... but in a good way!!!
I couldn't believe my luck, Andy Timmons was holding a guitar clinic last night, just 2 miles from my front door.
Small venue, maybe 50 or so people attended ... so really up close and personal. He played a number of songs to begin with, followed by a Q and A session, and then another handful of songs to finish up with (about 2 hours in all). What an amazing guitar player, and a really nice bloke too ... good sense of humour.
I was sat three rows back, so in theory I should have been able to see everything ... in practice, there was a bloke sat in front of me in row 2 with an unfeasibly large f**kin head!!! Ok, rant over with ...
The Q and A session was very interesting, Andy Timmons did talk a lot ... at one point he was discussing Eric Johnson and Yngwie Malmsteen, and made a reference to "Cracking The Code" which was something that he had been watching, and found very useful. I think it's a series of videos that explains economy picking techniques, I'll have to check this out.
He also talked about the amp he was using (Mesa Lone Star) and his current pedal board. He was only using the clean channel of the amp, with chorus/delay in the fx loop. The majority of the tone is generated from the front end pedals ... which he prefers over the lead channel. I was so impressed with his tone, it sounded awesome.
I must admit ... it was a very inspirational night, and I really enjoyed it, many thanks to Andy Timmons!!!