Beppe Gambetta, Hayes Griffin, and the Power of a Pick
Twenty-some years later, Hayes Griffin still has the pick.
“It's a Dunlop Altex. It's like the kind of teardrop shaped ones. I had a memento box when I was a kid, and it had all this stuff my grandma gave me, like some arrowheads she found on her farm. And I put that pick in there.”
The flatpicking guitar virtuoso Beppe Gambetta was at a music store in Heath, Ohio, to do a workshop on behalf of Taylor Guitars. Griffin was an impressionable youngster who hung out there.
“If I see a child that is really interested in the music, I give him my pick,” Gambetta explains. “And I usually say, ‘Don't lose it because it's magic. It has all the notes hidden inside.’ So that's the thing that I did also with Hayes.”
An extraordinary combination of skill and charisma has earned Gambetta a passionate following among bluegrass, roots, and world music fans on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s an improbable calling for a native of Genoa, Italy, and it started with one record.
“It happened with an album of the Newport Folk Festival with just a couple of songs from Doc Watson,” he says. “It's like when you meet a girl, the love of your life, you understand after ten seconds that that's it, that you found the treasure that you were waiting for. And so, for me, I needed just one song. I loved the beauty of the tone, the beauty of the rhythm, everything about that kind of acoustic sound.”
In a career that stretches more than 50 years, Gambetta’s dazzling guitar playing, evocative singing, and stirring original compositions have led to award-winning recordings, performances around the world, and collaborations with legendary artists including Doc Watson, Tony Rice, David Grisman, Tony Trischka, and Dan Crary.
And now Hayes Griffin.
Inspired by Gambetta and other musicians, Griffin studied, shredded, gigged, and then graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music. He’s toured with national acts and taught both private lessons and in university classrooms. He’s now an in-demand camp and workshop instructor and a popular on-line mandolin and guitar teacher. He's an inspirational and innovative content creator for his hayesgriffin.club online teaching site. In 2024, he placed second at the prestigious National Guitar Flatpack Championship in Winfield, Kansas. That led to a reunion.
“That was the first time I had spoken words to Beppe Gambetta and maybe even seen him in person since I was 12 or 13,” Griffin says. “He was playing Stage Four right after the guitar contest was over. So, we met backstage, and I told him, ‘You don't know this, but you were the first flat picker that I ever saw live, in person. And he said, 'Did I do the pick routine?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’
“It's hard not to get emotional about it,” Griffin continues. “To have that opportunity come in that moment--it was just like an alignment of the planets or something. It was a full-circle moment. It was cosmic, I would say.”
That reunion led to Gambetta inviting Griffin to join him on tour.
“He’s not only a fantastic player, but he is also multi-talented because he plays different instruments,” Gambetta says. “And I enjoy playing all the arrangements of my albums with him, because when I play normally as a solo player, part of what I arranged is lost.”
Griffin traveled to Genoa last spring to be part of Acoustic Nights, a concert series Gambetta began producing in 2001. Gambetta’s stage shows not only include the bluegrass music he loves, but both traditional and original Italian music, much of it written to accompany dance. One intricate and energetic piece, “La Doccia,” especially challenged Griffin.
“Somebody asked me, ‘How much effort did you put into that?’ And I said, ‘Let's put it this way: If I can spend 15 minutes with a fiddle tune, I can have that melody pretty much forever. But that piece of music took me six months of daily practice to get it underneath my fingers.’”
The Acoustic Nights crowd appreciated his dedication.
“Everyone really loved him,” Gambetta recalls. “It's a big show. We have 3,000 people. It was a pleasure to play with him because he played some music that he was supposed to bring to the Winfield contest. The audience really went crazy.”
Griffin and Gambetta continue to perform together. On Gambetta’s coming album, Next, Griffin and Gambetta will be joined by Nick Mantoan, a brilliant Italian guitarist who was similarly gifted with a guitar pick as a young man by Gambetta.
“The album talks about the little gestures and moments of your life that just last a second,” Gambetta says. “But in one second, everything can change for the better. So, there will be a reference to the famous pick that I gave out.
“In this world where we have a lot of insecurity and trouble, to do one good thing--to make one little gesture to a friend, to somebody--sometimes it can bring a beautiful result and can touch someone’s life. Now that I’m at a certain age, it's beautiful that I understand that in my career, I was able to touch a little bit the life of other people who became musicians.”
