For Legg, It’s the Head, Not Hands

If you’re an acoustic-guitar player, you’re going to hate Adrian Legg, who performs tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library. One listen to this guy will have the effect of making you want to smash your guitar into tinder and pick no more.

Such is Legg’s technical prowess that it’s difficult to believe that all that music in his latest album, “Waiting for a Dancer,” is discharged from a single guitar and a pair of hands.

Winner of an inventory of awards and honors from Guitar Player magazine--including Acoustic Guitarist of the Decade and, for five years running, Best Acoustic Fingerstylist--the witty Brit is humble about his playing, explaining his technique away as an elementary matter of philosophy.

“I don’t think it’s particularly technical,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It’s just tunes, and it’s fairly simple. It’s all a matter of perception. Finger picking, I think, is a bit complicated for people because so many guitar players think in terms of linear stuff. They see finger picking and they think of two or three lines of notes, but that’s not the way to approach it. Think of the notes in terms of slices, and it’s really rather easy.”

No matter how you slice it, Legg’s mastery of his instrument is dazzling. He incorporates influences and styles ranging from raga and rags to classical and country.

At times, it’s also difficult to believe that Legg plays the acoustic guitar exclusively. The tonal varieties on “Waiting for a Dancer”--which, like his previous five album releases are all solo instrumentals--traverse the spectrum from the sweet and ethereal “Bayou Belles” to the near-metal of “Son of Kiss Girl.”

“The tones are all done off of an Ovation pickup,” said Legg, who is a consultant for Ovation guitars. “It’s a four-frequency pickup, so basically you can make it do anything you like.

“The acoustic notion is a funny one anyway. It’s all very pious, isn’t it? It’s a load of bollocks, really. The dictionary says ‘acoustic’ means without electronic enhancement. That’s microphones. So nobody plays acoustic anymore, really. You look at the whole ‘Unplugged’ thing on television and they’ve got all these wires coming out of everything. The instruments are there to serve people, not for us to serve them. It’s just a box with wires on it, isn’t it?”

Because Legg, 48, is a self-taught musician who didn’t even pick up a guitar until he was 20, his accomplishments are all the more impressive.

He names American country pickers Chet Atkins and Merle Travis among his champions, but curiously, Legg cites his prime influence as a jazz master whose music is in no way reflected in his own.

“I hero-worship the late Joe Pass,” he said. “I thought he was a wonderful musician, and I loved the way he kind of went into the abyss with substance-abuse problems and came back. He’s someone I always loved to listen to live.”

Live music is Legg’s forte. For all the wizardry presented on his recordings, he says, he plays best in concert, where he can get lost in the pure emotion of audience interaction.

“It’s an urgent communication,” he said. “You want to communicate things to people, and music is the best way of doing that for me. It’s immediate and it’s transitory. It’s like you have a conversation and you say it then and there, then the moment’s gone. The business of relating to people is very fulfilling.”

Legg apparently communicated well recently on the G3 tour with electric guitar wizards Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson. Although his music is in stark contrast to that of the rock ‘n’ roll headliners, Legg was well received by his peers and their fans.

“I loved it,” he said. “I got on well with everybody, and I really enjoyed it a lot. They were all very nice and looked after me wonderfully, and it was wonderful to be exposed to a completely different approach to the guitar. Steve is just pure theater, and Eric plays differently every night. They’re such perfectionists, it’s nice to be exposed to such discipline. I definitely made new friends.”

Perhaps it was that exposure to different styles that has Legg thinking of deviating from the solo acoustic method for his next project.

“I feel like a bit of a change at the moment, but I’m not sure what,” he said. “You know when you have vaguely itchy feet and you’re not sure what it is? I suppose I’m waiting for something to come along and whistle at me.”

* Guitarist Adrian Legg performs tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real. 7 and 9 p.m. $6 (children, $3). (714) 248-SHOW.