Caught here onstage in Berkeley, California, in February '23, Jake Eddy plays one of his solo flatpicking performances, which is a testament to his ability and confidence as a player.
The fine folk art of bluegrass flatpicking has probably never been on the minds of more music fans than it is today, thanks to the rise of Billy Strings as an arena-scale artist. His chops and musicality, combined with strong songwriting and a superb band, have made him a different kind of guitar hero—one whose own heroes include Doc Watson, Tony Rice, and Norman Blake.
Of course, Billy Strings isn’t the only picker of his generation inspired by the greats or making new things happen on the flattop with a flat pick. Molly Tuttle has emerged as the most influential woman in the field’s history, as a two-time International Bluegrass Music Association guitarist of the year and a Grammy Award winner. Impressive flatpickers Grant Gordy, Jake Stargel, Cody Kilby, Chris “Critter” Eldridge, Trey Hensley, Courtney Harman, and Jake Workman have also toured and recorded widely, contributing to the approach’s elevation.
So, who’s next? We looked into the talent pool of emerging flatpickers and asked some of today’s leading players who’s been impressing them. And we came up with this list of four young, dynamic musicians with bright futures—playing bluegrass guitar and then some.
Jake Eddy
When Jake Eddy recently moved into his new house, a few hundred feet from the home where he grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, the first things he unpacked were a rug and the stereo. “And I laid on the rug, and I listened to A Love Supreme by John Coltrane and Manzanita [by the Tony Rice Unit]. And I cried my eyes out,” he says. Eddy offers this anecdote in a conversation about his musical passions and influences, and, sure enough, his growing body of work already includes abstract jazz, progressive string music, and traditional bluegrass.
What’s wild is how much this gregarious player and teacher has achieved by the age of 23. He’s visible and outspoken on Instagram and YouTube, and has a packed schedule of students. He plays gigs with mandolinist Andy Statman, one of the most sophisticated roots musicians out there, and he also has the nerve to perform live as a solo bluegrass flatpicker. Most everything about him feels unreasonably precocious and one-of-a-kind.
Eddy grew up in the bluegrass music world—a “festival rug rat”—and his abundant self-assurance seems to have shown itself early on. When he was just 14, the late road warrior Melvin Goins invited Eddy on the road, just as he had with a young Jason Carter years before the fiddler joined the Del McCoury Band. Jake’s family said okay, stipulating that his bluegrass picking grandfather go out as chaperone. Then, when the bass player quit, grandad stepped in and finished the tour. Jake actually played banjo in that band, “but I got to stand every night beside Junior Blankenship, who played guitar for Ralph Stanley.” So, to say it was a learning experience would be an understatement.
When the time came for college, Eddy had a scheme, which was to enroll in a music program, front load his music classes, and then split before the electives and humanities courses came due. (“I had always intended to quit,” he affirms.) His offramp was a job on the road playing guitar with the Becky Buller Band, which he did for a couple of seasons as the pandemic ban on touring lifted. Now, he’s independent again and focusing on his own identity as a player. That’s led to a self-titled debut EP, made in Nashville with Bryan Sutton and other bluegrass luminaries.
More recent, though, is his audacious solo album Live at Spanish Ballroom, recorded in Seattle with crafty takes on standards like “Beaumont Rag” and “Kentucky Waltz,” and plenty of magnetic stage banter to capture the feeling of being in the room with a self-assured storyteller. Solo flatpicking concerts are rare to say the least—virtuoso David Grier is one of the only guitarists to rise to the challenge—because it’s so hard to fill the musical space without support, but Eddy was born with a large dose of courage. “I never thought of it as limiting,” he says. “I thought it was cool.”
Jake Eddy’s Gear
Jake plays a 1951 Martin D-18, with D’Addario XS medium strings, and uses a ToneSlabs Tri XL 1.4 mm pick.
Luke Black
When Luke Black’s mother took him to a music store in first grade and urged him to pick up an instrument, he chose the banjo, thinking “it would be funny.” But he started something pretty serious that day, which led to a passion for bluegrass and a burgeoning career on the acoustic guitar. Black, now 20, is a swift and smooth flatpicker with an ambitious touring band, a degree from Berklee College of Music halfway complete, and a love of musical fusion and improvisation.
