Tommy Emmanuel: Fueled by Love of Music … and Coffee

Tommy Emmanuel. Photo by Luiciano Viti.

In an April 2025 interview with Guitar Player magazine, guitarist par excellence Tommy Emmanuel described his typical day when he’s on tour. That day begins with a good cup of coffee, if he can find one.

So how did a kid born and raised in Australia end up with a very American hankering for a cup of joe?

“I grew up drinking tea!” he admitted during a phone interview from his Nashville home ahead of his April 28 show at the Magnolia in El Cajon in support of his recent release, Living in the Light. Australia as a whole favors tea over coffee, he pointed out. “We have Bushells and a brand called Lan-Choo—and my mother swore by that. She used to say tea revives you.”

By the time he was six years old, Emmanuel’s parents had recognized his unusual gift on guitar (which he began playing at age four) and had formed a family band that toured Australia—which inadvertently introduced a young Tommy to coffee.

“There was a German guy in a caravan park—we call them trailer parks over here—he had this lovely smell coming out of his trailer. And I knocked on his door one day to see if I could play with his dog, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’m just having a cup.’ It was coffee and chicory. It was like a syrup in a jar. It was Arabica coffee and chicory together. He made me a little bit and I was hooked!”

And while, to his credit, he never mentioned it once during the interview, it turns out that along with Jake Shimabukuro, Laurence Juber, and Andy McKee, Emmanuel has his own blend of coffee from the Acoustic Coffee Company—the CGP Fuel signature blend.

Which brings us back to the point of the interview, Emmanuel’s status as one of the best to ever pick up a guitar, conferred with the title Certified Guitar Player—CGP—by the legendary Chet Atkins.

Atkins had been one of Emmanuel’s musical heroes after he heard one of his songs on the radio (before he’d even discovered coffee). The young Emmanuel worked up the courage to write to Atkins and received a letter back inviting him to call for a visit if he ever got to Nashville.

He would take Atkins up on that invitation in 1980, and they ended up playing together numerous times and recorded a duo album in 1997, The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World.

Along with John Jorgenson (interviewed in the April 2025 issue of San Diego Troubadour: https://sandiegotroubadour.com/a-chat-with-john-jorgenson/), Emmanuel has one of the broadest stylistic ranges of any contemporary guitarist, equally at home in rock, folk, country, and jazz idioms. Emmanuel was asked about an observation from Jorgenson (whom he called “an amazing player”) that possessing that much range can make it difficult to fill out a band with players who share that flexibility.

Emmanuel paused for a second, then began laughing and said, “Why do you think I’m a solo player?”

Emmanuel’s latest, Living in the LIght.

“I was fortunate back in Australia when I had my band and my career as the Tommy Emmanuel Band. I loved it. I wrote all the songs, then I sent the recordings to the guys, we’d rehearse it, and everybody did what was right. And there was lots of room for improvisation and fun in most of the songs. There were a few songs that had a little bit of programming, so we had to make sure we performed it as arranged when we performed it live.

“I never think too much about ‘this is not my style’ or that kind of thing. I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses, and if someone calls me wanting to pay me a fortune to play slide on their record, I’ll say no every time because I’m not good at that.”

There is a well-known story Emmanuel has shared in several interviews about the first time he was invited to sit in with the late Les Paul at Paul’s weekly gig at The Iridium in New York City in the early 2000s. Out of respect for Paul’s tremendous career, Emmanuel says, he held back during the first set, wanting the spotlight to remain on Paul.

After that first show, as Emmanuel recalled in the December 3, 2025 issue of Guitar Player magazine, Paul stormed into his dressing room and raged at Emmanuel: “I know what you’re doing! You think I’m old. Don’t you ever hold back onstage again. When I call you out there, you get up there! You give it hell. You give it all you’ve got!”

Emmanuel continued the story during the phone interview with Troubadour: “He wanted to set me up—and he did! I came out in the second set and hosed everybody for 10 minutes, and then he says, ‘Oh, you waited until I’m old to beat me up’ and had a good joke.”

“Chet Atkins had told me, ‘Don’t go play with Les, he’ll humiliate you!’ I think he was just being a naughty boy.

“I’m like that with people who hold back around me. I totally get both sides of that story. It was just a funny thing that happened.”

Given his stylistic range, Emmanuel was asked if it’s even possible to compare guitarists as different as, say, jazz great Joe Pass, classical legend Christopher Parkening, or hard rock pioneer Richie Blackmore, who just was announced as a Lifetime Achievement honoree from the National Guitar Museum (which honored Emmanuel three years ago).

“They’re all playing the guitar in their own way. And they’ve all contributed to the popularity, the growth, the interest in, and the fun in playing guitar.”

And once you start talking top-rank guitarists with Emmanuel, the conversation can bounce in unexpected directions. A discussion about favorite instruments in Emmanuel’s collection somehow landed in Jerry Reed territory, with Emmanuel then saying, “Every time I play one of his tunes, I’m still amazed how clever they are and how musically gorgeous they are.”

Another question about guitarists with broad stylistic range touched on Big Jim Sullivan (who, interestingly, had given a young Blackmore his first guitar lessons in the early 1960s).

“Holy hell, he was amazing—he really was!” Emmanuel said of Sullivan, pointing out that he was known as “Big Jim” among English musicians because he was first call for studio dates in 1960s London, ahead of “Little Jim” —aka, Jimmy Page!

“On Gilbert O’Sullivan’s (1972) hit, ‘Alone Again (Naturally),’ that’s Big Jim Sullivan taking that really lovely solo. The way he interprets that melody will tell you everything about him.”

Photo by Luiciano Viti.

And, despite having that lifetime achievement award, Emmanuel says he has no plans to slow down. “I’m 70, but I feel like I’m just starting, I feel like I haven’t done anything yet—that’s how I think.

“Then when people say, ‘So, are you going to retire now that you’re in your 70s?’ I say, ‘Retire from what?’

“I love what I do!”

When asked if it’s weird to see himself described in print as a mentor or role model for younger guitarists, Emmanuel said, “I take words like that pretty lightly—especially about myself. I feel like I’m the same kid from the bush in Australia that I’ve always been. I’m not high maintenance, I’m pretty easy going, I don’t let ego or false aspirations for wealth and power enter my orbit.”