Adam Rafferty

How to Meet Adam Rafferty in Your Hometown While on Tour

Friends, I digress from my “meaning of life” blog posts to something a little more hands on.

As many of the Law of Attraction books and teachers say, “Ask and it is Given”. So, I am broadcasting a request to you and the universe, and I have faith in the process! This will be really cool to see this come together!

The joy of my life is traveling, playing music and making new friends. I’d like YOU to be part of it.

I’d like to come and do a live performance just for you in or near your hometown while on tour. I am trying something never before done…using the internet, youtube, twitter and facebook (and emailings) with fans directly.

I am still looking for an official manager and booking agent, so in the meantime I turn to my fans and friends for gig & concert venue suggestions.

Please email concert / gig ideas to

venues [AT] adamrafferty [DOT] com

I am in the process of building up my worldwide touring, and it’s tough work to make all the phone calls digging up gigs, finding good places, etc. You probably know the places close to you that would be good to play.

It can be a concert hall, a club, a church, a school, even a house concert – it would be my pleasure and joy to do a date in your area while on tour. Masterclasses can work too. And hey, let’s not forget music stores, fingerstyle societies, etc.

Here’s What You’ll Get:

A private lesson with me when I come to town – and I can show you songs that I can’t put online due to copyright problems, if you catch my drift!

A lifelong friendship. I love all the folks whom I meet in my travels and touring. This is the real joy.

It’s Quick & Easy – Here’s how to do it!

Even if you only have an idea of a place (or a few) – this does not need to be a gig offer – send an email to

venues [AT] adamrafferty [DOT] com

Of course the more info the better (address contact person, telephone, web url, email) but whatever is easy for you is fine.

Sending them to that address will help me stay organized.

To communicate with me about other stuff, just email me at

adam [AT] adamrafferty [DOT] com

I thank you in advance, and I am excited to see what you and the rest of the fan base come up with. I look forward to meeting you!!!!

The Bangkok Guitar Lesson and New Goals

By Adam Rafferty 4 Comments

Greets friends!

I am writing you from Cologne Germany and I just arrived from Bangkok last night. Long trip.

Traveling to Bangkok to play with Tommy Emmanuel and the other GREAT players there was an experience I will not forget. The fine players on the bill were Boonchob, Masa Sumide, Joe Robinson, and Michael Fix. Each one had a unique ray of guitar genius and I am very appreciative to have ben there for it all.

On a personal level, certain weak areas of mine as a player became apparent to me. I like the idea of sharing them with you on this blog, because it’s easy to think that pro concert players simply “have it together” musically and psychologically all the time. Maybe by showing you my fragile side, you’ll feel okay about yours. We’re all human.

🙂

Michael Fix and I were having a coffee and he summed it up by saying “wow, here I am with all you other world class players, I almost feel as if eventually people will figure out that I am a fraud”. Crazy, huh? Well that’s exactly how I felt too. We had a good laugh and realized we probably were not alone.

I figured I’d share my new musical goals with you and invite you into my growing process. Please watch my growth and if it gets too big, have a doctor remove it. That’s a joke.

Until now many of my arrangements have been very much like classical guitar transcriptions in concept. Like “well if I map out the bassline and melody to Stevie Wonder, play it funkily, I’ll just slap the two together and have a cool arrangement”.

This is valid, but it is a completely different approach from seeing what the guitar does naturally and beautifully. Composers like Fernando Sor right on up through Chet Atkins and Tommy Emmanuel allow the beauty of the guitar, the open strings, and the natural physics to play out….like a deep comfortable exhale of breath.

A balance between the approaches is what I need next. Better yet, a commitment to beauty and tone is where I am heading. Knowing you’ll play an E Triad and thinking about going to the next triad is very different from playing the triad and ALLOWING ONESELF to feel, experience and vibrate with the triad.

It’s a cycle of playing and listening, then playing, then listening, etc – but having one’s radar up for a “feel good” vibration, a vibration of “love”. Sometimes just a deep listening to one’s own playing can stir this. And, a sense of real honesty with oneself…which is something I struggle with sometimes. I hang with certain ideas to see if they will work rather than discard things immediately, but maybe I need to toss things sooner!

There is nowhere to hide when you have an acoustic guitar blasting through a PA. Tommy, as always, had everything covered so beautifully my skin tingled and energy shot up my spine hearing his beautiful stuff.

I know that he has spent more time than me in that place of listening, making sure it feels good and making sure the music lines up with his intuition. That’s way deeper than “knowing” how to play your arrangement. It’s the difference between a monologue and a dialogue.

Here I go back to the drawing board, evolving. This morning I woke up at 4:30 and decided to just play pretty and have my radar and intuition up. No funk, no fast stuff, just beauty and glow and tone. Playing simple stuff, improvising and listening. Very different from practicing a piece – but more like practicing a “place”.

The plan? Let me stay there and see what happens. Let me go there every day and practice that vibration and allow new things to happen on their own.

Thank you for listening to me, and my music and tolerating my growth! No not the one on my back, the musical growth 🙂

I am not a finished product and never will be. Let’s see where music goes next.

Until next time…with much love….Adam

Happiness for No Reason At All

By Adam Rafferty 2 Comments

Greets friends. I am up at 4:27 am in NYC….the Europe jetlag has me crashing early and waking early.

I just returned from a great week of playing jazz with the Alvin Queen Quintet in Bern, Switzerland. It was a very musical, fun, grooving gig. I am looking forward to a slew of fingerstyle guitar performances in Bangkok and Germany over the next month.

