is serve whatever song I am playing with what’s appropriate. The most important thing to me is to serve the song with what the song needs, not to try and put blues into a melodic song where it doesnt fit.
In my opinion, David Gilmour from Pink Floyd is the most melodic struc- tured player on the planet, but you are certainly right there with him. How did you develop that melodic style? Well, I think my heart for playing is melodi- cally driven. Everytime I try to play some- thing, I want it to have a sense of melody to it. There’s a great old story about Chet Atkins. He was in the studio with a guitar player who said “I really don’t know what to play on this,” and Chet said, “The melody usually works.” (Laughs) But I’m a huge fan of brevity, and what I am trying to play is what I would sing. And what I’m singing is what I might play. Each one comes from the same place, the same set of ears, the same heart - one’s coming out of my fingers and one’s coming out of my mouth, but they’re still coming from the same core. That to me is where that sensibility comes from. I’ll tell you a great story that proves this in a way. It was the thing I did with Carrie Underwood, it was a version of “How Great Thou Art” for this prime time TV show. The show was about
honoring all these women in coun- try music, and Carrie asked me to come and join her. Artists would come out and sing one of their songs and then they’d do some- thing together. I said I want to play guitar, I’ll let my guitar be my voice. You’ll sing, you’ll shine. She said, no, you’ve got to sing. I told her to just try it, and we did and it was the neatest thing that ever happened. There were like 30-mil- lion hits on this thing on
YouTube.And to me, an instru- ment is easily as emotional as a
voice. Great music has great emotion to it. You can play it in a way that is heart wrench- ing. To me, that is kind of it in a nutshell. Try to play what fits.
Do you prefer to be thought of as a great singer, or a great guitar player? (Ponders) Well... When I started into country music I knew that country does not have a long history of guitar gods. It’s about the singer and the song. There are some great players obviously, but I knew that my ticket to success was not because I was a hot shot gui- tar player. So I just let people discover that I played. I remember when I first came to Nashville, I was on this TV show and I walked up there with my Telecaster and a couple of twins. The guy looked at me and said “is that a prop?” (Both laughing) I just said, “You’ll see.” (Laughing) But I knew that in Nashville my singing would always overshadow my playing. I wasn’t driven to prove to the world that I could play, I knew that would unfold with time. What really brought it to light was when Eric [Clapton] started doing those Crossroads shows. He did the first one in Dal- las in the early 2000’s, and I’m sitting at home. It was a period where my popularity was starting to fade a little bit, they weren’t playing my records so much on the radio. Everybody goes through it you know. We
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