I do have other interests other than Civil War history. Two
of my "other interests" are New York Mets baseball and
acoutic guitar. I have been a Mets baseball fan since
before I started playing guitar, and I have been playing
guitar for 35 years.
New York Mets
I'm going to start a series of pages on the Mets. I'm not
sure what I'm going to do yet. I collect the autographs of
the 1969 and 1986 Met World Series Championship teams, so I
may post those. I am also going to start a series called,
"The top 25 Met players of all time." Check out the
New York Mets pages for
more.
Acoustic Guitar
I've been studying and playing the music of Leo Kottke on the guitar for a long
time. Leo Kottke was the best American
acoustic guitarist of the last half of the 20th
century. He still tours hundreds of dates a year and
if you can get a chance to see him, go. He's as much
an entertainer now as a guitarist. Now in his mid-60s,
he's slowed his style of playing down quite a bit.
For a long time I
thought I'd never hear a guitar player better or more
interesting than Leo Kottke. Recently, however, I have. His
name is Andy Mckee. When I listened to his music for the
first time I remember reacting the same way I did when I
first heard Kottke in High School. Shock and awe.
Stylistically, Kottke and McKee don't have much in common,
but they attract the listener just the same.
It's been a long
journey for me with the guitar. I remember getting my first
guitar as a teenager and playing it for months before I
knew you had to tune it. By the way, I'm a lefty player,
which makes procuring quality instruments a little harder.
Before the internet, getting a quality left-handed
instrument was an impossibility. Now you can get a good one
if you search the web for a few months. I'll tell you a
little about my guitars in the following pages.