CMHoF Will Host Gretsch Guitar Pull In July

Tommy Emmanuel, Eddie Pennington, Joe Robinson and Nashville duo Striking Matches will take part in a special program, titled The Gretsch Sound: A Guitar Pull, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Sat., July 16 at 2 p.m.

The event is presented in support of the exhibition American Sound and Beauty: Guitars from the Bachman-Gretsch Collection, which ends its run July 17.

Through this casual musical performance, these master players will discuss the unique features of Gretsch design and demonstrate their individual musical styles with their own instruments.

Tommy Emmanuel is regarded as one of the world’s leading fingerstyle guitarists. He is a two-time Grammy nominee and one of only five guitarists named Certified Guitar Player (CGP) by Chet Atkins.

Kentucky native Eddie Pennington, a perpetuator of the “Muhlenberg Sound” of Merle Travis, is a recipient of the NEA National Heritage Fellowship and a member of the National Thumb Pickers Hall of Fame.

Virtuoso guitarist and singer-songwriter Joe Robinson is an Australian Guitar Magazine award winner and a winner of Australia’s Got Talent.

Striking Matches, the songwriting, guitar-wielding, alternative-country duo of Justin Davis and Sarah Zimmerman, has been featured on the ABC series Nashville. Their debut album, Nothing but the Silence, was produced by T Bone Burnett.

The program participants will sign commemorative Hatch posters following the performance.

The Bachman-Gretsch Collection was amassed by Canadian guitarist and songwriter Randy Bachman, a key member of rock bands the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Bachman acquired more than 300 historic and rare Gretsch guitars in the 1970s and 1980s. His collection was purchased in 2008 by the Gretsch Foundation, the charitable arm of the Gretsch family.

American Sound and Beauty: Guitars from the Bachman-Gretsch Collection is the largest exhibition of stringed instruments ever mounted by the museum. The 75 guitars presented also offer the most comprehensive look at the Bachman-Gretsch Collection ever made available to the public.