Guitar guru

Sunday's front page featured a photo of my old guitar teacher, Glenn Weiser. Glenn lives in the Albany area and doesn't get out this way often, so it was cool to see he performed at Johnson Hall (sorry to have missed it).

Glenn is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and has written numerous books and magazine articles on fingerstyle guitar and harmonica. His specialty is arranging Celtic tunes for fingerstyle guitar. You can read all about his musical publications and his other adventures (such as writing for Metroland) at http://www.celticguitarmusic,com.

He and I met at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs about 10 years ago, when I was living on Phila Street and working at The Saratogian. I took lessons with Glenn off and on for a few years, and he showed me a lot about both flatpicking and fingerpicking. You can hear my recent recording of a Scottish tune he taught me on the video posted here. You can hear Glenn's recording of "Carolan's Receipt" here. 

If you're the type of person inclined to troll YouTube for random bits of video comedy, you might want to search for Glenn's musical tribute to Eliot Spitzer. I'd post the video right here on my blog, but like most things having to do with New York state government, it's not fit for decent company ...