you gotta see and hear thomas leeb play guitar

My ex-coworker (current friend) Steve and I were walking around this past year’s NAMM (North American Music Merchants) show in Anaheim when we happened by a young guitarist wrapping up his set. His name is Thomas Leeb, and he’s a sensational guitar player. He’s not the first to employ his fingerstyle and percussive techniques, but he has blended them together in a style that is pretty distinctly his own.

This video for him covering “No Woman, No Cry” isn’t the best selection of songs (especially since he does write his own), but it is the best video I could find online that captures the diversity of his style.

But here’s a video that’s actually from the 2008 NAMM show, in case you want to relive the experience that Steve and I had of standing about four feet in front of him as he played for us (we asked him to play one more and promptly bought his CDs – at first to thank him, and then because when you’re that close to a guy playing that well, you’ll do pretty much anything he says). Sound’s not that great, but it gives you a good idea of what we saw.

One of the exciting components of NewTunes is going to be the talented, unsigned or independent musicians we to attract. The way our search engine works, we think it’ll be one of the better and more frequent ways for undiscovered talent to emerge. We’d be honored to have Thomas Leeb be one of them