Free lesson: how to play bass on your guitar
You see it at just about every jam, whether in the living room or the festival parking lot: the wall of guitars. Almost everyone holds a flattop guitar, and when...
Fingerstyle guitar lesson: pianistic picking
Guitarists often rely on default techniques for accompaniment: strumming, alternating boom-chuck bass/strums, or fingerpicking single-note patterns. You can cover a lot of ground with those techniques, but there’s another way...
Songwriting workshop at Woodstock Invitational guitar festival
I’m thrilled to be returning in October to the Woodstock Invitational, an annual gathering of some of the world’s best guitar makers (including Linda Manzer, builder of my most prized guitar) and more than...
New Voices winner at Turtle Hill Folk Festival
A happy moment from last weekend’s Turtle Hill Folk Festival, where Wendy Ramsay and I—aka Pepper and Sassafras—had the honor of being voted audience favorite in the New Voices showcase,...
Emerging at FreshGrass and Turtle Hill Folk Festival
In September, I’m thrilled to be performing with my duo partner Wendy Sassafras Ramsay—we’re now officially known as Pepper and Sassafras—at two top-notch festivals. On September 10, we’ll be in the Rochester, New...
Behind the song: “Sycamore Tree”
My song “Sycamore Tree,” from the album Stop, Drop, and Roll, began with a beat played on the dining room table and grew into a complex story song—and ultimately one of my most requested songs...
Behind the song: “Dog for a Day”
“Dog for a Day,” written when I was in my 20s and recorded years later on my album Humming My Way Back Home, has had a long and happy life. It’s...
Graham Nash on his songwriting evolution from the Hollies to CSN
I was trained in my time with the Hollies to write two-and-a-half-minute songs to play right before the news. We knew how to make hit records; we knew how to...
Behind the song: “Ode to an Old Guitar” by Vincent Cross
NYC-based folk songwriter Vincent Cross shares the story behind his song “Ode to an Old Guitar,” from the album Old Songs for Modern Folk. The story I bought an...
New duo video: Wayfaring Stranger
I’ve loved and played the traditional folk/gospel song “Wayfaring Stranger” for a long time, but for some reason recently I started taking it in a new, jazzy direction. At the...
