He recorded one of my songs
He found one of my songs that he liked
And we'd become friends from doing the Crossroads Guitar Festivals
He invited me to that and that came a really amazing time you know
This was the early 2000's, I think probably 2003, and he called, and uh
And they weren't playing my records as readily as they were
And that was starting to... I can feel that waning and knowing it was happening
And this kinda struggling with where's my place, I didn't wanna host the awards anymore
And things like that and... so he called and uh said
"I'm having a guitar festival, and I'm only inviting guitar players I like"
"Would you come and play?"
And so, here came this validation from one of my heroes
You know it was, "Oh thank God, he sees me as who I am, who I really am"
It's the musician at heart, you know, and you take all the labels away
He's a country player, he's a jazz player, he's a swing player
You take all the stuff away, you know
Great musician, he's just a great musician
And because of that, he found one of my songs
And asked me to come to New York and record it with him
So, yeah, I'm really just petrified, you know
I'm not scared about being able to play
I'm just afraid of I'm wanting to sound great, you know
Because here's one of the Greatest of the Greats, you know
I'm gonna play with him, and so I wanna sound great, and so we worked and worked
And um, we finally got to the place where he was happy to that track we'd cut
And we were listening to it and in a span of about five seconds
I played something that went by
And in my mind I'm sitting there going "Goddang, I wish I didn't sound so small" you know
He played something now that sounds great
Then I played something and it appeared five to six seconds
And I'm sitting there just beating the crap out of myself
And it's just the three of us in the studio him and me and the engineer
And Eric looks at the engineer and he says
"Has his guitar got reverb on it?"
And the guy says, "No"
And he goes, "Well, shit make mine sound that good"
So I said, Oh great! He's just like me
He's as insecure as I am, we're all out there just beating ourselves up all the time, you know
It's amazing but it's kind of comforting to know that everybody, everybody struggles
And I found people I admire most are humbled to some degree and insecure to some degree
And the ones that have the most arrogance and the most poser ability
Are usually the ones that aren't quite as gifted