I've been hearing about this guy for some time now. I got to see him at Andy McGibbon's acoustic forum last night and was blown away.

He did a short set on acoustic guitar (Larrivee, I think an LV09), backed by bass player Jimmy Indi.

Loved his playing. Great chops. There was a lovely sense of flow and motion to his solos. Beautiful, ringing tone. And some feeling to his playing. I suppose what I was lucky enough to see last night could be slotted into a broad Butler/Benson category, and too often I find music in that space to be technically excellent but a bit sterile. Not this guy. There was a real.... joyousness about his playing, sometimes some real fire as well.

There were several other players in the room. You could hear jaws hitting the ground every now and then. The annoying thing was not his solos (fantastic) but the way he'd throw these utterly ridiculous little licks and chords in as fills into a verse whilst he was singing. This was, I thought, one of the keys to his performance because even when performing a song, with the necessary repetitive structure, he was not quite repeating himself, keeping things fresh and ear catching all the time.

Great set. Too short. Top player. (really).