Album Notes

Curanderos are traditional healers or shamans and often use special medicine songs in their ceremonial work with the afflicted. As stated above this CD, “Curanderos” is a selection of pieces that have previously appeared on some of my other CDs, with the addition of one new piece “Shaman”. I chose to republish these recordings as a collection that I felt expressed this idea is sound.

I am a guitarist, composer and songwriter, and have played and studied the guitar for most of my entire life. Formally, for the first fifteen years or so I used a pick, having almost no awareness of anyone playing any other way. Then one day, a couple of years after my family moved to a large metropolitan area, I discovered the “Classic or Finger Style” of playing. By this time I was already established as a fairly employable guitarist, playing with various groups, doing solo performances, working in recording sessions with mainstream artist and signed with a major management agency... and in essence, being exclusively in the music business. It was then I decided to stop using a pick and play only with my fingers. This created a problem with my employability in much of the music work as I knew it then. The major employers did not like the change and I lost lots of work, but I bit the bullet and dedicated myself to study and play only with fingers regardless. As time passed, things worked out fine however and I never picked up a pick again. Today I play only with the fingers, in the “Classical Style”, as it is referred to, on all my guitars whether acoustic or electric.

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