Brad Davis’ name should be familiar to regular readers of The Bluegrass Blog. He has served as one of our Guest Contributors, and we have posted a number of times about his various exploits as a performer, guitar instructor, songwriter and sideman.

The folks at Flatpicking Guitar Magazine have just released a new book/DVD/CD package which features Brad as instructor. Flatpicking The Blues is designed to both introduce the form and vocabulary of traditional 12 bar blues to flatpickers, and also show them how to incorporate these techniques into bluegrass and fiddle style flatpick guitar. Brad’s goal was to give experienced flatpickers enough of a feel for the blues to enable them to comfortably jam in that setting, and to show guitarists of any stylistic bent how to add a blues influence to their playing.

The package contains an 88 page book, with all the exercises and song examples from the DVD lesson shown in both tab and standard notation, plus a play-along audio CD with the various tunes from the video. To supplement the course material in the book and on the disks, Brad and Flatpicking Guitar Magazine have launched a new web site to provide ongoing and continuing areas of study for anyone wanting to explore blues guitar playing from a flatpicker’s perspective.

Brad Davis spoke with Bill Bay (of Mel Bay Publications) at the recent NAMM show and he told Brad that this was the most comprehensive and well organized instructional product he had ever seen. According to Bill:

“This is a great approach to teaching the blues to guitar players with a different background. It also helps them incorporate the blues accents into the other styles they play.”

Brad is excited about this course, and encourages everyone to make use of the additional materials provided on the supporting website.

Dan Miller of Flatpicking Guitar is offering a discounted price on Flatpicking The Blues for all orders received prior to February 1. More details and ordering info can be found on their web site.