When Your Instrument Stops Being a Barrier
Lessons from Abraham Laboriel, Michael Landau, and the most powerful live show I've ever seen
NAMM week in Los Angeles.
My buddy and I were going out every night to catch live music. Different clubs. Different bands. Just soaking it all in.
This particular night, we had tickets to The Baked Potato.
If you don’t know it, The Baked Potato is a legendary jazz club in Studio City that’s been around since 1970. It’s tiny, holds maybe 100 people, packed tight. And here’s the thing: they don’t book this kind of talent once in a while for special occasions.
This is every show.
World-class musicians. Intimate room. Two sets a night.
That night, the lineup was Abraham Laboriel on bass, Abraham Laboriel Jr. on drums, Greg Mathieson on keys, and Michael Landau on guitar.
I didn’t know what to expect walking in. But was I in for an experience.
We got there early. My buddy and I ended up about 10 feet from the stage, close enough to see everything. The room was filling up. The band was setting up, joking around, adjusting mics.
And then they started playing.
Within the first few bars, I realized: this show was going to be different.
These guys weren’t there to show off. They weren’t there to prove anything.
They were there to give.
You could feel it in the room. They were sharing something they’d spent decades building. Not to impress us, but to bring us into it. To let us experience what they were experiencing.
They had so much fun together. Laughing between songs. Locking eyes during solos. Feeding off each other’s energy. I’ve never seen this at a live show with such clarity. They brought the entire audience into that feeling.
It wasn’t performer and crowd.
It was all of us, together, inside the same moment.
And Abraham Laboriel Sr, this man has played on thousands of recordings, toured the world for decades, the joy radiating from him while he played was something I’ll never forget.
No ego. No proving. Just pure, unfiltered love for music and the act of sharing it.
I could’ve sat in that room for days.
Here’s what I keep coming back to:
Deep familiarity turns what you know into musical expression.
These musicians knew their instruments so deeply that there was zero barrier between what they felt and what came out through their hands. The technique was invisible. All you experienced was connection, joy, and music.
Think about your own guitar practice for a second.
When you’re deep in technique work, working through triads, drilling scales, learning chord progressions, it’s easy to lose sight of why you’re doing it.
You’re not learning triads to know triads. You’re learning them so they become part of your musical vocabulary, so when you want to express something, those triads are right there, ready to be used in that expression.
You’re learning them so deeply that they disappear. So when you’re playing with other people or just lost in the groove, your fingers go exactly where they need to go.
No thinking. No technical barrier. Just expression.
That’s what those guys had at The Baked Potato. Decades of deep familiarity meant the technical work had dissolved into pure musicality. The barrier between inner feeling and outer sound was gone.
Now, I’m not Abraham Laboriel…not even close.
But that night reminded me why I love helping guitarists build toward that kind of deep familiarity. It takes time and focused work, but it’s absolutely possible to get to where your instrument stops being a barrier and starts being a vehicle for what you want to say.
If that’s the direction you want to head, I’d be glad to help you map it out.
I offer a 45-Minute Guitar Coaching Roadmap Session where we work together to figure out exactly what you need to focus on and the best approach for your playing.
After our session, I’ll send you a personalized practice roadmap and some available time slots if you want to continue with one-on-one coaching.