Brian Williams recently interviewed New York-based guitarist Jim Campilongo for Virtual Woodshed. In the interview, Campilongo discusses, among other things, growing up in San Francisco, discovering Roy Buchanan, playing the Telecaster, working with Norah Jones, and he also offers advice for people trying to make it in the music business:
I would simply say “learn songs”. That’s the advice I always tell everybody, whether they want to become a better guitar player or this or that or whatever. The thing you can control is learning songs. We can’t control if clubs go out of business, but if you can play “Tico Tico” or a bossa nova, even if it’s just pretty good, there’s a chance you can go to a bus station in Europe and connect with people. And that’s the thing you can control. So many guitar players seem to focus on everything but that, I mean really knowing a genre. Like for instance, what are all the country instrumentals one needs to know, or what are the two hundred jazz standards one needs to know? Learn a Chet Atkins song. It’s not impossible! Learn two, so you can play at Christmastime and entertain your family. It’s something I work on and still have trouble with.
Read the full interview here.
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