Tommy Emmanuel
Tommy Emmanuel has come a long way since picking up his first guitar when he was a 4-year-old in Australia in 1959. He credits hard work and passion for honors such as being appointed Member of the Order of Australia and being named Best Acoustic Guitarist in Guitar Player Magazine for his complex fingerpicking style of folk, blues, rock pop and country music.
“I remember what it was like to play with my brothers and sisters and just getting used to the feel of the instrument and learning new chords,” Emmanuel said. “I can still remember when I learned an F chord and how important that was in my repertoire as a rhythm player. It was my first bar chord. I’d puff my chest out. It was like a big deal that I could play an F.”
His playing style became much more complex after Emmanuel heard Chet Atkins for the first time in 1962.
“I remember that gig vividly, because it changed my life forever,” he said. “It’s almost like it ruins your life, because all the stuff you liked before sounds awful now that you’ve heard that. When I heard Chet, I had that same revelation that he had when he heard Merle Travis. He said, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to be able to play like that.’ When I heard Chet, I said, ‘I’ve got to do that. I don’t know what that is yet, but I’m going to do that.’ I knew it the moment I heard it. It was a life-changing experience. The fact that I could hear he was doing everything at once was in itself a miracle.”
Emmanuel modeled his playing after Atkins’ fingerpicking style of playing the bass parts of a song with his thumb and the melody with his fingers. This is most prevalent in Emmanuel’s medley of Beatles songs, including “Here Comes the Sun,” “Day Tripper,” “Lady Madonna,” “A Little Help From My Friends,” “She’s A Woman” and “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
“I’ve always been a big Beatles fan since the 60s,” Emmanuel said. “It was Chet’s version of ‘Lady Madonna’ that gave me the idea to try to cover playing the melody and all the riff parts at the same time. People really love it, so I just kept expanding it. It’s getting longer and longer as the years go by.”
Emmanuel and his brother Phil taught themselves by listening to artists like Atkins on the radio and playing by ear.
“When you’re kids, you are just following your instincts,” Emmanuel said. “Things come along that inspire you and you try to work them out. You have to remember, it was so long ago. It was 1960, so there were no guitar teachers, no video, no television, none of that stuff in Australia. We really were listening to records and listening to the radio and just working things out by ear. That’s how we started. My brother would hear a song on the radio. He’d work the melody out and figure out the chords, then he’d show me how a song went. We’d work it out, work up an arraignment and play it in a show.”
They started touring as children. When Emmanuel was 6-years-old in 1961, his father sold their home and took the family band out on the road, living out of two station wagons.
“Thanks to my mother, she made it as comfortable as possible,” Emmanuel said. “We were kids from the bush, so we were always in the outdoors. We slept under the stars. We cooked on a campfire. We were literally like a traveling bunch of gypsies. That’s the life we knew, and that’s the life we really loved. We would play shows and make a few dollars, fill our cars with fuel and get a bit of food and move on to the next place. Sometimes we’d come to a town and try to drum up some business. We’d play in the street and we’d play in the hall right when schools were coming out. We’d go to the radio station and insist to be on air. We tried to be in everything.”
When he was a teenager, Emmanuel moved out on his own to Sydney.
“That was a big adventure,” he said. “It was the first time I ever saw a city. I got a job pretty quickly. I used to be a messenger boy for a big jewelry company during the week, and in the evening I played guitar in restaurants for food.”
Emmanuel quickly found work in music, landing a gig alongside country music singer Lionel Long.
“He was doing very well at the time,” Emmanuel said. “When I turned up for the audition and he saw how young I was, he tried to turn me away. I said, ‘Let me play something for you.’ He said, ‘I play in clubs. You’re too young. I play old people music you won’t know.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you try me?’ He launched into a Jimmy Rogers song, and I knew it and sang harmony. Then he went into a Hank Williams song, and I knew it and sang harmony. He had to give me the job. He was just laughing.”
Emmanuel was involved with several projects in the 70s, including teaming back up with his brother for the band Goldrush.
