Regular readers will know about another rock and roll journey I made to America and Australia earlier this year which, fingers crossed, will become a second book. Living it up down under I met and recorded some of Australia’s biggest names in music, and came back with hours and hours of juicy audio. Some of it will turn up in radio programmes of one sort or another, including one about AC/DC for BBC Radio 2 (no idea when it goes out – keep you posted), but there’s too much quality stuff not to start sharing some of it now. So join me as I venture boldy into the world of ‘audioblogging’, with a handful of pieces where I try my best to shut the heck up and let my subjects do the talking, playing, whatever. (I have no idea if audioblogging is actually ‘a thing’, by the way - if not, it is now.) As Tommy Emmanuel, to my mind the finest guitar player alive today, is currently touring America, here are some words and music from our encounter in ‘Australia’s Nashville’, at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in New South Wales earlier this year.

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell argues that genius is less a question of natural talent than of sheer hard work. The theory goes that Mozartian greatness, far from being a gift, is the product of no less than 10,000 hours’ graft. The Beatles put in the hours in Hamburg – 1200 shows in under four years – and Bill Gates did likewise, coding a school computer from the age of 13. If Gladwell is right, then Tommy Emmanuel, who has been a professional musician since the age of six (yes, six) and must have put in closer to 100,000 hours in the intervening years, is something like genius squared. (Indulge the hyperbole and excuse the math.) Since hearing Chet Atkins at the age of seven, Tommy has stuck to a signature style of playing called ‘fingerstyle’ guitar which, as you’ll hear in this clip, may well have been birthed by a very unlikely midwife – the Everly Brothers’ dad:

Possibly because an audience clapping along to a man playing ‘Yakety Axe’ on a Gretsch guitar passed for mainstream entertainment in the fifties and sixties, Chet Atkins was – and still is – a household name. Tommy Emmanuel is not, but I’m happy to call him a hero nonetheless. As I’m an ‘enthusiastic’ fingerstyle guitar player myself, Tommy cosies up alongside dead musicians and French existentialist philosophers on my list of idols, despite his being ‘about as cool as James Galway’, as my Australian ex-boss once put it. Over the course of my Aussie adventure I had, in a shameless attempt at currying favour with possible providers of food, accommodation or protection from beer-swilling, outback ockers, been trying (and mostly failing) to perfect Australia’s unofficial national anthem Waltzing Matilda on fingerstyle guitar. I asked Tommy to show me how it’s done:

If your idea of ‘something a little different’ – like mine until not very long ago – involves going to see a band without beards or multipart vocal harmonies, I can heartily recommend the refreshingly uncomplicated experience of seeing one man and an acoustic guitar in a ‘proper’ venue that doesn’t stink of piss. Tommy’s US dates are just such an opportunity. He returns to Nashville – now a kind of second hometown – this month with four dates at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society (I love that such a thing even exists), so I’ll let Tommy finish on a few words about how his hero became a mentor and friend. This clip opens on some some insight into Chet’s home life and cancer struggle:

Postscript: if you have any feedback on these audioblogs – clips too long or too short, words unnecessary or intrusive? – I’d love for you to leave me a comment. Thanks.

We’re a little off brief with this post, but given our current UK/US continent-spanning presence, we couldn’t resist posting this hilarious face-off between Jon Stewart and John Oliver about whose country is more f*cked at the moment. UK – 1, US – Nil.

Normal service will resume next post.

MPx

Exactly one year ago today, four friends – Chris Price, Joe Harland, Dan Kennedy and Matt Davey – met in a south London pub to celebrate the birthday of legendary AC/DC singer Bon Scott. Several pints of strong Italian lager later they visited the scene of his ‘death by misadventure’ at 67, Overhill Rd to pay respects to a rock and roll hero. Eight months after that, on the anniversary of Bon’s death, Chris arrived – with Adam Yee of Aussie legends Smudge in tow – at Bon’s graveside in Perth, Western Australia. A lot of stuff happened in between. If he ever gets around to writing the damn thing, you can read all about it in Chris’s next book. Meanwhile, enjoy this video of the final moments of that journey, along the real Highway to Hell – the Canning Highway in Fremantle – to the Raffles pub, where AC/DC played early gigs in the seventies. The tow-away zone you see at the end of this vid is the culmination of a 9,000-mile journey. That is all for now.