“Rational” logic or dinner table / family conversations would follow like this…wow, I am doing all these things – gigs, cds, etc…therefore I must be happy. This is the typical thinking. Yes, I have been a working music machine all year and “should” be proud, happy and all that.

Well, I have struggled with a lot over the last several weeks, actually. The stress of essentially playing 2 styles and 2 instruments has had me freaked out…there’s a new wonderful lady in my life whom I love and don’t want to be away from for weeks on end…I’m watching my parents age, and I’m seeing friends have kids and not having any myself…and as I embrace the touring life, my grip on the local NY scene loosens and it feels like there’s no ground under me. My home feels like a hotel and a hotel feels like home.

Ok, none of this is real – it’s my mental creation, and yuck, I don’t like writing it and making it more real…but to prove the point that stresses can creep in even when the outside looks rosy.

I was thinking to myself how absurd it all is. To not be happy in the midst of the worldly success? What’s wrong with me? And the riddle continues…I “should” be happy, but am not. What? Who said I should be? How come I am not? And on and on, the mind spins.

Ahh, and then the answer descends on me….yesterday afternoon after stuffing my face with the local Indian food here in Jackson Heights, walking back to my apartment. Must be something in that Indian food, I tell ya 🙂

On 74th street as I strolled I suddenly had no thought of the future, not thought of the past, no thought of what I have accomplished or what my plans were. No worries, no ideas, no nothing. The most full, brimming nothingness, so beautiful all by itself. Awareness. It was utter presence and delectable silence that descended on me and sent a shiver up my spine just for a moment.

To know that this is available always is incredible. Absolute grace and bliss for no reason at all. In a moment, the mind and soul are refreshed, wiped clean of illusion.

That’s what I call a gift from God.

Letting Go

By Adam Rafferty 4 Comments

Greetings Friends.

I know it’s been a while since I have written. To be perfectly honest, I like to write when I am spiritually flying, so that I can exude great vibes and raise everyones spirit.

It’s been an exciting, busy successful time since August but it’s been very trying at times, with personal, emotional and physical rough spots. I did not feel right writing. I now feel I am getting back on track, and wanted to reach out to you.

No worries – I am in great shape now, but life is just ….well, life!

This year I had set myself a bunch of goals, and I have achieved them:

1) Release “Chameleon” CD
2) Release the Stevie Wonder DVD
3) Release a Christmas CD (announcement coming soon)
4) Continue Touring

But like anyone who works hard – be it a business owner, a medical student, a stay at home mom – if you do the job at hand, other aspects of life can and often do get stressful. Relationships, a feeling of grounded-ness, and loving care for one’s body easily slip.

What happened yesterday though was amazing. A friend visited me for lunch and he was beaming, as he had just been to Santa Fe. For him it’s a very spritually charged place, and he just looked rejuvanated.

Simply in his presence I listened to him and looked at him, and chose not to speak much. I felt my troubles simple drop. If I started talking, and telling myself “my story” again my tensions would come back.

I saw this ability to simply “let go” which the Release Technique and Sedona Method are based on. It is very deep to see that the feeling about an issue is not the issue. Let me repeat that – becasue it is easy to gloss over this idea. The feeling about something is not the thing.

We can in fact let feelings go and not hang on.

The Release Technique and Sedona Method give specific and awesome techniques of inquiry to facilitate this. In my case yesterday it was more intuitive and spontaneous, but I felt like myself again – in an instant.

I’m black! Err, I mean back……

🙂

So friends, I’ll write from the road – I leave for Swizerland tomorrow to play with Jazz Drum Legend Alvin Queen for a week!

A Perfect Reminder

By Adam Rafferty 2 Comments

This past month has been interesting. I have left my hometown of NYC to be in Colorado and California to spend time practicing guitar, recording, and breathing easy. Many New Yorkers think if they’d get away from NY life would fall apart. Funny, there is life outside NY and I feel fine.

However – there are a few universal principles to remember. 1) wherever you go, there you are 2) you take yourself and baggage with you wherever you go.

I found yesterday – exactly one month in, that I took my baggage with me. A feeling of “it’s not good enough” and “I want more” and “everything will be ok when (fill in the blank)”. Ahh, the tendency to deny the present moment was something I got into my “carry on item”.

Luckily I found the medicine I needed. A quick profound message from a Sadguru on Youtube, and then one from Lester Levenson. Sadguru observes how there are people who create their own heaven and their own hell. I realized that I already have everything I want in life, and that once I have gotten “the object of desire” – it is utterly transparent. To want more, and to deny the present moment – is a mini hell I create, and to sit quietly is a heaven I create.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jgs1ubkMhU]

Another teacher (not the one posted above)Lester Levenson describes it quite simply. He has observed that we already are whole, complete – and that through desire we create a disturbance, an added unhappiness, and when we fill that unhappiness with the object of desire, we find our wholeness which was there the whole time. The mind quiets, we call it happiness – and then get on the merry go round again. The happiness is simply our natural state. It is that we “assume” a lack which is not real.

Just hearing the words of these enlightened teachers is a perfect reminder. I can reflect on all the desires I have fulfilled over the years, and can also see that these did not bring me lasting happiness. Knowing that, I can breathe right here right now and allow myself to be happy.

Our happiness is not “coming” at “a future time, a better time then now” when we have something, or when something special happens. We can listen now. We can breathe now. We can let it all be, and allow a profound peace to pervade.