Another Finalist's Experience

After reading Steve’s post I decided to share my impressions of the blues masters event as well.

The experience was awesome to say the least. Getting to jam with Joe Bonamassa, Derek Sherinian, Carmine Rojas, and Tal Bergman is something that I’ll never forget and certainly provides a lot of motivation to push my musical career forward.

This was the second major competition that I was selected for. In 2010 I won Guitar Center’s Steve Vai competition which was similar to this competition in that we had to submit a video performance to one of the artist’s backing tracks and then Steve chose ten of us from the submitted videos. But with that competition, that was the grand prize, so we got to fly to Los Angeles, get some gear, and have a private 2 hour lecture/performance from Vai. This was an amazing experience to be sure, but unfortunately due to the event scheduling, each of us only got about 1 minute of face time with Vai. I didn’t get a chance to really explain my gratitude and what it meant to me to have him choose me out of the thousands, and I’ve regretted that.

For the blues masters competition, we all had ample opportunity to spend some time with Joe and drench him with our adulation, questions and gratitude. As you may expect, he’s a super nice guy and the rest of the band was also very welcoming.

Aside: A funny thing happened during Joe’s sound check. They were taking a short break on stage and a few of us were noodling unplugged in the main room. I was playing some nonsense when Joe turned around and says, “Is that a Suhr?” as if he could tell by the sound alone. I said, “Yes sir.” and I stood there dumbfounded over the fact that I could tell such a terrible joke.

Some of us had our songs reworked a bit during the rehearsal, and some had them changed again during the performance. These changes in the songs did affect my performance quite a bit. I feel that I spent too much time during the performance listening for the new changes and was so focused on hitting the changes that I didn’t play to the audience nearly as much as I should have. More than anything a performance should connect with an audience, and I got too caught up in playing the song without flaws that I think that I neglected that. This is not anyone’s fault but my own. I love improvising but I have little experience improvising in a live setting. This exposed a weakness in my own playing that I will be working on. I should be able to play to the audience and attempt to connect with them even if I’m completely lost. Matt Hines gave an amazing performance and clearly kept the audience in mind throughout. He was engaging, entertaining, and the right choice for sure.

Another Aside: There is a ridiculous amount of rude comments on Matt’s performance that Guitar Center posted to YouTube. There’s no need for the rude comments about his performance, and I assume those that are doing so are jealous. I know that I never get more hate mail than whenever I submit a blues guitar performance. Although, I’m sure it’s not anyone on here.

Even Another Aside: During the rehearsal I was improvising during the solo section and I glanced up to see Derek Sherinian smiling at what I was doing, and I felt I could pretty much die happy then.

The absolute highlight of the evening for me was seeing Joe’s extended performance of BOJH. Hopefully they release a pro shot version of this performance because it was the single most incredible guitar performance I’ve ever witnessed. I’ve never seen anyone capture an audience so completely with an instrumental section of a song. There’s a part in the middle of a long instrumental jam section of the song where the whole band decrescendoed into silence and then exploded into one of the most driving and powerful guitar solos I’ve heard. Amazing. (I put a link below to a YouTube video of this performance. Thanks to Elexmage for shooting it.)

Nerd note: Joe was using two Jim Kelly Reverb Model amps.

This was an incredible experience. My work and living situation doesn't leave a lot of room for music, also there’s virtually no scene in Salem Oregon. For the last 4 years I haven’t really been playing music at all, besides wanking in the bedroom (two meanings). So for Guitar Center and Joe to offer their time and efforts to this means the world to me, and has lit a fire under my a$$ to get my musical career off the ground.

All of the finalists were great guys and great musicians; please check out their music via the Blues Masters competition page. I’m still in touch with most of the guys from the Vai competition, and I’m sure that all of us from this one will stay in touch.

- Eric Happe

A great videos of Joe's BOJH performance at The Mint :
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2pCFOeYMOA

Btw, I've gotten several question about the selection process. I don't have all of the details but a rep from Guitar Center told us that Joe actually went beyond the top 100 and ended up selecting the top ten from a pool of around 1000 videos.