Just fabulous John, there’s a lesson in there for all of us. Silky bends, fluid slides and some very sexy double stops (1:15) I’ll be re-visiting this for a while just to digest those dynamics.

Richard

Amazing, Charjo. Marvelous composition and so well played! You’ve outdone yourself this time. (I hope you find whatever it is you have lost.)

Bravo!!

Larry

Ok I declare your new nickname is ”Smoothy”
Soooo nice man, I could listen to you for hours.
What do you study for your arpeggios or is it just natural for you?
Awesome use of the open B string.

AndréM

Top of the class performance, John. Your tone and bends, note choices and touch all ring true and pleasing to the listener.

James

Awesome Charjo! The vibe was all your own and not entirely predictable where you were going to go with it. Love the tone as well.

Sounds great John. Love that bend to kick it off, hitting the half step and then up to the full, perfectly intonated. Shows you mean business. Just the perfect amount of grit dialed in so when you hit those double stops or dig in it comes through. And I like those “outside” runs you’ve thrown in.

Absolutely fabulous! Great dynamics and smooth, melodic playing. Love it!

Perfect performance with wonderful melodic ideas, sounds really professional.

Dieter

Awesome stuff here. There are lots of great submission for this challenge, but yours truly stands out.

Cheers,
Henh

I think the essence of making music is taking a track and telling a story with your guitar. You’ve done just that here, John. You did so with all your skills and all your soul. It’s impressive and moving, not depressive.

Very tasteful and masterful.

One of my favorite lessons, one the first I tried to play years ago, in the original version. And your own composition over the BT is brilliant! Loved these intriguing and original melodic phrases: really different from the Brian’s version, so refined and unique and very enjoyable to listen to (not to mention that of course you played spotlessly)!

Chilling! Very expressive and emotional. A haunting amount of reverb. This sounded perfect.

Pure class, John – everything about this spoke quality and professionalism! A real masterful performance – loved it. – Mark 👍🎶😎

Very beautiful, John. Nothing depressing for the listener, I find it rather soothing. You could play it for 10 minutes and I would listen and explore what you are doing all the way through. The tone is phantastic, too.

What a beautiful slow blues song, amazingly professional approach and perfect rendition Charjo!
High class stuff.
Lights.

Another professional performance John. Your composition and its execution were full of expression and atmosphere. It was played with great dexterity and tone and I really liked that harmonic sweep that you dropped in. One of my aspirations is to be able to do that at the drop of a hat.

I think I would describe that as the complete performance! So much to like , bends vibrato , arpeggios, superb phrasing you make it look effortless, and it wouldn’t be complete without those trademark double stops.
So enjoyable to listen to .

Martin

I didn’t think it could be possible but you have outdone yourself here, John! The music you played was so beautiful and wholesome, interesting and intriguing, smooth and silky, I feel like describing it in words is a blasphemy.

If you have tabs and wanted to share, I would love to break down this magic and learn some of your phrases!

Nicely done John…👌🎶

Sophistication on a another level. A Masterclass in selection of notes and execution. Very emotive as your music takes one on a journey, a story unfolding like a movie score. That speaks volumes when music you have created gives a life lesson to a listener. 📺 (A Spencer Tracy type character questions his choices and location in life, checks his pockets and decides to move on and leave all that he knew behind. Not depressing, but the cross road of uncertainty. Well that was the movie I saw.

That was something special John, so much to like. That double bend at the get go, the chordal ascent over the middle B bars, the arpeggios, they just kept coming. In particular, I like how you avoided the obvious resolution on a number of occasions and so too us to different emotional place, something more than just the blues, a bit of an outside sound.
There’s so many takeaways I can pillage from this that I expect to be coming back to raid it time and again over the next 12 months! I hope you won’t mind as it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d like to try and get into my repertoire over the next year.
Similar to you I’d like to leverage theory to compose more engaging solo’s but also have some ‘go tos’ in my trick bag for when I’m improvising. 2026 should be fun!

I was just writing in Michael’s previous submission on the same EP444 how the sound can make the difference and how fascinating is listening to the same EP assuming different flavours this way. Well John, you’ve given us another wonderful example of this. These are notes with a soul! I’m so inspired that I will make taking care of the sound (pretty poor by me) one of the goal for my 2026 guitar year, thank you John for this inspiration!

Hi John, wonderful, as always. I used EP444 also, but I almost don’t recognize it here with the difference in tone and phrasing. This track let’s the soloist shine in their own way. No worries about sounding depressed… you sound relaxed and confident, giving us all a mellow ride along the blues train. I enjoyed it very much!

Oh I really like what you came up with. Phrasing is so good. Wonderful bends. Grand slam!

Absolutly fantastic Charjo……your a pro…..wish I could ad-lib like that.
I did ep444 also
Paddyboy