Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Kottke Effect

So how does an unmusical mechanical engineering science nerd turn into a music-is-everything guitar making nerd? About 8 years ago a series of seemingly insignificant events quietly nudged me off of my chosen path onto a completely new track. One of those key moments was receiving an old Leo Kottke bootleg in the mail as a trade for a Phish concert that a friend had given me. At the time I had never even heard of Leo Kottke and the trade was made in response to a random internet post by someone in Boulder, Colorado (thanks internet!). As a new guitar player relatively unexposed to acoustic guitar music I listened to the CD and realized, "Whoa. I want to play guitar like that." Thus began my obsession with acoustic guitar and all things Kottke.

All this came back to me this past weekend when I went to see Kottke (my 8th? 9th time?) in Boston with Jeremy and my family. I had been living in Boston for the summer interning at a web design company when I got that first Kottke CD. Here's a video of me playing the first song of his (actually, his version of a Duane Allman song) I was able to learn on a guitar I made for a friend...


1 comment:

Lisa K said...

Yay! Even if I am thousands of miles away I love the fact that I still get to hear you play music. Thanks for posting this, Michael. I've already played it for several friends. Hey...I also heard that you had a swingin' house party recently...or should I call it a workshop event? I love and support what you, Jeremy and others are doing. Keep on keepin' on!