NAMM Day 2

I’m just getting ready to head back into the convention center for Day 3 of NAMM. During day 2 at NAMM, we had lots of loud music playing at the booths nearby, which provided for some interesting polyrhythmic distraction, and made it especially challenging to play at the Beyer booth. In fact, we created some “interesting new arrangements” of a few CGT pieces on the spot, which means we messed up but kept going and found our way out of it. I signaled the end of Blockhead a beat early; good thing the other guys followed me! Even with all the distractions and new arrangements, we drew a big crowd of enthusiastic listeners.

Last night we went to the Acoustic Guitar Magazine concert called “Acoustic Café”. CGT has played at this event twice before, including this performance from 2005 with a surprise guest:



Speaking of Acoustic Guitar magazine, the latest issue features a review of our latest CD Echoes: Echoes review

The big party last night seemed to be in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel where I am staying. The lobby is huge, with two big stages and rock bands performing at full rock concert volume. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people all hanging out in the lobby, trying to see rock stars, trying to look like rock stars, and some actual rock stars too!


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NAMM Day 1

Day 1 of NAMM. CGT and Tony Levin doing a short performance at the Beyer Dynamic booth. It is so crazy trying to play music in the convention center. There are hundreds and hundreds of booths, an in every booth there is some kind of musical instrument demonstration or performance happening. The sound is complete chaos, so it makes for a challenging performance. But we managed to play fairly well and have some fun too.


CGT and Tony Levin


Bert and Tyler trying out the new Moog guitar. If you could only hear what Bert was hearing in his headphones, it’s really wild. Clean chords with infinite harmonic overtone sustain.


Custom guitar pedals by Zvex


Ed Gerhard playing at the Beedlove Guitar booth. His playing was really beautiful. Listening to him, transported me out of the crazy convention center for a few moments.


Gene Simmons getting mobbed by the NAMM crowd.

It’s 6:30pm now and I just got back to the hotel room with a few minutes to post these photos. And now getting ready for dinner with some of our Musical instrument manufacturer representative friends.


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My view of Los Angeles while approaching LAX. I don’t remember ever seeing it so clear!


View from my hotel room at La Costa, Carlsbad.

Bert, Hideyo, Tyler and I are in Carlsbad California. Amazing weather here now. Sunny and warm! Last night we played a concert for the Harman International conference. The concert was outdoors in the plaza area of this beautiful resort hotel. It got a little bit chilly during the concert, which made it a little bit difficult to play guitar, but I still enjoyed the performance very much. The folks from Harman Pro have become good friends of ours and CGT has unofficially become the Harman Pro “house band” as this is our 3rd engagement with them.

Today we will rehearse at the hotel and then go listen to the legendary Quincy Jones speak this afternoon.


Tyler, Ricky and I at the hotel in Carlsbad with our display of Port Brewing hand crafted beers.

Here is a link to an radio interview that I did recently with Tom Schulte for: Outsight Radio Hours