I was fortunate enough to be able to see an Irish harp player at Silver Dollar City's World Fest, then a week later Paul McCartney.
Seeing him play, it's hard to believe he's 72 years old. He played for 3 hours, and took NO breaks! I'm not a super huge Beatles fan, but my wife is. I will say that I ended up enjoying the show much more than I thought I would. Of coarse his performance was amazing but he told some really great stories too. My favorite, was one where he spoke of being at his "buddy George's house" and playing the Uke, he then held up a uke that was the exact one he had been playing that day, (it was an old Gibson, looked kinda beat up).
He played his famous Hofner bass, he also played an electric which looked to be some sort of Custom Les Paul. I especially enjoyed the songs where he just played the acoustic, no band or anything. He played a couple different acoustics, one looked to be an old Martin maybe, the other was actually a right handed guitar that he was playing up side down, the pick guard gave that away. I think he may have played that exact guitar back in the 60s and 70s.
When he played Blackbird he talked about how playing the guitar still brings him a lot of joy in his life, he done the entire song acoustic and I was very impressed wit his ability as a guitar player. He also spoke about what the song was about and I did not know it had anything to do with civil rights, and I also didn't know he had met a couple of the "Little Rock 9" before the show and had photos taken.
One of the photos was from when he played Let It Be, lots of phones and lighters.
I paid way too much money for bad seats, but I found motivation to go home and practice harder, and to love the instrument more, and that was ultimately worth the price of admission.
Cheers!
