Guitar whiz Monte Montgomery favors acoustic over electric
Monte Montgomery is a different kind of Texas guitar slinger.
Sure, he plays fast and beautifully, with every tasty trick and trill in the guitar god's book.
But he does so on an acoustic — not electric — guitar. And dazzling audiences on that instrument isn't actually his first concern.
"I'm more of a singer-songwriter who plays guitar well," said Montgomery, who will perform for the first time in Wichita at the Venue at Abode on Saturday.
"Well" is putting it mildly. Guitar Player magazine named him one of the 50 greatest guitar players of all time back in 2004. His concert here is the first in the Winter Concert Series put on by the Kansas Acoustic Arts Association.
Montgomery also shares a stage on a regular basis with Australian guitar whiz Tommy Emmanuel, which is all that many Wichita music fans need to know. Emmanuel is a local favorite thanks to shows here and at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield.
"It's great fun," Montgomery said of playing with Emmanuel. "He's an amazing player. I usually sit in on his set, and he plays rhythm when I'm up there noodling. We have some moments when we trade off. We don't really spend a lot of time rehearsing."
Montgomery, 45, was born in Birmingham, Ala., and moved to Texas at the age of 12 with his mother, Maggie, who was part of the Hill County music scene.
"She doesn't play a whole lot anymore, but back when I was growing up she did," Montgomery said. "It was folky type of genre. She had two acoustic guitars and I ended up using one of them. That's how I got started."
Montgomery would later turn that experience into a song, called "My Mother's Hands," with the words: "She taught me every chord I knew/and now it's me she's playing through."
By his mid-teens Montgomery was playing gigs in Austin and San Antonio, both as an electric guitarist in bands and as a solo acoustic performer.
"I listened to pretty much everything I could get my hands on," he said of that formative period. "People from Lindsey Buckingham and Mark Knopfler to Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Steve Morse ... I'm just a fan of good music and good playing. Albert Lee is a guy I like a lot."
Playing an acoustic guitar, like his buddy Emmanuel, definitely puts Montgomery in the minority of guitar gods.
"It's just what I'm more comfortable with," he said. "I can pretty much do anything on an acoustic I can do on an electric. I want it to be more versatile, more percussive than with an electric."
Montgomery got his big break in 1999, with an appearance on "Austin City Limits." He's released 11 CDs and appeared on the covers of numerous guitar-oriented magazines.
Montgomery is nothing if not diverse as a songwriter, with a catalog that runs a gamut of styles. In the course of four tunes he might remind a listener of everyone from Pat Metheny to Yes to Billy Joel to Stevie Ray Vaughan.
"That comes from just being into so many different flavors of music," he said. "I don't really go after a specific style or genre of music. I just write what inspires me or what I feel at the time."
Montgomery makes no mention in an interview of the tragedy that struck his family in 2009, when his 21-year-old daughter was shot and killed by a friend, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Montgomery is also the father of a 6-year-old son.
"When I'm not writing, I'm just being a dad," he said.
If you go
monte montgomery
What: Solo show by the Texas singer-songwriter. Wichita duo Elliot Road opens. First in the Winter Concert Series put on by the Kansas Acoustic Arts Association.
Where: Venue at Abode, 1330 E. Douglas
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
How much: $15, $10 for Kansas Acoustic Arts Association members
This story was originally published January 7, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Guitar whiz Monte Montgomery favors acoustic over electric."