Playing for 2.85 BILLION people, and Taking a Screwdriver to a Guitar
Today’s guitar villain is Tommy Emmanuel. One of the most musical guitar players you’ll ever hear, Tommy has been dropping the jaws of audiences for decades with this impeccable acoustic guitar playing that sounds more like an entire band than just one person. With flawless rhythm, unreal technique and a way of playing that just makes you laugh, Tommy’s musicianship is captivating in a way that will inspire you to pick up your guitar, or, maybe, just set it down and watch. Tommy’s way of explaining things is another testament to his world class talent, so you may yourself coming back to this one over and over, on this episode of Guitar Villains.
Intro and Tommy Emmanuel's supervillain alter-ego: 0:00
Burning Questions: 7:14
The sound of tuning perfection: 11:12
Name Those Notes: 15:19
Dress up, show up, and do your best: 29:09
The difficulty of instrumental songwriting: 31:10
Tommy's unique approach to guitar playing: 33:35
The hardest and easiest thing about guitar: 37:49
Tommy Hollywood is working on a movie, The Tiger Rising: 38:42
Tommy's favorite airplane album: 42:10
Tommy's dream band: 42:46
Tommy's supervillain advice: 43:35
Tommy Emmanuel on YouTube
Tommy's website
Sign up for Guitar Super System, the most popular independent guitar learning platform on the internet: http://bit.ly/GVTE004
welcome to guitar villains i'm your host tyler larson why guitar villains you ask because villains are cooler than heroes it's just a fact this is a podcast by guitar players for guitar players and over the course of this series we'll speak with some of the most creative and innovative minds in the guitar community find out what makes them tick and how we can become better guitar players ourselves thank you for watching the video podcast here on youtube and you can also listen to the podcast on spotify itunes or wherever else you get your podcasts today's guitar villain is tommy emmanuel one of the most musical guitar players you'll ever hear and one of the best storytellers i know tommy has been dropping the jaws of audiences for decades with his impeccable acoustic guitar playing that sounds more like an entire band than just one person the flawless rhythm unreal technique and a way of playing that just makes you laugh tommy's musicianship is captivating in a way that will inspire you to pick up your guitar or maybe just set it down and watch tommy's way of explaining things in his storytelling ability is another testament to his world-class talent so you may find yourself coming back to this one over and over on this episode of guitar villains[Applause] welcome to guitar villains the show where we deconstruct and decode the guitar and tommy i just want to let you know that you've done a lot of amazing things in your career but there's one thing you were able to do that maybe nobody else in the world could oh yeah yeah basically you made john petrucci the immortal lord of the electric guitar and maybe one of the strongest men i know you made him cry oh yeah that was at new york town hall i remember well john was in the front row with his wife and she told me that he cried several times and she's never she's been married to him for 28 years or something and she said i've never seen him cry ever it's quite a quite a feat there and the only reason i know that is he was on the show and he told me that little story and i mentioned that you would be on the show and he was like tell tommy i love him say hi and uh absolutely yes he's a great guy you know he came to australia um i think it was for ibanez and um it was a long time ago it was about 1993 and i think he was playing with alice cooper in those days and anyway so i get a call from my friend a retailer a guy who was putting on a a clinic a workshop with john petrucci and he asked me he said would you would you are you free i said yeah i'm free tonight. he said could you come down um and be in the audience you know just to give us a little um excitement and maybe ask some questions and i'll never forget it john came out and he played two songs in a row with some backing tracks and he played so beautifully real creamy distortion and i love what he played how he sounded and then he goes anybody got a cigarette then he bumped a cigarette or someone lit and he goes like this he goes ask me some questions[Laughter] that's pretty cool i cracked up laughing i thought when me what a way to start a workshop you know that might be the best way and we want to mention um there's a little bit of fall allergies in the air we actually both live in nashville i don't know if you you knew that um i i'm here in nashville and i got some fall allergies you got so you're not you're not sick you're you're trooping through this this interview um but i wanted to let people know you have like kind of a a raspy debonair uh voice going on perfect for podcast god yeah i just answered a whole bunch of questions um for some other things and i sounded like i was on death death door you know i'm in my deathbed but i feel great you know it's great it's a good temperature today yeah and uh i'm happy to be speaking with you thank