Dom Flemons – Before the Blues – Early American Fingerstyle Guitar (2016)

This DVD is an instructional tool for people who are interesting in finding different ways to approach American vernacular guitar. I have found in my studies of early country blues guitar that many of the styles of fingerpicking and strumming used by the early songsters incorporated parts of the banjo techniques used in old-time music. As the guitar became popular in the black communities of the South, there was a time when the two instruments freely interchanged ideas.

I spent long hours practicing and learning the styles from various players in the South. Others approaches to fingerpicking were learnt from the 1920s recordings of musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers and Papa Charlie Jackson. They used a syncopated style to ‘dress up’ what would otherwise be simple chord progressions.
I hope this lesson will show a guitar approach that is perfect for accompanying a song and selling a performance. While the mechanics of the lesson may seem rudimentary, I believe you will be surprised at the way you can apply these techniques to your own style. – Dom Flemons