New member Bill Turner played some nice bluegrass and Chet tunes for us. His band is called Blue Smoke. Visit his Web site.

New member Patty Lynch brought in a 1976 Gibson flattop 6-string once owned by Leo Kottke. We all had a chance to try it out and discovered there actually still were some Leo-licks left in it!

For the November meeting Joe rounded up:

1. an outstanding fingerstyle player who has a lot of that unmistakable Chet magic;
   
2. an excellent luthier who builds his own line of guitars and has built and repaired guitars for George Benson, Sting, and Les Paul, and
   
3. the man who has been Les Paul's own sound engineer for the past 35 years.
   

Fortunately we did not have to rent a bigger hall to accommodate this team because they are all one person...Tom Doyle! He did a workshop for us at 2:00 PM, and then a concert at 7:00 PM at Joe's house. Both were a great success.

Tom Doyle click to view poster (135k)

Wonderful fingerstyle player - a seasoned performer who has played all up and down the East coast, Tom is a long-time fan of Chet and Les Paul and it definitely comes through in his playing. Tom played many of his arrangements as well as some original numbers. Les Paul's personal sound man for 35 years! - Helping Les get that perfect sound, Tom still runs the board every Monday night in NYC at the Iridium Jazz Club, and occasionally sits in with Les and his Trio. Guitar designer and Luthier - Tom has just finished building a new archtop and also brought some other pieces in various stages of construction for show and tell. Pickup and electronics expert - Tom showed us some of the pickup designs which have earned him a reputation as an innovator.

Please visit The Doyle's - Tom & Sue Doyle website for more information.

As one music critic said, "Ernie's blues is like a hot steaming stack of pancakes, piled with whipped butter and dripping with syrup...SWEET! Ernie is a standout guitar player."

Ernie gave an up-close guitar workshop in the afternoon at Beam's Music in Frazer, PA. and later that evening, Ernie performed an initimate acoustic concert at the Andersen's.

Those who attended and had a chance to get to know this remarkable bluesman were impressed by both his playing and the depth of his knowledge of historic blues music.

July certainly arrived with some colorful pyrotechnics, but they started several days before the Independence Day celebrations began, and the action was centered on some very talented flying fingers rather than the skies above.

On Tuesday we had a living room "Seminar" by the three artists of the Favored Nations Acoustic Tour: Tommy Emmanuel, Peppino D'Agostino, and Pete Huttlinger, who shared several remarkable hours with about 30 of the DVFGA's fingerstyle afficionados. After the seminar we held the official end-of-tour party, with lots of great food on a really nice Pennsylvania summer evening.

On Wednesday the three guitarists whizzed down to Sigma Sound in Philadelphia, the storied old recording studio famous for the "Philly Sound" - the walls covered with gold records for the Jacksons, Patti LaBelle, and many others. They taped for a TV program with a "camera running" philosophy, capturing everything from setup to tossing ideas around for tunes, and of course lots of pickin'. They also did individual interviews and the whole thing will be edited together into a one hour program.

That evening found us at The Sellersville Theater a recently restored fine old movie house with a great sound system. The guys were really pumped and played to an enthusiastic audience for about 3-1/2 hours! As quite often happens after a great fingerstyle concert, we had the folks coming up afterwards proclaiming that their lives had been changed.

Pete is one of the smoothest and cleanest guitarists on the planet. He played a nice variety of both original tunes and arrangements. A real standout was his version of "Josie" by Steely Dan, an arrangement which helped him win the fingerstyle competition at Winfield.

Peppino has extensive classical background and just loves to turn the classical world on its ear by performing Bach pieces on steel strings with a thumbpick! But the piece that stole the show was his own "Why Not" which started as an exercise for the left hand only. You hear full chord and melody voicings coming from the guitar but you can plainly see that his right hand is resting up on top of the guitar's sound box.

Tommy has, as he says, kicked it up a notch... and most of us didn't even know there were any more notches up there! The first tune he played for the seminar attendees was "To B or not to B", with all kinds of new nooks and crannies, an altered chord here, a couple of extra notes there, a few of those little timing tricks that only TE can get away with...it was an amazingly well crafted version.

The two days were an incredible experience and it was great to share in the wonderful chemistry among these three very talented artists.