John Knowles on choosing a guitar teacher, 2006

"If you’ve bought a guitar and are looking for ways to learn, you think you don’t know anything, but you know why you bought the guitar, you know whose music you admire, you have a dream about what you might be able to do someday. That’s really valuable stuff. So when you go to look for a teacher, see if they’re in fact on the path you’d like to be on. The reason is, the guitar is one word but it is many paths. If you get on the wrong path, the teacher will lead you down it--they know how to do that. The trick is to find out if that person understands your passion, which at the moment is maybe a little fuzzy, but it’s there. Don’t underestimate the value of that."

Outtake from a feature in Guitar Teacher magazine. Find out more about Nashville guitarist John Knowles, longtime collaborator with Chet Atkins, at his site.