What was your inspiration for creating a show dedicated to classical guitar?
In May of 1993, during my final semester of grad school at the University of Texas at Austin, my guitar professor, Adam Holzman, recommended me for a guitar teaching job at a college in Houston. I thought that a one-hour weekly radio program of classical guitar at one of the public radio stations might be a good way to launch a performance and teaching career.
I ended up not getting the job in Houston, but I thought that the guitar radio show idea was still a good one. I started lobbying two Austin radio stations, KUT-FM, the NPR affiliate, and KMFA-FM, a full-time classical station, and KMFA agreed to air it on a trial basis in October of 1993.
I chose the name "Classical Guitar Alive!" because I once read an editorial in a Guitar Player magazine titled "Is Classical Guitar Dead?" I was a student at the time, and I remember being very offended by it. So, the radio program is my rebuttal.
Strangely, just a few years ago, my mother stunned me with the news that her father (my grandfather) used to do a live radio show in Arkansas in the 1940s. He played guitar and fiddle along with his friends, playing bluegrass music. I always thought that the guitar radio show was my own original idea, but I guess not; my grandfather thought of it before I was born. If there exists a guitar-radio gene, I must have it.
Tell us a bit about your own experience with guitar. When did you start playing, and have you always focused on classical guitar?
I started when I was about 10 or 11. My sister had a guitar, which she forbade me to play, so I played that one in secret. I got my own guitar, a non-classical acoustic guitar when I was about 12 years old. At the same time, I started playing drums in the school band. I still play drums and have done several professional recording sessions as a drummer and a guitarist. I often go to open mics and sit in on drums just for fun. My drumming friends usually have no idea I'm a classical guitarist and vice versa.
At 12, I was playing guitar along with records and figuring out songs on the radio by ear. I took rock guitar lessons and got an electric guitar. I started teaching guitar at a local music store and a local recreation center when I was 18.
Once, a classical guitarist named Benjamin Verdery, (who later became the guitar professor at Yale University) played at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and I was floored by it. Then I left Arkansas and went to the University of South Carolina to study classical guitar with Christopher Berg, and then to the University of Texas at Austin for graduate study with Adam Holzman.
Your show, Classical Guitar Alive! is almost 30 years old. To what do you attribute this long-running success?
Thanks! I started it as a local show in October 1993, that makes it 32 years old in total, but 29 years of national distribution (as of January of 1997).
A few months after I started doing Classical Guitar Alive! on local radio, I found out that there were some other local guitar radio shows, but none that were nationally-broadcast. I decided to make it happen, and 4 years later it did.
It helps to have good mentors. One of them was a Vietnamese IBM engineer friend and guitar builder named Trung Le, who was wonderfully blunt. He used to tell me, "Tony, you need to ask people to tell you all the ways in which you suck!" So I did. I asked broadcasting colleagues with way more experience than me, to tell me what they disliked about my program, my voice, programming, delivery, etc. And when I convinced them that I didn't want to hear compliments, then they were brutally honest and very helpful.
The first nine years of producing the program was an unpaid position, and it was difficult. I supported myself by teaching music, playing occasional concerts, hundreds of weddings, and thousands of gigs, and I did weekend shifts on KMFA radio in Austin. When the program became nationally distributed in 1997, it began to take more and more time.
In 1998, I got a huge boost when Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin heard my show while on tour. He called me just to say he enjoyed the program, and he asked about a piece of music he had heard on the show. That gave me the boost I needed to continue.
By 2002, my program was airing each week on over 100 radio stations across the USA, and I wrote a grant that enabled me to finally get paid a little bit after expenses. In 2003, Classical Guitar Alive became its own nonprofit organization. I started fundraising and writing grants, and then I finally began to get paid a modest salary.
Each week, you interview an artist and discuss their work. Who have been some of your favorite interviews?
That's a good question, but a tough one. The Jimmy Page interview stands out, because it happened early in my career, in 1998, completely out of the blue. He called me because he had heard the show, and we ended up doing an impromptu 15-20 minute interview.
Sharon Isbin was great. Not only did she have fascinating things to say, but she's so articulate that I hardly had to do any editing. John Williams, the guitarist, was similar in that way. I'm fascinated by accents, so I enjoy hearing people speak from other countries or regions.
What is the most memorable performance that you have ever seen (or performed) in person?
There have been a lot. I saw Andrés Segovia play in Charleston, SC two years before he died. It felt like an historical event. I saw David Russell play at a guitar festival in Arizona, and it was so stunning that I couldn't hardly speak afterwards. A guitarist friend of mine who was there asked me "Are you alright?"
I also saw Van Halen play in Little Rock on their 2nd world tour. That was the best rock concert I have ever seen. Years later, I got to play one of his electric guitars for about 20 minutes, right before it sold at a rock-n-roll charity auction. It was autographed by the whole band, and it had definitely been played a lot. The guitar was easy to play; it was definitely built for speed.
Of my own performances, I was fortunate to perform in the childhood home of Paraguayan guitarist-composer Agustin Barrios Mangoré, on his birthday, May 5th, 2010. It was part of a 12-day tour of Paraguay that I did while serving as a Cultural Envoy for the US State Department. The first time I played at the White House, during Christmas of 2002, was fun, even though it was an informal performance of mainly Christmas music with a mixed chamber ensemble.
You played at the White House?! Tell us more.
I played three times at the White House (2002, 2004, and 2005). In addition to the extensive background checks beforehand, right before we went in the 2nd gate of the White House, we also had to open our instrument cases, to let the Secret Service's bomb-sniffing dogs smell our instruments and cases. I miss being there, so I think I might see if I can play there again next Christmas.
Thanks for sharing with us, Tony! Be sure to tune in to Classical Guitar Alive! every Sunday at 2:00 PM on WSCL 89.5 FM.