How good was Prince as a guitarist—really?

Guitar instructor and YouTube creator Bryan from Yes You Can Play Guitar breaks down Prince’s technique, musical genius, and why no one can truly compare to him.

In this episode of Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley, Bryan shares his journey from professional musician to building a successful YouTube channel, along with deep insights into guitar mastery, practice habits, and the reality of making a living in music.

🎸 Topics include:

• Why Prince was more than just a guitarist
• The truth about learning guitar (and why most people quit)
• Pentatonic & blues scales explained simply
• Building a music channel on YouTube
• Music industry lessons from real-world experience

Bryan also discusses how discovering Prince later in life changed his perspective—and why Prince’s legacy continues to inspire musicians worldwide.

Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley features legendary and emerging funk, R&B, and Prince-associated artists, along with musicians, producers, and industry insiders.

On air since 1982, the show delivers real conversations, untold stories, and deep insights into the music and the people behind it.

Right.

We are in for a real treat this afternoon. It's July 4th here in the States. A few days ago was Canada Day. Moving day up in Canada.

Our next guest is a very successful musician and also a YouTube channel host. Yes, you can play guitar. His name is Brian.

We've been longtime friends and supporter and viewer of his channel and he's here to talk about whatever's on his mind and we can ask him. Thanks Brian for tuning into music. Musicians reveal.

Absolutely A pleasure, Joe. Very, very honored here today.

Now, now I'm looking at the background. You got a cool background with the rack of guitars and all different. You got amps and all sorts of stuff. Even keyboards, I see, to the right and.

Well, my.

Right, yeah, keyboards happening over here too. Yeah, my little recording set up.

Do you do most of your recording right in that room?

Yes, and most of my recording now is for my YouTube channel.

And the YouTube channel. Let's go back to the infancy of the YouTube channel. Was it during the pandemic that it started?

I was with someone who had mental illness, borderline personality disorder. So all due respect to people who suffer from that, but it just, it was, it just wasn't cohesive to doing a YouTube channel.

My initial kind of goal was to kind of be like an educator, like, like maybe someone along the lines of like a Rick Beato or something like that. And then. But then we kind of got into the reaction videos and then people seem to gravitate towards that with me.

You are currently. You still are an instructor for guitars as guitarists as well, right?

I do actually, yes. People think that, you know, once you get over 20, 000 subscribers on YouTube, you make tons of money. That's not always the case.

I do have a full time job. I teach guitar, I teach bass guitar, a lot of different things. Advanced composition theory, all that kind of stuff. And I'm very.

It's a serious matter. So I don't just, like, accept anybody for lessons.

So when you were starting out with the guitar lessons and getting the resume for that, how did you go about that?

So all my education with music and guitar was all private. Like, through private lessons.

I've studied with a lot of different guitar instructors, some people who had their PhDs, but I'd actually, I went to college. I. I was an electronics technician. So I was working in high tech. I'm a type A personality. I like to get things done. I don't like bs.

I. I don't like in the sense of. In the workplace. Like, I function better on my own. So I remember in high tech, it was kind of up and down all the time.

And, you know, if a company lost contracts, then people would get laid off and there was never really any security. But I was teaching. I was playing professionally on weekends, and I was teaching part time. And then the last company I'd worked for in the.

In the late 90s, I. They had a hard time. And I made it to the fifth or sixth round of layoffs. And I remember saying to myself, I don't care what I have to do.

If I can just squeeze out a living teaching guitar and playing professionally and living on a mattress and eating bagels, I'll be. I'll be okay. I just don't want to do this and beating the system, maybe, so to speak. So I did that for many years. Played in a lot of regional bands.

I had my own music school. At one point, I think I had over 100 students. I had some instructors working for me.

So I'm gonna say about 10 years ago, I had a YouTube channel, but I didn't get YouTube. Like, it was more just to promote my business locally for students.

Like, I remember seeing, like, Marty Schwartz and Justin Guitar and all those guys who now have massive YouTub channels. But I remember at the time, I remember thinking, man, these guys are dumbasses. Posting their lessons for free on YouTube. What's this about? Now?

