I've was honored to play a special gig with the amazing Instrumental/Surf/Rockabilly band Retrofoguetes. Carnaval in Salvador, one of the biggest street fests on the planet, will explode on Jan. 30th, and the band decided to play a different set including some Carnaval Classics some 'Trio Elétrico'-style instrumentals, played on an instrument called Guitarra Baiana (similar to the American Mandocaster).

In the early 1990's, an eccentric conspiracy formed in the city of Salvador, Brazil. Rowing against the current of the cheerfully tropical and at times overly superficial mainstream of their party-happy hometown, the founders of CRaC! were attracted by weirder and less 'facile' noises, like those emitted by John Cage, Frank Zappa, John Zorn or Brazilian outsiders Tom Zé and Hermeto Pascoal.

Sweeping means to use a single continuous stroke of the pick, in one direction, across two or more strings. Frank Gambale is specialized on this kind of thing. I wrote this etude to enhance my string changing abilities, using basic sweeps on pairs of two adjacent strings. Note that with only a few exceptions the right hand always maintains the same picking pattern . Getting this down will help you to be more efficient and waste less picking-hand motion.

Another etude for Country style hyper-plus-mega-tera-peta Hybrid Picking: We are going to play using both pick and the right hand fingers. I wrote this in 1990, based on stuff I learned from Berklee tutor Jim Kelly in Madrid in 1988. Use a flatpick and your right hand middle and ring fingers.

An easy chord and walking bass etude, based on things I learned by listening to players like Carlos Gimenez, Joe Pass, Barry Galbraith, Django Reinhardt or Freddie Green. Play it using pick, of fingerstyle, pick or both, and experiment with applying the chord movements to your own arrangements or other styles like Funk or Soul.

In April and May 2007, I did a small tour in Argentina, together with Evangelina Baronio on bass and the incredible Buho Briglia on drums. The gigs were advertised as the JCM Power Trio (see left). We also visisted Estudio Iencenella in Bahia Blanca, where we cut studio versions of the repertoire. There were some new compositions as well as guitar classics I've been playing since years. Back to Brazil, I reworked the guitar parts on 8 of these pieces.

I compiled a list of guitar related literature and vidos that I would like to recommend. Its fairly broad and not limited to any one kind of style and approach. In case you're planning to go to deserted island, take this stuff with you and you're safe. I intend to add comments on some items on this list in the future, too.

I did some Lap Steel and Mandolin work for the Patagonian Country band Los Presumidos. The band decided to include a Christmas tune, and now we're all amazed how well the record is selling.

I played two nights with my Dirty Ol' Dogs  partner, singer and harpist Diego Orrico. We did a mix between Rural Blues and John Zorn stuff using my Paradis Loop Delay to jam over some loops recorded on the fly.