Acoustic Nation with Dale Turner: The Influential Percussive Playing Style of Preston Reed

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Preston Reed’s career as a solo acoustic performer began much in the mold of his earliest influences: Jorma Kaukonen, Leo Kottke and John Fahey.

But five solo albums later, and after witnessing the “two-handed” approaches of Edward Van Halen, Stanley Jordan, Jeff Healey and Michael Hedges—combined with his desire to add drum and percussion sounds to the mix—Reed began a musical transformation. By the release of Instrument Landing in 1989, he had fully reinvented himself.

The Preston Reed we know today—the tapping, slapping, unorthodox tuning, guitar-body-beating phenom and profound influence on contemporary pickers like Andy McKee and Kaki King—is now a living acoustic-guitar legend. Let’s crack our knuckles on a mix of progressive passages from this monster axman.

The calm before the percussive storm, “False Spring” initially appeared on Reed’s third album, 1982’s Don’t Be a Stranger, before being re-recorded two years later on Playing by Ear.