I get it. So anyway, I. I did that for a number of years, and then I had a few difficult years there.

Some big changes and some things happened in my life where I took a break from the guitar for a couple of years. But I knew coming back, it was what I wanted to do. Again, I missed it, and it's my passion. And. And then I started going with YouTube.

Yeah, and you've built up quite the following. And we've. We followed your journey. Yes, you can play guitar. Brian is with us.

And, you know, you going when you were building up the thousand subscribers talking about that and you, you actually did a show, like a celebratory show on it, right, with all your fan. And you read people's names and everything. You know, you make it, I think it's definitely.

You're very personable with your channel and it comes across.

When I started my channel, I, I made it a point to try and make myself think of what it's like to be on the other side. So I remember, you know, I have my favorite YouTube channels and I know what it's like when I would make a comment and it never got acknowledged.

Now even with some of the bigger channels, I think my following is big enough that when I do make a comment, they might, they'll take some of the bigger channels, will take the time to acknowledge me. But when I would do that or some, or you'll even see on Instagram, I have an Instagram account, but I'm not really a big Instagram guy.

But you know, some famous people, like, they never acknowledge their followers, their fans and stuff.

I don't like to use the word fan, but I told myself, I said, you know, no matter what, I got to make an effort to acknowledge these people because I would think this person thought enough of watching this, this video and they took 10 minutes to watch it and they took another five minutes to write a comment or yeah, still kind of blows my mind.

So I would make the point of initially I'd respond to every comment personally and then I had a period a little over a year ago where I took three hours one morning I was responding every comment. I had a good friend of mine, Mark from England, he told me, he said, dude, you're not gonna be able to do that forever.

So we, we did a video a few weeks ago about, we set a timer for five minutes and I just scrolled through all the comments.

So, right.

A 20 some thousand subscriber channel, how many comments you get? And I just scrolled really quickly for five minutes and it still didn't even touch.

So what I try and is I try to be very good when people message me or I do a reading your comments because I think that's really important to kind of acknowledge their human beings out there that are taking the time to watch your channel. And some of the comments that people will write, you know, it's amazing something and like they must have taken them a half an hour to do that.

So I can at least say, hey, how are you doing? Thank you, I appreciate it.

Right, right.

I never want to lose sight of that.

Yeah. And definitely, I mean, you're. You're continually building up your viewership and everything.

And let's mention about your Patreon channel, which you started. What was the reason to it tell us how people can. Can sign up for that as well?

So I'd heard of Patreon. Like, the thing is with YouTube, for me, it's a. I'm still learning. It's a learning process with everything. I got over a thousand subscribers.

And then I. I had some people saying, you know, you should start a Patreon. You should start a Patreon. I'm like, yeah, I've heard of Patreon. I'm not really quite sure what it is.

So then I researched it and I had a lot of people saying, hey, if you do a Patreon, I'll join. Then I got into understanding the whole thing of putting in extra content. Sometimes if I do a reaction video, it gets blocked by YouTube.

So when it does, I just move it over, I put it on my pat. That's one of the perks of. So my Patreon community grew. It's still small. It's modest, but it's a good bunch of people.

But I also start a guitar Patreon, so I have two Patreon communities, one for reactions. So, like, for reactions, I might. So I get thousands of requests a month. I can't do all of them.

If someone joins my Patreon, I try and make it a priority to get to theirs before the thousands in the comment section. But I also have a guitar community. It's a bit smaller, but it's for people that are into guitar. They want the extra content, extra lessons.

They can download guitar tabs, PDF, files of lessons and all that other stuff. We got some cool stuff going on with that as well.

Yeah. Another. Another thing I really enjoy about your channel is it seems that you dig deep into other guitar players on.

On YouTube that, you know, I. I didn't know about, and you bring to light. And a few of them come to mind. Talk about the young cat from Indonesia. Yeah. And. And is it a Japanese girls group?

