Today, our Yamaha Sessions continue with a gorgeous and tender performance from guitarist, producer, and singer-songwriter Jack Schneider. Best known for his road gig with Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill, Schneider released his debut album, Best Be On My Way, to critical acclaim in 2022. The project features Gill, David Rawlings, Stuart Duncan, and more collaborating on Schneider’s vintage-tinged original songs, each dripping with the styles and sonics of ’60s and ’70s troubadours and Americana poets. His latest single, “When the Saints,” is a delicious, shuffling folk-rock ballad with deeply stacked vocal tracks and retro trappings that was released in late July.
For his Yamaha Sessions performance, Schneider chose “Gulf of Mexico,” another original – that is as yet unrecorded and unreleased – which showcases the warm, full, and deep sound of Schneider’s Yamaha FS9 R acoustic guitar. Resonant and rich, the drop D tuning accentuates the melancholy evident in the timelessly constructed song. A bright spruce top and sultry rosewood back and sides add up to a guitar that’s equally at home in folk and Americana as bluegrass and flatpicking. Schneider pulls excellent tone from the instrument, with impeccable intonation and confident touch whether picking or strumming.
Ultimately, the guitar shines first and foremost as a complement to Schneider’s thoughtful and romantic writing, rising to the occasion of the lyric and its textures. Listeners can sense the respect and adoration Schneider holds for his picking and songwriting heroes – folks like Gill, James Taylor, John Denver, John Prine, and many more – in the way he carries on the age old tradition of country-folk literature in song.
Stay tuned, as our Yamaha Sessions will continue in just a couple of weeks right here, on BGS.
Discover more about Yamaha Guitars and their FG series here.
Video Credit: Steve Voss, Solar Cabin Creative