you yes so we do uh things a little bit differently on this show we're gonna play some games i'm gonna try to get to the bottom of what makes you tick as a musician and hopefully you'll have a great time and next time you're you're playing out in nashville i'd love to love to come see you so this show is called guitar villains because i think villains are cooler than heroes i've always found their characters are deeper and more memorable so the first thing i want to ask you is out of all the movie or comic book villains out there would you say you identify with any one villain the most and that could be something as simple as appearance or something as nuanced as a character trait um i can give you my answer first and okay and then you can you can you know either agree or give me your answer uh i think you are like renee bellick who is the main antagonist from indiana jones in raiders of the lost ark you familiar with that character absolutely he's highly intelligent he possesses a great many treasured artifacts and uh he's a world traveler and that's just like you i think you're highly intelligent not just as a musician but as a person and you have some unbelievably cool guitars i'm sure some treasured guitars and i think you've probably traveled the world 10 times over and you've got a pretty suave and cool persona i think like bellick does oh well thank you um i would say i relate to um gene hackman in superman oh good one he was he was the bad guy and he was full of great humor he was totally evil but full of humor and uh even when he got beaten he was still cool you know yeah totally and i think i'm a big gene hackman fan i thought he was incredible um in the movie mississippi burning you know he's an amazing actor and you go right back to the uh late 60s to bottom bonnie and clyde he played uh claude's brother and uh he was brilliant in that too gene heckman is a great actor he's amazing i loved him in uh in crimson tide with denzel washington uh so first things first i have a couple softball lobs for you i call this segment burning questions[Music] so these are rapid fire questions that if you were to conduct a live master class where anyone could ask you questions about anything they want regarding music these are questions they would ask yeah what gauge pick do you use it's uh it's about um let me have a look it's pretty heavy it's here's my pick 1.5 millimeters wow is that a thumb pick or a regular one let's say that's one of my signature if i dig in my pocket this is what i have you got a lot of picks in there yeah i always have lots of pics but this is my signature one great oh that's an interesting shape there it's like kind of round almost yeah it's based it is based on david grissman's mandolin pick delightful all right yeah uh what gauge strings do you use 12 to 54 and 13 to 56 depends on like one of my guitars i tuned down i tuned down a whole step and sometimes down to drop c so i i i use big strings on that 13 to 56 but on my other two guitars i travel with three guitars on the road but um the two of them are 12 to 54 and i use martin strings some of the adario strings and sometimes ernie balls new string called a paradigm that's a great string best string they've ever made yeah the unbreakable one uh what is your number one guitar it's a matin made in australia and it's called a te personal and um so it was made handmade all three of my guitars that i toured with were made in the custom shop at made by a man named andy allen and uh he knows what i like and he's always full of surprises he he gave me this guitar that i've been using lately the last six years or something and it's thinner in the body it has a smaller sound hole than the other ones but it's much bigger and louder you know on my new album if you listen to this like the very first song it's a song called a song for a rainy morning a guitar sounds so beautiful and says you know it really it does everything i'm looking for i was just listening to that song before we were chatting because it's raining here a little bit all right um so i this segment is actually i i typically have electric guitar players on here but i'm still going to throw this one at you what's your favorite guitar amp[Music] uh oh old friend is okay old founder what's your favorite guitar pedal um i guess i've got some homemade distortion units which help you to get a big distortion sound at a lower volume um and they're made by a friend of mine in los angeles and that's all he does he makes pedals he's retired from his work and i think i have three of his medals and they're so good it doesn't sound like you're using a pedal it just sounds like the amps really cranking nice yeah that's a good quality and a distortion pedal for sure yeah so i the first big question i want to ask you is something that really intrigued me when i was doing my homework for this episode you once said that half of jimi hendrix's albums were slightly out of tune yet we only noticed it when stevie ray vaughan came along and covered hendrix and he was in tune and yeah that we realized like the mojo and feeling in hendricks's music which as a huge hendrix fan it was like such a brilliant