Tommy Emmanuel | |
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Emmanuel performing at the Soave Guitar Festival, Italy, May 2010 |
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Background information | |
Born | Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia |
31 May 1955
Genres | Folk, Rock, Pop, Blues, Country |
Occupations | Musician, Songwriter |
Instruments | Guitar, lap steel guitar |
Years active | 1962–present |
Associated acts | Dragon |
Website | Official website |
Notable instruments | |
Maton TE Signature model, Williamson Guitars |
William Thomas "Tommy" Emmanuel AM (born 31 May 1955) is an Australian guitarist and occasional singer, best known for his complex fingerstyle technique, energetic performances and the use of percussive effects on the guitar. In the May 2008 and 2010 issues of Guitar Player Magazine, he was named as "Best Acoustic Guitarist" in their readers' poll.[1] In June 2010 Emmanuel was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).[2]
Contents |
Emmanuel was born in Australia in 1955. He received his first guitar in 1959 at age four, being taught by his mother to accompany her playing lap steel guitar. At the age of 7 he heard Chet Atkins on the radio. He vividly remembers this moment and says it greatly inspired him.[3]
By the age of 6, in 1961, he was a working professional musician. Recognizing the musical talents of Tommy and his brother Phil, their father created a family band, sold the family home and took his family on the road. With the family living in two station wagons, much of Emmanuel’s childhood was spent touring Australia with his family, playing rhythm guitar, and rarely going to school. The family found it difficult living on the road; they were poor but never hungry, never settling in one place. His father would often drive ahead, organize interviews, advertising and finding the local music shop where they'd have an impromptu concert the next day. Eventually the New South Wales Department of Education insisted that the Emmanuel children needed to go to school regularly.[3][4]
After his father died in 1966, the family settled in Parkes. Tommy eventually moved to Sydney where he came to be noticed nationally when he won a string of talent contests in his teen years.[3][5] By the late 1970s, he was playing drums with his brother Phil in the group Goldrush as well doing session work on numerous albums and jingles. He gained further prominence in the late 1970s as the lead guitarist in The Southern Star Band, the backing group for vocalist Doug Parkinson. During the early 1980s, he joined the reformed lineup of leading 1970s rock group Dragon, touring widely with them, including a 1987 tour with Tina Turner. He left the group to embark on a solo career.
Throughout his career he has played with many notable artists including Chet Atkins, Eric Clapton, Sir George Martin, Air Supply, John Denver, Les Paul and Doc Watson.
In 1994 Australian music veteran John Farnham invited him to play guitar next to Stuart Fraser from Noiseworks for the Concert For Rwanda. Emmanuel became a member of Farnham's band.
Emmanuel and his brother Phil performed live in Sydney at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics in 2000. The event was televised worldwide with an estimated 2.85 billion viewers.[5] When performing together the pair will sometimes share and play just one guitar with each having one hand free.
In October 2002 he was invited to perform the Australian folk song Waltzing Matilda at a service at the Washington National Cathedral held for the victims of the Bali bombings.
In December 2007 he was diagnosed with heart issues[6] and was forced to take a break from his hectic touring schedule due to exhaustion, but returned to full-time touring in early 2008.
In late January 2010, having been deeply touched by the tragic 2010 Haiti earthquake earlier in the same month, Emmanuel announced[7] that he would be auctioning off three guitars, that he personally played and owned, on eBay, in order to raise money to donate to UNICEF in Haiti.
In June 2010 Emmanuel was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).[2]
Emmanuel has said that even at a young age he was fascinated by Atkins’ musical style – sometimes referred to as Travis picking – of playing bass with the thumb and melody parts with the first two or three fingers at the same time. This technique became the basis of Tommy's guitar style.
While Emmanuel has never had formal music training, his playing ability has won him fans from all over the world. He is known to play percussion parts on the body of his guitar. As a solo performer he never plays to a set list and uses a minimum of effects.[5] He usually completes recordings in one take.
