There has never been a better time to learn guitar. The amount of instruction, inspiration, and high-quality gear available to players right now is staggering. Great guitars are more affordable and accessible than ever—a well-set-up Fender Squier can absolutely rip. YouTube alone has produced a generation of musicians with technical abilities that would have been considered elite level 20 years ago. The licks are there. The tone is there. The technique is there.
And that’s genuinely exciting. I mean that.
But here’s something I want to share with you, not as a criticism but as an invitation: Some of the best parts of playing music are waiting for you outside your bedroom. And the only way to find them is to go play with other people.
I started my first band as a freshman in high school. We rehearsed in the basements of the guitarist and drummer for all four years. We learned songs by ear, from sheet music, or from an older brother who knew a few chords and was willing to show us. No YouTube. No tabs a click away. Just a group of kids in a basement figuring it out together, slowly, loudly, and with considerably more enthusiasm than ability. Those were some of the most valuable musical experiences of my life—and not just because we were learning songs. We were learning how to play with other people. How to listen. How to lock in. How to serve something bigger than any one of us.
I think about that a lot when I watch younger musicians coming up now. They have access to everything we didn’t. But I wonder sometimes if the ease of learning a song alone from a video is quietly replacing the irreplaceable experience of learning it together in a room. Those older songs people still love—the ones that have lasted—most of them were made by four or five people in a band, playing together, finding something collectively that none of them could have found alone. That’s not nostalgia talking. That’s physics.
I see it every night playing with the Goo Goo Dolls. Five people onstage, and what we create together is something none of us could produce individually. The sum of the parts creates something much larger than the individuals. That only happens in a room, with other people, in real time.
I got a clear reminder of that during a recording session for blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd. No rehearsals. A chart would appear in front of us, and we’d record from the first take. In the middle of the second take, bassist Kevin McCormick—who has played with Melissa Etheridge, Jackson Browne, and Crosby, Stills & Nash—quietly settled into a part that shifted the entire feel of the song. The moment I stopped focusing on my own part and locked into what Kevin was doing, something opened up. It was two musicians, no conversation, finding each other in real time. It’s one of the best feelings this job offers. You remove your ego, find the best idea in the room, and build your part around it. The practical term is just listening. And then making adjustments. Sometimes small. Sometimes seismic.
“Take those licks you’ve been developing and go find some people to play them with.”
Here’s something specific for guitarists. The left hand gets all the attention—the notes, the chords, the fretboard. Every lesson, every tutorial focuses on what you’re playing. But the real magic is in the right hand. It’s not just when you hit the note. It’s when you let go of it. The dynamic range in your strumming or picking hand is where the feel lives.
And here’s the other thing every guitarist eventually hears: Turn down. You can’t hear how you sit in the mix until there are other people in it with you. Sometimes your job is to drive the pulse of the song. Sometimes your job is to support someone else who is driving it. Knowing the difference—and having the discipline to play the supportive role when that’s what’s needed—is something you can only learn by being in the room.
I can point directly to the guitarists who shaped my understanding of all of this—Emerson Swinford (Rod Stewart), Brad Fernquist (Goo Goo Dolls/New Radicals), David Levita (Alanis Morristte/Tim McGraw). None of them sat me down for a lesson. These are all friends of mine I just happened to be lucky enough to play next to for years—and I absorbed it.
So here’s my invitation: Take those licks you’ve been developing and go find some people to play them with. A drummer. A bass player. Go back up a great singer. See what happens to your playing when there’s someone else in the room. See what opens up when you stop listening only to yourself.
Music was always meant to be shared. The best parts are out there waiting for you.