analysis and a revelation to me can you talk a little bit more about how like imperfections are actually what can project people to the place they're meant to arrive musically yeah um well you know everybody has their own way of of bringing the mojo out and you know when i when i hear stevie ray vaughan i hear that he's so in tune when i listen to chet atkins i hear tuning perfection you know eric clapton tuning perfection the guys are so good but yet there are like there are some people like for instance um you know james taylor as a singer is right in the middle of the note he is such a perfect singer you know like stevie wonder people like that but then you go to a guy like rod stewart who sings a fraction sharp the whole time but he's got a there's something about that that's so good and feels great and you'd if you've got to really listen but everything is a fraction sharp and it's just how he is and that's his sound i i can hear the vocal and you think wow it's really in tune but then you keep listening and you'll hear it it's slightly above do you think that's just it's just a it's his sound the same thing with michael mcdonald you know he's a great singer and a piano player he never just leaves a note like that he his he always tails off or did and it falls away yeah like a slur of some kind yeah everybody has their their little ways of doing things do you think that that's something that you purposefully develop or how how would you go about honing something i think it just becomes part of your sound that you're used to you know i'm used to being in tune i hate it when i'm the even the slightest bit out my whole world is off center until i get it perfectly in tune and so you know i'm really sensitive to tuning and the times that i've had to play where there was nowhere in the song that i could get to a machine head to turn you know in the middle of a phrase or something it drives me crazy i just got to get to the end and then fix it you know you almost maybe like alter a phrase that you're playing so you can make a little space for the tune yeah i'll maybe um maybe my string's growing sharp and i'll and i'll try to give it a tag when i'm playing oh things like that and if it's flat then i'll push push it up with the left hand you know chet atkins had a uh a brazilian guitar called del vecchio which was a resonated guitar and the intonation was pretty funky and i saw him push that thing into tune every time he played it it sounded perfect geez i knew it wasn't exactly in june but he made it that way that's so hard to do i saw uh steve vi broke a string on a floyd rose guitar which of course everything goes insane and he he was doing just what you're saying he would be bending us a note and then using the whammy bar to like he was holding the whammy bar in a certain position so that the strings became the tension was correct and yeah he's brilliantly unique yeah yeah what a guy so now i want to play a game called name those notes[Applause][Music] the concept is pretty simple i'm gonna play you a sequence of guitar notes from songs and music that you have recorded over the years and you have to tell me what song these notes come from so you're gonna see how well you know your catalog and how well you can recognize your guitar playing it'll uh it'll spur some conversation about the songs too and uh everyone i've i've played this little game with so far has had a similar reaction to yours which is like oh no what have i gotten myself into but i think you might surprise yourself so we're gonna start with something easy that i think you'll get and things will get progressively more difficult does that sound good yeah all right here is the first bit of notes[Music] ruby's eyes nailed it yeah so this song it feels like a like a film score like some kind of secret agent is chasing after the antagonist i i don't know why it gives me that feeling like something in the harmony obviously it's not like an aggressive song but there's something there's a mystique about it can you talk a little bit about this i watched a james bond movie called moonraker and it had one of those chords that's in that song i i found that chord i i loved it it sounded great and i wrote the song because of that and the next day i was in the lounge at the international airport in sydney ready to fly to singapore and i i had my eyes closed and i was playing that song all of a sudden i heard a little voice singing along with me and i opened my eyes and there was this beautiful little girl about three maybe four at the most if that she was dancing from side to side and she was singing that melody with me and of course the first thing i did was look around for her parents because i'm a parent too yeah and i saw them standing over there and they waved to me and they pointed to her and she's okay so i said what's your name and she said ruby and i thought ruby i've just written you a song and i didn't and that's where i came up with the title and i still am in touch with ruby she's 14 or something now 15. wow that's a that's a beautiful little story i think i i think i know the chord because i okay this is a really strange with a g in it