«I love the term fingerstyle, because it's meaningless. To a musician, that's such a beautiful thing. It means you're not confined to any genre, but at the same time you have a strong connection with other artists in your field: Essentially any solo acoustic guitar player, and not even necessarily acoustic. There's definitely fingerstyle guitarists who fit within a genre: Robert Johnson played the blues, Chet Atkins was a country musician, Joe Pass played jazz, Don Ross is a funk machine. But because of the creativity required to make so much music from one extremely humble instrument with only one pair of hands, none of those musicians is a typical country guitarist, or a typical funk guitarist.

I don't know what my genre is. I'm a progressive musician for sure: I like experimenting with techniques, mixing genres and trying to make something original and new. But at the same time, I love simple songs, and I love connecting as deeply as possible to the historic roots of different styles. 

So yeah, fingerstyle for me just means freedom.» 

«Why to play alone on stage? I was never very good at playing with other kids. I struggle to understand what other people want me to do, unless they are very blunt in their speech. And when I explain what I want from someone else, I can only do so in equally blunt terms. It's not the healthiest way to communicate. 

Sometimes it's terrifying alone up there on the stage. When the music is flying through the air all around me, melodies, drum beats, basslines, chords - Sometimes I can have an out of body experience as I suddenly become acutely aware that every one of those sounds is being made by me, my body, in that moment. It feels like it could come tumbling down any moment. 

But when I feel in control, it's glorious. And in the end I don't care about perfection anyway. All I want to do is make the audience feel what I feel. Probably because it's the one way I've found that I really can communicate with people.»

Jon Gomm, May 2024