Ever been enthralled by just a performer and their guitar?

Both sadly gone…Steve Goodman and Jesse Winchester.

 

James McMurtry this past Saturday night.

 

John Butler playing Oceans...If you see him play it live and you don't cry, you don't have a soul!

 

Great choice. Lindsey's an underrated guitarist and always living in the shadows of Stevie. I think he is the creative force in the band.

 

Richard Thompson, John Martyn, Isaac Guillory and Nils Lofren, all excellent.

 

Tommy Emmanuel

 

Many times - especially Roy Harper, Nick Harper, Richard Thompson

 

There's too many to mention, but "at extreme ends of the scale" I mean fifty or more years apart.

Barry Galbraith. (from an album of mine)



Peter White.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPUuN9Ft4rI

 

Hypothetical


I doubt few people beyond John Cale saw Nick live
There was a brief famile clip of him performing in his documentary

 

Michael Hedges
Jeff Beck
Stevie Ray Vaughn

 

All the old bluesmen who used to play the Newport Folk Festival back in the day > Hurt, Davis, Lightnin', James, ......

 

Roger McGuinn
Marshall Crenshaw
John Hiatt
Steve Forbert
James Maddock

 

A bit more contemporary.

Lianne La Havas

 

Jonathan Richman. Enthralling is the word.

I also saw Beck alone with a guitar paying a folk set in front of 6000 people, opening for Sonic Youth. He killed it.

 

Adam Sandler

 

I am a tremendous Marshall Crenshaw fan, but James Maddock is one of the most engaging, charismatic solo performers I've ever seen.

 

Norman Blake
Richard Thompson
John Prine

 

When Robyn Hitchcock plays his classic Soft Boys, Egyptians and solo songs, he can be very enthralling on acoustic guitar.

 

Totally agree and I'm a huge fan of MC too.

 

I saw James Maddock in a songwriter's circle at the Bitter End maybe eight or ten years ago, years before Sunrise on Avenue C. All of the writers/performers were fantastic, but James was just in another league. To the point where another songwriter on the stage just stared at him, stunned and slack jawed, after his performance of "Hollow Love," and said, on mic, "WHERE DID YOU COME FROM!?!?"

 

Teri Gender Bender of Le Butcherettes performing solo on NPR's Tiny Desk.

David Byrne at the beginning of Stop Making Sense. And of course Neil Young and John Prine.

 

Richard Thompson and Shawn Colvin are at their best at solo acoustic guitar shows, in my opinion. Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello (the latter sometimes switching to piano) do pretty well on their own as well.

 

Ylrp. DAN OWEN

 

Roger McGuinn & Kris Kristofferson have each come up with memorable solo concerts that have been my pleasure to attend.

 

I guess the word "enthrall" can have wide definition.