First Performance for the guitar class

So last night I went to my first performance workshop.  It is put on monthly but my guitar instructor for the "Special Forces" group that I belong to.  I think there were about 12 of us at this session and everyone either prepares something or improvises over their preferred key.  I chose to do a cover of a cover of the song "Somewhere over the Rainbow"  A fine gent called Chris Impellitteri recorded it on one of his albums years ago and I always thought it was cool to do a metal version of that song.  Now, Chris I is an insanely good player and I am clearly not anywhere near his level........yet!!  so I did my cover of his cover.  Still Metal, still cool, just much simpler. 

I was nervous as hell but doing everything to try to relax by cracking jokes, mocking my about to be played masterpiece......lol.  anyway, it went great, the group really liked it and I received some valuable feedback on how to improve my playing.......which is the reason we do this workshop in the firstplace.

There is a young guy in our group who is well on his way to being a virtuoso player.  He's 16 years old and been playing for 4 years........WOW.  Sweep arpeggios, changing keys at will, working the modes to perfection, superb player and only getting better.  Our instructor makes it very clear.......if you want to play as well as Rio.....you MUST DO AS HE SAYS......and you will get there.  I have never had as much fun playing guitar as I am now.  I really wish I had Tomasso as an instructor when I started playing guitar at 14 (impossible as I think he is younger than me...lol).  Now, it's possible it may not have helped as my practice schedule was....shall we say.....non existent??  But maybe it was because I never really saw any improvement week after week.  I learned different songs but always had the same flaws in my playing....like my picking hand, I could not pick smooth to save my life.  So for 30 years I've had horrible picking technique and Tomasso was able to fix that in about 4 months.

I'm learning so much and enjoying playing guitar like I never have before.  I think that is the reason I also have a renewed passion in building them again to. 

OK, so when I get home from work I'll be applying primer to the strat project.....maybe some pics?