Allen Shadd, flatpicking guitar master and aficionado who has won 28 guitars in contests, has been a busy fellow. Originally from Florida, and now residing in South Carolina, he explained what’s happening in his world, and shared some exciting news.
“Two things of interest. I retired from competitions in 2023 after winning Wayne Henderson’s contest for the third time, and also having won Winfield three times. I was approached by Marcel Ardans (Lessons with Marcel) about doing a book featuring tab/music notation and discussions about my contest arrangements. I agreed. We just finished the final proofing, so it will be out soon in PDF form. We may print it at some point, but for now it will just be a downloadable PDF.”
Allen’s new instruction book, How to Win Guitars and Contests, will be available for download starting September 20. It is collaborative effort between Marcel Ardans and Shadd. Allen explained its creation and concept.
“Marcel is a rock star with the younger audience. He has this YouTube channel, and he breaks down instructional material and interviews people. He has tons of subscribers. For our genre of music, he kind of leads the pack.
He reached out to me about the time I won Wayne’s in 2023 for the third time, and I announced my retirement from contests. He wanted to transcribe all my competition songs and preserve them. I thought that was pretty darn cool!
He transcribed a lot of the videos that you could see me playing online. I went over earlier this year and spent a weekend with him outside of Raleigh. He interviewed me. With the interview part, hopefully it will help make sense of my playing.
We will release it in PDF form on September 20 when Winfield holds its championships this year. It will be on his website as a one time download. Once you buy it, it’s yours.
There are five songs in this book and they are all arrangements I used to win national competitions. It begins with a little foreword that I wrote. I hope it inspires somebody. A lot of my guitar heroes are gone. We all have our own mortality and I’m 60 years old. I hope I leave a legacy when I am gone for the younger players.”
In the book’s Preface, Allen writes…
“What people may get from these transcriptions is entirely up to the individual. There are few ‘hot licks’ in each arrangement, but not as many as most expect to hear from a flatpick contestant. I am a melody player, so my approach is focused on that rather than trying to melt people’s faces off. Because of that, I think these arrangements can be beneficial not just to people aspiring to win any contest, but to anyone that wants to learn how and why these arrangements worked so well for me.”
It is followed by Ardan’s reflections on Shadd. The tabs are arrangements that became staples of his contest repertoire: Alabama Jubilee, Little Rock Getaway, Blackberry Rag, Sweet Georgia Brown, and, the unlikely contest favorite, Somewhere Over The Rainbow.
Allen then discussed his upcoming tour.
“Also, I have booked dates for December as a trio with myself, fingerstyle phenomenon Richard Smith, and John Cowan. We really don’t have a name, but John posted it as ‘Cowan and His Guitarmy.’ We can reference that just for fun.
We were limited with the dates that we could play because John is still out on the road with the Doobie Brothers until December 8. They’re ending in California. I’m giving him a couple of days to rest, pull a rehearsal, and our first date (with the trio) is December 12. We were only going to do a few dates, but it’s gotten bigger and bigger.”
Allen shared how the three came to be.
“Richard has a studio in Nashville and John lives right outside of Nashville. The first time I met John was at Winfield in 1979. Fast-forward to 2016 or ’17, I was working with Darrin & Brooke and he was doing some of the shows. So during COVID, nothing was going on, so we decided to go to Richard’s [studio] and the three of us did some things together. So we decided to do this revolving around John’s schedule. John liked what we were doing. Richard is a monster finger-style player and I’m a flat picker. The two styles kind of work off each other. So I started booking dates!”
Catch the trio at one of these venues:
