“Question: when is an acoustic guitar not an
acoustic guitar? Answer: when it’s in the hands of New York visionary Preston Reed.” Total Guitar
Most great guitarists would be happy to create a legacy of classic recordings, stand-out performances
and blistering technique, but US-born Preston Reed has gone much further by inventing an entirely
new way of playing the guitar. His influence is crucial for a new generation of guitarists including
Andy McKee, Newton Faulkner and Kaki King, all of whom play in the style developed by Reed back
in the mid-1980s.
Preston Reed is a one-man revolution. The New Yorker tweaks the nose of musical convention,
pokes the eye of accepted wisdom, and burns the rulebook of the past. Reed fuses chord-based
grooves, soaring melodic runs and polyrhythmic percussion with his breathtaking two-handed style.
The power and depth of his original compositions are as unique as the man’s execution, as blues, rock, funk and jazz meet, interlock and attack to create a sonic brew quite unlike anything you've heard before.
There’s a clear line in the sand when it comes to the journey of Preston Reed. It was drawn in the
summer of 1988, as the guitarist sat in his Minneapolis apartment and searched for a way to break out of a musical rut. Until that point, Reed’s path had been familiar. He was a child of the ’60s, and
cites his earliest memory as The Rolling Stones’ hit The Last Time, whose classic lick led him to early
flirtations with the ukulele and a grounding in basic chords courtesy of his father. He wrote his first
song at eight – a number called The Lonely Night – before a course of regimented classical lessons
wilted his passion.
But fate wasn’t finished with Preston Reed. At 15, the bug bit again, as Reed attended a Hot Tuna
show in New York and was floored by the bluesy fretwork of Jorma Kaukonen. That night, his guitar
was retrieved from the closet and took up permanent residence on his lap, with Reed drawing inspiration from acoustic legends like John Fahey and Leo Kottke, and developing his own voice along the way. He was still just 17 when whispers of his talent buzzed through the music circuit following a live debut in support of beat poet Allen Ginsberg at the Smithsonian Institute.
Starting with 1979’s Acoustic Guitar, a volley of thrilling albums spread Reed’s reputation, and by
1988 he had signed a major deal with MCA. But behind closed doors, the guitarist was frustrated.
Though spellbinding by any standards, his playing had reached a plateau; his muse held in a
stranglehold by the physical limitations of the instrument. Then the thunderbolt struck. Reed wiped his technique clean, stepped into the void and made his first attempt at the two-handed fretboard attack
that would change his trajectory forever. Creatively and commercially, things would never be the
same again.
If Reed were the type of musician to look back, he could reflect on three decades of glories including
gigs with Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt, burgeoning sales of his 15 (and counting) studio albums, sold-out venues across three continents, untold hits on YouTube and the praise of both the man on the street and fellow six-string pioneers like Al DiMeola and Michael Hedges. If he were a statistician, he might refer to the 1997 live satellite broadcast on Turkish television that saw an audience of 120 million in 17 countries flood the switchboards after his performance.
But Preston Reed doesn’t deal in nostalgia. Twenty years after he changed the face of the acoustic
guitar, this trailblazer still tours and records with a passion that flows into the hearts, heads and feet of
his audiences, and continues to push his musicianship to a place where other guitarists fear to tread.
Nobody knows where Preston Reed’s journey will take him next – not even the man himself. The one
thing we know for sure is that it’ll be one hell of a ride.
