Eddie Pennington Master Musician Gallery Show at the Princeton Art Guild

Eddie Pennington,m Master Musician
Gallery Show at the Princeton Art Guild
June 8th, 2021 – July 31st, 2021
The Princeton Art Guild and Gallery is honored to showcase Mr. Eddie Pennington in our Charles Alvin Lisanby Gallery during the months of June and July 2021.
Widely recognized by his peers as one of the greatest living thumbstyle guitarists, Eddie Pennington has kept alive the sound popularized by Kentucky native Merle Travis in the 1940s in venues through the United States and Europe.
Because of his ability to adapt well-known tunes to the alternating bass rhythms that characterize “Travis pickin’,” Eddie’s performances have generated renewed interest in this challenging art form.
He holds an honorary doctorate from Western Kentucky University, has been awarded a National Heritage Fellowship Award and Kentucky Governor’s Award in Arts.
He was a member of the Masters of the Steel String Guitar tour, was named National Thumbpicking Champion numerous times, was inducted into the Thumbpickers Hall of Fame in 2003 and was Thumbpicker of the Year too many times to count.
He has played on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and participated in the Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C., played at the 1996 Olympics and the Folk Masters radio/concert series. He is also a regular performer at the annual Chet Atkins Appreciation Society Convention, the Kentucky Derby Day Breakfast and his music was featured on KET’s “Kentucky Afield”. But one of his crowning achievements came in August 2011, when he was inducted into the Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame.
His father Norman taught him to play fiddle; but once Eddie heard the alternating bass-rhythms of thumbpickers Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, he knew what he wanted to do. In a recording made by Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, Eddie heard Travis talk about how he had learned the style from Mose Rager.
Once Eddie learned that Rager lived only 20 miles away from his own home, he decided to pay him a visit.
Eddie was 18 years old. He says he still remembers that day in May 1974 when Rager welcomed him into his home for his first opportunity to learn from a master.
“I went into town and someone told me where his home was,” Eddie recalls. “I looked around a bit and then knocked on the door. A tall, older, white-haired man answered the door and I asked ‘Is this where Mr. Mose Rager lives?’ He looked at me and said, ‘This is what’s left of him,’ and asked ‘Are you a box picker?’ I nodded and he said, ‘Then get your box and come on in.’
“I did and that was the day this type of music came alive for me. I knew I had met one of the masters and just knew I had to pick that way.”
So that’s what Eddie set as his goal in life, to keep the thumbpicking style alive. He lives here in Princeton with his wife Penny and many guitarists make pilgrimages to western Kentucky to meet Eddie and learn from him just as he did with Mose Rager.
(Bio written by Stacey McCaslin Menser circa 2017)
(Eddie’s photo credit to Michael G. Stewart)
Stop in at the Princeton Art Guild on Saturday, June 26th, 2021, beginning at 2pm and ending at 4pm, for a reception honoring Eddie Pennington. Light refreshments will be served and there will be music!
The Guild House is open Tuesday – Friday, 11am – 2pm. Check our Facebook page at Princeton Art Guild,Inc for Saturday openings. It’s free to come in!  We hope you will stop by, take your time and look around.