Emmanuel frequently uses his left thumb to fret bass notes on the 5th and 6th strings as well as playing chords such as Am and E with just two fingers. He uses a thumb pick mostly, a flat pick or just fingers. He also integrates amongst his trademark blazing runs and kaleidoscopic chord progressions a quick note / chord "dive," imitating a tremolo system effect on his fixed-bridge acoustic guitars, by pressing the palm of his right hand against the body of the guitar directly above the fret board close to the neck joint while maintaining forward pressure with his left (fretting) hand.
His main guitar is a small-bodied custom Maton EBG808 made in 2003, that is fitted with a pickup and an internal condenser microphone, to which he has given the nickname "Mouse" due to its quieter volume unplugged but massive sound when plugged into an amp. Two of his main stage guitars, notably his signature TE1 Maton dreadnought, are battered and worn due to his excessive playing and percussive techniques.
As a young man in Australia, Emmanuel wrote to his hero Chet Atkins in Nashville. Eventually Atkins replied with words of encouragement and a longstanding invitation to drop by to visit.[8]
In 1997, Emmanuel and Atkins recorded as a duo and released the album The Day Finger Pickers Took Over The World, which was also to be Atkins' last recorded album before he died. Emmanuel and Atkins appeared together on The Nashville Network's 'County Christmas' in late 1997 and on that occasion Atkins stated about him: "He is one of the greatest guitar players I've ever seen."
In July 1999, at the 15th Annual Chet Atkins Appreciation Society Convention, Chet presented Tommy with a Certified Guitar Player award, an honor Atkins has bestowed on other guitarists.[3] This award gains its fame from being bestowed by Atkins himself, a widely recognized leader in guitar music. The award states: "In Recognition Of His Contributions to the Art Of Fingerpicking." Tommy performs at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society (CAAS) in July each year in Nashville.[9]
Emmanuel released the DVD "Live At Her Majesty's Theatre, Ballarat, Australia" on 11 July 2006 and also the "Center Stage" accompanying DVD in late 2008.
Emmanuel has produced 3 instructional videos: Guitar Talk (1993), Up Close (1996), Emmanuel Labor (2008)
"Smokey Mountain Lullaby", a duet with Chet Atkins, was nominated for the 1998 Grammy award for Country Instrumental Performance but did not win. His song "Gameshow Rag/Cannonball Rag" won "Instrumental of the Year" at the 35th Tamworth Country Music Festival on Saturday, 27 January 2007,[11] and also was nominated that year for a Grammy for "Best Country Instrumental Performance".[12]
"Jersey Bounce" is a song written by Tiny Bradshaw, Eddie Johnson and Bobby Plater with lyrics by Buddy Feyne who used the nom de plume Robert B. Wright (as this song was written during an ASCAP strike). It hit #1 in 1942 as an instrumental recorded by Benny Goodman and his orchestra, and also charted that same year by Jimmy Dorsey (#9) and Shep Fields (#15) . It was covered by numerous bands and swing orchestras including Glenn Miller, Jan Savitt and Red Norvo. Artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Ella Mae Morse and The King Sisters also recorded it. Fitzgerald recorded it on her two albums Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! and again on All That Jazz. The King Sisters and Ella Mae Morse versions were singles.
The tune was popular as the source of aircraft nicknames during World War II. One of the first examples was a B-24D Liberator that served in the Eighth Air Force with the 93rd Bomb Group at Alconbury, England, in 1942 and 1943 (pictured). It was also the name of two B-17 Flying Fortress bombers in the 303rd Bomb Group stationed at Molesworth, England during World War II. In fact, this plane flew 14 combat missions and was labeled "the hardest hit ship of the 358th Bomb Squadron (VK-K)". After it was taken out of commission, the "Jersey Bounce 2" replaced it. At least four other Bombardment Groups had B-17 bombers named "Jersey Bounce".
Jersey (/ˈdʒɜːrzi/, French: [ʒɛʁzɛ]; Jèrriais: Jèrri [ʒɛri]), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (French: Bailliage de Jersey; Jèrriais: Bailliage dé Jèrri), is a Crown dependency of the United Kingdom, a possession of the Crown in right of Jersey, off the coast of Normandy, France. The bailiwick consists of the island of Jersey, along with surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks collectively named Les Dirouilles, Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Pierres de Lecq, and other reefs. Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy, whose dukes went on to become kings of England from 1066. After Normandy was lost by the kings of England in the thirteenth century, and the ducal title surrendered to France, Jersey and the other Channel Islands remained attached to the English crown.
Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination.
The island of Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands. Although the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey are often referred to collectively as the Channel Islands, the "Channel Islands" are not a constitutional or political unit. Jersey has a separate relationship to its Crown from the other Crown dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man, although all three Crowns are held by the monarch of the United Kingdom. It is not part of the United Kingdom, and has an international identity separate from that of the UK, but the United Kingdom is constitutionally responsible for the defence of Jersey. The Commission have confirmed in a written reply to the European Parliament in 2003 that Jersey is within the Union as a European Territory for whose external relationships the United Kingdom is responsible. Jersey is not fully part of the European Union but has a special relationship with it, notably being treated as within the European Community for the purposes of free trade in goods.
Jersey is the debut solo extended play (EP) by American singer and actress Bella Thorne, released on November 17, 2014 by Hollywood Records. Thorne promoted the EP for a one time, in the event Shall We Dance on Ice, in Bloomington, Illinois, on December 16, 2014, when she performed "Jersey".
“Everything is very different so it is hard to say I have some Coachella music, I have some R&B, some more Ke$ha talk-y music, I wanted there to be a song for everyone I don’t want it to just be you hear a song on the radio and say, ‘Oh that kinda sounds like Bella Thorne,’ like she would sing a song like that. I want it to be so versatile and different.”
In March 2013, Thorne announced she'd been signed to Hollywood Records, and began working on her debut album. On 23 April 2013, she discussed details about her upcoming album, telling MTV: “What fans can expect is [for it] just to be very different from anyone, because I don’t like to be one of those artists where you can be like: ‘Oh yeah, I know them from that song.’ All my songs are very different from each other. So I don’t want to be known as only one genre.” On 28 March 2014, Thorne announced her debut album would be named as the single, and confirmed it will consist of eleven songs.
What a Time to Be Alive is a collaborative mixtape by Toronto-based rapper Drake and Atlanta-based rapper Future. It was released on September 20, 2015 via the iTunes Store and Apple Music. The mixtape was released under the labels of A1, Cash Money, Epic, OVO Sound, Freebandz, Republic and Young Money.
The mixtape debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200. The artwork is a stock image that was purchased from Shutterstock.
The mixtape was first teased by a range of sources including DJ SKEE, Angela Yee and Ernest Baker, and was officially announced on Drake's Instagram on September 19, 2015, when he revealed the mixtape's release date and cover art. Drake and Future premiered the album on Beats 1 on OVO Sound's "OVO Sound Radio" show on September 20, 2015, after which it was released on the iTunes Store and Apple Music.
What a Time to Be Alive received generally positive reviews from critics, receiving a normalized metascore of 70 out of 100 on the review aggregate website Metacritic based on 24 critics.Billboard described Drake and Future's chemistry as expected and said "Future deals with personal demons that he tries, and fails, to drown in drugs; Drake is mostly about insecurities and lesser gravity".Rolling Stone gave the album 3.5 out of 5 stars, attributing the "fresh and spontaneous" feel to the quick production of the album, where "both artists [are] playing off their louder-than-life personalities without overthinking the details." However, Sheldon Pearce in a Pitchfork Media review suggests that this limited time-frame for making the album is the sonic downfall of the mixtape arguing that the album "wasn't created with the care or the dutiful curation we've come to expect from both artists when solo."
G C9 D G
Some walls are made of stone
Sometimes we build our own
Some walls stand for years
Some wash away with tears
Some walls are lined with gold where
Some hearts stay safe and cold
Some walls are made of doubt
Holding in and keeping out
Chorus:
Em D G
If there is any hope for love at all
Em C9 D G
Some walls must fall
Some walls are build on pride
Some keep the child inside
Some walls are build in fear that
Love let go will disappear
Chorus:
Em D G
If there is any hope for love at all
Em C9 D G
Some walls must fall
Bridge:
Em G
How will you ever know what might be found
Em C9 D
Until you let the walls come tumbling down
Chorus:
If there is any hope for love at all