this is a really strange thing because you said uh james bond i i have so i have the the sound effects that you're hearing they're all labeled and i have this one written as double 07 ruby's eyes chord and this is it's this last chord here that's it that's the chord and i was like that feels like i'm in a secret like a secret agent movie so we got another group of notes you ready yep that's um back on terra firma the bridge part yes indeed do you remember where that particular performance was yeah it was uh at the olympic games in 2000 in sydney and you know what i i once i found out that my brother and i were going to be on that show i i said i chose the song back on terra firma and i i went to nashville and i mastered it and made it sound big and and the backing track because my brother and i we're going to play live over the top which we did with line six pods that we used and um so i i went and mastered it got it down to two minutes and 46 seconds which is what every artist was was allotted and i had the master with me i was about about to fly nashville to la la to sydney and i got out to nashville airport with the master in my jacket pocket and i'm standing in line to get on the plane and i thought this guy standing in front of me with long long blonde hair i tapped on his shoulder and he turned around and it was john jorgensen he was going back to l.a and so we end up sitting side by side and i when we got on the plane i said to him john phil and i are going to play on the closing ceremony of the olympic games and we're going to play back on terra firma and he burst into tears he cried he was so thrilled because he wrote the song right geez it's so appropriate for that event yeah how serendipitous to run into him how about that and and i don't know if you know this 2.85 billion viewers we're watching you pretty yeah and nothing to get nervous about you didn't look nervous you look like you always look you're having a good time yeah great cool story let's move on to the next group of notes drive time nice they're getting a little harder you're not wavering i love i love this little turn around the in this song it it's it gives the song like uh it's it's a center for people to cling to do you ever envision your songs as like little adventures like i when i listen to your music i find as a listener i'm always on like this little ride but there's there's like a pull off from the highway on the same pit stop that i'm used to kind of getting off on which is really hard to do instrumentally to keep your listener in that comfort zone i started writing that song because i was walking around the house playing that little thing e c sharp minor f sharp minor back to b yeah so when i was writing it um i had been listening to a lot of uh james taylor and stevie wonder and they that they inspired me so much they still do you know there's not a day goes by that i don't listen to at least a couple of james taylor songs uh his writing has inspired me so much the same was tv wonder yeah he's my wife's uh favorite music one of my her favorite in in her whole side of the family really it's his favorite because they're from carolina um and there yeah the you know going back to carolina is like their anthem yeah today's episode of guitar villains is brought to you by guitar super system are you tired of youtube ads telling you that youtube guitar lessons suck me too i don't know about you but somebody setting an acoustic guitar on fire or teaching crappy cover songs in front of a musty black curtain feels a little disingenuous to me i'll get straight to the point join tens of thousands of other guitar players and visit guitarsupersystem.com to join the most popular independent guitar learning platform on the internet if you're a beginner there's an entire curriculum called a beginner's corner just for you if you're an expert the music theory and technique curriculums reach the highest levels of mastery and are based on industry standard learning methods i've used since graduating berkeley college of music if you're somewhere in the middle you're actually the perfect candidate the choose your destiny approach allows you to cater your learning experience to exactly what you want to accomplish whether that's improving your improvising ear training learning new techniques songwriting and more you'll also have access to private live streams lesson comments and a community forum for feedback as well as exclusive giveaways and new curriculum releases the best part is everything that i just mentioned is included in one monthly subscription and you can cancel anytime or like a lot of people do upgrade your subscription to a yearly pass of course you can also just learn guitar right on youtube for free because youtube guitar lessons don't suck if you know where to look so check out guitarsupersystem.com now back to guitar villains all right we got two more little groups of notes this one is next you ready yep here we go a little tricky here can you play it again yep and i have a longer version if you need that[Music] that's um that's me and my brother together i think it is yeah it's the shadows tune yep the savage the savage that's