Oh, love bites. Yeah.

Yeah. How did you come into contact with them?

So in the comments, they got mentioned a lot. You got to check this, bandit. You gotta check this better. And again, I try and keep my reactions for my Patreons.

One of the downsides of having doing reactions well on my channel, I do reactions, interviews, guitar lessons too. It's not just reactions, but. So for a long time, I did a deep Dive on Prince, which is. I'm still doing.

I do a bit more of that content more now on Patreon. When you have so many. When you start seeing someone in the comments section saying you gotta.

If you see someone mention a band a thousand times, eventually you want to say, okay, I better check the, this band out. So I, I remember one day. So okay, Love Bites. Okay, I'll check it out. And my God, that first song, I think it's called Breaking the Wall.

It just blew me away. I'm like, you know, and I love, I mean I love all styles of music but.

And I'm much more open minded but that virtuoso guitar metal guy in me goes, oh my God, this is fantastic. These guys are amazing.

Have you heard from the band at all?

No, no, not yet. What I like to do is when I, you know, when there's bands that I want to eventually interview, I want to get myself up to speed.

So there's some bands. Nightwish from Finland are an extremely popular band. I'm doing a bit of a deep dive into that.

I'm keeping dive with Prince going and like Love Bites, I want to get myself more up to speed and educated. Thankfully with Prince, when we were doing. And we're still going to do some interviews to people kind of from the Prince history.

You know, I have a good friend, the Solitary Adventure.

He joined me in my interviews because he's, he's been amazing for me because I, for me remembering names and chronological orders and stuff, that's kind of hard for me. But when we interviewed Morris Hayes like he was great on that end where I was good on the technical musical end. So it kind of worked really good.

So he's been a big help that way. But someone like Prince, he's got a massive history.

Like I don't think anyone could ever contact, interview and talk to everyone that he's been involved with.

No, no. And you guys, you guys have a great rapport. The Solitary Adventure. And I mean I, I really enjoyed the Morris. I had Morris on when they were doing.

They were out in Vegas for a residency. That was a few years ago. But you guys had a nice sit down with him extended and you know that, that was, that was great watching.

Yeah, he, I mean musical director and you know, coming into the group and.

And when we talk about that with perspectives too. Like when we had Scotty Baldwin on. Scotty Baldwin.

Oh yeah, he's another good one.

Yeah, he was a sound engineer for Prince. He was a sound engineer for Lady Gaga, Earth Wind and Fire for me when I played in regional bands, you know, I had my own.

Eventually I got my own mixing board and I. I learned about how to mix sound and stuff. So I'm just thinking, God, I would love to sit beside Scotty Baldwin watching him work at night. Just watch him work the board.

And he even did, towards the end of pr, Prince, before he passed away, he did some of the piano microphone shows.

Yeah, he did. Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't remember 100, but it was during. When he was working with Prince in New Zealand. He goes into detail on it in the interview we did with him. But something happened.

Yeah, there was some tension and he. Yeah, that was it. Yeah.

But we also. We did an interview with Susan Rogers that was quite. Yeah, right. She was such a sweetheart.

And, you know, we talked to Dave Rusan, who built the famous cloud guitar.

Oh, wow. Okay. I gotta check that one out.

Even Prince, Prince would come into the music store where he worked when he was like a kid. So he had a lot of really great stories as well.

Being a Prince of Minneapolis sound fan, it's just. You're just a joy that you brought that and hooked me into there. And then the other stuff you have on your channel as well.

But, you know, how did you decide the initial foray into Prince?

That's a really good question. So, admittedly, in the 80s, I was aware of Prince.

But, like, I was, you know, I was a kid in the 80s, becoming a teenager into the late 80s, I was more into metal, heavy metal. I knew who he was. I didn't, you know, I didn't kind of get all of his vibe. I didn't get a lot of him. I kind of knew.

I had a vague memory of seeing some commercials for Purple Rain. I remember hearing When Doves Cry.

