Hello everyone! I am not new to guitar but new to the site. I have been playing guitar for a long time, but honestly I cannot call myself "good" by any means! I am 51 years old and have been playing since college, so probably close to 30 years. I mostly play acoustic guitar, but in recent years have branched out to electric. I have a small home studio and record my own songs, most of which I would say are in the "Americana" genre, with a touch of country, folk, bluegrass, etc. But I also love the music of JJ Cale, Mark Knopfler, and some of Clapton's work. I mostly grew up listening to classic rock and folk-pop, such as John Denver, James Taylor, and Gordon Lightfoot, but also some harder rock like Skynyrd and AC/DC. I also love blues music as well.

In the past few years I have been recording my own songs, mostly with acoustic guitar and drums, perhaps some bass guitar thrown in, and then maybe some electric guitar lead or backing music. This is where I really want to go with these lessons. I feel that my "lead work" is quite bad. I want to get better at it and make it so that all of my leads don't sound exactly the same. I know my scales farily well and the fretboard is no mystery to me, but I just struggle sometimes. I have no desire to play scorching lead guitar or lead bluegrass riffs at 100 mph. If you listened to, for instance, the lead guitar work by Red Shea in Gordon Lightfoot's Sundown or Baby Step Back, that's kind of what I shoot for. The bluesy rock stuff by Cale would also fit this bill.

So, I would call myslef a solid intermediate player, but nothing special. Most of my life was spent strumming and singling, which is certainly a fun pursuit, but I'm ready to take it up a notch now.

Sorry for talking your ears off here! I look forward to interacting here and learning some new tricks!