Pat Donohue's
Profile
Pat began the guitar at the age of 12.
He has been interested in roots music since he saw Lightnin' Hopkins
and Big Joe Williams's playing for the first time when he was
a student at Minnesota university. In the course of his widely
listening to music of Big Bill Broonzy, Robert Johnson and others,
by the influence of Blind Blake, he was wed to the feild of jazz
and ragtime, and established his own fingerstyle guitar style
having wide musicality by fusing folk and jazz. It is no exaggeration
to say his outstanding techniques to play various music from brass
marches of Dixieland to Duke Ellington's tunes on the solo guitar
are ultimate in the field of contemporary fingerpicking.
In 1983 Pat won at "National Fingerpicking Championship"
which is hold in Wimfield, Kansas every year. It is known as one
of the most authoritative competitions. In 1985 He came out and
released the first albmun(LP) "Manhattan to Memphis"
from Red House Records. And then He released "Pat Donohue"(LP)
in 1987, "Life Stories" from Blue Sky Records in 1991,
"Two Hand Band" in 1993, which is very much talked about
as a supreme acoustic guitar instrumental albumn. Then his distinguished
techniques of guitar playing and firm backbone of his musicality
were appreciated through "Big Blind Bluesy" recorded
in1994 and it features his basis country blues. Through his albumn
"Back Road" in 1996 in which the king of country music
Chet Atkins took part, he was recognized as not only a great guitarlist
but also a excellent singer. In 2000 he released his latest instrumental
albumn "American Guitar" featuring full of American
sounding guitar literally.
For the video media, the live performance video "Pat Donohue
In Concert" has been released from Vestapol. The video lessons
like "Rags To Rock / Advanced Fingerstyle Guitar Solos"
and "Jazz Classics for Fingerstyle
Guitar< Vol.1 & 2 >" have been released by
Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, and the latter has been released
from TAB Guitar School in Japan. Pat who has also an great ability
of composition has the wide activity such as taking charge of
the radio programs and so on.
In 1999, he toured Japan with Duck Baker for the concerts organized
by TAB Guitar School.
*All of Pat's CDs and videos are available
from TAB Guitar School.