Preston Reed Information

Question: when is an acoustic guitar not an acoustic guitar? Rulebreaker. Trailblazer. Visionary. Phenomenon. And yet, even the breathless plaudits of the world press dont quite do him justice. When Preston Reed picks up an acoustic guitar, words will fail you. To watch Reed perform is to witness the bending of reality. The New York master tweaks the nose of musical convention, pokes the eye of received wisdom and burns the rulebook of the past. Using an evolution of the two-handed acoustic technique he pioneered in 1987, he fuses chord-based grooves, soaring melodic runs and polyrhythmic percussion that integrates the breathtaking potential of the guitar body. The power and depth of his original compositions are as unique as the mans execution, from his roots in blues, rock, funk and jazz to explorations in Middle Eastern and neo-classical styles, Reed's music embraces familiar sounds in a fresh and original way. Preston Reed doesnt need a band. He is the band. Over 30 years after his idiosyncratic style was born, Reeds seismic global impact has created a sea of guitarists playing in his style, many of them inspired by 1994s hit instructional DVD, The Guitar Of Preston Reed: Expanding The Realm Of Acoustic Playing. Today at the height of his game, Reed's recordings and live performances still define the sound of the pioneering compositional guitar genre he invented over a quarter century ago. The studio is his playground, but the road is Reeds natural habitat. This is a man in motion. His music represents a border-hopping universal language, and fittingly, tour bookings have drawn him across the planet, for performances that leave cultural ripples in their wake, from Europe to Australia, China to the US and beyond. Reeds musical journey has endless twists and turns, but theres one distinct line in the sand. It was drawn in the summer of 1987, as the guitarist sat in his Minneapolis apartment and wracked his brain for a way to escape his musical rut. Until that point, Reeds path had been familiar. As a child ...