I knew, kind of knew he played guitar, but I always thought of him like a Michael Jackson type, like a singer, dancer, entertainer. I remember.

Yeah, the splits.

It's not that I thought anything bad of him. I just wasn't really overly into the music.

And then, of course, you know, he came out years later doing the guitar solo for While My Guitar Gently Weeps in the hall of Fame. I remember when I was starting my YouTube channel, you know, I was posting a lot of guitar instructional stuff.

And I was just trying some different things. And I said, you know what? Like, let me just try Something different.

And I did a reaction to it and it started getting a lot of views and people were subscribing.

But I have to say that the Prince community, you hear different things about Prince fans and the hardcore fans and stuff, but they've been absolutely 100 wonderful to me. My channel, my Patreon, like, you know, you know, Joe, people think of YouTube.

I know so many people have come up to me and said, I would love to do a YouTube channel. But all the comments, like, what if someone said something bad about me? Or you don't you just develop a thin skin, a thick skin. Sorry to that. But.

Right.

You know, sometimes people have negative connotations with YouTube with the comments and stuff. But I've actually found YouTube 95, 99 of the people are amazing. Like, it's so weird.

And then you kind of become friends with these people around the world. It's just. It's a really cool thing.

Yeah. And I know with the.

The Prince fans that are watching YouTube channels or people who weren't necessarily into Prince when Prince was alive or, you know, at the peak of his career. Yeah, yeah. Just like yourself there. The comments that they're right now are like, oh, you know, it's so great.

You're into this and discovering his music and you should check out this. And hey, that's great. Which means he's. His music and legacy will live on pretty strong when we're. When we're long gone.

I'm sure they'll never be. You know, I've learned so much about Prince and I still have a lot more to learn. But there'll never be anyone that can do the things.

I know how hard I had to work to become proficient on the guitar. I. I couldn't. You know, one guy said to me one time in the comments, I actually thought it would make a good video.

He said, well, you're a really good guitar player. Like, how do you compare to Prince? And I wrote back to him, I said, there's no comparison at all. I said, it's not just guitar.

It's being an entertainer. It's, it's, it's being a dancer, it's being a musician, it's leading a band, running a business. It's. There's no comparison.

Nobody should compare themselves to him. That's just. It's a scary thought. Nobody should ever do it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just. You've mentioned it several times in your Video, you're like, he had to be on some exercise program and taking care of himself.

They said he didn't sleep. But I mean, it was fantastic live, you know, Never missed.

No, absolutely. Yeah.

So Brian from Yes, you can Play Guitar is with us, and we're honored to have him on the show. And you can go to his YouTube channel, just right in the search on YouTube. Yes, you can play guitar and go through all his videos.

And do you ever update the videos, like titles or you just let it fly once you put it out there?

And one of the things I do is like, I'll go back to my old videos, which are very hard for me to watch. I think every YouTuber who stuck with it knows what I'm talking about. You're like, oh, my God, look at how I looked.

Or look at how the lighting is, or look at. But sometimes I'll update the thumbnails and maybe do some updates to the description boxes or the tags or something like that.

Or that's about the most I'll do.

Now. Now you're talking about your guitars. We can see your guitars. How big is the collection?

So my thing is, I'm not a vintage guitar guy. I have friends. I've got friends that can't even play, and they have more guitars than I do. But I have. I have eight guitars.

Some of them are set to different tunings, but I'm very particular about guitars.

I'm kind of hoping at some point maybe getting a sponsorship with a guitar company I like because people have been sponsored with a far less of a following. So I've never.

Right.

I've never approached a guitar company about that, but that's something maybe I'll look at in the future.

Yeah, you definitely deserve it. I mean, you've given the spotlight to. To plenty of guitarists and.

Yeah.

Just the art of playing guitar. Okay. Pentatonic scale. I learned it from you. What. What is that all about? Can you break it down to the layman?

Yeah, of course. So the pentatonic scale. So penta. Penta. It's five notes. Okay. So I often tell people when I'm giving them guitar lessons, I say the pentagon. Okay.

Okay.

Five points. Or a pentagram. If you were into Satan. Satanic music back in the 80s. That's an 80s joke. Probably a lot of people. Okay, so anyway, so you have.

You have your major pentatonic scale, and you have your minor pentatonic scale. And of course, you know, they say pentatonic scales, you know, Jimmy Page's favorite scale. You know, It's. It's just a staple in rock music.

Led Zeppelin, A lot of the riffs, a lot of the licks are written around that scale. It's. And then when I think of the major pentatonic scale, I think I pull out those licks when I play country music.

Or when you have southern rock like the Allman Brothers, Dicky Bats, those guys, they really use that scale a lot, too. Fantastic scale.

Yeah, you mentioned a lot during Prince's solos as well. So that. That's why I brought it to, you know, light there.

And then you have what's called the blue scale. You can have a major blue scale and a minor blue scale. Technically, it's a hexatonic scale because there's six notes in it. Okay, but.

And so it's just an addition to the blue skill, which are great, too. And I've seen Prince use that one sometimes, too. Very common.

Now, how about as a guitarist, when they say sometimes it's best to give, you know, the playing some space in between the notes?

I think that's. That's an absolute, like, if we're thinking about, like, Dave Gilmore kind of thing from Pink Floyd.

Right, right, Absolutely.

Sometimes it's what you don't play matters as much as what you do play. That's another saying you hear in guitar.

Oh, okay. That's cool. Yeah. Brian up in Western Quebec in Canada. And you. You like. You like the outdoors? I saw you did a few outdoor videos, you know.

Yeah, I love the outdoors. We're kind of. I'm gonna be honest, Joe. I am kind of a. I'm. I am a bit of a recluse by nature. I kind of, like, kind of keeping to myself.

But it's kind of funny. Like, a lot of my friends on social media and YouTube, they're like, you're an introvert.

I'm like, actually, I'm an introvert that learned to be an extrovert. But, you know, I kind of, like. I just go like, you know, when I see people, hey, how are you doing?

Right.

A local musician asked me if I play in a band or something last night. I said, no, I'm sorry, man. I'm just kind of. I keep to myself. That's just how I am. I've learned to be that way.

Tough when you're trying to get gigs in the music business, right? Yeah.

Looking back, back when I kind of learned about.

When I was actually learning about the music business and learning and the industry, like, on guitar, I had a lot of really good guitar teachers, but I didn't have anyone wisen me up to the business. I had to learn a lot just on my own through trial and error.

And you know, that was another thing I was hoping to be able to share on my YouTube channel for some of the musicians coming up. Like I did a video a few months ago about like my top 10 warning flags. When you're playing in a band or right stuff, it's tough.

And I got to a point where I'm like, you know what, if I can just be a regional musician making some good money from gigs on weekends, I would be happy with that. But I think looking back, I have a certain type of personality. Joe. I think I've like lightened up a little bit with age.

But type A could be intense, especially when it came to business. But I was big on people keeping agreements.

So if I played in bands with guys and we had business agreements and people weren't keeping them, I didn't have patience for that stuff. You know, I don't know, maybe, maybe my communication skills could have been better. But it was just a common thread.

I noticed with a lot of musicians in a regional sense. They complain about, oh, if I only had a good paying gig.

And then when you end up playing with them, you see kind of they don't pull their weight and they don't do what needs to be done and you're kind of like, okay, like this isn't kind of like the decision the discussion we had when we started this. So you know, I'm sure I wasn't perfect to deal with either.

But even now, like the thought of playing in a band, as I said, I had a fellow message me last night. I'm like, oh my God, I'd rather just do YouTube and teach guitar because it's kind of like control everything. I'm the master of my own fate.

Like I would never, that's another thing too. I don't like to put my fate in other people's hands.

Right. And you, and you're doing really well with that with the YouTube channel and also the Patreon channel.

And you got somebody coming, knocking on the door in a little while. That for, for a lesson, right?