it yeah woodsong's old time radio hour that's when that was all right i i had never heard that so i knew i was playing an a yeah an a chord and showing that yeah just judging by your guitar playing it seems like your inclination this is just me analyzing it seems like you're inclined to learn uh at least the bass and rhythm guitar parts simultaneously like the bass guitar and rhythm guitar which i think is a testament to how important ear training is and like people don't want to hear us tell them like oh back when we were learning guitar there was no youtube to see where to put your fingers and obviously i think youtube is a revelation and wonderful you know for learning and we can do things like this with technology but i always try to encourage people to exercise their ears when they can and kind of put that restriction on themselves would you agree that's maybe like the most important part of guitar playing is having that strong ear well i i can't understand anybody who doesn't want to have an ear for music you know how can you not recognize a you know now go back go back and fret that's a flat g f f do you have relative pitch or perfect yeah i have relative relatives so you have you have that tone you can kind of hear where the a is and maybe when you hear another note you're like all right where is that from a you can kind of figure it out that way well for instance the beatles version the original version of yesterday is in the key of f so yesterday when you when you hear it ah you know that's f ah that's e uh f f sharp g uh hey b flatter you know yeah i could do it if i had a throne it sounds beautiful yeah right all right here we go last uh last group of of notes you ready this is a tough one this might be a tough one it might be the easiest one it's quick ready here we go[Music] somewhere over the rainbow very nice you went five for five thank you brother yeah so i you've described playing guitar on stage and that's from a live cut of you playing somewhere over the rainbow um you've described playing guitar on stage as the greatest drug you know and yeah i know that this past year has probably been hard to deal with for somebody like you who lives on stage almost and i i'm optimistic we're through the worst of it um you know things seem to be trending the right direction so with that in mind can you tell me about a time you know on stage that you maybe haven't shared before that particulars particularly stands out in your memory uh you bet it was in russia and some people came to the side of the stage with a massive big red heart with we love you on it and and they put it on a stand and then they went and took their seats and it was just so moving to me that they went to all that trouble you know and um i had a great time there when i was in russia people are amazing they really are and poland is the same um i've got too many good memories i can't remember them all but you know touring to me is the happiness business you know i play and you get happy and that's a great job and i'm i'm grateful to my maker every day that he made me a musician and someone who wants to play for people you are you're one of the few guitar players i've ever heard that and i'm sure you've heard this before people tell you this but when you play i just like smile and laugh and that's a rare quality yeah you know it's not about trying to watch my technique right my technique should be invisible you know it's about the music it's always about the song and when when people say you know what are you looking for or whatever i'm there's only one thing i'm looking for and that is to play well because if i play well i'll please myself and i'm pretty sure you'll be pleased too so you know it's all about showing up you know dress up show up and do your best and um i always do that and and you know i remember um there was a great tennis player named yvonne lendl who won wimbledon many times back in the 80s and the journalist said to him what was your most humiliating time on the court and he said i've never been humiliated because i always gave my best effort and some days i just didn't come up to where i should and sometimes i i did it so the answer to that is because i always gave my best effort and that's how it works for me i give do my best and hope that you know the mojo will show up and the magic will happen and i'll be flying my kite and there are other days where you know if you're just not in the zone and then and it's like everything's a chore then you better have some good songs to play because that's what's going to get you through yeah well you have plenty to choose from on that front i really love how effortless and like how much fun it looks like you're having absolutely and and you know your your technique's unbelievable and you're such a musical player but one of my favorite parts about you is actually like your songwriting specifically i feel like sometimes that can go overlooked maybe when when guitar players are talking to you they want to know about you know some some things beyond what they are able to play but the songwriting is just so difficult to be proficient at and i think that's really an underrated