oooh.. I love this post!
I've got so many influences, I don't really know which one does what, like - I learned classical Spanish/flamenco style when I started high school and my guitar teacher loved Mark Knopfler (for his finger-picking rock music) so Dire Straits were a definite early influence.
The most prominent musical awakening I can clearly remember though, is when I first heard Jimi Hendrix... Little Wing specifically. I listened to everything I could of Jimi - and what I heard was beauty, but from a completely different angle to what I'd been taught classically... Jimi didn't seem to carefully approach each and every note the way I always thought music was supposed to be created, he almost wrestled it into being exactly what his unique sound was.
I think that, not only did he give me the idea that all music didn't have to be precise, it could be truly individual - before that I never considered that playing a song could be done "the way I play it" not just "the right way".
Ever since then, I think I've been enamoured of the idea of music as a conversation, a reflection of our own voice and personality, and I think that's why I love this hobby and ultimately ended up buying this business - I love the idea of people playing their own music on the instruments they created themselves... if I can help people express themselves then I will have done something worthwhile with my time here.
- Tbo