Tommy Emmanuel
“That was a wild time,” he said. “We were young guys on the road, and we were so self-contained. We had a station wagon and a trailer, and we carried our own gear around. We set up in pubs and clubs and any place we could get to play. That’s how we made a living. That’s how we built our repertoire as well. We had to learn all kinds of music. We had to play for like four hours, because every night we’d do three sets. It was good groundwork for us. It’s funny how life works. It prepares you for what your destiny is.”
In 2000, the brothers were invited to perform at the closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Sydney.
“Just before we went out, we were standing looking out at 200,000 people in the stadium in this massive spectacle,” he said. “I told my brother, ‘Take a picture of this in your mind, because it will never happen again in our lifetime. We will never be seen or heard like this again.’ It was awesome.”
Emmanuel joined the band Dragon in 1985 before launching his solo career with the album “Up From Down Under” in 1988.
“I just wanted to get out and do what I felt was really in my heart,” he said. “That was to play solo and do something different. Most people said I was mad and should have a band and singer. Of course I didn’t listen to anything anybody said, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It’s challenging playing solo and holding an audience for two hours. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of songs and stories and ideas. You just have to step out there and give them your best.”
Emmanuel’s solo career has been largely inspired by Atkins, who he first played with during a trip to Nashville in 1980. Atkins eventually inspired him to move to Nashville, and he has been a permanent resident of the United States for six years.
“The thing about Nashville is there are so many talented people here,” Emmanuel said. “I moved here because it seemed to be where I belonged. I had lived here out at Chet’s place for quite some time. He had a granny flat built on his house, and he insisted that I come and stay and not stay in hotels. Every time I came to Nashville, I’d be living out at Chet’s house. He took me around, introduced me to people and just kind of made me feel like home. Eventually I bought a little house here and made the move.”
Emmanuel was honored by the opportunity to record as a duo with Atkins on the 1997 album “The Day Finger Pickers Took Over The World.” It was the last album Atkins recorded before he died.
“It was a beautiful experience,” he said. “When I got the call from Chet, I was still living in Australia. I immediately started writing, but I already had some tunes. I played them for him over the phone, and he loved them, so they ended up on there.”
Another song that ended up on the album was the Australian classic “Waltzing Matilda.”
“That was the first song we played together,” Emmanuel said. “The first time I was on the Grand Ole Opry, I brought Chet out to play with me and that’s what we played. It was a great honor.”
Emmanuel was honored by Atkins at the 15th Annual Chet Atkins Appreciation Society Convention in 1999 with the Certified Guitar Player Award. He returns to play at the event every year.
With music heavily influenced by artists such as Atkins, Emmanuel has been embraced by the country music community. He was voted the Global Country Artist of the Year at this year’s Country Music Academy Awards.
“That was a great honor for me,” Emmanuel said. “I guess I’m one of the only people who play the kind of music I grew up with, which is Chet Atkins and Merle Travis kind of music, and play it all over the world.”
Tommy Emmanuel
Emmanuel is breaking into a new genre this year with an instrumental Christmas album.
“It’s pretty traditional,” he said. “I also have a couple of original songs on there. I wrote myself a kind of a real Christmas carol. There’s also a song a friend of mine from Australia had written with a guitar and piano duet. There’s also stuff like ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’ and ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas.’ I kept it instrumental so people can sing along.”
Another project keeping him busy is a new website called TommyTV available at TommyEmmanuel.tv.
“It’s an interactive site where people can go in and download instruction or look at videos and commentary of things happening on the road,” Emmanuel said. “There’s also a section where I interview other guitar players and we interact and play together. It’s all very spontaneous, unscripted and a lot of fun. The instructional videos have four camera angles. You can split the screens and slow things down. You can upload your own videos so we can see you play. It’s all about interaction.”
Emmanuel launched a new U.S. tour in September. He is performing at the Playhouse Square Center in Cleveland on Sept. 25. He’ll return to Ohio with a show Sept. 28 at The Midland Theatre in Newark and Sept. 30 at the Clark State Performing Arts Center in Springfield.
