International Thumbpicking Contest 2006
Muhlenberg County, Kentucky
by Scott Taylor

The 2006 The International Thumbpicking Contest was held at Paradise Park near Powderly, Ky on the last weekend in August as usual. It was as hot as ever and the wind refused to blow to lend us a hand. There was no threat of rain for a change but it would have been nice if it had clouded up and blew as if it was going to storm. 
The weekend began with the International Thumb Pickers Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Friday night also at Paradise Park. Inductions included Paul Yandell, Paul Moseley, Eddie Pennington, David Duncan and many others in the various categories. 

The guitar contest began on Saturday morning around 9:30 AM with an explanation of the rules and definition of the contest divisions followed by drawing numbers for picking order. The event has been divided into 3 contests. The favored contest is the Traditional Thumbpicking Contest which requires the contestants to play older traditional thumbpicking in the style of Mose Rage, Merle Travis and the earlier Chet Atkins alternating bass tunes. The second contest, The Comtemporary Fingerstyle Contest, includes newer thumbpicking tunes like those of Doyle Dykes, Tommy Emmanuel, Pat Kirtley and the later Chet Atkins music as well as non-thumbpicking tunes under the heading of fingerstyle. Fingerstyle allows for any accompanying bass lines whereas the Thumbpicking is an alternating bass. The third contest was the Open Style Contest which includes all other styles of guitar playing that do not carry the bass or rhythm.  This year each contestant played only one song in each round. The top 5 finalist in the Traditional and contemporary Contests played a song in a playoff round but there was no playoff for the Open Style Contest.

Judges included the great Chet music arranger and fingerstyle guitarist, John Knowles; National fingerstyle Guitar Champion Pat Kirtley; and CAAS President and fine guitar transcriber Mark Pritcher and several others. The judges were different for the vasrious picking contests. The final playoff was judged by all of the previous winners who were in attendance...and there were many....Pat Kirtley, Eddie Pennington, Paul Moseley, Larry Stone, Roger Hardin, ..........


The winners of the contests are as follows:

Thumbpicking contest
1. David Duncan
2. Scott Taylor
3. Geoffrey Watts
4. Steve McCoy
5. Billy Denham

Fingerstyle
1. Matt Thomas
2. Steve McCoy
3. Tim Thompson
4. Scott Taylor
5. Cameron Castle

Open
1. Matt Thomas

As winners of the picking contests, David Duncan and Matt Thomas played one more tune to determine the overall winner. Matt played a fingerstyle arrangement of a standard but David played a great Chet tune and walked off with the overall picking title. 
Both Dave and Matt each won two guitars. Dave won the Traditional Contest and the Overall Title so he had first choice of the guitars and selected a Taylor and an ACE guitar while Matt won the Contemporary and Open Contests and received the remaining Taylor and a McCullough guitar. Mel McCullough has made several of the prize guitars over the last few years and custom builds for players as well as makes a few models of his own. His Jerry Reed Baldwin knockoff with a few redesign tweaks by Paul Yandell is becoming one of his favorite models. This year's McCullough was a small bodied acoustic electric with a 1-13/16" nut width, a bit wider than standard and approaching a classical feel. Matt had played it several times before the contest and commented on how nice it was. He was thrilled that Dave left it for him.

Winners: Matt Thomas from Newport News, Va and David Duncan from Flemingsburg, Ky.

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