Yes, yes, yes. I teach guitar and, and music full time. That's my actual job. And I also do YouTube. That's what I do.

Yeah. So, so we were talking before we went, we went on air and you said that I'm not a metal guy.

And I thought to myself, I, I have had some hard rocking guitar. I had, well, the drummer from The CRO Mags. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And a story that happened, I needed to keep.

My show was like on New Year's Eve, but I had a dj, a wedding slash New Year's Eve gig. And I left the. The interview with a CRO Mags on. On a loop at the station and it was on for 12 hours.

All you heard was like, I don't know, death metal or hardcore music, right?

Hardcore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, hardcore. And somebody actually called me the next day and was wondering if. If I was okay, what happened because all they heard was the chromax for 12 hours.

It's funny. So for me, with metal, I'm more drawn to. I like, like, I like a lot of different styles of music.

You know, like when I was coming up, you know, when I played the circuit, I was doing a lot of country music. So I had to change. I had to learn like how to play country music. Country licks changed my guitar rig completely for that. But with.

But even though I like hard rock and metal, like, I've always been drawn more to virtuoso type players. And it's interesting when you mentioned. I. I'm hoping that I'm correct with this, but the.

The band Suicidal Tendencies, so they were kind of a punk, thrash crossover band. They're still going, but back in the day they had a lead guitar player. His name was Rocky George and he was scary good.

He's one of my favorite guitar players. I'd actually like to interview him. I. I think he went on to play with Fishbone. That's a. He played with the CRO Mags for a while.

I think he sat in with them. Gary, guitar player, like, he's someone I would love to sit down and trade licks with and talk to for sure. But.

But I've always been drawn more to like the virtuoso type guitar playing and musicianship of any instrument, really. It's weird because I'm a guitar player, but when I do a reaction video, the first thing I look at is the drummer in the band.

Yeah. It's interesting how you.

You've given your breakdown and reaction and analysis of Princess drummers throughout the different players and Michael Bland and John Blackwell and. Yeah, I'm always interested when you're. You're going deep into it because it's more than just, oh, that's a cool song. And you know, you're.

You stop it and give a little detailed analysis of it. So do you. Go ahead.

Sorry, I was just gonna be. You can't always Win. Because then people don't like it when you stop.

Yeah, yeah, you mentioned that.

I'm like, guys, I'm getting older here. Like, like sometimes I'll just go to the kitchen and get something. I forget what. I get what I'm going to get.

Like I, I had this hit, this milestone a couple months ago. I needed something from the kitchen. So I get up working, I get up, I go to the kitchen, forget what it was.

I come back, I sit down, I remember what it was, I went back in the kitchen, I forgot again. So I'm telling people. I'm like, well, at times I have to hit stop and say what it's on my mind or I'll forget.

Right, Right. Oh yeah, I'm in that club too. Yeah, yeah. I'm getting near. I'm getting near 59. So there you go. I'm in the club.

Yeah.

So. So have you heard back from any of the, the Prince music? Well, I know you had Morris on, on the show. How about the other musicians?

Have you heard back, any comments.

Like from Scotty Bo, like the other people we've interviewed?

No, the, the, the musicians and Prince's band about the comments and stuff like that. We, we know people are out there watching.

Yeah. So know we're in a really weird time when you contact people for interviews. Like, I always try and do it in a professional way.

Like I don't like bugging people on their social media. Like I try and find out whatever their business contact is and then I like to do it by email and stuff.

But we're going through a really dry period right now and I don't know if it's because so many channels are doing interviews or because everyone's on the road right now. It's a summer. This is, you know, this is how they're making their money.

If you're a musician now, for most, you know, you got to be out in the road playing. That's how you make your money. So it's been kind of a dry time, but so, but I'm hoping to have a few more interviews down the road. For sure.

Yeah. You and you and the solitary adventure Chris, right?

Yeah. If anything, that's Prince related. Usually if Chris wants.

Right.

He'll join me and he's just awesome to have.

