Me and my buddy Rusty Spiegle left Alabama for Nashville on the morning of the 23rd, in blistering heat and high humidty and holding visitor passes to the NAMM show, courtesy of our local guitar shop Fretted Instruments. Since the show isn't open to the public, we were happy to have these passes.

Arriving three hours later, we entered and discovered Maton was not in the show directory! Walked up and down every aisle of the huge exhibition hall to no avail. This took several hours and while there was plenty to see and hear, we finally concluded Tommy and Maton just weren't at the show after all.

Tired out, we headed for the exits when, by sheer accident, I saw TE's head bobbing some distance away.

This turned out to be the booth of an Australian music software company; through some foul-up, NAMM had failed to reserve booth space for Maton and they had to attend as "non-exhibiting suppliers".

In any case, anyone and everyone walking by stopped to listen and the crowd soon grew very large, filling the aisle, blocking traffic and access to other vendor's booths. It's easy to imagine how large this crowd could become once word got out. While unfortunate, it's easy to understand why other vendors might become upset, since the booths are anything but inexpensive. I would estimate between 10 and 15 vendor's booths were blocked at 3PM on the first day; no telling what it was like 3 days later!

While listening, up walked another friend from Birmingham, Jim Ohlschmidt, a fine player and writer whose interview with TE appeared in Acoustic Guitar magazine. (He also produced a new CD by yet another Alabamian, Clyde Kendrick; it was Clyde's guitar which Phil played during the closing concert of the Chet Convention, this guitar appears in your picture of Tommy and Phil playing simultaneously).

Once TE finished playing and the crowd dispersed, me, Rusty, and Jim went up to Tommy to say hello before heading home. In about 5 seconds we went from bone-tried to fired-up, determined to stay for the show at the Wildhorse Saloon despite the fact doing so would mean getting home around 2AM (on a work day).

The Wildhorse is a huge nightclub built inside reclaimed warehouses along 2nd Ave., right on the bank of the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville. Beautiful new place, home of a "country line dancing" type television show, great sound system, etc. We arrived two hours early and parked ourselves at the counter along the second story balcony, ordered food and drinks, and relaxed out of the heat and humidity. These turned out to be the best seats in the house, not too far from the stage and with a clear sight line not enjoyed by those in the VIP seats below, which were only chairs placed on the flat dance floor. We also had food and drink service, so all was ideal.

This being the "Muriel Anderson All-Star Guitar night", quite a few players were on the bill with the first set being acoustic and the second, electric. Tommy appeared last in the first set, playing Daytripper and a couple other barn-burners. A great showcase both for Maton (it was immediately obvious which guitar/pickup sounded best through the giant PA system) and for Tommy. With just a couple seconds of "guitar percussion" he got a huge crowd reaction, far more than other players who may make pounding on the guitar the basis of an entire style.

The acoustic players then played a blues together and perhaps something else, I can't recall. After a break, Jerry Donahue started off the electric set. His cancellation had been announced earlier, as he was playing a block away at the Caffe Milano with the Hellecasters. During their break he popped in at the Wildhorse and played a few tunes, followed by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown", Stanley Jordan, Jimmy Bruno and Brent Mason.

Daunted by the late hour and high volume, we almost left at this point. I also had a sneaking suspicion that during this electric set Tommy might have bopped up to the Milano to sit in with the Hellecasters, and was tempted to go over and check. But the air conditioning it was still miserably hot and humid even this late at night, so we waited for the show finale. Tommy reappeared with the other acoustic players and led everyone in a rendition of Stevie's Blues, with TE providing an energy boost and directing the order of solos, handing them out to members of the electric backing band (Nashville studio giants Michael Rhodes on bass and Eddie Bayers on drums, and a keyboard player who I didn't recognize and who unfortunately could not be heard most of the time); up to now they had been mostly ignored by the blazing guitarists.

TE was clearly the finest player there, but was very gracious throughout, involving other players in his solo pieces and being very respectful of Gatemouth Brown, a "roots" blues player who had appeared a bit uncomfortable surrounded by the hot licks electric folks (at one point he walked off, returning with a pipe which he proceeded to light up on stage, blowing huge, clouds of smoke, while the dweedly-dweedly players dualing around him. Upon returning, Tommy took care to make him feel more at ease and everything seemed to end happily.

At this point we packed it in, though clearly things were still jumping in Nashtown that night. Got home about 2:30AM (ouch).

Well, that's about all I can recall at this point.

BTW, my wife and I just received our TE fanclub materials the other day and were talking about how funny it is, at our age, to be joining a fanclub! <grin> But it's all a lot of fun and we're happy to have Tommy and Phil appearing so close and so frequently. Excellence in music is obvious and these guys have got it.

Bill Monk Birmingham AL USA