Black’s story is an endorsement of the local music scene around his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. It started at Fretted Instruments in the Homewood neighborhood, with Scruggs-style banjo lessons. Guitar came a few years later. His family wasn’t especially musical, but the store exposed him to a community, and “that ability to play with other musicians and feel that connection at a young age got me into it,” Black says.
What set him on his current trajectory, though, came after his first guitar teacher passed away. Luke saw that teacher’s son, a well-known regional picker and educator named Allen Tolbert, playing with his band at a nearby festival. “I went up to him after he played, and I was like, ‘Hey man, like, show me how to do this,’” and they were off. Tolbert introduced Black to the spacegrass universe of Tony Rice, and that approach was so influential that when he started his band, he adapted Rice’s model and called it the Mountain Grass Unit.
Playing mandolin and singing lead in the band is Drury Anderson, a lifelong friend and companion on Black’s bluegrass journey. “He was a big inspiration. We both just play off each other,” Black says. “We kind of started instruments at the same time, at the same music store. He picked up mandolin when I picked up banjo, and so we’ve been playing ‘Clinch Mountain Backstep’ together for like 12 years now.”
Black says he’s never been to the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, where newcomers tend to get noticed by the industry, but he and his buds started attending the smaller Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America winter conventions in Nashville. As old-school as that convention is, the jamming and the youth network helped him develop a personal vision. “After getting really involved in the bluegrass community, I started branching out. I mean, initially, it was just all Tony Rice,” he says. But he dove into Béla Fleck and Mike Marshall’s music, while young pickers such as Trey Hensley and Billy Strings offered contemporary inspiration. And don’t forget Jerry Garcia—there’s a Grateful Dead banner on his dorm-room wall at Berklee.
The Mountain Grass Unit is prepping for its second summer of touring with one album under its belt. Berklee’s showing him a variety of approaches and tightening up his music theory and jazz knowledge, but it’s safe to assume that we’ll see Black and his Unit following the Billy Strings trail on the jam circuit. “I really want to play as many genres as possible,” he says. “But my first language is definitely bluegrass.”
Luke Black’s Gear
Luke plays a Santa Cruz 1934 D, using 80/20 bronze Elixir strings with a BlueChip TAD 60 pick and an Elliott capo.
Alex Graf
Alex Graf’s bluegrass epiphany, or one of them, anyway, occurred at a festival performance by Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder with Cody Kilby playing guitar. Alex was then a devoted jazz guitarist, planning for collegiate music studies, and the mystique of flatpicking had never revealed itself. Yet “it made instant sense to me,” he remembers. “The repertoire, the canon, the jamming, and that shared language. I was deep into Charlie Parker at that point. And I was like, ‘Holy cow, this is not the same,’ but it just resonates. I had never understood that.”
Even so, Graf, now 28, didn’t chase that Cody Kilby vibe for quite a few more years, developing what he jokes is a case of “late-onset bluegrass.” He buckled down after moving to Durango, Colorado, with his fiancée in 2017, and especially during the pandemic, when he learned solos from Tony Rice and Clarence White with the same focus and intent that he’d done for jazz solos years earlier. Today, Graf pursues a hybrid musical style with ’grass and jazz equally in reach, chiefly through his trio Tone Dog, with Tony Holmquist on mandolin and Silas Hamilton on bass. Separate from that, Graf self-produced a striking recent album of guitar tunes—original and traditional—called Sagebrush Continuum, a nod to the scrubby high desert where he lives, somewhere between sea level and his adopted state’s alpine peaks.
Tony Rice’s music, he says, “brought me into the world of bluegrass and new acoustic music. And something about it felt dangerous, like I wasn’t supposed to do that. So that made it really exciting. I became obsessed with taking the jazz stuff that I had and trying to reinterpret myself, or that understanding, through acoustic music and bluegrass.” Yet he’s never attended the IBMA convention or had contact with a thriving scene besides his friendship with Durango’s Stillhouse Junkies, who are signed to Nashville’s Dark Shadow label, so he’s in a good place to develop a sound all his own.
“I am chasing something,” he says, while stretching to define it. “A lot of it is coming through developing an improvisational language. I feel like every time I’m improvising, I’m getting a little bit closer to being able to express myself in the truest way. I know it’s a little woo-woo philosophical, but that’s kind of what drives me.”
Alex Graf’s Gear
Alex built his repertoire and recorded his album on a Taylor 100 Series acoustic, but he recently picked up a new Martin D-18. He plays D’Addario XS medium gauge strings with a BlueChip TAD 60.
