Hi Guys,

I’m a 62-year-old lifelong blues fan from Birmingham UK. I’ve had a monthly subscription to Master Guitar Academy since April 2013 but only just started to use it! Bizarre I know. What happened was I took redundancy/early retirement from my company the month prior and probably had some idea in the back of my mind that I’d spend all my free time learning to play the Blues properly with Robert as my tutor. Well, it didn’t take too long to realise I was too young to sit around at home in my early fifties so I started another company and I never got to pick up a guitar for about another seven years. At the back of my mind, I kept telling myself to cancel the subscription, but I thought, well it’s always there if I need it and it’s nice to support people like Robert! Yeah, I’m a fool but I mean well.

I started playing in school and college bands but never with any great skill, just learning the chords for the songs we covered. I played bass in a couple of bands as well to about the same skill level. Then life and an early family got in the way, and I didn’t pick up a guitar for about another twenty years. In my forties, I decided it would be nice to pick it up again, but I never really stuck at it and really all I’ve been able to do since then (until recently) is noodle badly in position one of the minor pentatonic scale playing the same few blues licks. I have managed to acquire a few guitars though – Maybe I thought laziness wasn’t my problem and I just needed the right guitar although I do just like owning guitars. They are things of beauty and bring me pleasure. I’m not going to list them all, but I’ve got a couple of Mexican Fender strat’s, three Tele’s (all project builds), an Epiphone Sheraton (kinda like a 335), my main squeeze which is an Epiphone Les Paul, and a few acoustics (including a Canadian built Godin Fifth Avenue which Robert would probably approve of). I picked the guitar up again seriously last year and as a reward for sticking at it and seeing some progress (although I’d still probably only classify myself as an advanced beginner) I bought myself a Gibson 50s Les Paul Standard. I bought it untried on the internet (due to covid restrictions) and I kinda wished I’d tried it first because the neck is very chunky and takes some getting used to. I have no doubt I will get used to it but I still find my Epiphone Les Paul easier to play (not least because it’s on hand whereas the Gibson is currently at my work office because the wife doesn’t know about it yet, lol).

I’m getting side-tracked. My company was hit hard by covid (we do event catering and there have been no events) so I furloughed the company throughout much of 2020 which is when I picked the guitar up seriously again. I started by digging out the CDs to an old Griff Hamlin’s Blues Guitar Unleashed course and Justin’s free guitar lessons on youTube which I’m still using, both of which I might say are excellent. And then just this week I remembered I’ve got this Master Guitar Academy thing that I’ve been paying for all these years and decided to check it out again. I couldn’t log on initially because I was confusing my username with my email address, and it just wasn’t having it, but Robert kindly answered my email in the middle of his skiing holiday and sorted it out for me (thanks Robert). Looking at all the lessons that are available to me, I’m like a five-year-old on Christmas day so I’m very much looking forward to working through them and hopefully becoming part of this community.

Music-wise my heroes are probably similar to most guys from England my age: Clapton, BB King, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Paul Kossoff, etc although I do like some of the more modern stuff from people like Stevie Ray Vaughan lol.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Amps wise I’ve got an old Vox AC30, a Fender Blues Deluxe, and a slightly flaky Lab Series L5 all of which are pretty much too loud for home use, so I tend to just use a Spark 40.

Anyway, I’ve you’ve got to the bottom of this thanks for staying with me and I promise to not waffle on so much in the future.