And if it's maybe if it's an interview that he can't make or maybe for whatever reason, I'm going to start having my Patreons who are fans interviewing with me.

Oh, that'd be. Yeah, they'll Definitely have questions. Yeah, that's for sure.

So it's.

I think that's another great way I can give back to Patreon and say, okay, like, you might have to do a draw or something to pick who's going to join me. But that's a good way through my medium of having people meet, you know, the people that they're fans of.

Yeah, that. That'd be a great promotion for you. Yeah, absolutely. Now, now let me ask you, sticking on the.

The Prince feel off the top of your head, do you have a favorite video that you, you know, reacted to and. And give us a reason why?

So I reacted to a lot of Prince videos. Again, it's hard for me to go back and watch. I'll watch some of my old videos and go, oh, the lighting. Oh, this, oh, that. But I have a really.

A spot in my heart for Sometimes It Snows in April. It's such a beautiful song. And I. I had a very sentimental connection to something in my life with that, so I'm gonna say probably that song.

But I think when I responded to it, I just did the audio, which is very rare. Like, I. I don't very often respond to. React to an audio, but, you know, I had a lot of people saying, no, it's, it's.

I think it was last year and I think Prince's death date was coming up.

Right.

And I listened to it and it was a very profound song. There's something about the melody and the song.

And we did a deep dive on Patreon a few weeks ago until one of the Montrose shows where he's playing with Third Eye Girl. And I believe they did that song as well. It's just amazing. So I'm gonna say that song and that my reaction to that song was very.

Probably my favorite.

Yeah, yeah, definitely one of his most emotional songs that he ever. That he ever wrote. And I think he. He wrote it on the day he passed away.

Yeah, that's.

That's what I read about that. So. Wow. So, Brian. Yes. You can play guitar. Anybody can do it, any age. Even. Even knucklehead like me.

Well, Joe, let me ask you this question, okay? And I talk about this when people come in for lessons, right.

So, Joe, we don't, you know, we don't have to get into telling people where you live or anything, but the town that you live in. If we did a poll, we walked around and knocked on every door and said, yes, sir. Yes, ma'. Am. Just doing a poll. Is there a guitar in the house?

There's probably a guitar in most of the houses in the community that you live in, because, hey, it's portable and, let's be honest, cool people play guitar. But, okay, so if there's guitars and 80 or 90 of all the houses, is there 80 or 90 of those people?

Is there a good guitar player in those houses, do you think? So?

What's the percent?

So if.

If there's going to be guitar in almost every household in the community you live in, is there a really good guitar player in every one of those houses that has a guitar?

I'm gonna say no, but no. Am I wrong? Okay.

No, you're right. Right. It's a very disproportionate ratio. So a lot of people are like, why? And some people be like, well, I don't know.

Like, I don't think someone goes into a music store and says, you know, I'm gonna buy that guitar on the wall and it's going to look great in my closet for 10 years or I'm gonna suck. So why is it right. There's a lot of misconceptions about learning guitar. A lot of people that are just completely crazy.

And you see these ads, even on YouTube of people saying, you don't need to learn theory and you don't need to do this. People are always looking for the easy way, you know, but the big thing is, is someone will get a guitar and they don't.

They don't know what the hell to do. So for a lot of people, although YouTube's wonderful, I have a YouTube channel.

But some people sit down and they'll just kind of say, okay, and they'll hit a lesson on YouTube. Watch it for 20 seconds, go. I call this the YouTube cycle. Ah, let's do something else. Let's do something else. Let's see.

So it goes on for an hour, and then before they know it, a year's gone by and they're not any better. You need a methodology, right? YouTube's wonderful. I've got a channel. It's great.

But, you know, if we don't say to kids when they're of age to go start grade school, we don't say, ah, just stay home, watch YouTube instead. You need a methodology. You need a practice plan. People don't know how to practice. They don't know what they're supposed to be working on.

They're not supposed to. They don't know how to hold the guitar. They don't know how to do this.

