I’ve been noticing some older guys with guitars showing up on YouTube lately. Here’s Ken Speers (69) playing some pretty cool (if you ask me) fingerstyle jazz (When You Wish Upon a Star) with some pretty slick artificial harmonics:
And then again with Lady Be Good:
I think it’s time to start an “Old Guys” category!
When you mentioned the artificial harmonics, I felt compelled to look up Lenny Breau's birthdate, which was August 5, 1941. As of Wednesday, he would be 68 years old, and he would certainly fit into the "oldsters" category.
Good music is ageless, needless to say, and YouTube has actually become a bit of a "leveller" in the musical world. If you want to see completely unknown musicians playing intimate music in the most informal of settings (their own living rooms or bedrooms) and at a high level of creativity, you can find many examples there. It's yet another affirmation of that old adage "The best things in life are free". Peoples' creative instinct and inner urge to communicate with and bring beauty to the outside world simply cannot be suppressed, and these gems tend to emerge from that impulse.