Zeb Snyder
Twenty-seven-year-old Zeb Snyder has more miles under his tires and more albums in his discography than the other flatpickers in our story. He’s been playing the instrument for 20 years and touring since he was 12 with the Snyder Family Band, with his father Bud on bass and sister Samantha on fiddle. Since 2017, he’s been the youngest member of Appalachian Road Show, a hard-driving bluegrass band of veterans. And yet Snyder’s articulate, dynamic picking deserves to be better known.
Usually, family bluegrass bands are run by a patriarch, but the Snyders were a bottom-up operation. Zeb and Samantha started by taking youth lessons on classical guitar and violin, but growing up in Lexington, North Carolina, their listening tastes ran to country and bluegrass, so they started picking at local events. “The more lead guitar I started playing, and the more serious we got, we wanted somebody else to play with us. So, we asked Dad to play bass,” Zeb says.
Thing is, Bud hadn’t played since high school, so Zeb taught himself the instrument and then taught his dad how to play parts he and Samantha were coming up with, song by song. “My Dad was working a full-time job the entire time, so he didn’t have time to really study it. He always played what I taught him.” Meanwhile, Zeb and Samantha worked together on songs—she with her lyric focus and him with his instrumental chops. “So, my sister and I led the whole thing.”
Remarkably, the Snyders put out a string of independent albums and then got signed to a bluegrass label, where they issued two more … all before the youngsters reached college age. Moreover, they were pretty funky, in the vein of Nickel Creek, but that didn’t determine Zeb’s future as a bluegrass artist. When the Snyders wound down, he was taken on the road by the traditional and blues-minded mandolinist Darrell Webb. Then, Webb soon conspired with two former members of Mountain Heart to create Appalachian Road Show, a semi-conceptual band that weaves narrative and wardrobe into its throwback vibe.
Initially, the Road Show brought in hired guns for its first album, so newcomer Zeb played second to Bryan Sutton during the sessions, which he regards as “transformative” in his guitar education. Since then, he’s cultivated his bluegrass with a hybrid right-hand picking style adapted from the late electric-guitar wizard Danny Gatton.
“We take great care to protect this Appalachian Road Show vision and be really specific about what each individual song needs to sound like,” Zeb says. Whether a tune calls for a Doc Watson touch or Travis-style picking, or something else from the tradition, he’s got that in his bag. “The family band was progressive and original, and ‘let’s see what kind of weird stuff we can come up with.’ And this is a more subtle, directed kind of creativity,” he says.
Zeb Snyder’s Gear
Zeb plays a 1955 Martin D-28 that once belonged to Phil Rosenthal of the Seldom Scene, strung with D’Addario XT medium gauge phosphor bronze strings. He uses a BlueChip TAD 45 pick and a McKinney-Elliott capo he’s had since he was 13.
- Jon Stickley: Flatpicking Into the Future ›
- 10 Commandments of Bluegrass Guitar ›
- 8 Licks Tony Rice Loved to Play ›
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
Initially released in 1977, the Gibson RD model has been a cult classic for years. It is famous for its unique appearance, which takes inspiration from both the Gibson Explorer and Firebird designs, as well as its functionality and use by several popular guitarists across multiple genres.
Now, the iconic RD Custom joins the Gibson Custom core lineup for the first time. Not only is this the first Custom Shop-built RD model, but it is also the first 25.5” scale length solidbody core model offered by Gibson Custom. Complete with the classic and comfortable RD body shape, including a rear tummy cut for extra comfort, this model also features a mahogany body with multi-ply top binding, Gibson Custom aesthetics, including gold hardware and mother-of-pearl block inlays on the neck, and a mother-of-pearl Custom split diamond headstock inlay. The RD Custom also has a 25.5” scale mahogany neck with a Medium C profile and long neck tenon, a bound ebony fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets, and a bound headstock with Grover Rotomatic tuners. The updated electronics include 490R and 498T pickups, CTS potentiometers, and a hand-wired harness.
The Gibson RD Custom is designed to help players stand out from the crowd with its longer scale length, curvaceously elegant body, and classic design. Now is your opportunity to experience the unique and comfortable playing experience of the cult-favorite Gibson RD Custom for yourself. A Custom Shop hardshell case is also included.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