So the first batch of Missing Parsons shirts were mailed out to addresses in the US today – hurrah! We hope you’ll be proud to wear them. Please remember that we’re giving these shirts away in exchange for your help in sharing our content on Facebook, Twitter, your own blogs etc (see this earlier post for more info). We’re pretty trusting types on the whole, but we’ve commissioned The Lonely Island to come up with this video, which explains what will happen to anyone who doesn’t keep up their side of the bargain.

As promised, we have looked into the cost of shipping to addresses outside the US, and here’s what we found. We had requests from the UK, France and Australia, which conveniently all cost $9.60, plus $1.39 for packing. Add a cent for the shirts (PayPal won’t let us sell for zero dollars), and that makes exactly $11.00. At today’s exchange rates that’s:

GBP – 6.89 / Aus. D – 10.20 / Euros – 7.66

If you’re still interested in joining TEAM AMERICA and receiving your *FREE* t-shirt at the postage and packing costs quoted above, please email us to arrange. Thanks again for your encouragement and support!

MPx

Brits in America can't be too careful on July 4th. I'm not taking any chances.

UPDATE: Several people have been in touch to say how sad they are that the Independence Day t-shirt offer (see the post immediately below this one) isn’t open to folks outside the US. The reasons for this is that all stocks of Missing Parsons shirts – as modeled here by Chris – are currently in America. We’re very happy giving them away to lovely folks  who want to help spread the word, and by charging you for postage and packing we at least don’t lose money; we just assumed that the cost of shipping to other countries would be too high to make it worth your while. But you never know – it might not be as much as all that.

So we’ll look into the cost of shipping to the UK, Australia and anywhere else we receive requests from, and if you’re happy to pay the postage, we’re more than happy to send you a shirt. (We may also have to get around some international merchandising shiz with PayPal, but hopefully it’s nothing we can’t handle.) Perhaps we should change the name from TEAM AMERICA to TEAM GLOBAL DOMINATION or something – suggestions welcome. Oh and we hope you won’t mind being friends with Chris or Joe on Facebook so we can communicate directly with our superuser strike-force when needed.

Thanks again for your support and encouragement, and Happy July 4th!

MPx

Update: we’ll be closing the TEAM AMERICA free t-shirt offer on Friday 15th July at midday EST.

U2 broke America by touring relentlessly. We plan to do it with a little help from our friends.

Here at Missing Parsons HQ we receive a lot of mail from readers in the US who have enjoyed Live Fast, Die Young. It literally warms our cockles to know that anyone has taken pleasure in reading our words, but it’s doubly pleasing to get feedback from American readers, as we know they’ve had to go that extra mile – maybe even pay a few extra dollars – in order to get hold of their copy. Three-quarters of our website traffic, Facebook friends and Twitter followers come from the US, and yet to date it’s not possible, sadly, for them to walk into Barnes & Noble and pick up a copy of the book.

So it’s time, this 4th of July weekend, to raise our game in the US of Stateside, to make Mr. Barnes and Mr. Noble sit up and take NOTICE, goddamnit! We are inviting our American friends to join a CRACK TEAM of advocates who, in return for a *FREE* Missing Parsons t-shirt (pay postage and packing only), will help us break America by sharing our content with their Facebook friends, Twitter followers and anyone else who will listen. All we ask is that each time we post a new blog, video or self-congratulatory news item on Facebook or Twitter, you Share or Re-tweet it to your friends. In return you get a Missing Parsons t-shirt (one per person) and entry into an exclusive club: MISSING PARSONS TEAM AMERICA. We’re thinking about asking this team of superusers to contribute in other ways too, like suggesting cool stuff to post on Facebook, writing guest blogs etc. Go on, it’ll be fun.

Who’s in? OK then, just visit the Missing Parsons shop, select your size, and complete your ‘purchase’ via Paypal by clicking ‘Buy Now’. (It’s also helpful if you can give a thumbs up to this posting on Facebook if you use it, so we know who’s on the team.) While stocks last, the cost of the t-shirt is ZERO DOLLARS. When we run out of t-shirts, the deal is up. PayPal is a completely safe way to order goods online – if your order cannot be fulfilled, you won’t be charged a penny. (And if your shipping address is outside the US, sadly we can’t send out to you either, so your order will be ignored.)

Thanks for your Parsonage – and Happy Independence Day America!

MPx

Postscript: apparently Paypal won’t let us sell stuff for zero dollars. So we’re charging a penny and taking a penny off the postage. That’s FREE!