They don't know they need someone Sitting there, just saying, okay, no, this is the plan. Learn this today, work on it next week, I'll give you more. We're going to progress, right? Steps. Right.

So, you know, but people don't, they, they don't get it. A lot of people don't get it. Some people do and they, they get a good instructor or whatever.

Some people will pick up the guitar a couple of times, say, I guess I don't have it. I'm not playing like Ingva Momstein or Eddie Van Halen. So I'm just gonna, it's like, no, they didn't sound like that when they picked it up either.

So that's the big thing. And also one of the things I do on my channel too, Joe, is I advertise for people that are kind of really stuck on guitar.

Whether you're a beginner, you've been playing for a while, people can contact me for like a one on one online consultation.

Okay.

I can help them through that situation with what they need to work on, explain some things. So. And they're not locked into lessons doing that too. They can just book a consultation whenever they want.

And that, that's. The links are right on, on your YouTube. Yes, you can play guitar, right?

Or they can email me at yes, you can play guitar gmail.com.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I, I do know how to play one song on an instrument. When the Saints Go Marching In. I could play it on piano.

There you go.

So an ex girl, an ex girlfriend, years ago, I told her I could play the piano. And actually she became my wife, my first wife. But yeah, I was invited to her house with her family to meet for the first time.

And she, after dinner, she says, oh, he knows how to play the piano. And it was right there. And they're all excited for me to play it. And I said, shoot, I'm in big trouble here. So I always make the joke.

I played a 20 minute rollicking version of when the Saints Go Marching.

You know what, if I'm ever down, which I probably will be at some point in your neck of the woods.

Right.

Well, we'll do a jam and then we'll go out to Texas Roadhouse. It's like my favorite.

Oh, yeah, there you go. Yeah.

And the other thing is too, I don't know about New York State, but when I travel, when I've traveled in Ohio and Pennsylvania, it's Waffle House. There's Waffle House signs everywhere.

Yeah.

I don't think up here, I haven't noticed it, but yeah, I, I know down in Connecticut where we used to live was like Cracker Barrel and stuff like that.

Oh, I've been to cracker Barrel too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, a lot, a lot of, you know, you go out on the road, you know, we were talking, we both don't like to drive as much as we used to, so.

Yeah.

But you do see a different part of Canada in the U. S. And how far are you from Montreal by driving?

So I think Montreal, it's a couple hours away.

And, and some of the best eating in the world. Like somebody feed bill did a version an episode of that on Netflix. But not the best city to be driving in, folks.

You're better to park somewhere and get a taxi or an Uber.

Yeah. What's at the 15 and the 40 and the roads out there? Yeah, but you say it's worse in Toronto, right?

Yes. There's no comparison, I think with Toronto's sometimes when you get stuck in those, those traffic jams, like I've been fortunate to time it right.

When I've had to fly through Toronto where I just hit the right time to just. But that doesn't happen too often. Normally I'm stuck in a traffic jam of some sort.

Right. I gotta ask you one final question.

Yeah, of course.

Okay. How's your little doggie? I saw the dog, he was cooling out the other day. What's your dog's name?

Name? Our dog's name is Poochie.

Poochie. Okay. And what breed? What breed?

I don't even know what breed he is. He's, he's upstairs with his mama there. She's.

Okay.

He's working in her office. But he, he's going to be 17. He's the tiniest little dog, but my God, his vertical, vertical jump. Joe is like. This dog is just crazy. It's hilarious.

Yeah, yeah.

I got our dog in, in the back room because just you know, inevitably should, should make her presence known. There you go with the bargain.

Yeah, yeah.

So hey Brian, hopefully one of many times in the, in the future that absolutely. We talk to each other. This, this has been great.

Yeah.

And yes, you can play guitar.

Brian with his guitar instruction, his reaction videos, you know, you can go right into his description and you know, a one on one consultation and the Patreon Channel as well.

Well, absolutely, yeah.

Yeah. You're a busy guy.

I, I am busy, but that's the way I like it.

That's right. So thanks, Brian.

Thank you, Joe.

Okay.