part of of what you do well you're very right about that uh that's for sure brother um writing songs is the hardest thing you know it's easy to to write something with a lot of notes and a lot of changes and you know i can probably write you something right now but it wouldn't have any meaning you know and to tell a story and to take the listener somewhere musically without words is something that i've been working on all my life and that's why i don't write a song every day because uh i'm not always that inspired i've got other things that i'm doing you know um but i write when i'm inspired one of my favorite songs of yours is called the mystery and um i just i just love the way the verses have this chromatic descent that doesn't feel chromatic necessarily because of the way you lead the voicing um it's it's like the mysterious version of blackbird which is like my favorite beatles song right it's a beautiful song blackbird if you listen to the the mystery um i had been i had been listening to alison krauss and union station their album let me touch you for a while or something like that song and know that album and i was very influenced by them um i was also i was getting over a divorce that was difficult and i had met a young lady that i was very taken by and i had made up my mind that i was going to contact her and so i was emotionally in a good place right and that's where the song came from so it's also in the g6 tuning oh cool you use a lot of different tunings i know i know you mentioned a couple drop tunings and yeah i don't use as many as people like you know vicky kenford or um or any mckee those you know they use dadgad a lot um i don't play anything in dadgad it totally confuses me um so i just use normal tunings or i tune down right to get that you know and a lot of people think i'm using unusual tunings but i'm not it's just the way i play it and right it is makes it sound like it's an open tuning isn't it so interesting how just tuning down a whole step can almost transform your playing in a way because it changes everything yeah exactly i love it um you're really you're really proficient at guitar but what i also appreciate about you and videos i've watched um over the years and as an educator myself is your knack for explaining things and teaching do you have a secret background as a guitar instructor or does that just come naturally to you because not every great player is a great teacher so it's something that i notice a lot sometimes it's hard to explain some things that i do because you know where i grew up what i was listening to what i care about all my instincts and all that stuff it's we're all different you know could you get me a water thanks thank you just getting some water from my throat no worries yeah and so thank you brother when i write i'm thinking i never think like i'm just writing a song for me to play on the guitar i i think i'm writing for a singer and a band yeah that's definitely a an element of your playing that is unique to your your playing style because you're kind of you're almost uh i don't know if you like this term but one man band definitely can be something you can fit the bill for if you wanted to i actually have an example of that that i clipped out that i'd like to play for you and then maybe you can use your your your teaching skills to explain what the heck is going on here ready all right yep[Music] okay so that was just you doing just me yeah i play the brushes on the face of the guitar i scratched it up with a screwdriver i i mashed it up scratched all the front up so when i rub my hands i really goes like that then i play the bass i hammer the bass with my left hand so i got those two going and then i sing over the top of it a screwdriver so was that did that give you any anxiety to take a screwdriver to your beloved instrument or is it just a tool to you you don't care then it became useful that's a good way to think about it absolutely yeah i mean it's just a guitar it's a piece of wood that's that's the ultimate uh i do i do love that guitar and i miss it you know i i get it back tomorrow it's just been refretted because i wore those spreads out last three years right on that's that's exciting yeah i love when my guitars go to the spa that's what i say guitar spa yeah i never thought of that uh all right cool man well we have a few few questions that i like to ask all the guests here as we wind down what is something that you've learned most recently doesn't have to be guitar related it can have to do with anything i've learned um i've learned that i'm not in charge that i have to surrender my will uh because you know there's a there's a power greater than me in the universe and it's running running the show not me i think we've all learned that recently yeah what is the hardest thing and the easiest thing about the guitar well the guitar fits in anywhere um you can play any kind of music with the guitar you can give people a good time to sit and play in few tunes um but it is challenging and you have to keep working at it if you get lazy you'll pay the price because you won't be able to play what you normally play and you'll have to really push yourself and then you won't feel good about where you're at so even if you're not working you've still got to put in some serious time with the instrument if you want to be any good it takes a lifetime to get good at anything any instrument great advice what are you working on right now that you'd like to tell potentially a million people um i've got some recording to do uh with rob ix and trey hensley um we've got some songs we want to record and my friend richard smith who lives here in nashville who's actually originally from england uh him and i are going to record some songs as well so that's my next two recording projects um and i have a movie coming out i don't know exactly when they're going to release it but i did the with with a co-writer um i did the soundtrack to a new a new film called tiger rising and um we were i wrote it all on my iphone and just kept it in voice memos and i would write the piece and put it with the film see that it all worked then i'd just text it to um don harper in los angeles and he would um orchestrate it and and all that and last month i had two days in the studio and i recorded all the guitar parts for the whole film and then the third day we went into ocean way studios here which is a big church and we recorded the 22 piece string orchestra and over dubbed them over the top and and so we got the whole film done in three days unbelievable that's that's not easy to do i mean studio sessions you got a lot of work you gotta have all your ducks in a row for something to move that quickly but it was great that um actually it was great that we had this uh lockdown situation with curvature 19 because i i had to stay indoors and work on my my film so it gave it worked in a good way it was it was a and um it actually helped me out by taking all the pressure of you know traveling and all that stuff uh got rid of all that and i just concentrated on the film and so i got it all the time tiger rising can't wait to to hear what happens next with that but um dennis quaid queen latifah uh it's a great cast and the two main actors are kids 10 year old kids a girl and a boy and they're really good i'll call you tommy hollywood now i was on a blues cruise me and buddy guy and and uh um joe joe bonamassa we were doing this blues cruise and i played a solo show and a lady came up to me and she looked a little bit familiar and i i kind of thought i knew her face and she said oh your music's great blah blah blah i'm going to send um yours i'm going to send some songs to my brother because he makes movies and it was steven spielberg's sister i've heard of him that's that's a very serendipitous yeah she was real nice great a couple more questions for you what is your favorite airplane album what's your favorite thing to listen to flying on an airplane i usually like um i'll play the country music one or the rock and roll like if if they've got if they've got on-board music already there i'll go through and find what they have and they may have r b they may have jazz country bluegrass i'll kind of swap around until i find what i like cool build a band what four others in a band living or dead would you want to play with so it's a five person band you're on guitar who are the four other members oh okay um well let's see um abraham liborio on base okay stevie wonder on keyboards um uh steve gad on drums and uh alex acuna on percussion wow what a band these are i love asking people these bands they always turn out to be amazing bands uh all right finally to loop in your guitar super villain alter ego i have one final question for you what do you believe about the guitar that most guitar players would think is crazy this could be like a hard truth guitar players need to hear or something you know that others don't or a misconception about the instrument or whatever you want i think people especially guitar players they think they think too much about um the fact that you know you've got to play with the band you've got to have the power of a band um i believe that you know i i can change the world by the way i play music and i believe that that just the fact that i'm playing an acoustic guitar doesn't mean that it's not powerful you know you've got to think i've got something good to say to my my homies you know my my brothers and sisters out there i got something good to say to you here it is and i just believe in that um i don't believe that i have to be compared to other people i don't believe that people are missing the bass player and the drummer and all that when i play on my own it's just you feel everything and that's how it should be and you just just do your best and you know really what really counts the most is the quality and integrity of what you do and that you put 100 of your honest effort into it it's like the truth you can't resist it very wise words so tommy as we wind down here i'd like to thank you for taking the time to be on guitar villains it was great fun to talk about some different stuff too so i appreciate that of course it's been an honor to talk to you uh we'll look forward to seeing what treacherous plots you devise next in your musical endeavors[Applause] you